There had been three places everyone hoped to
go—America, England, or Palestine. Hardly anyone had any hope of
going anywhere, but the general consensus, unless you were a
Zionist, was that America was best.
And now, it seemed, she had an aunt in
America.
Every year at Passover dinner. Her father
would make the same toast:
“Next year, in Jerusalem.”
Had he
meant it? Perhaps, toward the end, when “next year” had begun to
seem as unreachable as the fulfillment of prophecy. It was a
tradition and, after a while, something of a dare.
“Next year,
in Jerusalem.”
“
The secret government of Israel reaches
out its hand to you,”
the woman had said.
“You are a Jew. We
are Jews, working for a Jewish state. There is nothing
else.”
And she had meant it, standing there beside
her in the recreation yard, her burning eyes looking past Esther
toward some distant prospect only she could see. She had been a
Zionist, this one—Esther had known a few others like her. They all
believed in a future.
Lately, because the weather had turned
slightly warmer, everyone who was regarded as medically fit spent
the hour between noon and one in the tiny exercise yard that was
enclosed by the prison building on all four sides. The prisoners
tramped around in circles for twenty minutes, one line inside
another, moving in opposite directions, and then, for the remainder
of the time, they stood together in little groups, talking quietly
and trying to keep warm. The guards watched nervously from the
doorways, but they did not interfere. Even Russians knew that there
was nothing to fear from the conspiracies of a crowd of underfed
women convicts.
People tended to cluster according to
barracks assignments, the prison was wormy with informers and
everyone was frightened except among familiar faces. As a Jew, an
enemy of the state that had vanished, Esther had few friends—the
Viennese ladies, residents of Mühlfeld, had little enough reason to
regret the good old days of Nazi rule—and the constant attentions
of Filatov hadn’t made her any more popular. Almost everyone,
probably, assumed she was a spy for the guards. So it was something
of a surprise, almost a pleasure, when the tall woman with the
heavy, muscular arms and the zealot’s eyes—a new prisoner, since
her fingernails still looked freshly cut and filed—came to stand
beside her, asked her when they were likely to be let back indoors,
and glared up into the pale winter sun as if it were her mortal
enemy. For perhaps a minute they stood together like that, sharing
the square meter or so of cobblestone between them just like people
who did not have to answer roll calls six or seven times a day.
“I don’t think there will be another
opportunity,” she said suddenly, turning her shoulder toward
Esther, throwing her into shadow. She was close enough that Esther
could smell the carbolic soap in her newly issued prison dress. “I
think there is something you ought to know.”
She turned her left hand so that the little
finger was pressed against her thigh, exposing the inside of her
forearm. There, just under the elbow, in blue ink, was tattooed a
worn-looking five-digit number: 39789. The hand closed into a
fist.
“Auschwitz, class of 1943. Perhaps I look a
little strange to you? A little unfeminine? I have Doctor Mengele
to thank for that. He was experimenting with hormones for his race
of supermen. I haven’t had a period since my twenty-first
birthday.”
“I’m sorry,” Esther said, the tears
glistening in her eyes. It all came back in that moment—Chelmno,
the deaths of her parents, Hagemann, everything. She couldn’t tell
what she felt, whether pity or shame. She didn’t know what to say,
except to repeat, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry about me, Esther Rosensaft—my
business here isn’t about me. And don’t look so startled either.
You can’t tell if the guards might not be watching.”
It took no more than a few seconds. Two or
three slow, deep breaths and she was all right again. She glanced
around, looking for Filatov, but he wasn’t there. It was all
right.
“What do you want with me?” she asked,
surprised at the sound of her own voice. “Leave me alone. There’s
nothing I can do for you here.”
“Which is why we are getting you out. This is
no health spa—you think I checked in here just because I like
prisons? You’re leaving. Tonight”
“You’re insane!” Esther began to edge away
from the other woman, who took her arm, just above the wrist, in a
grip that felt as if it might crash the bones. “Let go of me. You
talk like that and you’ll have both of us in trouble. What do you
think, that people can just walk out of here?”
