The Glatstein Chronicles (26 page)

I grew anxious and impatient. I knew that back home they were holding up the last act for my arrival, waiting for me to ring up the curtain. The last act was unavoidable, but the whole household was awaiting my presence, loath to end the play without me. The ending was predictable, and yet I was afraid lest, God forbid, I miss a drop of what my nearest and dearest were about to experience. How long could they hold out, waiting for me to arrive? If on the ship I had strolled leisurely about the deck as if it were a long, sunny valley leading nowhere, with my memories of the past cold and remote, I was now in such a state of impatience that I didn’t want to see anyone. Everything appeared as an obstacle on the way to my goal. I no longer wanted to join a world of strangers and to engage in conversations that would have consequences. All this now seemed a waste of time. I decided to see how far it was possible to restrict myself to my own company. I sensed, even though I didn’t know how it would happen, that I was on the verge of some meaningful event that would open my eyes to much that was still unclear. Now that I was finally on the right road, I felt I must not stray.

The steady clack of the train’s wheels calmed me somewhat, precisely because the train, speeding toward my mother, seemed to have taken on my restlessness. When I closed my eyes, I might have been traveling on the very same train that, on a certain night twenty years before, shortly after midnight, bore me away from home. It was now also just past midnight and it would have been something of a consolation had this, miraculously, happened to be the same train. But when I opened my eyes, all such sentimental thoughts vanished. There was no comparison to the train of twenty years ago. That train I would have recognized, skinned alive!

Next to me sat a priest dressed in loose robes with a wide cowl that looked warm as a blanket, and with sandals on his bare feet. He had a long, yellowish beard and his unusually large rear took up so much room that I was squeezed into a corner. The other passengers in the cheerless compartment had all nodded off. Only the priest was awake, contentedly reading a French newspaper and from time to time stroking his beard with one hand, in good Jewish fashion. The dozing passengers had all retired into themselves, as if to sleep away their troubles, as well as to avoid contact with one another. I had no choice but to close my eyes, too, though I had no desire to sleep.

I was roused from my dreams by a cold shudder that passed through my body, rattling my sleepy bones. The priest was no longer seated beside me, his place taken by a slender man of a totally opposite demeanor, with a small head and thin, pursed lips. His hands, resting on his knees as though he were sitting for a formal photograph, were so thin and transparent that one could make out every bone. When I opened my eyes, he looked at me, then quickly turned away, pursing his lips until they disappeared, as if to prevent them from uttering a single word.

It was now lighter outside and easier to make out that many in the compartment were not strangers to one another. A woman who lay stretched across a seat began giving orders to the man beside her, sitting scrunched into the narrow bit of space she had left him. Sleepily, the man was doing her bidding. On another seat, two men were asleep, propped up against one another. It was hard to tell whether they were friends, or strangers whom travel had brought into intimacy, possibly even an “Aryan” and a “non-Aryan.” A woman in a far corner had one eye half-open. She was struggling to open both but didn’t want to be the first to disturb the harmony of slumber that still prevailed. With great difficulty I stretched my limbs that had fallen asleep. I got up and, treading carefully, as if I were walking on sand on rubber soles, dragged my still lifeless, bloodless feet into the narrow corridor.

Dew-soaked fields, small villages nestling among rocky hills rushed past the window. The sky was overcast, with a hint of rain. Standing beside me was a short, broad-shouldered man, in his early forties. He stared out the window at the passing fields, forests, villages, all the time turning his head to me as if he wanted to tell me something, but each time looking away and again fixing his gaze on the misted window. At last he said something in German, and when he saw that I didn’t answer readily, switched to broken English, carefully feeling his way through the language, asking me if I was an American. He was dressed in a suit, the very picture of propriety, his trousers so perfectly pressed that it was a miracle how he had managed this so early in the day, when everybody else was still tumbling about in a state of dishevelment. He was fair-haired, but not that arrogant German blondness which wouldn’t have suited his whole, modest appearance. His dirty-blond hair was sprinkled with gray, and his large face was set off with a pair of sad, nearsighted eyes. He was a businessman, returning home from Paris, who had once done considerable business in America. “Now,” he chuckled, as if wanting to make a joke, “America has stopped doing business with us. But Canada is still a good customer.”

