A dark panic gripped the Jewish boy. “What’s going to happen to me now? What’s going to happen to my report?”
Itzik the Long made up his mind without even thinking about it. “Come with me. If you stay here, they’ll arrest
you. You can join us and put on a yellow armband. You’ll be one of us, at least for now.”
Elhanan joined the Jewish labor battalion. When he returned to his village later, centuries later, it had changed.
So had he.
Malkiel son of Elhanan son of Malkiel. Here I am, Grandfather. Malki-El: God is my king. But your king did not protect you, Grandfather. Ask Him why, as a favor to me. You’re there, on high, so near the celestial throne; speak to Him. Tell Him that even in their distress His people go on glorifying Him. Now, what does He make of such praise?
Standing at his grandfather’s grave, Malkiel was speaking to him but also to himself: How do we stay Jewish in a world that rejects Jews?
You were lucky, Grandfather. There were people who envied you here in your grave, do you know that? You were the last to be buried in consecrated ground. The others? Better not to talk about the others. Grandmother: Ah yes, much better not to mention her death.
Malkiel knew how his grandfather had died. Thanks to his father, who had sought out the story among the rare survivors of the ghetto. Grandfather Malkiel had been the invaders’ first victim, but they envied him all the same. What luck, people said. He had a proper funeral. He died an individual death.
The ghetto was established in April of 1944, when the Red Army was already closing in, just beyond the mountains.
The Germans summoned old man Rosenbaum and appointed him elder of the Jews. He declined the position. “I mistrust power,” he explained. “I don’t know how to give
orders.” He was about to go on, but a blow to the head stopped him. Another knocked him down. They beat him senseless. They revived him with cold water. “Now will you accept the job?” He still declined. The torturers went back to work. Same result. In the morning the Germans summoned the chief rabbi and other notables: “You make him listen to reason.” Before the prisoner’s eyes they shed bitter tears: “ ‘Woe unto me, to see you like this,’ ” the chief rabbi moaned, quoting a Talmudic verse from the time of the martyrs. “Take the job,” said the president of the community. “Be our spokesman to the Germans; if you refuse, they may appoint an opportunist.” Grandfather Malkiel let himself be persuaded.
The ghetto lasted a month. No more. The Russian front was going to explode any day, and Adolf Eichmann was resolved to do his job quickly. There were still six hundred thousand Jews in the Hungarian provinces, and the killers had only a few weeks to deport them.
Despite the decrees raining on the ghetto, its inhabitants clung to hope. “It can’t last long,” they said in the streets. Anxious about fairness and justice within the confines of the ghetto, the Jewish elder and his associates worked day and night organizing aid to the poor, the sick, refugees from nearby villages. Not everything went smoothly, far from it, but at least they got used to waiting. Even with hunger and isolation, the situation seemed tenable, livable. Medical services, an employment office, housing offices, all operated more or less efficiently. True, local anti-Semites took advantage of the occasion to let off steam: they stopped religious Jews to cut off their beards, spat on women, insulted parents in the presence of children, forced respected old men to lick sidewalks clean; but these ordeals were, as people said, in the natural order of things. “May no worse thing
happen,” they prayed. A certain Zoltan, fanatical leader of the Nyilas, popped up often in the ghetto, and then the streets emptied. He sowed terror among the residents. He bludgeoned, mutilated, killed whoever crossed his path. The committee suggested, “Let’s keep our eyes open and set up an alarm system. With warnings we can take shelter before Zoltan strikes.” In short, things could have been worse.
Soon they were.
One Sabbath morning the Jewish elder was summoned to the Kommandantur. An SS officer from Eichmann’s team broke the news to him: the Jews were going to evacuate the ghetto. “Where are they sending us?” Somewhere in Hungary, was the reply. “When do we leave?” Tomorrow, was the reply.
The officer, unusually amiable, went on: “Don’t worry. This measure is due to the military situation. The Russian front is getting closer. If we remove you from the front, it’s for your own security.” Then he ordered him to keep the matter secret. “No one must know about this. Not before tonight.” The elder was about to withdraw, but the officer called him back: “One more thing. You will supply me with a list of ten names. Ten Jewish names.”
“For what purpose?”
“So they can serve as hostages. If one Jew escapes from the ghetto, one of the ten will be shot.”
