The Story of a Life (5 page)

Sometimes he’d be overcome by longing for his village.
His longing was tangible, as if it brought him close to the trees and to the streams that surrounded his home. Now his house was all locked up, and two peasants were taking care of his fruit trees and vegetable garden. The poultry and other farm animals had long since been sold, apart from one cow that Grandfather had requested be kept. Once I heard him tell Mother, “Take me back to the village, please; it’s hard for me to be away from my home.”

Mother hesitated for a moment. “Let’s see what the doctors have to say,” she said.

In the evening, Dr. Feldman came by and persuaded Grandfather that in his condition it would be best for him to stay near the hospital, and not in a village some fifty kilometers from the city. Grandfather listened and said, “It seems that this is how it has to be.”

Our home was without Torah and without religious observance, but from the time of Grandfather’s arrival, it changed radically. Mother made the kitchen completely kosher, and we would eat only vegetarian food; we wouldn’t light a fire on the Sabbath, and when Father wanted to smoke on the Sabbath, he would go out behind the house or into a nearby street.

Victoria, our elderly maid, treated Grandfather with enormous respect. Once a day she scrubbed the floor of his room. I heard her say to Mother, “Not everyone has the good fortune to have a father like your father. He’s a really holy man.”

Victoria could say things that made me afraid. Once she said, “The Jews have forgotten that there’s a God in heaven.”

“Not all of them,” my mother protested, trying to soften her words.

“In the synagogue there’s barely a quorum in the mornings.” Victoria stood her ground.

I had no doubt there was a God in heaven, who governed not only the stars in the sky but His creatures as well. I acquired this belief from another servant, who filled in for Victoria for a short time. Younger than Victoria and extremely pretty, Anna-Maria would repeatedly tell me in secret that there’s a God in heaven and He governs not only His stars but all His creatures as well.

In the afternoons, Grandfather would get up from his bed and go out on the veranda. Grandfather did not speak of his beliefs, but all his actions were directed toward those beliefs. Sometimes it seemed to me that he was lonely because he wasn’t understood, but at other times I felt that his room was full of vitality—full of invisible guests who came to visit him and with whom he communicated in the language of silence.

Father and Mother sometimes quarreled in the kitchen, arguing with their hands clenched, trying to convince each other with a flood of words. When the words led nowhere, they moved away from each other and fell silent. But Grandfather’s silence was void of anger and was more like a heavy pillow onto which one could lay one’s head. When Grandfather came to live with us, Father stopped criticizing Jews and their religious beliefs. He became withdrawn, spoke very little, and on his return from the exhausting attempts to get us transit papers, he would come straight into the kitchen, where Mother would pour him a cup of coffee and spread two slices of bread with fruit preserves. He would eat distractedly and rapidly, finishing the two slices in an instant.

This was the atmosphere at home during that year: Grandfather’s calm and Father’s tumult. From time to time, and usually at night, Father would take me outside, and we would wander for hours. He loved the quiet cobbled streets at night. He would stride down street after street, with me trotting
behind him. Sometimes he would stop and say something: a sentence or a few words. I’m not sure to whom his words were addressed. Sometimes there rose from within him a kind of unexpected, strange happiness, and he might begin to sing out loud. And that’s how we would reach the river. Father loved the river, and on more than one occasion, I saw him bend down toward it. Once he said to me, “Water is closer to us than the earth,” and he laughed, as if he had put some nonsense into words. These hasty outings were not always pleasant, but I recall them more vividly than the houses that I used to visit.

I could not know that these were the last days we were to spend at home, and yet I was constantly telling myself that I needed to sit next to Grandfather and watch him. I felt I should not lose sight of him sitting on the veranda, or of how he looked when engrossed in a book. Mother, too, sitting next to him, must not be forgotten. I felt that the coming days would not be good ones, but no one could have imagined the tidal wave that was already surging toward us with full force. I’d lie in bed for hours, reading Jules Verne, playing chess with myself, and feeling sorry that Father was so distracted—not shaving in the morning, and leaving the house in haste.

