Displaced Persons (8 page)

Ah, said Chaim. I wanted to tell you—

Rakover can’t stop talking about the boy. You know, they took him out from the priests, it’s terrible, the child still crosses himself—

Pavel, said Chaim. Let’s talk with him next week. I’m traveling a little this Saturday.

Hmm? said Pavel, emerging from his bedroom, wrapping his tie around his neck. Chaim was in the corridor.

I will be taking a trip, said Chaim.

A trip? said Pavel. On the Sabbath?

We travel to the camp every week for the service, said Chaim. You have traveled on the Sabbath. So yes, this Saturday I am going to Hamburg instead.

It is different to travel to pray, said Pavel, stiffening. And what, may I ask, calls you to Hamburg?

Ah, repeated Chaim, calm, authoritative, his voice firm and
deep—he could make his voice steady, he was a man—I am attending a concert in Hamburg.

Pavel looked at him.

The symphony, repeated Chaim. With Leo Meisel. He has made arrangements for his best students to go.

Pavel paused another moment. Then he said: Out of the question.

Pavel’s voice was not loud, but in the kitchen, where Fela prepared breakfast, the clinking of the plates and silverware suddenly stopped. Chaim turned down the corridor. He would take his coffee, he would have a piece of bread.

Pan Pavel, he called as he walked, it is arranged already. Only for one night.

One night! Pavel’s voice rose. And this you announce with your back to me!

Chaim moved toward Fela, who stood at the stove, and poured himself coffee into a cup. Pavel followed him.

Excuse me, young man, Pavel managed, his voice quieter now, quieter but tense, tight. Where will you stay for one night? In the concert hall? Or will Leo Meisel take you begging at a church?

You stayed in churches in your time, ventured Fela, with a smile, nervous. Come, Pavel, have your coffee.

And for what reason did you keep this from us until now?

I did not keep anything. What did I keep? Chaim swallowed, the coffee burning his mouth. No, he would not become angry. The more furious Pavel grew, the more Chaim wanted to be solid, calm, in control.

You knew, you had these plans! The man did not simply obtain tickets the way he picks up women!

Pavel, Pavel. Fela was humming his name, half afraid, half amused. What? Don’t you have things you do not reveal? Don’t you have things you keep quiet?

Not like this!

Yes like this! Of course like this. Fela touched Pavel’s shoulder.

But Pavel seemed not to notice. Chaim, he said. It is impossible. I need you here.

For one night, Pavel, you do not.

And how do we know this fine scholar will bring you back, all in one piece? Hamburg! There, no soldiers will protect you if something goes wrong.

Pavel, interjected Fela. Let the boy enjoy himself.

You! cried Pavel, turning to her, looking straight at her eyes, his jaw jutting forward, his teeth clenched. And how do you have the authority?

But the teacher, Pavel, it is he who wants to give—

Leo Meisel! Leo Meisel does not run this household!

But already Pavel’s voice was distant as Chaim fled the kitchen, grabbed his jacket, pushed himself out the door and onto Fela’s bicycle, pedaling furiously, sweating, toward the camp, toward school, letting the cool air cleanse his eyes from his vision of Pavel shouting. Why shouldn’t Chaim see a world? See and hear what he never had had in his life thus far, march forward? Did he have to go through life as Pavel did, looking back?

T
HEY BOTH RETURNED TO
the house late in the evening and did not speak to each other before retiring. But at dawn, the door to his room opened, awaking Chaim with a start. He sat up straight, his feet touching the wood floor, then saw Pavel and stopped. Slowly Chaim lay back down in his bed.

Pavel sat on the bed, his face sagged with fatigue. Chaml, he said.

The diminutive, the sound of which Chaim had not heard since
childhood, another lifetime, awakened in him the need to sob, to scream. He stopped himself.

I will go, Chaim answered, and turned his face to the wall.

