Authors: Anita Diamant
Tedi flushed. “You’re making fun of me. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“I’m not teasing. I’m really curious.”
“Today I woke up smelling pine trees. A whole forest of them.”
Leonie sniffed and grimaced. “Did it cover up the German?”
“No,” Tedi said, embarrassed to be talking of this. “What do you think is going on
with those Iraqi guys? And that drama with the exercise teachers yesterday? Then Tirzah
doesn’t show up to cook last night.”
“And Shayndel is so jumpy,” Leonie added. “Something must be happening. But for now,
let’s go see if Tirzah made it to the kitchen this morning. Shayndel may need us.”
A few steps from the door, they nearly collided with Zorah, who was standing perfectly
still and staring into the distance.
“Are you all right?” Tedi asked.
Zorah stared at them for a second before blurting, “I, uh, I have to go.” She rushed
around the corner of the barrack, pressing her back against the wall, frightened and
furious at herself.
She had seen other survivors standing like statues right in the middle of the dining
hall or on the parade ground, suddenly
overwhelmed and paralyzed by memory. But Zorah considered herself the master of her
past, immune to such displays. She had even started writing lists to keep her memories
clear and orderly: names from the concentration camp, the deaths she had witnessed
inside her barrack and on the parade ground, ingredients in the “soups” they had been
starved with, the mind-numbing work they had been forced to do. Her register of misery,
humiliation, and loss covered five pieces of paper, front and back, a hedge against
forgetting and also a fence to keep the past in its place. She kept it folded within
the pages of her Hebrew grammar, and ran her eyes over the columns every time she
studied.
But she had no way of accounting for—or fencing off—the sensation of her own hair
brushing against the back of her neck, which had, that morning, summoned the memory
of her mother. She used to call Zorah’s hair her “best feature” in a voice so heavy
with consolation, it always made her wince.
Zorah shook herself and started for the dining hall. She would ask Leonie to take
a scissors to her mop after breakfast. It would be cooler and lighter that way, and
she would need all of her wits tonight.
As Zorah entered the noisy mess, Esther and Jacob waved for her to join them. “I got
this for you,” said the boy, pushing a plate in front of her.
Zorah bit into a roll and was stunned by the texture between her teeth, and the aroma
of yeast. The soft cheese on her tongue was a tender revelation, a salty gift. The
tea, which Jacob had mixed with too much milk and sugar, answered some long-denied
craving. She bit into a slice of tomato and groaned.
“What’s wrong?” asked Esther.
“Nothing,” said Zorah, bewildered by the strange, over-whelming
testimony of her mouth. “It’s just that this food is … this tomato, I mean. It’s all
delicious today, isn’t it?”
“Try the red pepper,” Esther urged, passing another plate. “These are the best we’ve
had. Let me cut one for you.”
But Zorah was on her way out the door.
“Where are you going?” Esther called.
What is happening to me? Zorah wondered, hurrying toward the northern edge of the
camp, where she could be alone. Why should I go mad now, after everything?
The answer came to her in a man’s voice.
Life will not be denied
.
“Hah,” Zorah roared and immediately clapped a hand over her mouth. She would not turn
into one of the screamers or mutterers who caused people to turn away in pity or disgust.
She started pacing, walking faster and faster, as she silently argued with herself.
Life most certainly can be denied, she thought. Life is unforgivably weak. Death is
stronger than everything that breathes. I am an expert on the rottenness and hollowness
of this world. Death is what cannot be denied. No one is going to tell me that life
is a beautiful poem, filled with meaning, a God-given blessing.
And yet you nearly burst into tears over the miracle of a tomato.
Zorah recognized the voice. It was Meyer, who knew to woo her with cigarettes and
who remained in her thoughts, no matter how often she tried to dismiss him.
I must have been hungrier than I realized. That’s all.
You are sleeping better. You have gained a little weight.
Nothing but the fruits of boredom, she countered, wondering why she had turned Meyer
into the straw man inside her head. She barely knew him. The only reason he is such
a worthy opponent, she decided, is because he speaks with my words.
Worthy opponent or suitor?
Zorah blushed.
Your body is returning to life and so is your heart.
