Displaced Persons (4 page)

They played rummy, and a version of poker Fela would not reveal how she had learned. Before the war, Pavel didn’t play cards. But early on, after he had fled to a town not yet clean of Jews, he had stayed with a family he knew only slightly, and the father and daughter had taught him to play in the evenings, when no one was allowed out. They knew him only by a false name, Miloch, but he became close with them, especially the daughter and her husband, and he learned the game fast. He could make his face a mask and trick the others into thinking his prospects were bad. It was a good skill.

The war had ended, but still he played with deep concentration, breaking his thoughts only to watch as Fela cast out a card, or mocked a mistake of Chaim’s, or laughed as she laid out her winning hand. Fela made fun of his gloomy expressions.

So serious! she would say. We’re still alive, even if you lose the game!

He would want to answer, Who says I will lose? But he kept quiet, instead letting out a mournful sigh as he shifted in his seat.

He saw that Fela was the most cheerful when she played cards.
The rest of the day, her chores and her cooking, her letters to Palestine and to Poland, her squinted reading of the camp newsletters, she approached with grim drive. He liked to keep her playing cards as late as possible, so he could hear her shouts of victory and affectionate jokes before he went to sleep.

P
AVEL AWOKE IN THE
middle of the night. He got up and went to the drawer where he had placed his wallet and a little envelope of his pictures. He caressed the brown packet. He did not need to take the pictures out. If he stopped moving altogether, he thought he could hear Fela rustling in the bedroom across the corridor, Chaim’s hard breaths in the living room. They seemed at peace. In the day it was easier for him than for them—Fela afraid to go into the garden, Chaim lying on the sofa and humming—but at night they were free. Perhaps their thoughts exhausted them during the day, and their bodies had no choice after the sun went down. Meanwhile Pavel was alone, trying to explain things to himself without the help of a night companion or a fellow traveler. When Fishl had been with him there had been an understanding. He had been a guide, recognizing Pavel in the entry room of the death camp, advising him how to keep alive. The skills he and Fishl had taught each other kept him alive even now. Yet now Pavel was confused, more confused than he had been in years. He could speak more languages than a military interpreter, but still he did not know what to call this house and these companions. He needed an instruction manual to tell him how to wait calmly for food, how to talk with confidence to a soldier, how to sleep.

He returned to the bed. When they were children, his mother had given each of them a piece of chocolate in bed each night, in the dark. After her death, when he was sent east to live with his grandparents, his grandmother did the same. Now, the memory of the taste
made him close his eyes, trying to fool himself into sleep. Had his brothers and sisters been given chocolate in the homes of the aunts and cousins where they had been sent? He had not thought to wonder before this moment. After his father remarried and he was returned to his home in Katowice, he did not remember chocolate. Well, he was already an adult then, almost fifteen, and his grandfather was ailing, his grandmother preparing to live with one of her surviving daughters. His mother’s family knew how to take in the grieving and the abandoned without making them feel as guests or burdens.

Pavel let his eyes close, tried to push into his mind pleasant images, half-conscious dreams. He saw his grandmother, standing and smiling, blind to the men loading wagons with her precious possessions. Silver, china, his grandfather’s leather-bound Talmud, everything in piles like so many old rags. No, his grandmother did not see. Instead she called out to him, her voice more aged than he remembered. Eat, eat, you rascal, she said in Polish. Her croaked words caused him to give a nervous laugh, and his mouth began to itch. Her hand held out a bit of almond cake, and he knew that the almonds had come from the tree that had burst into blossom behind the house. His grandmother’s voice turned softer, to Yiddish: Eat. Skinny boy. Do you understand?

Yes, he answered. But her words seemed to bounce against his ears and skull without falling inside him.

Eat, eat. Do you understand?

Yes, he repeated. And he almost did. But now it was she who did not seem to hear him. Her face was removed, yellow, as in a picture or film. Yes, Grandmother, yes. He said it in every language he thought that she knew, Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, German. Yes, yes.

Eat, she continued, her voice in a singsong. Eat, eat. My
yingele
, my little one, my lamb, eat.

A
FTER A MONTH OR
two Fela was stronger, her legs no longer swollen, and she agreed to set out with Pavel on her new bicycle to the camp. They filled their satchels with cheese and bread, as well as a bit of gold, on a warm September day. There was no reason to be afraid; already she could move the bicycle in the side roads, and they would walk part of the way if she became tired.

Look how well you have learned, said Pavel, riding behind her. Very steady.

I had a good teacher, she called out.

They stopped to eat in a clearing near a half-repaired train station, a quiet area not far from a bustling one. Fela looked past the line of birches and smoothed their blanket on the grass.

I’m sorry I’m so slow. Really, I am very afraid. She laughed with a little hiccup, looked behind the row of trees again.

