Day After Night (10 page)

“Of course I will take care of her,” said David. “You can keep an eye on me. If I’m
not up to the job, you’ll let me know.”

“Me?” Leonie said. “I would be like an extra wheel. Like putting milk into a cup of
wine.”

“But what about you?” he asked. “Every man in this room is in love with you—well,
everyone but me. Why do you chase them all away?”

“You are drunk, monsieur,” Leonie said, wrinkling her nose at the alcohol on his breath.

“Yes, but that does not mean I am wrong. Why are you so chilly?” David tried to put
his arm around her, but she moved her chair and watched as eight kibbutz girls delivered
platters of cookies, cake, and strudel, and bowls of fruit compote. Shayndel followed,
a big grin on her face and a plate in each hand.

She placed one heaped high with sweets in the middle of their table. “This is for
everyone to share,” she said. “But the kuchen is mine. See, this one is made with
apricot, this has plums, and the third is apple with raisins—which is what I grew
up with.”

Shayndel picked up her fork with a flourish, like a maestro with a baton. She took
a small bite of the first two cakes and nodded her approval after each. But the third
kuchen required a second taste as she discovered almonds and bits of
dried apple that had been moistened with liqueur, and a sweet blend of spices she
couldn’t name. This was so far superior to her mother’s baking that Shayndel put her
fork down out of loyalty.

“Is it good?” Leonie asked.

“Unbelievable,” Shayndel whispered, so serious that everyone at the table burst into
laughter.

David stole a bite from her plate and pretended to swoon, while under the table he
pressed his thigh against hers. She frowned and tilted her head toward Leonie, letting
him know she was not going anywhere without her friend. David saluted and stumbled
off, returning a moment later with Miloz.

“You sit here,” David said, pushing him into the chair beside Leonie. He pointed at
Shayndel and said, “There is an accordion outside, and I simply have to dance with
you. Please, mademoiselle?”

Shayndel started to say no, but Leonie waved her away. “Go on. He will not be denied.”

Nearly everyone in the hall stared at the vision of Leonie and Miloz side by side.
Leonie’s soft brown waves framed her heart-shaped face; a pair of perfect brows arched
above eyes the color of gray clouds on a sunny day. She was the living proof that
Parisian girls—including Jewish ones—were congenitally stylish.

Miloz seemed even more striking sitting beside her. With a long neck and jet-black
hair that set off the milky whiteness of his skin, he looked like a Roman statue.
It was impossible not to imagine them married and the parents of the most attractive
Jewish children in history.

The attention made them self-conscious and acutely aware of the fact that they had
nothing to say to each other. Miloz
mashed a piece of cake into a pile of crumbs; Leonie sipped her water. They sighed
in union, which made them laugh and turned their discomfort into an alliance.

“Let’s go watch the dancing,” said Leonie.

He pulled her chair out for her and offered his arm, which set the men from his barrack
to shouting, “Hurrah!”

Zorah watched them, in spite of herself, and looked around the hall one last time
to make sure that Meyer hadn’t arrived without her noticing. That means he is at home
with his wife and children, Zorah thought, as she hurried outside, passing through
the gauntlet of Arab guards who slouched on either side of the door, watching the
festivities.

As the room emptied, Tedi noticed that the guards were eyeing the dessert table, and
brought them a plate of cookies.

“Thank you very much,” said a small man with a heavy mustache.

“You speak Hebrew?” Tedi asked.

“Hebrew and Arabic. I have English, and a little Farsi, too.”

Another man, who bore a striking resemblance to Arik, the Hebrew teacher, reached
for a three-cornered cookie. “My mother makes something like this.” After tasting
it, he grimaced.

Tedi laughed. “Your mother’s are better, yes?”

“Hers are sweeter.” He reached out to touch her hair and said, “You are sweet, too.”

Tedi stepped back. “I will get you something better.”

She sent one of the kibbutz boys over with strudel. The guards waved at her, mouths
full, and the Arik look-alike held up a sticky thumb.

Tedi waved back and then walked through the kitchen to the back door. She passed Tirzah
and a group of kibbutzniks
who were smoking and talking far too fast for her to understand.