“Do you mean the American boycott?” I asked, with as much feigned indifference as I could muster.

He laughed again, seeming to take pleasure in the fact, as if it were all child’s play and he the adult was watching from the sidelines. “
Ja,
boycott! Boycott!” he confirmed.

“So, how’s it going?” I asked cautiously, seeking to gain his confidence.

“Not very good! Much poverty among the workers, many factories shut down. My own silk factory had to lay off half its workers.”

“How will it all turn out?” I asked, growing bolder.

He shot me a look and broke out in helpless laughter, almost choking on his gasps. “We mustn’t talk about this! No talking! It’s better that way. No talking!”

Again exercising caution, I retreated to a more innocent line of questioning, until another opportunity to ensnare him might present itself. But he would no longer let himself be caught. When he sensed that we were on the verge of a dangerous subject, he had only one response: “No talking.” He laughed some more, to indicate that he was sorry he was being so impolite, his laughter ending in a somewhat hysterical screech, the kind some people make upon hearing bad news. He explained to me that it wasn’t in his nature to be impolite, but there were certain things one couldn’t talk about. He even tried to pull back from his former indiscretion, that factories had gone under throwing workers into poverty. “Things will probably get better,” he said.

The passengers were now waking up and the corridors starting to bustle. From all sides people appeared, wrapped in bathrobes. Outside the washrooms, passengers gathered impatiently, cursing the villains who had laid siege to the facilities and who were taking their leisurely time going about their business. In the morning light, the German’s face looked even more familiar and likable, his brown eyes ever ready with a smile. His broad shoulders bespoke power, but his large face, for all its severity, had an air of gentleness.

Men and women called out in a New York–accented, Yiddish-inflected English, and the German said to me, in almost awestruck tones, “Many Americans going to Europe now.”

“It would seem so,” I replied.

A tall Jew in a short robe walked by, looking me straight in the eye. “You forgot your razor,” a woman called after him.

“That’s right,” he answered and turned back, again looking me in the eye.

“What about your towel?” the same woman’s voice cried out.

“Dammit!” the man said, and went back again. On his return, towel in hand, he passed by once more, and after giving me a searching look, finally said, in English, “Good morning,” making it sound like a Yiddish greeting, with overtones of, “Ah, a Jew!” I returned his salutation.

We were now passing through Belgium. Mining towns whizzed by, with soot-covered houses and men going to work, carrying lunch pails. Various pieces of machinery dotted the rusty ground. The train sped on. The German stood looking out the window, mumbling to himself about Belgium’s coal and iron mines, its copper and zinc, its textile industry. The conductor, sporting a neat, waxed mustache, who had been going back and forth, now stopped and beckoned to me and the German. We acceded to his mysterious invitation and followed him into another car, where he proceeded to open a window and told us to look out. The train was passing through steep cliffs, creating a gloom, like the darkest of tunnels. We looked out and saw nothing, but the conductor’s face lit up with anticipation. Suddenly, he cried out,
“Le roi
—the king!” The German and I stuck our heads out the open window, but still couldn’t see to the top of the high, terrifying cliff. The train slowed down as it passed the giant wall of rocks, stained in a variety of rusty hues. Suddenly we saw, at its foot, bunches of flowers and an inscribed date, “February 17, 1934,” along with some other words which we couldn’t make out because the train had again picked up speed. However, I immediately realized that what we had just passed was the site where King Albert of the Belgians had ended his rock-climbing career. I was at a loss to understand what he might have been looking for in this desolate spot, except perhaps death.

The conductor kept looking back to the cliffside memorial. I craned my neck to catch a last glimpse and was seized by a shudder when the thought occurred to me that it was only a few months before that Albert had fallen to his death and lain lifeless in the place where the wreaths now lay. The conductor pulled in his head and sat down, looking spent, as if he had just undergone a horrible ordeal, like being present himself at King Albert’s final moments. He gave us to understand that we were a lucky pair, having been granted the privilege of seeing what nobody else on the train saw. When we thanked him for his kindness, he countered our gratitude with a look that seemed to imply that there couldn’t be thanks enough for the glowing experience he had provided.