It is safe with me, said Pavel. Two is a stronger number than one.

She said nothing.

Pavel said, We are together. He took her hand.

She moved her hand from his. Pavel felt something move inside his ribs, a wind of fear. But he pushed it down. They sat silently. He waited a moment, then took her hand again.

Again she pulled her hand away. He looked at it as she drew it into her lap: white, small, the knuckles slightly chapped.

Pavel, she said. I am looking for someone.

Ah, said Pavel. She was looking at him straight in the eyes.

He managed a soft expression. But really he was surprised. With her resting in the house, her fear to go outside—how could she look without looking? He had thought—but he turned away from her, faced the bicycles, the frames flat on the grass, the spokes turning slowly in the breeze.

Finally Fela spoke. And you? You are such a good-looking man. So kind, decent.

He said nothing.

She waited, then said it directly. You too, perhaps, are looking?

No, said Pavel. Not—there was—but I already know what happened. I look only for my brothers and sisters.

He did not look at her face, busying himself instead with his bread. They finished their meal in silence and mounted their bicycles again, Fela in front so he could watch as she rode. Why should anything change? She would look, perhaps she would find. He still could protect her while things remained this way.

He pushed his legs forward on the pedals and watched her hips on the frame ahead of him. He still could protect her. Already he had found a use for another gold chain. A little woman in the British camp knew how to counterfeit American identity cards. He could expand his business, give Fela what she needed to make a nice home, and then they would see what they would see. Already the zones were tightening, the paperwork to cross each border and enter each new town growing thicker and more complicated. Today he would pick up the American papers to add on to the British ones. He could go back and forth, do business in all zones, American, British, even Russian. He was making new connections. Only last week he had brought a truckful of provisions into the camp and left half with the refugee camp hospital, then sold what remained to the Germans for clothes, hats, jackets, and a wallet. A citizen of the world! He laughed to himself, but Fela did not turn around. Liberated, but not free. That was what they said in the camp, the slogan the refugees used to build organization, to argue for visas, for Palestine, for graves. A young woman, but she too was not yet free.

A few meters ahead of him, Fela’s light hair blew slightly, restrained by the scarf she had tied around her head. Yes, she was a lady.

September–October 1945

P
AVEL WANTED TO THROW
himself into something that would make him full. The trading was not enough. He tried to busy himself by attending the committee meetings of the Jews in the camp. The men had noticed that the younger refugees, the boys of fifteen or sixteen, were terribly ignorant. Could not they begin classes of some kind, something to make up for the time these children had lost? Were there no teachers among the survivors? Someone had volunteered to make a search some days before, and Pavel had not paid so much attention. But as he cycled with Fela home from the camp, he had an image of himself sitting with Chaim in their garden, teaching him all that he knew. Three days later, Pavel presented the boy with a stack of papers fastened with a clip.

Chaim, he said, blowing on a cigarette after his coffee. How old are you?

Ah, said Chaim. Fourteen or fifteen, I believe.

You believe? said Pavel. You look younger. Don’t you remember when you were born? Let us see—in 1939, were you—

Pan Pavel, said Chaim, no. You are right. I am fourteen, and my birthday will be next May.

And what of your father? He put you in
kheyder
, of course? How long was it before you were—

No, said Chaim, suddenly flustered. We—I went for some time, but—we—my father—he believed in the Bund—

But Pavel had already made his decision. Whether Chaim was a good student or no before, now things would be different!

Chaim was stammering. It’s that our family was not so—

All right, Pavel interrupted—everyone had secrets to keep, and who was Pavel to interfere with a child’s desire to hold his past to himself? All right. Well, in any case, it is the time, a little late, of course, but around the time, that you begin to prepare to become a bar mitzvah. It’s time to learn. I suppose you learned something in your family of Hebrew, even without—

Something, said Chaim, softly. A little, I could recognize, of course, but not—

Not enough, no. Never enough. I’ll teach you, my friend. Nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, Pavel lied, I was very slow with Hebrew myself.

C
HAIM SAT DOWN TO
Fela’s dark bread and soup of boiled meat. He would not look at Pavel. He would eat slowly, in silence. Still his body began to feel heat, as if it knew a discomfort and pain were coming. Why should Chaim obey? He bent to his soup, taking each sip like a medicine. He felt a needle begin to move inside, ready to become a knife, thrusting inside him, carving names into his guts. He would not look at Pavel, but when he glanced at Fela he saw her eyes turn
down to her plate, afraid to meet his gaze. A twinge of shame pushed through him, then an ugly gratitude that made him angry. Who were these people to him, making a false family, false home? Who were they? He had a sudden image of the raincoat that Pavel had brought home for Chaim, a proud trade he had made, and Chaim wanted to leap up from the table and slash the coat into tiny pieces, until nothing remained but a pile of collar, pocket, useless squares of cloth. There was only so long he could contain his fury.

