Upon the Head of the Goat (24 page)

Iboya appeared, running. She was trembling as she came up to us where we stood near the entrance to the shed beside Mr. Shuster, who was nailing up the instructions.

“They have dismissed me,” she cried and flung herself into Mother's arms. “We are in the first transport. They are loading us alphabetically.”

“Are they dividing us up?” Mrs. Gerber asked with alarm.

“There will be about three or four transports. The youth police and the infirmary will be the last to go.”

“I don't want to go without you,” Mrs. Gerber said to Mother and started to cry.

Judi and I looked at each other and our eyes welled with tears. “Come on,” said Judi to me, “let's look for them,” and we walked to the back of the shed.

Iboya ran after us. “Don't go looking for them,” she said as she caught up with us. “They are in a meeting. If they have a chance, they will come here. Otherwise, last night was a farewell. We have to help these women get themselves together.”

I looked around the shed and saw some women starting to gather their children, others poking aimlessly among their bundles. Mr. Shuster had walked down to the back of the shed, and Mrs. Gerber followed him.

“Don't let them separate us,” she appealed to him. “Our two families must stay together.”

“If it's up to me, I'll keep you together. But I can't promise,” he whispered back. She walked over to her space and began to fold up her blankets.

Iboya began to tear down our sheet wall and cut it into small squares.

“Here,” she said to Judi and me as we stood there watching her, “pass these squares out among the women and tell them to print their names and ‘Work Camp 500' on them and to sew them onto their bundles. We have a few extra needles and some thread for those who need it.”

At last we had our chance to be helpful. Not only did we distribute the white squares of sheeting, but we also helped the women print their names and the address on the squares before they sewed them onto their bundles. We worked with our ears straining to register any distant sound. After we had finished, Judi and I walked up to the front of the barracks and looked across the fields to the empty tracks. But they were no longer empty; trainmen were working on them.

“It's being readied,” Judi commented.

Returning to the barracks, we found people sitting on their bundles, almost as if they expected the train to come right into the shed. Mr. Shuster paced up and down, chewing on his pipe, obviously disturbed by the unnatural quiet in shed number 6. Finally he walked outside.

Judi and I followed Mr. Shuster and saw him look across the fields at the workmen on the tracks. We turned our gaze to the infirmary, hoping to see Gari and Henri coming toward us. But the road was empty. Judi noticed Mr. Shuster looking at his watch. “It appears as if you can't wait for the trains to come,” she snapped at him.

“If we are going, it might as well be soon,” he answered. “What good is this waiting to any of us?”

“I'm in no particular hurry,” said Judi with sarcasm.

I decided then to ask Mr. Shuster the question gnawing at me ever since the coming of the trains was announced. Watching all those people following so readily the German orders to leave their lives behind, I couldn't help wondering what would happen if we were not so obedient.

“Mr. Shuster,” I asked hesitantly, “what would happen if we refuse to leave when the trains come?”

Mr. Shuster turned toward me, still chewing on his pipe as he weighed my question. Judi spoke up. “She means if we put up a resistance.”

He removed the pipe from his mouth and held it, the bowl cupped in his hand, as he spoke. “Girls, the answer is self-evident, but I'll answer it by asking you a question. Why do you think the Hungarian police and the German guards carry rifles with bayonets? I understand how you feel, but I'm afraid we have no choice.”

“Man always has an alternative, and a choice,” Judi retorted. “It has been demonstrated throughout history in every war.”

“Demonstrated, yes, but rarely accomplished. In order to resist, your position has to be comparable to your enemy's. They have an iron army, and we—we don't even have men.”

“Many well-known resistance groups were made up of small numbers of people,” Judi persisted.

“Look around you, Judi. What do you see?” Mr. Shuster waved his arm about. “A pack of frightened women and children with a few old men scattered among them. Some resistance group we would make.”

“We have some young men and also some women who are not afraid,” Judi continued to argue.