T
HE OPENING PIECE—MUSIC
without voices, Smetana, all bright violins—ended. Chaim had held his breath through the last portion, then let it out slowly. He had not breathed steadily since their first moments in the concert hall, the usher’s downturned mouth as they walked in, the downcast eyes of the concertgoers in the seats around them. He could feel the audience around him recognizing them, if not by Tina’s crippled hand and Basia’s Gypsy-dark hair, if not by Leo’s pointed, studious face, then by Chaim’s nerves and discomfort. They could smell it on him. But how had he survived those periods of disguise as an itinerant farmhand in the Polish countryside, or those nights in the forest, pretending to be Catholic among the partisans? How had he survived all those months of the war, if this fear could so torture him now, in peace?

Night birds moaning. The orchestra had begun their second piece, and two men and two women had turned toward the conductor, their lips half-parted, ready to twist out the Latin words Chaim had so carefully memorized. Behind them, a dozen men and women—too few, Leo whispered to him as they pushed out their first notes—

Chaim could make out only snatches, syllables of the words he had seen on the page, as the roaring chorus grew more fierce, blocking him—then a pause and a man’s voice, the soloist, and then the higher one, the woman’s deep blood voice, and then the sound of the lightest bird, and the four of them together, with only a few of the strings behind them, so quiet, then again the calling—
abrahae, abrahae, kam olim abrahae promisisti
, the words taking him away from
the sound for a moment, the words he had caught and remembered, studying in the barracks schoolroom.

He looked over at the orphan girl Basia. She was silent, open-mouthed, lost. Her face glistened in the reflected light of the orchestra pit. Could she be crying? Her breathing was barely perceptible—children did not cry silently. But Basia did weep. Tears rolled down her face and neck. And as he stared at her wet face, Chaim felt tears dart into his eyes too.

They ran down his face and touched his lips. Yes, this was how to mourn, with the roaring all around, with the ritual noise blocking out one’s own grief. What did she remember, this little orphan girl, of her losses? Less than he did himself. But something moved her. In the schoolroom there was a child with parents, a child with no cause to look back. And he—he could recall, here in the concert, a reserved woman’s hum, an aunt perhaps, not his mother, a girl’s cry in the morning—yes, here his losses, the ones he could name and the ones he could not name, became sharper, pressed into his skin, more than they had at any religious service. This music was closer to him than the tales of harvests and rams, begetting and sacrifice. Or perhaps not as close. Perhaps the distance was what made everything so clear. He could understand and remember better when the roaring was not so loud, when it came to him in low tones, near whispers, when it came accompanied by violins, not human lamentation.

T
HEY STAYED THE NIGHT
in a boardinghouse in Hamburg, so as not to drive back in darkness. He stayed in a room shared with Leo while Tina led Basia into one next door.

Was it beautiful? said Leo, shutting the door.

Yes, said Chaim. Yes, it was beautiful.

In the night he awoke, Leo wheezing next to him, the white cur
tain flat against the closed window. He thought of sitting up, then decided not to move. His skin was cool, his belly calm. He touched his hand to his forehead and remembered a flash from his dream, just the images, no sounds: an empty concert hall, the walls to one side blasted open, the remnants of a battle, a place he had never seen himself, a place out of pictures, a film. It once had been a beautiful building. Chaim closed his eyes and tried to remember more. He saw himself wandering around the orchestra pit, staring up at the remains of the art-covered ceiling, the fat blond angels and naked Greek gods. Some of the velvet seats for the audience still were intact. He climbed out of the pit and sat himself down in a soft red chair, to wait for the musicians to enter.

August 1946

Y
ES, SAID THE
A
MERICAN
clerk in her stuttering German. We have a Hinda Mandl. Shall I send someone for her?

But Pavel could not answer.

The clerk’s hands fluttered through her papers. You are not permitted in the women’s barracks. Herr Mandl? I shall send someone for her.

Let her be warm, Pavel thought, sitting in the registry room of the Foehrenwald assembly center in the American zone near Munich. It was August and already the days seemed shorter; winter would be upon them, and his little sister would have to be prepared. Let her be warm, he repeated to himself. Let Hinda eat and be warm.

