I Have Lived a Thousand Years (22 page)

“Here,” Mommy says. “Stop right here, please. And thank you kindly.”

The courtyard is deserted. The rooms are bare. The floors are covered with thick layers of dust. And something else. In the middle of every room there is a heap of human excrement.

Where is everything? The furniture, bedding, carpets, curtains, pots and pans. Even the pump from the well is gone. How will we get water?

And where is Daddy?

“Perhaps Daddy is staying with someone else. Until our return. He didn’t want to be alone in this empty house. Soon we’ll find out.”

Bubi limps into town to find out. I run over to our neighbors to borrow a wicker broom. Mrs. Plutzer stops in her tracks. “Elli! Jesus Maria, it’s Elli! You’re back! Jesus is kind. You’re alive.”

The Plutzers bring us a pitcher of milk, some eggs, and a bundle of straw to sleep on. We are home.

Thirty-two young boys and girls have returned. Our arrival makes the number thirty-five. Daddy has not come yet.

Then, one day, two weeks after our homecoming, Misi Lunger arrives and brings news about Daddy. He saw Daddy along the route home in the company of a man named Weiss from the village of Nagymagyar. What causes Daddy’s delay?

When news reaches us that Mr. Weiss has arrived in his village, Bubi decides to get to Nagymagyar at once. A Šamorin cattle dealer on his way to some villages in the Nagymagyar vicinity offers Bubi a ride on his wagon early next dawn.

It is still dark when Bubi rises and takes off toward the home of the cattle dealer. I feel a tinge of regret that Mommy does not let me join my brother on the journey. It is a hazardous trip for a girl: The countryside is full of roaming Russian soldiers.

It’s about 10
A.M.
when Bubi, his face ashen, walks into the kitchen. “Bubi, you’re back so soon?”

“I did not go.”

“The cattle dealer did not go to Nagymagyar after all?”

“The cattle dealer went. I did not go.”

A cold hand stops the beating of my heart. Mommy looks intently into Bubi’s eyes. Very, very quietly, she asks, “Bubi, what happened?”

“We hung around for a long time before he was ready to start. When I climbed up next to him in the driver’s seat, he said, ’Look, kid. It’s a shame you should make this long trip for nothing. The others told you to go to Nagymagyar because nobody wanted to be the one to tell you. I’m going to tell you the truth about your father. He’s not coming home. He died in Bergen-Belsen two weeks before liberation. Lunger and Weiss buried him with their own hands.’ And so I did not go to Nagymagyar.”

Mommy freezes. I give a shriek and run into the yard. Bubi follows me.

“Come inside, Elli. There’s the law. I have to rend a tear in your dress. And then we have to sit
shiva.”

In the kitchen Mommy sits on the floor, staring into the vacuum.

“When news of the death reaches the family after the lapse of
shloshim,
the thirty-day mourning period, they sit shiva only for an hour, instead of a week,” Bubi explains in a soft murmur. “Daddy died in April, and now it’s July.”

Bubi grips my collar to rend a tear in it, and I begin to howl like a wounded beast. Gently he pushes me down on the floor, and I sit shiva for Daddy.

There is nothing to keep us here any longer. Now we know that all the others are not coming home, either. News reaches us daily of family and friends who were taken to the gas, and others who died in one camp or another, or on the highways of Germany, on death marches. And others who died after liberation on their way home.

Each piece of news adds to a deepening sense of isolation. We are the only survivors, the three of us, just as Bubi said in Waldlager. There are no Jewish children here, no older
people. The children I saw marching toward the smoke in Auschwitz, the little boy with the yellow clown, they were the last ones. When I see a child on the street, I see those children, and little Tommi, Susie, and Frumet in the cattle car heading for Auschwitz, and my insides turn numb with the pain of emptiness.

I want to go to Palestine, the Jewish Land, and live among people who share my inner void. I want to hear the echo of that void reverberate in the voices of my fellow students, my fellow shoppers, my fellow pedestrians. When I reach for a bar of soap on the grocery shelf and my fingers cringe from the memory of soap made of “pure Jewish fat,” I want to glimpse the horror in the eyes of the next shopper reaching for a bar of soap. Can the void ever be filled?

Perhaps it can be shared. Perhaps in the Jewish Land.

