Jewels and Ashes (30 page)

Many such notices were appearing at the time, signalling the unexpected reappearance of a friend, an acquaintance, a former comrade, as if returned from the dead. ‘I am looking for Meier Zabludowski', she had written, more or less. ‘I am thinking of moving to Australia or New Zealand.' The note was brief, a mere inquiry. Yet between the lines could be heard a barely concealed scream, a plea for help. Like so many others, she was seeking a means to flee the ruins of a past life in which they had marched together, through the streets of Bialystok, their arms linked, cushioned by each other's warmth and an illusory sense of communal strength.

‘Send her money! Our savings! A permit! A guarantee! Send her everything she needs!', father had replied on an impulse. At least these were the words that mother would mimic, at the height of her tirades. ‘Send her everything she needs!' This was mother's version, the way she imagined it, or accurately recalled it — I could never tell one way or another. And when I had begun to question father, he had, in those years, never replied. He would quietly retreat behind his bedroom door, to the works of his beloved Yiddish poets, to seek relief from the rage that had overtaken first his wife and then his children.

On one side, a silence; on the other, a tirade. My loyalties wavered, first one way then the other, goaded by father's retreats, bewildered by mother's furies: ‘I have a story to tell! No one sees! No one understands! No one knows who I am!'

The year is 1947, or thereabouts. A baby is wailing. Mother is pregnant with the second child. ‘Send her money, guarantees, everything she needs!' The spectre of Mrs Abrahams looms large. The fate of Sheindl remains fresh in her mind. Bialystok has been consumed by flames. Father is consumed by his helplessness and shame. Mother is consumed by a sense of having been betrayed. The shadow of Hitler extends from the grave. Father withdraws, a sullen retreat, limping with a loss of nerve and belief. Mother awakens with screams; and years later I would feel trapped in between, seeking desperately to distinguish reality from dreams.

Nearing the outskirts of Bialystok I see peasants gathering potatoes and turnips. They wear thick jackets, scarves, and knee-length boots. On the River Nerev a boatman poles past cottages sinking into the banks. In the yard of a farmhouse an old woman feeds her pigs. Villages whirl by. Crows swirl between church crosses and spires. A hare scampers from the tracks. Old men walk slowly along dusty paths. Wagons laden with the final harvest lurch over country roads. A midmorning sun hovers above fallow fields.

‘Those early years, after the Shoah, were a time of numbness, of suppressed grief, a stumbling through thick fog.' This is how father has described it. And it is only now, since my journey has given us common ground, detailed maps that I have come to know like the veins which run blue rivulets through father's worn hands, that I can fully accept his words. ‘We did not know it at the time', he tells me. ‘How could we? We were like wounded horses, moving by instinct. We kept our sense of guilt at bay. We immersed ourselves in making a living, and in bearing children, three within four years. We moved back to Melbourne, following an urge to rejoin family and former Bialystoker, to find that they too were so immersed in their own efforts to rebuild their lives they did not have time to pause and look at themselves. We kept moving out of habit, driven by blind momentum, for we had little choice — either move forward, create a home, a refuge, or go mad.' And, of course, some did. Like Bloomfield, forever tramping the streets, sleeping in parks and rooming houses, the tattooed arm his badge of sorrow, his engraved pain, his permanent Oswiecim.

Golden autumn, the Poles call it with pride. The landscape flows with a muted light which streaks into the city I am fast approaching. Bialystok appears tranquil, detached, beyond history, a survivor, intact. I see father in a leather jacket and open shirt, his trousers rolled up to the knees, wading across a stream on a trek through local forests: my favourite photo of him. His eyes are, as I have sometimes seen them, beyond doubt and confusion, denial and shame. They are blue. Clear as transparent skies. And mother's are deep hazel, almost black, the colour of earth, of endurance.

I see them as they are now, in their old age. Father's natural tendency has always been to fly, to soar on impulse and grand ideas. Yet for the fortieth year in succession he looks down upon the same patch of earth, as he composts, digs, plants, and moves towards an inner balance, an integrity. And mother, who has always cooked and cleaned and sewn and served, is softening, her gaze moving upwards, through distances, towards the heavens, towards surrender. And I see my reflection in them both. My eyes are green, in between; while within, I sense the first inklings of a harmony, the first intimations that a long journey is nearing its end.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A MIND CONSTANTLY ALERT, hands weaving as he talks, ideas bouncing erratically, curiosity expanding with age, body and soul channelled into single-minded attention on his rambling monologues — my father. A survivor. A philosopher.