“Good night,” Tedi said. “Many thanks.”

The clearing in front of the dining hall, noisy with laughter and music, was full
of dancers, but Tedi was too tired to join in. Her face ached from smiling back at
the stares and comments from the kibbutzniks. She wondered if she would always be
treated as a curiosity: the tall blonde Jewess.

She walked toward the eastern fence, which faced onto a half-plowed field, pungent
with the smell of broken sod and crushed weeds. The mountains were a dark shadow in
the moonless night.

After the closeness inside the dining hall, the air was sweet and cool. She took a
deep breath and turned her face to the sky. It seemed impossible that these could
be the same stars she had looked up at six months ago, impossible that she was seeing
them through the same eyes.

On the night of her escape, the icy air had hit her like a slap in the face, harsh
but welcome after the fetid heat and terror inside the boxcar. There had been a full
moon that night, which seemed as outsized and unreal as a paper cutout in a theater
set.

After ten of them had squeezed through the floor of the cattle car, they found themselves
facing an enormous field, flooded with moonlight. Tedi saw the others start to run
but then drop to the ground, disappearing in the weeds. She followed suit, lying on
her back and staring up at the moon as the sound of boots grew closer. One of the
soldiers had a bad cough. One of the others swore as he stumbled over a rail tie.
They seemed in
no hurry and Tedi realized that they were unaware there had been an escape.

Her fingers burned in the cold; she wished she had thought to bury her hands in her
armpits, but she didn’t dare move. She became terrified that she might sneeze. Go
away, she prayed. Go away.

Finally, the engine coughed back to life and the train pulled out, but Tedi waited
until she heard someone else move before she dared lift her head. They scrambled for
a line of trees, where they huddled close and rubbed each other’s hands back to life.

Tedi sank down and sat in the dust of Atlit. After the Germans marched into Amsterdam,
Tedi’s best friend had told her, “You’re so lucky. You look like a poster girl for
the Hitler Youth.” Gertrude had said it without malice, but Tedi was ashamed. A few
weeks later, her parents announced that they were sending her into hiding at a farm
outside Utrecht.

“I don’t want to go,” she wept. “I want to stay with you. Why don’t you send Rachel
instead?” But the decision had been made; her sister was too young to go to strangers.
They would find somewhere else for her as soon as they could.

On the night before she was to leave, Tedi’s mother sat on the bed beside her and
brushed her hair. “You will be all right, sweetheart,” she said, “but our Rachel has
no chance of passing.”

The memory of her mother’s words sent a chill up Tedi’s back. She tried to think about
something else, but tonight she was too tired to fight the past. Rachel had been as
dark as Tedi was fair, intellectual where Tedi was artistic, moody where she was sunny.
Tedi was the favorite daughter, and both of them had always known it.

“I’m sorry,” Tedi whispered.

Two days after her little group escaped from the death train, a group of British soldiers
found them, gave them tea, and wrapped them in blankets before putting them on a truck
headed for the Displaced Persons center in Landsberg. There she found more barbwire,
more barracks, and endless lines in which she waited to talk to officers and Red Cross
workers and black-market “fixers,” who flourished in the chaos. She was sure that
someone could help her get home, which was all she could think about. So many of the
others talked about getting to America or Palestine, Argentina or Canada; she wondered
if she was the only Jew in Europe who wanted to stay.

Her mother had said they were all to return to the apartment on Bloemgracht as soon
as they could; that was the plan for “after.”

Tedi got as far as the train depot in Stuttgart, which is where she ran into Arne
Loederman, her father’s business partner for seventeen years, since she was a baby.
It took her a moment to recognize the frail old man calling her name. He wept at the
sight of her, skin and bones.

He told her that he had been in Bergen-Belsen. He had seen her father, mother, and
Rachel there; her Uncle Hermann, Auntie Lu, and their sons, her cousins, Jakob and
Hans, too. He raked his fingers down his cheeks and looked at the ground. He didn’t
have to say it.

Tedi shivered, as cold as she’d been in the moonlit field. Even her fingers were numb.
It was not a surprise. She had known they were dead, felt it even as she insisted
on getting back to Amsterdam.