He had come back to the American zone with a small valise filled with silk and wool, pounds of coffee for trading, even a set of ladies’ combs that Fela had insisted he bring with him, should he find his sister. Pavel had come with these things, and coming with them made him feel more secure. Pavel had a better system for searching than a newspaper or a Jewish chaplain from the army. He had a desperation.
And with Hinda, even after the first failed expedition, he felt that something was right. His other sister and his youngest brother had perished with the rest of the children in the town when the ghetto was liquidated, and of his two remaining brothers, he still knew nothing. And yet Hinda—Fishl’s Dincja had seen her alive, and no one knew of her being dead.

She had not been in Landsberg, and months had passed with few clues. But he had not allowed himself disappointment; a chaplain at Feldafing had responded after some time to his inquiry; her name had appeared on a list in a camp newspaper, with a contact address at Foehrenwald. He had sent a letter telling her he would arrive, he would arrive and wait for her, and with the letter he posted a box of cigarettes and scarves with an American army truck to the camp. He had bicycled in the heat for the next two days, his American papers secure inside his shirt, and now in the little office where a clerk at a metal desk ran through her list of recent arrivals, the papers seemed to press against his chest, making his breathing thin and slow.

He heard voices outside, more American attempts at German, and Pavel stood to wait in the doorway. Two figures approached, walking slowly. Was she weak? Was she sick? There had been a tuberculosis epidemic in the camp. Could she—the women came closer, and Pavel felt his heart hurtling against his ribs, as if to push his body toward the pair. But his body did not move. The woman’s face became clear, sharp jaw, dark eyes, the same high forehead that marked the whole family, her tiny body a shadow in front of him, blocking his view of the dirt path, the row of barracks, the watchtower, the soldiers and inmates moving between the buildings. In his head Pavel knew that she came accompanied by a young messenger, but his eyes saw only Hinda.

S
HE LOOKED SOMETHING LIKE
her own self, older, of course, thinner than the last time he had seen her, in the spring of 1942. She had
come to Foehrenwald with a bundle of typhus-ridden women liberated from a barn crowded with remnants of a death march, hospitalized in one camp, then transferred to another. She was a small girl—no longer a girl, Pavel supposed, she had grown to womanhood in camps—but still sharp. Her chestnut hair, still short, had returned to its wavy beauty. He touched it as they embraced, and as they walked from the camp office he let his hands roam through it and embraced her again. He stopped every few steps to look at her. It was hard to breathe: a body created from the same bodies that created him, a living being from the same mother and father.

Hinda, he said, again and again. Hinda, Hinda.

Pavel, she said, Pavel.

They walked together to a small area near the camp school. They would have some privacy. As they moved behind the building, toward a small garden, Pavel heard his sister coughing. He looked at her. So reserved a moment before, Hinda now had tears streaming down her face, and as he watched her, he realized he himself was weeping. They wept the same way: in silence. They sat on a bench, and Pavel felt his skin chapping where the salt water had dried on his cheeks. It was a humid and cloudy day.

After some time Hinda spoke: I want to get married.

Hmm? he said, surprised. To whom?

She had a friend, it seemed, someone who had gotten through the war on Aryan papers—he fought on the Polish side in the Warsaw uprising! Hinda said, with an uncharacteristic excitement—and who cared for her, who had a great future in front of him, who wanted to marry her and take her out, to England or to America, whichever came first, to escape this new prison, to take her away and make her life something calm and peaceful.

Pavel frowned. I should meet him before you decide anything, he said.

No, Hinda said. I have decided. You should meet him, of course.
But I have decided, Pavel. You are not my father. You are my brother.

He said nothing.

My only living brother, she said. Her tears again flowed.

She seemed to think he had no say in the matter. After a moment, he said, I have a house. I live in a house. After I meet him, there we will make your wedding.