“Listen, you little guttersnipe. Haven’t you
heard of the Mossad? Yes. I rather thought so. Then pay attention.
The day before yesterday I was in Istanbul. They flew me here so
that yesterday morning I could buy a bowl of onion soup at the
Kaffeehaus Franz Josef and spill it all over a Russian sergeant,
telling him in the ensuing argument that, since all Russians were
pigs anyway, he shouldn’t even notice the difference. I’ll probably
get eighteen months for it, but who cares? When I come out, if
everyone does their part, I’ll have a country to come home to.
Israel. You’ve heard of it. I may hardly be a woman anymore, but
I’m still a Jew. They can’t rob me of that. And so are you, whether
you like it or not.”
She had never let go of Esther’s arm, and the
passionate murmur of her voice was almost hypnotic. She made it
sound—yes, almost believable.
“Why me?” she asked finally, shaking her
head. “It’s not. . .”
“Why not you? I don’t know the reasons. I was
told, ‘Do this.’ I do it—I don’t ask questions. I don’t know why
they want you, but they do. So here I am, and tonight you will be
going out.”
“You came here? You consented to it?
Here?”
“Yes, why not?” The woman actually smiled,
but even that seemed a kind of defiance. “After what you and I have
been through, what difference can it make? If I can’t be in Israel,
why should I care where I am? And I can’t be in Israel, at least
not until after we’ve gained our independence. Two weeks ago some
of us blew up a police station, and I was recognized. This, I
expect, will be almost restful.”
A guard standing at the entrance to the
western cell blocks glanced at his watch. There probably weren’t
more than two or three minutes left before they would all be herded
inside and this opportunity would be lost forever. Esther could
feel the blood throbbing in her neck. It was as if a hand were
trying to squeeze the windpipe shut.
“How will you get me out?”
“There is a capsule.” the woman said calmly.
She seemed almost bored. “Dinner last night was at six o’clock—take
it with dinner tonight. The timing is important. Shortly after
midnight you will become very sick, so sick you and everyone else
will think you must be dying, but don’t worry. Just let things take
their natural course. By tomorrow morning you’ll be out of this
place. You’ll probably be having buttered toast and coffee in the
American Zone.”
“A capsule? How did you get it inside? They
strip-search all the new prisoners.”
“You are young, aren’t you. Tell me, when you
were brought in did they bother to check the inside of your mouth?
I didn’t think so. It was fastened to the gums behind my lower set
of front teeth with a dab of flesh-colored putty. Nothing could
have been easier.
The guard carried a whistle to his mouth and
blew it. The hour was over. Everyone began shuffling toward the
doors, to get inside where it would be warm. In this cold, if they
lingered even a few more seconds she would attract attention.
“Where is it? Give it to me, quick!” Esther
whispered fiercely
The woman was already turning away. And then,
for just an instant, she looked back, smiling contemptuously.
“When you have a few seconds alone.” she
said, “you might look in your dress pocket.”
Lying on her plank bed in the flickering
light, she reached into her pocket for perhaps the tenth time to
make certain it was still there. It was a flat little pill about
the size of a drop of water.
“
You will become very sick, so sick you
will think you must he dying.”
It had, of course, occurred to
her that should she take it she might really die. Perhaps someone
was trying to poison her—how could she possibly know? Of course,
there was no reason why anyone should wish her dead, but there was
also no reason why anyone should go to so much trouble to help her
escape from Mühlfeld. It was necessary, for the moment, to leave
the whole question of motives aside.
Of course, her aunt in America. . .
The lawyer had said all she needed to do was
to remain patient. He was petitioning the military governor and, as
everyone knew, Russian clemency was as much a commodity to be
bought and sold as cheese. If her aunt was rich enough. . . And the
Americans were all supposed to be fabulously rich.
It was almost too good to believe. In
Trenton. New Jersey, she could begin life all over again. Perhaps
her aunt would pay for a surgeon to remove the number from her
arm—no one would ever have to know that she had been in the camps.