“To be brave is very honorable. To be foolhardy is very wasteful. I thought I was being brave when I deserted my work group and went to look for my family. But I was picked up before I could find them. Now I am without my comrades as well as without my family.”

To my astonishment, Judi became sympathetic. “I'm really sorry about your bad luck, Mr. Shuster,” I heard her say in a deflated voice.

“It is the times. Very bad to be a Jew during depressions. We make such perfect scapegoats.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we are a minority, well conditioned to persecution. Sometimes I think that this is our purpose.”

“To be scapegoats? That sounds very unfair,” Judi commented. “Especially since we are supposed to be the chosen people.”

“To be chosen is a big responsibility,” said Mr. Shuster. “Sometimes God uses us in very strange ways.”

I was confused. It all sounded too complicated to me. “Mr. Shuster,” I asked, “what exactly is a scapegoat?”

He stopped poking his thumb into the bowl of his pipe and answered slowly, “In the Bible, when Aaron's sons died, God told Moses to go to Aaron and tell him to lay the sins of the Jews on the head of a sacrificial goat and to send the goat out into the wilderness to carry off all the sins of Israel.”

So that's what Mother meant when they took away Ladybeard, I reflected.

“But these are not our sins,” I said, “they are the Germans'. Why should we have to carry them?”

“The Germans are twisting God's words and sending us to carry their sins into the wilderness.”

“If this is the way God chooses to use His people, I'd rather not be chosen,” said Judi defiantly. “We are what we allow ourselves to be. The whole concept of Judaism is archaic. Both our culture and tradition are cowardly. We obey out of fear, not devotion, and forfeit our freedom. As a consolation we have accepted or invented the belief that we are the chosen people. What an outrageous excuse! I, for one, am not going to be used for such a purpose. I don't even consider myself Jewish.”

Mr. Shuster shrugged his shoulders. “If you come up with a good solution, I would like to hear about it.”

“We just might,” said Judi, taking my hand and leading me away. She seemed more troubled than angered. “Mr. Shuster is not as simple as I imagined he was. He lets the Germans use him as an errand boy not out of stupidity but because he's given up fighting them. All his fighting energy went into trying to trace his family. And now that he's failed, he has no fighting left in him. So he accepts what has happened as the will of God. Well, that may be his answer, but it isn't mine.”

“So what will you do?” I asked, hoping that she wouldn't give in, the way Mr. Shuster already had and the way that my mother was starting to.

I felt sorry for Judi. She had been misled by her liberal upbringing to believe that she did not have to live by restricting rules. She had been taught she was a Hungarian, but now found out she was a Jew. Her false security was crumbling and she had no identity to hold on to.

Her shoulders sagged as her expression grew more concentrated. “I wish I were a man! I wish I were older! I hate to be left out of things!” She spoke harshly and kicked at some pebbles as we walked back to our mothers and the children.

The shed was filled with silent people, sitting on their bundles. Once we were in our space, Mother quickly handed us each a last piece of toast. We chewed on the morsels until they were moist and then swallowed them down through tight throats. Sandor and Joli gathered up their toys, and Mother packed the pails, shovels, and the old spoons, cleaned of their ghetto clay, into a bundle. Iboya took her notebook from her duffel bag and began to draw pictures of animals to amuse the children.

Henri came by before supper. “No sign yet of the trains,” he told us. “We doubt that they will come today.”

“Would they board us after dark?” Mother asked anxiously.

“No,” Henri said, “they wouldn't take the risk of letting some people slip away. If the trains don't come within the next hour, chances are that you won't leave until tomorrow.”

“It will be some night, then,” Judi said bitterly. “We are all packed. We will have to sleep sitting up; the earth is too cold to lie on. Where is Gari?” she added, changing the subject.

Iboya put down her notebook and joined us. “Have you seen Shafar?”

“They are both listening for the train. They will be able to hear it two kilometers away.”

“How?” Mother asked.