But I have a problem. Bubi received an affidavit from a school in New York, and soon he will be leaving for America. The three of us had vowed never to be separated again. We must follow Bubi to America as soon as we can.

What’s America like? Are there people in America who can understand? The compulsion to fill the void? The search, the reaching out? The sense of futility? The irrevocable statement that is Auschwitz? The loss of perspective? The total, irreconcilable loss?

Can anyone understand the pain of the uprooted? This was my home once, my town, my country. The pasture beyond our house was my childhood playground. The path leading to the Danube was
my
path. I can still hear Daddy’s firm, light footsteps next to me in the grass as we hurry for a quick swim in our river. I can hear Mommy’s cheerful chatter, Aunt Serena’s soft singing far behind us. I can see
Bubi and his friends striding ahead with fishing gear, partially swallowed up by the tall grass. I can see the poplars swaying in the distance and the deep shady forest looming far beyond. I can smell the mist of the water, mingled with the odor of wet moss. I can hear the pealing of church bells and their echoes booming in the surrounding hills. It is all part of the fabric of my inner world—the Danube, the meadow, the Carpathian foothills, and the town. Without it I am not whole. Yet, it is no longer mine. It is not my home anymore.

“A
MERICA, WILL YOU BE MY HOME?”

ŠAMORIN, AUTUMN 1945

It is a cloudless morning in autumn. The vibrancy of summer still shimmers in the air and paints splashes of sunshine across the rusty landscape.

I am back in school. I race down the street, inhaling all this beauty deep into my lungs with an intoxicating sense of freedom. Dare I run as fast as I please, and bask in this splendor without fear? Dare I enjoy the luxury of carrying notebooks under my arm, just like before? Sit in a classroom, among fellow students, just like before? Dare I feel like an adolescent—be silly, and restless, and indulgent, and critical, and boisterous, and sentimental, at will—just like my peers?

Dare I enjoy the luxury of being a girl? Having hair? Wearing a dress, and underwear? And regular shoes, girls’ shoes? Having a bar of soap, and a toothbrush? And being noticed by boys?

As I run, two Russian soldiers approach and cluck their tongues. One of them attempts to block my path, but I swerve around with practiced speed and cross the square at a trot.

A brilliant red star flutters above the entrance of the school building. No pupils are to be seen on the wide front stairs. Class must have started. I have no watch; no way of telling time. Whatever happened to the eight-o’clock church bells?

The floor in my classroom still smells of stale oil, and the blackboard is cracked in the same places. The squeaking of chalk against the freshly washed board gives me goosebumps just like before. And the sound of the bell at the end of each session gives me a sudden start, just like before.

But everything else is different. My own class graduated while I was away, and the kids in this class are total strangers. They are children of ethnic Slovaks “repatriated” by the government in a huge “population transfer” from Hungary, beyond the Danube. Our town and the entire region became part of Czechoslovakia once again, while I was away. Czech and Slovak teachers came in place of the Hungarian ones I knew and loved, and the language of instruction is Slovak. I do not see a single familiar face in school.

I had longed to see Mrs. Kertész, our homeroom teacher. In the camps, in my mind and sometimes in my dreams, I wrote long, elaborate letters to her, describing all that was happening to me. I had imagined returning to school one day and handing her all the letters, like chapters in a book. I had imagined her comments and corrections, her smile, her praise. But she is gone, and no one in class has even heard of her.

I am the only one in the class who was born here, in this very town. Yet, I am the only outsider. I do not belong to any group. The others have compatriots they know from “the old country.” They came in groups from their native towns. The kids I grew up with are no longer here. My Gentile schoolmates were transferred to Hungary with their families. And my Jewish schoolmates? Almost all of them did not return from Auschwitz.

Thirty-six of us have returned. Thirty-two girls and boys,
and four adults, of Šamorin’s one hundred Jewish families. Thirty-six from over five hundred people—parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, friends, neighbors, storekeepers, and teachers, toddlers, and teenagers.

The thirty-six of us meet every day in the communal dining room we call
Tattersall. Tattersall
means racetrack in German. I don’t know who gave this curious name to the abandoned building the authorities allocated for our use. The peculiar name stuck, and it became a metaphor for our exclusivity. The
Tattersall
—a small yard, a large kitchen, and two empty rooms with coarse, unpainted tables and chairs—is our private cocoon. Here we eat together and carry on endless discussions. The past is too much with us, too raw. We do not speak about the past. Neither do we talk about the present: It simply does not exist. In the
Tattersall,
the future is the only reality. It is the only topic of discussion.