Again, I found myself standing with the German in the corridor of our car, looking out the window, indifferently observing the green stretches of field and the isolated little houses. My companion, however, was staring intently, drinking in every detail of the passing scene, as if searching for something. Suddenly, he gave a start, raised his hand, and pointed outside. “You see?” he cried out. “All that land over there? It used to belong to us.” He made a fist, as if to hold it in his hand. “They took it from us by force.” His eyes filled with tears and his shaky hand seemed to caress the rich, green fields that were hurtling by. I looked on with continued indifference. I felt pity for the man, who was now completely convulsed. I sought a living connection between these particular stretches of ground, which the train was chewing up with a fury, and his tear-stained eyes. But my sympathy didn’t affect my indifference. I even tried to talk myself into thinking that I envied him for feeling so personally the loss of his territory, but this was of no help either, and I didn’t succeed in fooling myself. I absolutely did not envy him. Jewish cosmopolitan, Gypsy, opportunist, internationalist—I even tried hurling all the familiar charges in the anti-Semitic book at myself, for the fate that didn’t allow me warm attachments to bits of land that one country had stolen from another. Typically Jewish! Suddenly I decided that I must somehow smuggle into the conversation the fact that I was a Jew. I began to feel that it was unethical on my part not to do so, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of German Jews. How could I stand fearlessly beside this “Aryan” and not disclose myself? It was also not altogether right of me to deceive him, but out of sympathy I hesitated, because he had grief enough. Should I present him with a new problem and add to his distress by declaring my Jewishness? A demon finally pushed me over the edge. I was no longer in control of myself, and my tongue tossed off words before I had even come to a decision.

“As a Jew,” I said, “I can’t understand such personal attachment to a piece of ground, such fervent patriotism. I’d like to say that I appreciate and value all this, but even out of politeness I can’t, because I simply don’t grasp it. At most I can say that such feelings strike me as tragicomic.”

Had I spoken loudly enough? Did I make clear my Jewishness, in no uncertain terms? The German stood still glued to the window, but then I noticed him looking at me out of the corner of an eye. He finally turned to me and I felt a change had come over him, even though he tried to hide it. He wanted to catch a good look at me from the side, but I looked at him full face, with open anticipation. He placed a trembling hand on my shoulder, a heavy hand it was, but he kept it there lovingly. He soon removed it and took my right hand in both of his. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “It’s going to be all right. I understand your Jewish desire for revenge, it’s justified, but everything’s going to be fine.”

I was caught in a terrible tangle from which I didn’t know how to extricate myself. I felt no hatred toward him personally, and it wouldn’t have bothered me at all if Germany got back its lost territories. The German, too, found himself in a quandary, telling me how deeply he felt about the wrong that had been done to his country, yet not agreeing with everything that present-day Germany was doing to foster its revival. Indeed, he was far from agreement, but as he had said earlier, “We mustn’t talk about this.” There were several Jewish families, he told me, living on his street, whom he didn’t know personally but to whom he sent secret notes, assuring them that things would get better. Nevertheless, his Jewish neighbors went about with bowed heads and didn’t let themselves be consoled. They looked ashamed. “We Germans, who were humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles, have found someone else to humiliate,” he said, “but as sure as it’s God’s will, we mustn’t talk about this.”

He almost screamed out these last words as a warning to himself, because now entering our car was a group of seventeen-, eighteen-year-old blond youths, proud and high-spirited, wearing swastika armbands. Their thick, peasant faces broke out in laughter; they moved about vigorously, confidently, as if striding on solid ground. Each time we passed one another in the corridor, colliding lightly, they offered polite apologies. These members of the Hitler Youth filled all the cars, greeting each other, arms smartly upraised. At each encounter, up went the arms in mutual salute. They kept up a steady humming and buzzing, like members of an orchestra tuning up, awaiting the conductor’s baton to burst into performance. They looked freshly scrubbed, as if they had just risen from sleep. Beefy conductors had also come aboard with a “Heil,” but in their case this seemed merely routine, a perfunctory exercise. Clearly, we had crossed the border from Belgium into Germany.