The soup trickled into his stomach. He took an English class each week, but it was not enough to give him a purpose or an escape. Perhaps a routine would help him leave the house, make his own life. He had inquired, without real interest, into work or training, among the aid workers. Perhaps that was his way out.

A
FTER A MONTH IN
the camp print shop Chaim accustomed himself to the operation of the large and ancient ink machine that rolled out the camp newsletter, little stories reviewed by the soldiers to ensure they carried no news of riots, protests, arrests. Death notices of the refugees were permitted. Also lists of names of the living, announcements of departures. Bundles of young people had already been let out to temporary homes in Britain and France, to be rehabilitated until—but until what no one yet knew.

His hands turned a dark blue-black every evening as he read through the lists before the ink on the pages was dry, the names rubbing off on his clothing and skin. Each week young men and an occasional young woman or two gathered in the early evenings outside the shop to pick up the new pages, skipping over the drawings on the front page, the poems on the second page, fingers running up and down the lists, eyes squinting, hands folding the short pages and then reopening, rereading. He watched them searching for a last name that
meant something to them, a town in which someone had a cousin, a patronymic that sounded like a past neighbor’s, borrowing pens from one another as they circled clues.

He continued to attend his English class in the children’s school barracks, and Chaim left his post early on Tuesdays to make sure he found a seat close to the front of the room. One evening a man from the print shop came trotting after him as Chaim crossed the threshold. A young woman named Rayzl Traum had submitted an advertisement to the camp paper. The printman had written the advertisement and stopped at the last name, questioned her. She had a young cousin Chaim before the war.

The children were finishing their lessons, the teacher outside the room, waiting as they wrote the last sums of the day. From the doorway Chaim saw the small ones copying the scrawls from the blackboard into their slim notebooks. Then he turned his face to the printman’s feet, his heavy brown shoes.

I had a cousin Rayzl before the war, Chaim answered.

H
E REMEMBERED HER
. R
AYZELE.
Now she was plump, filled with a rageful kind of cheer, another one who wanted to blot out the past, march forward. Their fathers were brothers. She held him close to her chest and breathed into his hair when she saw him.

They sat on a bench near the print shop, and he waited for her to tell him what she knew. But she did not say a word, instead looked at him directly in the eyes, as if to send out her message without speaking. Perhaps she waited for him to ask. But he did not want to know. Perhaps it was a family trait, to know and not to say, to write quietly in notebooks, as his father had done in his job as a translator—was that his job?—yes, of course, he had tutored Chaim in the Yiddish letters before Chaim could understand the words he read, of course that was his work, was Chaim forgetting these things already?

After a moment, he said, Where do you sleep?

Not here, she said. I live on a Zionist kibbutz, a new one they started a few kilometers south, on good farmland. So we don’t have to depend on ration cards, like little prisoners again. We prepare for these British—her mouth turned fierce—to let us out of here, to let us into our homeland. Come with me there. You can smuggle yourself out of the camp. It’s an hour’s drive from here.

I—said Chaim—I have a place, not in the camp—I thought you could stay with us—

But she hesitated. They expect me back this evening, she said. And you—already you have missed convoys they let into Palestine. You are young enough to be an orphan—why did you not go on the list?

I don’t know, he said. I am here, I live with—I have a warm place in a home until—I take English lessons—

English! cried Rayzl. To be a stranger in a strange land again! A Bundist, just like your father, refusing Palestine for class politics? Look how it helped him! And since when do the English let you into their country, or the Americans either? English!

C
HAIM CAME TO THE
house in Celle and lay down on the sofa. He bent his arm over his eyes to block out the remaining afternoon light, and he saw an image of his mother, her own elbow bent at her brow to cover her eyes, yes, once he had seen his own mother lie down like this, perhaps after the first action or perhaps at a different time, at some terrible news or another, he did not remember, saw only her thin body outstretched on the cot in the ghetto apartment, no, it must have been after, long after his brother had been taken—and the image itself made Chaim tear his own arm from his forehead, curl his body into a ball, sob.

After some time he opened his eyes and stared at the wall, cov
ered with floral paper. He did not want to touch it, the false decoration of a home in which he lived as a strange guest. Sometimes he brought one of the young men he had met from outside the print shop to stay in the house, just to feel himself not so alone. But Lazar had not liked to sleep there more than one night at a time, even with the use of a clean sink and the promise of Fela’s pastries. And suddenly Chaim too wanted to escape the little house, the little town, the questions that would surely come tearing at him in the evening as Fela laid out the food on the garden table. He did not want to see them. He wanted to escape every familiar face he saw, every reminder of something he knew. He wanted to be a stranger, completely alone, a newborn, learning new images and new faces.