Of all the seasons, he says, autumn is the philosopher. He had been born in winter: ethereal, snow-veiled, but forbidding and threatening. His basic pessimism had been tempered by spring's naive and buoyant innocence. The summers had, he admits, been satisfying, at times even joyful. But the heat could also bloat the mind and dull the senses.

So it is autumn, after all, he has come to prefer. Autumn is the present stage in his life. A softer melody. A potential harmony. A song of fruition. A thanksgiving. Autumn is contemplative', father stresses. ‘The season of afterthoughts, when leaves fall with a quiet language of their own.' In the Old World it had been a season of colours, permeated with a copper glow, bronze and blessed.

And it is colour that greets me as I return to Bialystok after one month's absence. The city parks are coated in ochres and lemons, auburns and pale emeralds. Buildings cast stark shadows to the movement of a sun low on the southern horizon. One day it rains incessantly, the next the sun re-emerges radiant and warm. Yet just as unexpectedly, temperatures plunge towards zero, frosts cover the countryside, and sharp winds bite into the skin.

Buklinski and Bunim are waiting as arranged. They sit in the gloom of Buklinski's apartment, late afternoon, subdued, rugged up in gabardine overcoats. After a schnapps we descend the stairs into Zabia Square. An evening chill has settled upon the city. The two men clutch at their scarves and coats as if protecting themselves not only against the chill, but also against sinister forces they sense lurking around them. As we wait in line for a taxi they shuffle nervously. Out in the open, on the streets of Bialystok, my two companions are revealed as frail and vulnerable men on an alien landscape.

On July 27, 1944 the Red Army liberated Bialystok. In mid August Srolke Kott approached the outskirts of the city. He saw peasants in the fields gathering hay. Others stood chatting in front of their homes. A bizarre normality. An autumn harvest. As if nothing had happened. Srolke oscillated between fleeting moments of hope, and a brooding sense of dread and foreboding. Perhaps, yes, there would be some trace of home, a familiar face, a former neighbour.

I have never met Srolke Kott. For many years he has lived in Buenos Aires. Father knew his family as neighbours in Bialystok; but he remembers little of Srolke, since he was considerably younger than father. Mother had known his elder sister and had sung with her in choirs over sixty years ago. In a world of shadows, such connections can be as strong as blood ties. Soon after the war, Srolke wrote of his experiences as a partisan in the forests of White Russia. Father was particularly drawn to Srolke's descriptions of his return to Bialystok. He absorbed them so fully, he could recount them as if they were his own. The ballad of Srolke Kott, the song of his homecoming, became the song of father's imagined homecoming.

As Srolke drew nearer he hastened his steps. The first sight of the city confirmed his worst fears. The railway station was a burnt-out shell. The bridges were shattered. Whole streets had been reduced to rubble, and rows of houses to chimney stacks, a single wall, a skeleton.

Srolke approached the street in which he had grown up. Cobblestones which had once been smooth from the constant tread of footsteps were now overgrown with weeds. Holy books lay scattered about, their pages rotting. Wherever he looked there were broken chairs, doorless wardrobes, fractured beds. Feathers from ripped pillows and quilts mingled with photographs of people who had once lived there — images of men with beards and sidelocks, women with fashionable hairstyles, a child in her mother's arms, a boy seated on a horse, another wrapped in a prayer shawl on the day of his bar mitzvah — the album of a lost people.

All that remained of his family's house were foundation stones and half a chimney. The rest was covered in sand and patches of grass. There were not even the remains of a wall on which he could find support. Srolke tried to visualise where his parents' wedding photo had hung. For the children this photo had been the measure of their growing-up, while their mother would point to it as a reminder of how young she had once been.

Srolke was overcome by confusion. The legs that had supported him through many kilometres of forest and swamp gave way beneath him. The air he breathed seemed choked with the fumes of Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz. All his loved ones, all that had given meaning to his life, had vanished. One question echoed constantly within him: how could man commit such crimes upon his fellow man?