It would be something beautiful. Nothing like what the other refugees had, more and more marrying after one meeting, two meetings, a walk with the intended, a dozen onlookers crowded to watch the two say their marriage prayers under a canopy made from an army-issued sheet. Hinda’s wedding would be different, not the impoverished little gatherings around a barracks of hungry people, but a party, something elegant and full, with pastries and delicacies and even, he thought, a little music. Yes, a little music. He would give to his sister what she might have experienced had she grown to be a bride under the watch of their father.

F
ELA AND
H
INDA DID
not make a good impression on each other. Fela put out her hand when they met, and Hinda seemed not to notice it. Pavel saw, and a protest welled up in his throat: Hinda! he wanted to cry. But he said nothing, watching Fela start back in surprise.

The rest of their hour together was stiff, labored. Kuba, Hinda’s intended, at the last minute had been obliged to attend to some business. Hinda entered the little house alone, delivered by a car that had been dispatched by Pavel. Now it was up to Pavel to move the conversation.

All right, Pavel thought. At least Kuba did business, unlike those refugees who slept all day in the barracks of the DP camp, moving about in a state of apathy, refusing to get up and work or even talk. But the meeting, which had been arranged so Pavel could assess Kuba, in
stead became a chance for Hinda to judge Fela. And here was Hinda, sullen and haughty, just as she had been years ago when their father married their stepmother, just as she had been when she had seen, by chance, Pavel in the street with a girl. Years ago.

You smoke too much, said Hinda, watching Fela strike another match.

Who did not smoke? It kept down the hunger. It gave the body the illusion of warmth. Few of the refugees had given it up. In fact Hinda smoked also; she had brought her own cigarettes.

Kuba has a good contact, Hinda said. He is so blond, it is easy for him to move around. He gets French ones, sometimes. I try to be careful; it is not so ladylike to smoke so much.

Fela blew out a puff from her mouth. The smoke came out in two little circles. Often when she did that, even as a joke, Pavel thought she looked like a film actress. But now he didn’t. He was worried. He said, We all smoke.

He knew it was not an adequate answer. He could feel Fela’s anger in the caress she gave his hand, which rested on the table, holding his own cigarette. She did not touch him in front of others, but now, in front of Hinda, she wanted to throw off her restraint. Her gesture had an effect: Hinda looked coldly at the two of them and said, Not all of us smoke so much.

Pavel and Fela retained a modesty in public, acting as friends, perhaps cousins. For what would others think of him, not marrying a beautiful Jewish girl with whom he shared a bed? Yet the explanation was even worse—that Fela still looked for her husband. So they were discreet, and they depended on Chaim—who had moved into Fela’s room—to keep quiet himself. What did others need to know about their living arrangements? They had their own dwellings to worry about.

Yet here was Fela, openly touching, her pale fingers rubbing his knuckles. Was she taunting his sister, or perhaps him? He did not know. Pavel was relieved—no, not relieved, he thought, just tired, just
ready to rest—when Chaim hopped off Fela’s bicycle and bounded into the garden, giving Hinda a tip of the cap as she stood up to leave.

P
AVEL BROUGHT
C
HAIM WITH
him to meet this Kuba near Munich. It was better that way, men among men. Kuba stayed with a friend from his childhood in a bare apartment only moderately clean. Pavel sniffed a bit when he came in. Even without a woman living in the home, one had to make attempts! His sister’s intended did not seem to waste money on luxuries. But Kuba was friendly, a round pink face atop a small body, neatly dressed in gray trousers and a dark jacket, and he shook Pavel’s and Chaim’s hands with vigor.

Kuba too had thought to have an observer. His friend Marek brought glasses from the kitchen, and they sat down in the front room with a bottle of schnapps, a gift from Pavel. Chaim unpacked from his satchel a bundle of American cigarettes.

Marek took a cigarette first. He lit it with a match, then passed the light on his cigarette to Pavel’s. All this travel just to take a look at the sister’s groom, yes? That is a loyal brother.

Was he making fun? No, Pavel decided. He breathed out. She is all I have, he said.