The elder had been on his feet throughout this exchange, and now he felt dizzy. His head whirled and his knees gave way. His vision blurred and his heart pounded. What can I do, God in heaven, to keep this danger from others? “Officer, sir,” he replied, “I understand your request, and my answer is affirmative. You shall have ten names. But not this minute. Tonight. It is the Sabbath, you see, and I am not permitted to profane the holy day by writing.”
The SS officer stared at him, dumbfounded: was this Jew making fun of him? He must have decided that no Jew would dare laugh at an SS officer, because he dismissed the elder with an order to return that night with a complete list.
The elder went home and asked his wife to go to see a certain number of Jewish dignitaries and invite them to join together in a
Minhah
service at the chief rabbi’s home. There he told them of his conversation with the SS officer.
“So this is the end,” murmured the chief rabbi.
The president of the community asked, “And the list? Are you going to hand him his list?”
The elder’s answer was yes. Barely masking his anguish, the president of the community asked, “Which names will you give him?” The elder replied, “Not yours.”
That night he handed the officer a sheet of paper folded in half. The officer opened it and saw the elder’s name written down ten times. He froze for a moment, deliberating. Then he slammed the elder against the wall and began punching his face, methodically: right cheek, left cheek, right cheek. Without a word, with no sign of anger, he slugged his victim until the old man fell to the floor. “Pig!” the officer shouted, crushing his jaw under the heel of his boot. “Try to trick me, eh? You’ll get the punishment you deserve: you will die ten times.” Ten times the elder passed out under torture, and ten times he was revived. Unrecognizable, he had become a lump of flesh without will, a bloody body without life. When the officer fired a bullet into the elder’s head, he was assassinating a dead man. To terrorize the ghetto, he had the body delivered to them. They buried him that evening. Later the Jews of Feherfalu nodded as they said, “Yes, yes, he was lucky; he is lying in his own grave.
A crazy idea flashed through Malkiel’s mind: if he were to die now, he would like to be buried here.
“You again?” It was Hershel the gravedigger, with his monstrous dark head. “Well, then,” he brayed, “you finally going to buy me that drink?”
The afternoon was drawing to an end. A gentle breeze murmured secrets from one gravestone to another. A branch creaked. The tree bowed, as if to show respect for this ground, where so many of the dead had found eternal rest.
“Didn’t I promise to tell you about the Great Reunion? Buy me a jug and you’ll see. I know what a promise is. What do you say? Hershel relaxed on the dewy grass. Sitting, he seemed even more misshapen. He crossed and recrossed his legs; his herculean torso stayed motionless. “You’re rich, and I’m only a poor bastard,” he said. “Pity a poor bastard who’s also the last remaining Jewish gravedigger in this town! Can you imagine what it’s like living here? My only friends are dead people. But dead people are stingy; they never buy me a drink. But you, Mr. Stranger, you are alive and well; and you offer me nothing?”
Malkiel inspected him more closely. He had never in his life seen a more grotesque creature. Everything about the man was wrong. His ears were too big, his eyelids too heavy, his mouth was gaping and half toothless; and his hair was all dark, dark as jet, and shockingly thick, as if covered with bark. “Your promises don’t interest me,” Malkiel said.
“Listen, you trying to insult me, or what? You too good to drink with me?”
“Forgive me. But I prefer stories, certain stories.”
“You do?” Hershel beamed. “I know stories. I know as many stories as God Himself. And mine are cheaper.”
“All right, here’s a deal: for each glass, you tell me a story.”
“Ah no, what do you take me for? A street peddler? I’m a wholesaler! I deal in bottles, not glasses!”
“All right.”
“You want me to tell you the story of the Great Reunion?”
“No.”
“Hey, it’s a fantastic story, believe me! You’re not interested?”
“Yes, but some other time.”
“Too bad. That’s your loss. What story do you want me to tell you now?”
“The story of Malkiel Rosenbaum.” Pronouncing his own name, Malkiel felt, irrationally, that he was lying to the gravedigger. He felt guilty. And if he were to confess that it was his own name too?
Hershel said, “Malkiel Rosenbaum? The last dead man from the ghetto?”
“Did you know him?”