For a long time Srolke sat on the foundations, unable to remain still; yet at the same time, unable to flee. Nearby stood a fragment of barbed-wire fence, a remnant of the ghetto wall. In front of him Srolke noticed a hole in the earth, and recalled that this must have been the hideout he had built for his sister and parents. He bent over and stared at the opening. Inside it was dark, and he was seized by an urge to begin digging. Perhaps he would be confronted by corpses. It would be as if he had entered his own tomb. And in that moment Srolke was overwhelmed by that thought which was to haunt many survivors in years to come: why had he lived whilst his dear ones had been torn from life? How was he to deal with the fear of his own thoughts? How could he answer for himself? Is this what it meant to be liberated?

On the fringes of Bialystok, where the city thins and becomes forest, stands the house of Yankel, the shoemaker. The taxi draws up to his weatherboard cottage. Yankel guides us through the front garden. Sunflowers glow like lanterns in the darkness. A pair of candles light up a living-room table covered in a white cloth. Yankel's wife, the Queen of Shabbes, greets us. She unravels our scarves, helps us off with our coats, and shows us to our seats. ‘Help yourselves', she tells us. Buklinski needs little coaxing. He opens a bottle of vodka. ‘Time for a schnapps!', he exclaims. ‘Time to forget!'

It was well after midnight when Srolke finally moved away from the ruins. The streets were deserted. In the distance, like a shadow, he saw a solitary figure flitting between houses. Srolke hurried after him, drew alongside and asked, in Polish: ‘Where can I find Jews?' The stranger stared at him as if confronted by a lunatic ‘I have seen no Jews at all', he replied. ‘There are none here.'

Srolke remained stranded, confused, unable to determine his next move. He noticed a light nearby, and was drawn towards a house in which he knew Jews had once lived. A Polish woman sat by the kitchen table. Srolke greeted her and asked if she knew of any Jews living in Bialystok. After a long pause she replied that she had heard there were several staying in Kupietzka 24; but she could not be sure.

As he neared the building Srolke saw that it was severely damaged. The windows were shattered, the foyer strewn with rubbish. He climbed the stairs and entered a darkened room where he could just make out an emaciated woman sitting by a table. ‘Yes', she replied in a barely audible voice, ‘there are Yidn living here', and she resumed her indifferent stare.

Srolke and the woman sat silently, lost to each other in private thought, unable to converse. Soon after, her husband entered: a bare skeleton of a man. He was hungry for information. Who was still alive? Did Srolke know the fate of this or that person? Did they have mutual friends? The same questions were asked by other figures who darted into the room from time to time, back from a day of scavenging. They were all shabbily dressed, barefoot, tired and, despite their many questions, reluctant to talk, as if afraid of hearing the sound of their own voices recalling the recent past. They quickly selected a portion of floor to sleep on, covered themselves with papers, and placed their clenched fists behind their heads as pillows.

By the time Srolke awoke the next morning, they had all left on their daily search for food and familiar faces.

‘He's going to cry! Bunim is going to cry!', exclaims Buklinski as he dances around the table, stopping by each guest to pour another glass. Bunim's crimson complexion darkens with each successive schnapps. Yankel's wife serves course after course of chicken — chicken soup, roast chicken, boiled chicken, chicken pieces — a universe of chicken. ‘A Polish wife with a Yiddishe heart', whispers Buklinski, while Yankel sits at the head of the table like a benign patriarch surrounded by an extended family.

Bunim lifts his head and gazes at the ceiling as if about to address the Creator. His voice is cracked, almost broken, but his once rich tenor has retained at least some of its former glory. He hums snatches of Yiddish melodies. ‘Bialystok was a city with a Yiddish soul', he muses. ‘No longer any rabbis, no longer talmudic scholars, no longer a Yiddishe city', he laments.

‘And no longer Zlatke, queen of the whores! No longer pimps, thieves, and brothels on the Chanaykes!', interjects Buklinski, as he continues his vodka-inspired waltz around the table.

A sudden tap on the window: Buklinski's Polish mistress has arrived. She sits on his lap while he sings Yiddish love-songs with the cracked voice of a street entertainer. Buklinski's blood pressure is soaring. His uncontrollable energy, his manic zest for life, propel him back into wild monologues and refrains from the lanes of the Chanaykes, where his insatiable longing was first kindled, and where existence had become an eternal pursuit of touch, vodka, and love. Many years later this voracious drive to live had intensified, rather than diminished — even more so after his sojourn in Auschwitz.