And the future lies far from our birthplace, the motherland that had brutally expelled us from its womb. Every one of us nurtures a fond dream of a distant land. For most, this land is Palestine, Eretz Yisrael. Most anticipate the day when their names on Jewish Agency lists will turn into permits for Palestine, and the transports will start. They live for the day, for the hour.

Others have relatives across the Atlantic—in America, Canada, or South America—and they live in anticipation of documents. They dream of documents, talk of documents—letters of invitation from relatives, visas from consulates, exit permits.

We, too, Mother, brother, and I, live on the emotional verge of departure. A few weeks ago a letter arrived from Daddy’s younger brother in America, and it changed our
lives. The letter was addressed to Daddy. “Dear Brother,” it read. “I saw your name on a list of survivors published in one of New York’s Jewish newspapers, and I hasten to write, to communicate my great joy at the happy news. Please write to me as soon as you receive this letter, and let me know about the rest of the family. I want to help you to come to America. As soon as I receive your letter, I will start all the necessary procedures. Your loving brother.”

It was Mother’s sad duty to inform my uncle about the New York newspaper’s tragic error. By return mail Daddy’s brother offered to help us to get to America and find a new home in New York where he had made his home.

How ironic. Father’s impossible dream would become our reality. He used to point at the tallest skyscraper on postcards from his brother: “See?” he would say, “over a hundred stories high. Can you ever imagine a building over a hundred stories high? This is Broadway,” he would point out. “When we get to New York,” he promised with a smile, “I will buy you the prettiest dress on Broadway.”

Oh, Daddy. I still see your tall, slim silhouette disappearing into the dawn. Will I ever stand at the foot of that skyscraper? Will I ever walk on Broadway, and buy a beautiful dress like you promised? Will your promise materialize in the future while you yourself have vanished forever in the haze of the past?

Daddy, we found the small pouch with our jewelry in the dark, musty earth of the cellar where you buried it. We dug twenty-five centimeters deep, just as you said, and there it was, the small, moldy, cotton pouch. The jewelry is here, Daddy, but you are not.

Mommy sold some pieces of jewelry to the Russian
soldiers to pay for Bubi’s board in Bratislava. Since the beginning of the school year, Bubi has been living in the Slovakian capital, some twenty kilometers away, where he is enrolled in a preparatory course for graduation. It is a course designed for students who missed out on education because of the war. Bubi has gained some weight, and his leg wound healed, and Mommy induced him to return to school. He cannot return to his former school in Budapest: The Hungarian capital is now beyond reach on the other side of a rather unfriendly border.

Mommy is busy sewing dresses for the Russian soldier girls, in exchange for eggs, flour, live chickens, even light-bulbs. Most of the shops are closed, and those that are open are empty. Even if there were merchandise, we could not buy it, as we have no money. It’s a blessing that Mommy knows how to make dresses. How else would we live?

The Russian army personnel have everything. The young soldier girls bring pieces of fabulous fabrics and they are thrilled with the frilly blouses, colorful skirts, and fanciful dresses Mommy makes for them. Our house is always full of
barishnas,
and
tovarishes,
their male companions; five soldiers to every soldier girl. The
tovarishes
bring along their harmonicas and balalaikas, their good voices and their good humor. In conversation with them I practice the Russian I learn in school, and they love it. I’m Mommy’s interpreter when taking orders for a new dress or bartering for the price. It’s fun.

I love the Russians. They fought the Germans and helped to save our lives. That’s why I love their language. Our neighbors, Slovaks and Hungarians alike, despise the Russians. They see them as the enemy. They see them as
crude and primitive occupiers. But to me they are heroes.

Three weeks ago Bubi and I, while helping to clean the synagogue, found Hebrew and English textbooks in the rubble. So I began teaching myself Hebrew and English. I find English very easy because of its similarity to German. Hebrew is more difficult because of the different script. The printed Hebrew characters are familiar from the
siddur,
the prayer book, but the written script is new to me. And the language itself, the vocabulary and the grammar, is totally different from the other languages I know.