Without the hanging sheet walls of our tent around us, I felt exposed, and all eyes and ears seemed to be directed toward us as we crowded around Henri. He answered Mother's question, speaking very softly, “They just have a way of listening.” Looking at his watch, he then spoke in a normal tone of voice, “No, I don't think the trains will come today. Most likely it will be tomorrow.”

I looked at the people sitting all around us. Their bodies seemed to sag in disappointment, and I could hear fragments of comments: “How shall we sleep?” “They told us to pack.” “What about supper?”

Judi and I followed Henri outside, and as soon as there were no people around us, we both asked simultaneously, “What has been decided?”

“We have not reached a decision.”

“Then why are they listening for the trains?” Judi snapped.

“So that we can have some advance notice,” Henri answered her in an even voice.

“Could you tell Gari that I would like to see him before curfew?” Judi asked in a gentler tone.

“I'll tell him,” said Henri, “but I can't promise you anything.”

Judi took a letter from her pocket and handed it to Henri. “Please take this to him, but tell him not to open it until after we're gone.”

Henri put the letter in his pocket and walked away. We went back to our families in the shed. Mother and Mrs. Gerber were quietly talking; Iboya was again drawing pictures and writing words for the children. Judi and I sat down on our bundles and both of us were suddenly without energy, even to talk to each other.

Shafar and Gari came into the shed shortly after supper and told us that a large reinforcement of German guards had arrived from the city. The night watch force of the ghetto was also being doubled. Gari and Henri were to be stationed at assigned posts alongside the Hungarian police. Judi asked Gari if he could get himself assigned to our barracks.

“I have no influence with the Germans.”

“You speak their language and your name still is Weiss,” Judi retorted.

“I have some packs of cigarettes left if you think that would help,” Shafar offered. Gari took the two packages of cigarettes that Shafar held out and put them in the breast pocket of his shirt. Shafar told Iboya he would try to get back to us, but they now had to go. We watched them until they disappeared from view beyond the back exit of the shed.

The atmosphere in the shed was more depressed than ever. Children, overtired and confused, began to cry. Mother and Mrs. Gerber started to unpack blankets and stopped when they realized that they might not have time to repack them. Mother flattened down a few of the bundles and put Sandor and Joli on top of them.

As the children slept, we all sat up, dozing from time to time, whispering to each other, and above all listening for the train. Mother and Mrs. Gerber began, once again, to reminisce about their lives. We sat listening to them, amazed to discover how little we knew about the girlhoods of our mothers. How surprised we were to hear that their feelings when they were girls had been very much like ours. Mother spoke about our father, the first man she had ever loved. Mrs. Gerber talked about how much she had wanted to be a writer and how she had kept a diary hidden in her drawer. All their secrets and hopes were discussed in the darkness of that night.

For the first time, Iboya even talked to Judi and me about Shafar. She did not think that she would see him again, at least not until the war was over. “We said our real goodbyes last night and promised to wait for each other.”

Judi told us what she had written in her letter to Gari. “I asked him not to take chances with his life because I want to meet him again when the war is over and to continue our courtship on an adult level. I want to experience with him all the sensations of a mature romance—all the things I have read about in books. I don't want to be cheated of any of life's promises.”

Once again I envied Judi's sophisticated attitude toward romance. Henri and I had simply promised to try to stay in contact with each other from wherever we were sent.

By listening to us and sharing her feelings with us, Iboya had treated us as her equals. But she was two years older than we and restrained in temperament. She did not easily discuss her feelings with anyone. When Judi asked her what it was like to be with a grown-up man, Iboya answered simply, “I don't think age alone decides; individuals and circumstances make the difference.”

“But you and Shafar are old enough to get married,” Judi persisted. “You can do anything. You don't have to stifle your desires.”

I could see that Iboya was slightly annoyed at Judi's persistence, but she answered her patiently. “Shafar is a sensible and reserved man.”

“Sensible,” Judi hissed in a loud whisper. “Why should we be sensible when nothing around us makes any sense? What if we never see them again? Think of what we'll miss. Won't you be sorry then?”