She would take the past, everything that had been done to her and
everything she had done, and bury it all somewhere deep inside her,
where it would never find its way out again. Perhaps she could even
get married someday. Why not? If she herself could start believing
she was once again a nice girl—not the sort of girl who lets
herself be used by soldiers because she wants to be sure she will
be alive and have something to eat when it’s over—then perhaps some
man might. She could. . .
“
Is my aunt here?’
“
No. Your aunt has young
children.”
It really was too good to believe.
Julius Rosensaft had been the only child born
to Immanuel Rosensaft and his second wife, Sophie, née Charmi.
There had been an earlier marriage, producing two daughters.
Anything could have happened to them, one of them might even have
survived to have a husband in Trenton, New Jersey.
But Esther’s father, had he lived, would have
been forty-seven years old, and the younger of his half-sisters
would still have been ten years older. Even in Trenton, New Jersey,
it was a rare woman who, leaning hard on sixty, had children young
enough to keep her at home. The attorney Piessen had made an error.
There was no aunt in America, no infant cousins. He had made the
lie just a shade too elaborate.
And this man had been no Zionist missionary,
trying to save her from going mad in a prison cell. If she left
Mühlfeld in his custody, she realized at once, with a clarity that
astonished her, no one would ever hear from her again.
As she lay there, listening to the light bulb
click, her eyes misted over and she felt curiously lethargic. She
wanted to stay where she was, forever and ever. At least here, at
Mühlfeld, no one was trying to kill her. She was safe, if for no
other reason than because to be here was to be dead already.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, hardly even forming
the words with her lips. “Oh, God, will I really have to stay here
forever?”
And then a voice inside her answered,
No.
Take the capsule.
Why not? It was a chance—she had no right to
ask for more than that. By morning she would be either free or
dead. At that moment it hardly seemed to make any difference which.
She would take the risk that strange, distorted woman had been
telling her the truth.
By the time the guard unlocked the door and
brought in her tiny tin tray with a piece of gray bread and a bowl
of thin, dust-colored soup, she had regained her composure and was
sitting up. It was all very simple once one had made up one’s mind.
After that, everything was easy.
“Comrade guard,” she asked, making her voice
softly timorous—she was begging a great favor and wanted him to
know it. “Comrade guard, could you please tell me the time?”
“Why? You afraid you might be late for an
important appointment? Hah, hah, hah!” He was a big man, in his
middle forties, his crinkly hair turning white at the edges, and
his laughter made the cell vibrate like the inside of a drum.
“Please, citizen guard, I only want to know
because—”
“Be quiet, girl,” he answered, with a casual
wave of his enormous hand. “I don’t care why you want to know. The
time isn’t a state secret. It’s five minutes after six.”
“Thank you, comrade guard.”
After the door slammed shut behind him, she
waited another minute, counting off the seconds to herself—it was
perhaps the longest minute of her life. And then, with a deft
movement, she tore the soft center out of her piece of bread,
wrapped it around the capsule, and swallowed it. She drank off the
soup as fast as she could, before she lost her nerve. It tasted
faintly of iodine.
In six hours it would begin to work. In
seven, or perhaps eight, she would know the worst. She lay down
again on the plank bed to await her deliverance.
9
It was dark, everywhere dark. No sound except
the guns, miles away, murmuring like sullen old women. But they
would come closer. By first light, certainly by seven or eight
tomorrow morning, the Russians would come—that was what Hagemann
had said. All the morning she had crouched in her room, behind the
locked door, listening to the crackle of machine guns. They were
liquidating the prisoners in the other camp, in batches from the
sound of it. It seemed to take forever. And then, of course,
Hagemann would come back, unlock the door, and shoot her too. The
Germans were making preparations for their retreat, and they
intended to leave no witnesses.
But Hagemann had never come back. Trucks had
driven up and down along the gravel roads, and now and then there
had been another short burst of rifle fire, and then silence.
Esther waited a long time—hours, it seemed—and then tried to break
open the door. There was no window, only the door, and she
couldn’t. . .