Mr. Loederman held his arms out to her and held her close, weeping bitterly on her
shoulder. She did not return his embrace or cry and finally, he pulled away. He took
both her hands in
his. “You must travel back to Amsterdam with me, Tedi,” he said, without meeting her
eyes. “Half the business belongs to you. You remember Pim Verbeck, the old foreman?
He promised to take care of things for us. Whatever is left will be your inheritance.
I will take care of you.”

But Tedi said, “I am going to Palestine.”

Mr. Loederman’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “I suppose I would do the same if I
were younger. You must write to me when you get there. I will send you what I can.
Here.” He tried to press a few coins into her hands.

Tedi would not take them. “I have to go,” she said. “Wait. Let me buy you something.
Food, a pair of shoes, something.”

Tedi was already running away from him, hoping to catch up to the people she had been
traveling with, the ones who were headed for Palestine. They had tried to talk her
into coming with them and leaving behind the whole poisoned graveyard that was Europe.
But she had kept her mind fixed on Amsterdam, the markets and the cinemas, the light
on the water, the bakery down the block from her house, her favorite bridges. Once
she got home, she promised herself, she would never complain about the dampness, or
the long winter nights, or even the smell of the canals at low tide.

But Mr. Loederman had erased her longing and turned her homesickness and nostalgia
into anger and loathing. Why had he survived? Why not her father, who had been a better
man—kinder, smarter, and younger, too? Why was Tedi alive and not Rachel? Where was
her mother? Her cousins? Her friends? Suddenly she imagined Amsterdam full of ghosts,
reproaching her from every window, every storefront, every doorway.

In Palestine, at least, no one would burst into tears at the sight of her.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Tedi traced her name into the dirt and remembered
Mr. Loederman’s wife, Lena, an old-fashioned woman who wore crocheted collars. They
had had a grown son, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. All dead, she realized. She
should have hugged him back.

The accordion raced up a scale. Young voices rose into the night. Tedi put her fingers
into her ears and listened to the sound of her own breathing, one breath at a time,
as her father had taught her when she was seven years old and miserable with the mumps.
Papa had sat beside her on the quilted white counterpane. “Shah, darling, shah,” he
said, putting a cool hand on her burning forehead. “Take a deep breath. Good. Now,
take the next breath. Then another breath, and another, and another, and
voilà
! You will be somewhere else, all better, no more headaches. The sun will shine and
we will eat too much chocolate and we won’t tell Mamma.”

Tedi was rocking and weeping, her fingers in her ears, wanting her father, wishing
that she could be that seven-year-old girl again, wondering how a lifetime could be
burned and buried when it was so close that she could still feel the comfort of her
father’s hand on her face.

But the hand landed on her shoulder instead, grasping her firmly from behind. Tedi
screamed and threw her elbow back as hard as she could and jumped to her feet, fists
clenched.

Zorah was on the ground, clutching her thigh. “Bloody hell,” she sputtered. “You idiot.
Why did you do that?”

“I’m sorry,” said Tedi, dropping to her knees. “I’m so sorry. Are you hurt?”

“I’ll be all right,” Zorah said, sitting up and rubbing her leg. “I didn’t mean to
startle you.”

Tedi was rocking back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut, her arms wrapped around her
sides.

“Really,” Zorah insisted. “It’s not that bad.”

“They would grab from behind like that,” Tedi whispered. “One of them would hold me
down. They both laughed. They covered my face. It was as if I wasn’t even there, just
my …”

Zorah put her arm around Tedi’s shoulders. It took a long time until she stopped rocking
and trembling. The accordion played a tango from start to finish. Then there was a
big-band ballad and a local folk tune. Finally, Zorah ventured a few words. “It was
hell for women in the camps. I know.”

“I wasn’t in a concentration camp,” Tedi said. “I was in hiding. I was at a farm in
the countryside. All day long, locked inside the barn, and at night the farmer’s son
would come. Sometimes he brought someone else, an older man, and the two of them,
sometimes every night.

“When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I said something to the mother. She slapped me.
The Germans came the next day.”