Sometimes it seemed to me that Father was trying to burrow a tunnel through which he wanted to save us, but that the tunneling was proceeding so slowly that it was doubtful he would be able to finish it in time. At the same time, he was trying to find us berths on a ship that would take us to Gibraltar. Each day was a desperate attempt to break through the ring that was tightening around us. Mother, however, was so caught up in Grandfather’s illness that Father’s words—or, more correctly, his plans—left absolutely no impression on her. To her lack of attentiveness and her absentmindedness Father reacted with nervous shrugging of his shoulders; harsh
words were exchanged, and they brought up the names of people or places of which I hadn’t heard.

Death surrounded us on every side, yet Father seemed to think that if we tried hard enough there could be some respite, or even perhaps rescue. “We mustn’t give up,” he would say. It was hard to know to what exactly he was referring, but he invariably directed his most severe criticism at himself, and hardly ever at us. Once I heard him say to Grandfather, “We need divine mercy, abundant mercy.” I wondered how such a phrase could come from his mouth, and it seemed to me that Grandfather was also taken aback. So many incomprehensible sentences were whispered at home. It seemed that we were living in the midst of a searing riddle.

Mother sometimes waved her hand, as though trying to dispel bad spirits. For some reason these gestures angered Father, and he said that what they needed now was a cool head, not despair. Yet despair confronted us. For a moment Mother rallied, and then it seemed to me that once again she might burst into tears.

At the end of the summer, on a clear and absolutely cloudless day, Grandfather dozed off and never awoke from his sleep. Victoria noticed that he had ceased breathing and rushed to get Mother. Mother fell on her knees without uttering a sound. When she noticed me in the doorway, she grabbed hold of me and said, “What are you doing here?” She immediately took me to our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Horowitz. I didn’t want to go, and I threw a tantrum. My screaming must have only made my mother more determined, because she then slapped my face. Mrs. Horowitz held out a piece of candy wrapped in golden foil and said, “Don’t cry, child.”

I lay there, drumming my legs on the ground, overwhelmed by anger and humiliation. Late that night, tired and confused, I was brought back home.

The house had changed beyond recognition. It was filled with people. Victoria was serving coffee in small cups, and the living room was full of smoke. Father stood apart. He wore a
kippah
on his head, and his body was swaying like a drunkard’s. Mother sat on the floor wrapped in a blanket, surrounded by unfamiliar people. People talked not about Grandfather’s death, but about practical matters; perhaps they did so to divert Mother’s attention, but Mother would not be diverted. Her eyes were large and wide open.

Suddenly it seemed to me that everyone was pleased that death had gone away, that now it was possible just to sit and drink the coffee that Victoria was serving. This sense of things going on as if nothing had happened hurt me, and I fled to my room. To my surprise, even my room was full of people.

This time, Father did not hold back. Then and there, in front of everyone, he derided what he called the tribal burial customs that did not respect the dead and that lacked all good taste. In particular he blasted the Burial Society for rushing through the prayers and for being in such a hurry to hand out spades to the mourners—and then demanding donations on top of their fee. I knew that he didn’t approve of Jewish burial customs, but this time he vented his anger and held nothing back. He concluded his tirade by saying, “I, at any rate, will not abandon my body to them. Better to be interred in a lepers’ graveyard than to be buried in a Jewish cemetery.”

People dispersed soon after this, and Father’s voice echoed in the empty house. I didn’t know if Mother agreed with his words. She sat on the floor, and not a sound issued from her mouth. In the way she sat there was something of Grandfather. Perhaps in the way she rested her hand on her knees.

