Sunrise West (11 page)

‘I don't believe that's your reason,' replied the ever-confident Mendel. ‘I know exactly how you must feel about leaving this tedious place. We've been here for nearly a month, that's enough! Let's get away for a while. Come on, let's get away,' he repeated enthusiastically. ‘We need to experience something else, something different. Santa Maria won't run off — it will still be here in a thousand years, maybe more. I can understand why you hesitate, but be honest with yourself. Ask yourself what you
feel
, what you would
like
to do, not what you think you
ought
to do.'

Mendel could be very persuasive. He had even lined up the address in Naples of a transit house for displaced persons.

After arguing about it for three days, we set off.

 

 
The Boy
 

There were some fears that liberation could not expel from a survivor's psyche. Chief among them, for me, was a red windowless train.

Mendel and I travelled by bus from Santa Maria to Bari, and then we boarded — to my relief — a passenger train with large windows. It would take us west across the country to Naples. We chose a compartment at random, but when we entered it we noticed a small thin boy with the pale face of an old man. He was curled up in the foetal position, next to the window, and appeared to be very unhappy. We said hello but he didn't answer.

When the inspector arrived and asked to see our tickets, we showed him a loose page I carried on me from a Hebrew prayer-book. He smiled, saluted and left. I looked across at the boy. I was curious about him, intrigued by his sadness — though I knew that the roads of Europe must be full of dejected children streaming across the countryside in search of lost parents, siblings, and homes that once had been.

Come midday, the youngster fixed his black searching eyes on our sandwiches, so I enquired in broken Italian if he wanted one. He didn't answer. ‘You don't speak Italian? What about Yiddish?'

‘Yes, yes, Yiddish!' he cried.

‘Where were you born, where have you come from?' I asked him. ‘Why are you travelling all alone at a time like this?'

He seemed willing enough, now, to open up. He told us that his name was Szlamek and he was twelve years old. He
had lived through the war with his mother and younger sister, in the ghetto of my own city of the waterless river. ‘We were among the few hundred Jews left to clean up the ghetto,' he said. ‘After we did what we were ordered, the Germans drove us all to the cemetery. Graves had already been dug, and we believed they were just waiting for a machine-gun unit to finish us off. But at the last minute we heard shouts and hurrahs, and there they were — the Russians had come. They surrounded the Germans, took their weapons, and led them away.'

Szlamek, his mother and his sister had eventually been brought to Italy by the Bricha, an underground organization that smuggled Jews across the ruins of Europe to Palestine. Now they were staying in the south of Italy — by coincidence, at Santa Maria di Leuca, not all that far from our own DP camp. ‘We heard there that my uncle, my father's brother, survived and is living in Naples,' Szlamek explained.

‘Naples is a big city,' said Mendel. ‘Do you have an address for your uncle?'

The boy took a small piece of paper from his pocket and showed it to us. I shook my head as an even bigger coincidence hit home. ‘You're in luck,' I said. ‘That's the displaced persons' building — the very place
we're
headed for!'

We arrived early in the morning. Naples was drizzly and not yet awake. I thought the sky looked as if dawn had been overtaken by dusk. The light rain that was falling could be seen only against the still-burning streetlamps. As the three of us climbed the staircase of the building for displaced
persons, Szlamek stopped suddenly and asked us to leave him on his own; but then almost at once changed his mind.

‘No, please stay
behind
me — in case it's not the right door.'

He stood in the long dark corridor for a good while, hesitating, holding his breath. Then, at last, his little fist landed with a gentle thud on the brown timber. A woman opened the door. Szlamek stepped back shyly, but then he spotted the man in the shadows behind her. Like a shot he had bolted past, crying ‘Father, Father!'

They ran into each other's arms. The man clasped the boy to him; Szlamek hung tightly from his father's neck. When they finally let each other go, we were invited in and Szlamek broke the good news about his mother and sister. The woman looked on in silence — she understood the situation, understood that she no longer belonged here. She had snow-white skin, and jet-black hair held in place with an ivory comb. It was heart-wrenching to watch her quietly packing up her meagre belongings, then sobbing goodbye to a man with whom she had hoped to rebuild her torn life. Before she left she managed to give the bewildered little boy a prolonged hug.

Szlamek's father, whose name was Lev, asked Mendel and me to stay for a cup of coffee. I sensed that he wanted to explain, to justify himself. ‘I didn't know that my wife and children were alive,' he stuttered, burying his face in the steamy cup.