“Did I know him? You’re asking me did I know Malkiel Rosenbaum? I knew him better than his own son, better than his own wife. After all, my poor sir, I was the last one to see him. Come with me now, my boy, and you’ll hear stories, real horror stories that will make you tremble; I swear it to you.…”
They left the cemetery. The customary basin of water was ready: Malkiel washed his hands, and the gravedigger wet his own. Near the park, at the corner of an alleyway occupied by a grocer and two butchers, the tavern was open but half empty. Malkiel knew the place, thanks to Lidia;
sullen husbands dropped in to cheer up, and hard-featured widows, and empty-eyed old men.
“Shall we take a seat in the corner?”
Hershel asked, seething with thirst and impatience.
Behind the bar a waiter was reading the newspaper. He was obviously bored. Malkiel called to him, with no luck. He called louder, and did no better. “What’s his problem? Is he on strike?”
“That’s my fault,” the gravedigger said. “He can’t stand me. He’s a dummy; he claims I drive his customers away. Why? Because they think I’m ugly and stink of death. I scare them, he says. That’s not true, believe me. I don’t scare anybody. They scare themselves.”
But the waiter was probably right. Suddenly the few customers still in the tavern were on their feet, paying their bills.
“One of these days,” Hershel said, “I’m going to grab my cane, the one I used the night of the Great Reunion, and I’m going to come show that son of a bitch what I really think of him.”
“Forget it,” Malkiel said. “Tell me instead—”
“Malkiel.” The gravedigger grimaced. “Malkiel Rosenbaum. I remember him as if he were here, right in front of me, as if he’d asked me to have a drink, like you did.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Hey, you’re in a hurry! Something to drink first!”
Malkiel rose and went over to the waiter, who ignored him. “Hershel, tell him in Romanian or Hungarian that if he’s friendly he may land himself a nice tip.”
The gravedigger called out from his corner. The waiter answered.
“He says he wants his tip in advance!”
Disgusted, Malkiel pulled out a sheaf of Romanian bank
notes and set it on the bar, right under the waiter’s nose. It was not enough. “The son of a bitch says you have to pay him back for all the customers I drove away just now,” said the gravedigger.
A second sheaf brought a smile to the waiter’s face. He was suddenly efficient. Three large glasses and a bottle of
tzuika
appeared on the table. They all three hoisted a glass.
“I’m listening,” Malkiel said.
“When he goes away. He annoys me.”
“He doesn’t speak Yiddish.”
“I don’t like his face! If he doesn’t leave, I leave! With the bottle!”
All right, all right; the waiter went back to his newspaper.
“Malkiel Rosenbaum,” the gravedigger said, and wiped his mouth with a corner of his jacket. “I knew him, you bet I knew him! But when I took him in that Saturday night, in the funeral parlor, his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him. His head was a bloody bundle of rags. His body was a housepainter’s body—blue and red and green and black, a real rainbow, you know? I dug his grave, and it’s crazy but I was laughing—and no, you may not ask me why—I was laughing with rage and pride all at once, because Reb Malkiel was stronger than his murderers. I was laughing, but the whole world was crying. His funeral was something to see. By candlelight the chief rabbi, the widow and about twenty leaders came for the burial service. The chief rabbi recited the special Kaddish that you only recite then. ‘He was a great Jew,’ said the head of the community. A saint, the vice president corrected him. One of the Just. He sacrificed himself for the honor of the Jewish people; may his soul rest in peace in heaven among the shepherds and sages of Israel.… It was almost dawn when they went
back to the ghetto. Nobody was asleep. They were all preparing for the deportation. The leaders told them what Reb Malkiel had done and how he had done it, and Jews blessed him as they said their good-byes. He was somebody, Malkiel Rosenbaum.”
Hershel emptied his glass, filled it and emptied it again. I must tell all that to my father, Malkiel was thinking. He deserves to know everything. But—will he still be able to understand?
“And I didn’t go back to the ghetto,” the gravedigger went on. “You want to know where I went?”
“Where?”
“Nowhere, at first. I stayed at the cemetery. Then I went to join the partisans. Surprised?”
“Nothing about you surprises me.”
“You must be wondering how I stayed alive, isn’t that what you were wondering? If I guessed right, you order another bottle.”
Malkiel ordered another bottle.
“The dead protected me,” said the gravedigger, rubbing his left knee with his right hand. “The cattle cars carried off all the Jews, but they left me behind. The Germans forgot about me. Maybe they thought I was dead; I thought I was a dead man myself. It’s no fun to be the only living man among all the dead.”