IN THE GHETTO, children and madmen were friends. All the social frameworks had collapsed: there was no school, no homework, no getting up early in the morning, and no putting out the lights at night. We’d play in the courtyards, on the staircases, between trees, and in all kinds of gloomy corners. Sometimes the madmen would join in our games. The new chaos worked to their advantage as well. The Mental Institution and the Hospital for the Mentally Ill had been closed down, and people who’d been let out of those places wandered through the streets, smiling aimlessly. Their smiles also carried more than a trace of gloating, as if to say, “All these years you laughed at us for mixing things up, confusing things, confusing time; we weren’t precise, we called places and things by strange names. But now it’s clear that we were right. You didn’t believe us, you were all so damned self-righteous that you thought us completely worthless. You packed us off to institutions and you shut us away behind lock and key.” There was something frightening in the gaiety of their smiles.

They celebrated their freedom in strange ways. In the park they would lie stretched out on their backs, singing, and the young men among them would call out compliments to girls and young women. But most of the time they would sit on the benches in the public parks and smile. They treated children as their equals. They would sit cross-legged and play five stones, dominoes, and chess. They would play catch, and even football. Anxious parents, at their wits’ end, would swoop down on them. The insane learned to spot the parents early and would run away in time.

There were some dangerous ones, too, among the insane—madmen who’d menace us with real fury. We children also learned to spot them coming, and we’d run away. But most of them were quiet and polite and would make sense when they spoke. There were even those who you would never think were insane—ones you could question about math, geography, or a book by Jules Verne. Also among the insane were doctors, lawyers, and rich people; and there were some whose property, as soon as they’d been institutionalized, was appropriated by their children. Occasionally an insane man would stop a game to tell us about his wife and children. Some of them were religiously observant and would pray, make a blessing before eating something, or try to teach us the morning or the evening prayers.

I liked looking at them. Their faces were expressive. They enjoyed playing, but didn’t know how to win. We were better at it than they were. When they lost, they’d burst out laughing and say, “Even the tiniest tots are better than we are.” True, there were those who became infuriated when they lost and might overturn the board or throw things around. But there weren’t too many of these. Most of them accepted defeat graciously and even smilingly.

Occasionally one of the insane would lose control, raging
wildly in the street, thrashing out, or biting. Right away the ghetto police would be called in. They would waste no time and round them all up. After a day or two behind bars, they would again be released. And right away we would invite them to play chess or dominoes. It was strange how they harbored no resentment, neither for the police nor for those who’d handed them over.

I liked to observe their gestures—the way they held a plate, or tore off chunks of bread. Sometimes they’d fall asleep in the park, all crumpled up, as if they weren’t grown-up people but children who had suddenly got tired in the middle of a game. During the days of the deportation, they tried to escape, to hide, but the police, of course, were sharper than they were. In their great naïveté, the insane would hide under the benches in the park, or climb up trees. It wasn’t hard to catch them; even the way they ran was clumsy and awkward. The ghetto police would grab them roughly and load them onto the trucks. No one interceded on their behalf—it was as if there was a general consensus that if we all had to be deported, then they should be the first. Even their own families didn’t try to save them.

During one of the deportations, I saw a truck filled with the insane. People threw them slices of bread, chunks of pie, and baked potatoes. They jumped to catch the food while it was still in the air, but quite hopelessly. They stood next to the grille of the truck and smiled, as if to say, “We never managed to do the right thing, and because of it we weren’t loved. But now, when we are being taken away from you, why are you casting us away with this hail of food? We don’t need your food now. A little attention, a little love would have gone a long way. Instead of this, you’re fobbing us off, tossing us this tasteless food.”

With that expression on their faces, they left us forever.

EVERY TOWN, it would seem, had its own Janusz Korczak. In our town the person who led the blind children to the railway station was the director of the Institute for the Blind, the teacher Gustav Gotesman. He was short, the same height as the children, and he did everything fast. He was renowned for his method of teaching: everything was learned through music. Melodies were continually wafting from the Institute for the Blind. Gotesman believed that music not only served as a good instrument for learning but also enhanced sensitivity in people. All the children at the institute spoke in melodic tones, even when they addressed one another; the frailty of their little bodies complemented the pleasantness of their speech. In the afternoons, they would sit on the steps and sing. They sang classical songs and Yiddish folk songs. Their voices had harmony and sweetness, and passersby would stand by the railings and listen to them.