A small hand slipped into hers and stilled the voices in her head. “Are you ill?”
Jacob asked. “Do you want me to fetch Mama? Or the nurse? Mama says we must take care
of you because you are sick in the heart. I told her the doctors should give you medicine
for your heart, and she started crying. Mama cries a lot. I have never seen you cry.”
Zorah tried to smile away the worry that made him look even more like a little old
man than usual. Jacob was far too small for his age, his face still thin and pinched
despite a healthy appetite. Even so, Zorah was struck by the change in him; this was
not the listless, silent child who had arrived in Atlit a few weeks ago.
As they walked back toward the mess hall, Jacob skipped beside her, a dervish of words
and ideas. “Are you really going to be my teacher?” he asked. “That’s what Mama says.
She says that you are smarter than Mr. Rostenberger. I told her that your breath is
much nicer than his and that you probably wouldn’t pinch my hand if I make a mistake.
When will we start, Miss Zorah? Will we continue with the page of Talmud about what
time you’re supposed to say the Sh’ma in the morning? That’s where he started. Where
is your book?”
“I have no Talmud,” said Zorah. “We will begin with grammar. Hebrew is very dense,
you know. Compact. Full of mysteries.”
“What does that mean?”
She tried again. “Hebrew is a bit like hard candy.”
He nodded seriously. “Does Hebrew melt when it’s hot, too?”
It took Zorah a moment to realize that Jacob had made a
joke. “That was very funny,” she said, again on the verge of tears. After tonight,
he would become someone else’s student, someone else’s charge.
Zorah stroked his cheek gently. Now she knew that she wasn’t going mad after all;
she was mourning what she was about to lose.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Leonie, rushing toward them. “Would you please come
to the infirmary, Zorah?” she asked slowly, in her best Hebrew. “They need a translation.”
“I’ll be right there,” Zorah said.
“How many languages do you know?” Jacob asked, taking her hand again as they walked
toward the clinic.
“Four,” she said, not counting the three she understood but had never spoken out loud.
“Not so many.”
“I think it’s so many,” he said, with such an emphatic shake of his head, Zorah couldn’t
help but pull him close and hug his bony shoulder against her hip. “Go find your mama,
now.”
She was met at the door by a skinny young man wearing a white coat. Volunteers cycled
through Atlit so often, Zorah wasn’t surprised that she had never seen this doctor
before, but when he extended a hand that was calloused and not entirely clean, she
looked into his pale green eyes with suspicion.
“You are Zorah, yes?” he said. “I am Avi Schechter. We have two men inside babbling
to each other in some prehistoric jargon, pretending not to understand me or anyone
else. I’m told you’re a wonder with Polish dialects, so I’d like you to go in and
find out what you can about them. They got off a boat last week and we already know
they’re not Jews; we need to find out how they got here and what they’re up to and
what they did during the war.”
He talked like someone who was used to giving orders, and gave her no time to think
or choose not to do what he wanted.
He opened the door and pointed at two thickset men, clearly brothers, sitting together
on a cot. “I’ll wait for you here.”
Zorah heard one man tell the other to say nothing. “Can I get you some water?” she
said, stumbling only a little over the Mazur dialect.
Their faces registered surprise and then suspicion. The older of the two asked, “You
are from Danzig?”
“No, but I had cousins there,” she said. “They lived on Mirchaer Street.”
“By the synagogue,” he said. “I know the neighborhood.”
“Did you live nearby?”
He rubbed his hands over the dark stubble on his round face and asked, without hope
or rancor, “So are they going to send us back or will they put us in prison?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I told you it was a stupid idea,” said the other man, who looked even more like a
bear than his brother. He turned to Zorah and pleaded, “Tell them we didn’t hurt anybody.
We didn’t even turn anyone in to the police, and we didn’t fight. We were cowards,
my brother and I. We went to Denmark and waited it out,” he said.
“Why did you come here, then?” she asked.
“There was no work in Danzig. There were a couple of Mossad guys in town after the
armistice; we found out that they needed ironworkers here, shipbuilders. That’s what
we used to do. We had the documents, so I figured—”
“Where did you get Jewish papers?” But Zorah was unable to keep the edge out of her
voice and the older brother said, “Forget it. No one’s going to believe a word we
say.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me,” she said, but they shook their heads and
turned away.