He pushed his legs out of the house and took Fela’s bicycle toward the camp. On the main road he saw a group of British driving to the Bremen zone, a small island of American soldiers.

“Work,” he said, smiling, flashing his identity card. “I have work in the harbor.” They let him into their truck.

The rubble still covered wide areas near the port, but a few businesses and houses had been rebuilt, and in a small café near one of the piers he sat alone and watched the Americans in civilian clothes flirt and drink with the German women. Two black soldiers walked past him, talking in soft voices too low for him to hear. They were always together, in groups, and it was understood they had their own brigades, separate from the others. He followed their faces as they walked, stared openly at them. They did not seem to notice. In the American zone in Austria he and Fela had passed a camp, but their driver, a Jew, had warned them not to enter, for the Americans forced the Jews to live and work with the Ukrainians and Poles and Latvians. Americans do not separate, the truck driver had said. They say that was what Hitler did! The driver had laughed. Everyone saw the Americans too made divisions. The British did not permit the camp newspaper to publish any stories about the military, but on the radio
could be heard the stories of the skirmishes among the Americans, the Negro soldier left beaten on the street, the white soldiers protesting shared meal tables. When Lazar had been liberated, a brigade of Japanese from America had marched into his camp, frightening some inmates who thought the war had been lost to the Axis. Lazar laughed about it now, he confided to Chaim, but even he had been confused. But one could not be confused when one saw a black soldier. A black man was American, immediately recognizable for who he was, a symbol of freedom. When Chaim had first come to Germany, his heart had still jumped at the sight of a uniform, any uniform—but after the momentary shudder he knew to feel relief at the glimpse of a dark face, for he could see at once that these men were Americans, liberators.

Now in Bremen, Chaim sipped his coffee, feeling it spread through his chest. Towns people bustled away from him. Even with his clean clothes and straight hair, he felt himself recognized. What was it? Perhaps his face gave out the light of accusation when a German hurried down a street of the American zone, carrying bread or holding a child’s hand. Or perhaps—yes, he knew it—they could see the fear, a look he no longer had the confidence to hide. Towns people could see who he was, could see through the calm mask of a young man idling, their quick glances registering German from refugee. For a long time he had forced himself to forget the faces of his family, the names of the companions with whom he had fled the ghetto. His talent for disguise had erased the fear from his face. But now it seemed that fear revealed itself like a caption below a photograph. Now it seemed he could be named.

M
Y DARLING SISTER
. A letter came from Fela’s sister in Palestine, the diminutives and nicknames falling off the page in Yiddish, mixed with
the Hebrew that Bluma, so smart, so clever, now spoke every day. Bluma had heard nothing. She too had been writing to the synagogue in their hometown, to HIAS and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for word of sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, cousins. Bluma had heard nothing until the short letter from Fela, her dear one, her beautiful sister.

Fela wept as she read her older sister’s letter. What chain was more strong than the chain to a sister, even one whom she had not seen since childhood, when Bluma had defied their father and left? Flesh of the same flesh. Bluma had gone to gymnasium when no Jewish girl in their town could dream of it—the eldest, Pnina, had gone to work to support Bluma’s schooling, expensive even when the family store had prospered. And what had Bluma learned among the other students? She had picked up ideas, become a socialist, and at last joined a group of young Zionists and sailed off. It had been terrible at the time, the horror of her father and mother at the rebellion of their most gifted child, but now it seemed wise, prophetic.

Two sisters, one chain. And yet the relief that Fela felt when she opened Bluma’s letter, the gratitude for a word from her blood,
my darling sister
, did not fill her. It was as if she were still starving and given just a morsel of bread to eat. She longed to see a family face in the refugee camp, longed to read even a distant cousin’s name on a list of survivors. She longed for Moshe, the touch of him covering her, his breath like a blanket to warm her. Fela too had defied her father when she ran away, in the first weeks of the bombing, when it was still possible to flee to White Russia. But it was not for politics that she had disobeyed.

Thanks to Pavel’s trading, Fela now had clean clothes and an adequate amount of food; the bloating in her legs and belly had subsided; she looked almost as she once did, and she had begun to menstruate again. But the ache hadn’t left her. Now that her body could do more than subsist it began to remember other pains, not just hunger or
fear. Once, cycling down the street with Pavel, she thought she saw Moshe, and as the small man with his brown curls and calm eyes had come closer, her neck had tensed, as if they were together, at night, he about to touch her. It wasn’t him, of course; she saw that a moment after the constriction in her abdomen stopped. But now the face of the man in the street, the man who was not Moshe, became something she longed for, a reminder of the face she had loved and was beginning to forget. But she didn’t see him, the false Moshe, again.