‘You're not to blame,' I reassured him clumsily, knowing full well that I sounded neither convincing nor convinced.

‘But Szlamek, tell me,' Mendel mercifully interrupted. ‘What made you hide the truth from us — that you were really looking for your father, not your uncle?'

The boy shifted in his chair. ‘Mother told me that, to protect his life, our patriarch Abraham told the Philistines that his wife Sarah was his sister... And besides,' he added, ‘we didn't know what sort of a person she was, that lady who tried to steal my dad.'

 

 
Chameleon
 

My science teacher taught us that there is a microbe, known as
Trwałnik
(endurer), which has the ability to live through hot and cold, through boiling and freezing water; it can sleep for generations in an iceberg, or within the burning sands of the Sahara, then re-emerge when the opportunity arises. Such a
trwałnik
was Piotrek Królewicz, a man who had first crossed my path before the war.

There is a story that most Poles whose names end in ‘cz' are descended from eighteenth-century Frankist Jews who converted to Christianity. (Frankists, followers of Jacob Frank, were an extreme messianic sect that grew out of the earlier Sabbatian movement led by the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi.) The majority of these converts integrated, with time, into the Catholic fold; but occasionally, individuals would appear in their midst who, like Piotrek, retained a lifelong propensity to turn with the wind.

Nobody knew where Piotrek came from. Apparently he had been born out of wedlock, somewhere in the south. He
wore a perpetually downcast expression, and I pitied him. No one wanted anything to do with him; he was treated like a leper. Even the most wicked among us have their noble moments, yet Piotrek seemed not to have any. Among the Gentiles he was a dirty Jew; among the Jews, a nasty
goy
. His lot was somehow reminiscent of Hagar's son Ishmael: his hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him.

According to one colourful account, Piotrek had a quarrel with his wife which nearly ended in murder. He had complained that her insignificant breasts were spoiling his pleasure, so she hit back at his own diminutive organ. This enraged him, and made him suspicious that she might be tangling her roots with another man. When he caught her in bed with the interloper, and then listened to her defensive cry — ‘My little breasts are his paradise, and his cock mine!' — Piotrek hurled an axe at them. Luckily he missed, but the incident augmented his grudge against the whole world, and he took his vengeance on anyone who innocently crossed his path.

An artist in his field, he knew how to reinvent himself, and how to create a kingdom of sordid intrigue and betrayal. ‘In a way,' he would state softly, his voice like a spider's footfall, ‘the innocent are partners to every crime.' Piotrek was a professional: he stole, and then deftly resold the stolen goods to his victims. He devised a terrific system. First he would quietly infiltrate the homes of his dupes, making himself useful. I recall one case which astounded our district. A certain master tailor's young son — who obviously hadn't read
King Lear
or he would have been aware
of the Fool's wisdom (
Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest
) — showed Piotrek his grandfather's gilded Sabbath goblet. Two days later it was gone. The father, Reb Berel, was heartbroken: of all his possessions this was the object he cherished most. Piotrek naturally offered his ser-vices and undertook to retrieve the stolen goods — at a cost of fifty złoty. Berel's son accepted the deal at once, but then Piotrek politely asked ‘What about me?' so Berel agreed to another fifty. When the thief brought back the precious goblet, he casually requested a further twenty-five złoty for cartage!

Mendel and I came across Piotrek in a little café in Naples. He wasn't aware that we knew who he was, knew how during the war he had become a chameleon. No sooner had the Germans invaded our city than he meta-morphosed from a trusted Polish police informer into a Gestapo agent. It didn't last long, because even then he wouldn't give up his thieving, bribing and other machinations, and he was forced to flee overnight across the river Bug, where he made a successful bid to join the Soviet secret police.

Piotrek had the nose of a bloodhound, not dissimilar to that of the previously mentioned Pinocchio. He sniffed out straight away that we were survivors of the camps. ‘Boys,' he said without introducing himself, ‘there's money to be made, and I can see you're still living outside the real world. A neighbour of mine, Wolodja, is sitting on a suitcase of gold coins, and I feel that we are morally entitled to a share of this stolen treasure. What I propose is quite simple,' he continued calmly. ‘You guys will swear that Wolodja was a
kapo
in camp. The rest you can leave to me. How does that sound?'