“I just sewed the buttons on, that’s all. A hundred and fifty coats a day, on went the buttons, that’s all. Any fool could have sewn on buttons.”
“But no special demands?”
“No. Only — No, nothing.”
“Only what?” He paused. “Please. Who knows?”
“Kohl in early April I remember complaining about big shots and their special privileges. A German hero had his men here for special antitank training and demanded they be refitted with the coats as theirs had worn thin.”
“Hero. His name?”
“If I had it then, it’s gone now. So many things I forget. My boy was named David, my two girls Shuli and Rebecca. Them I remember. David had blond hair, can you believe it? I know the girls and their mother are gone. Everybody who went East is gone. But maybe the Germans spared him because his hair was their color. We thought it was a curse, his blondness, that they would take him from us. But maybe a blessing, no? Who could tell such things? A learned rabbi could maybe expl—”
“Mr. Eisner. The coats. The hero.”
“Yes, yes, forgive me. Thinking, all the time thinking. Hard to remember details.”
“Kohl. Mr. Kohl. He didn’t want to give up the coats.”
“Kohl. Yes, old Kohl. Not a bad sort, notions of fairness. He tried to say No. The boys at the front need the jackets. Not rear-echelon bastards. But the hero got his way. He had papers from the highest authority. Herr Kohl thought this ridiculous. From an opera. I heard him tell Sergeant Luntz that. Heroes from an opera a monkey wrench throwing into his shop. It was no good. My David, he’ll grow up to be strong. On a farm somewhere, in the country. He was only three. He hadn’t had any instruction. He won’t know he was a Jew. Maybe it’s better. Maybe that’s the best way to be a Jew in this world, not to know. He’s six now, David, a fine healthy boy on a farm somewhere in the country.”
Shmuel patiently let him lapse into silence. When he was done, Shmuel saw tears star the old man’s eyes and at the same time noticed that the old man wasn’t so old: he was just a man, a father, who hadn’t been able to do anything for his children. Better maybe that he’d died so he wouldn’t have to live with their accusing ghosts in his head. The Germans: they made you hate yourself for being too weak to fight them, too civilized to demand revenge.
“Opera?” Shmuel finally said. “I missed that.”
“What the fellow called it, the hero fellow. His plan. They name everything, the Gentiles. They have to name things. This from an opera, by Wagner. Herr Kohl hated Wagner. It made his behind doze, I heard him tell Luntz.”
“What was the name?” Shmuel asked, very carefully.
“Operation Nibelungen,” the old man who was not so old replied.
Shmuel wrote it down.
“It’s funny. Us. In this place,” he said.
She’d lit a cigarette. It had gotten dark now, and in the long still room with the mirrors and the hanging uniforms, he could see the orange glow.
“Why?” he asked. “Why did you come looking for me? You didn’t come for my theories on German evil surely.”
“No. I just wanted to tell you something.”
“Okay. So shoot. Tell me anything.”
“I’m divorcing Phil.”
“No kidding?”
“I wrote him. I said I wanted to go to the Middle East. He wrote back. ‘What, are you crazy, you think I spent all this time on a goddamned tin can to go live in some desert?’ So, that was it. I won’t see him again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Fischelson’s dead, I told you?”
“Yes?”
“And the money’s gone. It was all set up by this guy, this Hirsczowicz. A millionaire. But the money ran out. What little there was, most of it was lost somehow, in the early days of the war. So there’s nothing in London anymore. And there’s nothing back in the States. Not a goddamned thing but people talking about how they suffered without the meat.”
“I’m sorry you’re so bitter.”
“I’m not bitter at all. I’m going to go to Palestine. Nothing but Jews there, Jim. It’s the only place in the world where the Jews will be welcomed. That’s where I’m going.”
“Susan.”
“That’s where we’ll all have to go,” she said.
Her cigarette had gone out. Now, in the room, total darkness had arrived. He could hear her voice, disembodied.
“I’ll talk to him. To the Jew. Shmuel. Do you know he had quite a reputation as a writer in Warsaw? I’ll talk to him. He’ll go too. He has nowhere else to go.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes. I suppose I wanted to tell you I don’t hate you. I don’t want you to die. I never did. I remove the curse. I hope you get your man. The German.”
“I will,” he said. “Or he’ll get me.”
The old man was tired now. Shmuel wanted him to sleep in the room but he refused.
“A nap, not so bad. But the night? I have nightmares, you see, I wake up. It helps to know where I am. Besides, the barracks aren’t so bad now. They’ve moved the sick ones out. It’s what I know.”
“All right. It’s all right with me. You can walk?”
“Not so fast, but I end up where I’m going.”
He got the man up, and pulled the blanket around his thin shoulders against the cold. They walked in the twilight down the street to the
A Jew, thought Shmuel. A living European Jew: the first he’d spoken to in months. It came as a shock. He’d been so long among the Gentiles. Not Germans, but still Gentiles. They didn’t
When they reached it, a flashlight from an American sentry beamed onto them. It seemed to halt at their prison stripes as if those said enough and then blinked out.
“Go on,” said a voice.
They walked on through the familiar geography, across the roll-call plaza, down the street between the barracks.
“It’s over there,” said the old man, pointing.
“I know,” said Shmuel.
Shmuel helped him to the building.
“You needn’t come inside.”
“No, you helped, now I help you. That’s how it should be.”
“You, a Jew, a yeshiva boy, you are helping them fight the Germans?”
“A little. There’s not much I can do. They’ve got machines and guns. They really don’t need me. But I can do little things.”
“Good. We should have fought. But who knew?”
“Nobody knew. Nobody could have guessed.”