Kuba interjected. She talks of you like a hero. Smuggling letters between work camps. Sending her packages in Foehrenwald, even before you knew for sure she was alive. Then travel through the Russian zone to get to the American!

Pavel coughed, suddenly nervous. She is all I have, he repeated.

More than many of us, nodded Marek.

A silence.

Chaim said, We make the wedding in our house. Fela already plans for the meal.

Pavel threw him a look—should it be given away so quickly that
Kuba had passed Pavel’s scrutiny?—then looked back at Kuba with a grave face.

I see you must make good business, if you live outside a camp.

Marek and Kuba exchanged glances. We get along all right, said Kuba. We have our own connections. No doubt different from yours—

Marek interrupted. We don’t have a car, that is for sure!

The two of them laughed, and Pavel joined in.

Coffee, said Pavel, is better than diamonds.

Chaim took a short sip from his glass. The car was borrowed, but it was true, Pavel had plans to make a purchase of something used; it would give them more freedom than bicycles.

And we do not have British papers, continued Kuba. It makes a difference to have them. Hinda says you have both.

Pavel smiled. Should you believe everything Hinda says? The three men laughed again.

Young to be a partner in such a business, eh? said Marek, looking at Chaim. His broad cheeks had reddened with the schnapps.

Not so young, said Chaim.

Smart, said Pavel. He already teaches in the Belsen school. Everyone talks about him.

It’s not exactly teaching, Chaim interjected. I help with—

In any case, said Kuba, I want to marry your sister. I want to make something more than we make here. There is nothing for us here, business or no business. Nothing.

Pavel nodded. This Kuba thought ahead. There is nothing here, he agreed.

We went back to Kielce together, said Marek. We thought—I wanted to see my parents’ bakery, I wanted some message—I thought in the Jewish community center—

You can imagine, said Kuba. You can imagine.

You cannot imagine, said Marek, his voice suddenly louder. You
cannot imagine! After everything—Kuba does not know—I can see where you were, and he was not where we were, my friend—he does not know, but after everything, to come back and to have them massacring us again! We ran to the American zone so fast we left what little we had in our houses. Worse than before! I hate Poles more than Germans. I hate them more! Marek was shouting, his thin brown hair flapping over his forehead. I hate them more! At least here we have the chance to see the Germans hungry and defeated! There they live on our property and grow fat and they are delighted, overjoyed that we are gone! It is heaven for them. A little heaven.

Another silence. Kuba patted his friend’s shoulder. I just wanted Pavel to know that I will leave here at the first opportunity, the first chance.

But until then, sighed Marek.

Until then, continued Kuba, we would like to invite you into our business. You have connections, we have connections. We have crossed borders without papers before.

Pavel looked at them, thin Marek with his eyes almost running with tears, small Kuba with his blond, sunny face. They did not have papers for the British zone. But Pavel did. He had everything. Perhaps he could help them. He had money, he had stones. Not as good as identity papers, but almost as good.

I participate in the Jewish Committee of the British zone, Pavel said. I will see what can be done.

I
N THE
R
OUNDHOUSE, THE
speeches of the leaders and the mutterings of their followers became more and more desperate and furious. Yidl Sheinbaum, accepting his reelection to the head of the committee, cried out about the cruelties of the British foreign minister and the hopelessness of the American Congress. We have crossed the Red
Sea! he shouted. But still we are in the desert! Should we wait forty years?

It was true, Pavel thought, clapping angrily with the rest. They had been slaves in Egypt and still had not found their freedom. The outside world busied itself with more important things than the suffering of the Jewish remnants. They were all on the lists to emigrate with the Joint and the International Red Cross and HIAS; they all hoped for America, of course, and they all came to the demonstrations for the British to open Palestine, though the life when they got there! They had heard the hunger was worse than in Germany. A few refugees managed to have relatives sponsor them to emigrate outside the quotas, and they left at the first chance of sea passage. No, not even the most powerful people in the world wanted to give them a place to live in peace, to seek home, not just refuge.