Outside, the man in the white coat had changed into a worn leather jacket. “What did
you find out?”
“Not much,” said Zorah. “They’re from Danzig. They say they were shipbuilders and
ran away during the war. They are not going to tell me anything else. Not terribly
bright, those two. I don’t think they have any idea what they’re doing here, actually.
What happens to them now?”
“If it was up to me, I’d take them to the border and point them north and good riddance,”
he said. “The Yishuv may put them on a boat. I could care less.”
“But tell me something,” Zorah said. “Why are these guys in the clinic? They aren’t
sick. If you’re rounding up Christians, why don’t you bring over that Russian girl
in A barrack who is more than happy to tell everyone that she’s not a Jew?”
“And then there’s the one in your barrack,” he said.
“Who are you talking about?”
“That German creature, of course. Unbelievable story. A war criminal in Eretz Yisrael.
You didn’t know?” he said.
Zorah tried to look bewildered instead of relieved; he didn’t seem to know about Esther.
“So maybe you aren’t as smart as Hayyim said you were.”
“Hayyim?”
“Hayyim Meyer. Surely you can see the resemblance,” he said, turning his head to show
off his profile. “Everyone tells us we look more like brothers than cousins.” He took
a half-empty pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and waved it in front of her. “He
sent these for you. I hope you don’t mind sharing,” he said, handing it over. “Do
you have a message for him, if I see him?”
“Tell him,” Zorah said, trying to think of something clever, “tell him … thank you
for the cigarettes.”
“A real romantic, aren’t you? Why don’t I give him your love and tell him you’re pining
to see him again.”
Zorah watched him walk off and stamped her foot. “His name
would
be Hayyim.”
“What did you say?” asked Leonie, who had been waiting for her. “Hayyim means ‘life,’
doesn’t it?”
Zorah held out the pack of cigarettes. “Do you want one?”
“Chesterfields? How nice, thank you.” As Leonie extracted a cigarette, a slip of paper
fell to the ground. “What’s this?”
Zorah picked it up and unfolded it.
“There is only the letter
M,
” said Leonie. “Does it mean anything to you?”
“Sort of.”
“Meyer.” Leonie smiled. “
Non?
”
“Meyer,
oui,
” Zorah said, so plainly miserable that Leonie knew better than to tease.
“I’m going to the calisthenics class now,” she said. “This Uri fellow is very entertaining.
Will you join me?”
Before Zorah could say no, Leonie added, “Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know anymore.”
Shayndel chopped the cucumbers in time with the internal metronome that had woken
her early that morning. At first she thought there were real drums beating somewhere
in the camp, but eventually she realized it was her own heartbeat urging, Let’s
go,
let’s
go
.
She tried to ignore it, but the beat grew louder and more insistent, crowding out
everything, including her usual good humor. She had snapped at Tedi and growled at
the two Arab
guards who normally exchanged smiles and a thumbs-up with her. She was, she realized,
behaving just like Tirzah, who had not even said good morning when she arrived.
“Ba-
dum,
ba-
dum,
ba-
dum,
” she muttered, bringing the blade down in time. Her hands were sweating so much,
she had to stop and wipe them every few minutes to keep the knife from slipping.
The back door hit the wall with a sharp crack, announcing Nathan, who sailed into
the kitchen, followed by Bob and Uri. “Look who’s here,” he bellowed.
“This is good news?” said Tirzah. “You two had better stay out of trouble today.”
“They have plenty to do,” Nathan said, stuffing a piece of bread into his mouth.
“Since Nathan figured out how to disarm the rifles, everyone is much more confident,”
said Uri.
Tirzah and Shayndel looked at each other, and then stared at Nathan.
“You really are a pig,” said Tirzah. “I’ll bet you didn’t let on that it was Shayndel
who told you how to fix those guns.”
He ignored her completely. “Let’s get out there,” he said, grabbing a handful of olives
and heading into the dining room. “I’ll show you which men we’ve chosen as barrack
leaders.”