my turn to go on strike.
Turning on my side, I stared at the window through which Stefa had left our world. To die seeing the sky – even if it was heavy with coming rain – would be comforting. Would it be too much to hope for that my niece had looked up instead of down as she fell?
I slept a drugged sleep and awoke unsure of where I was. Sitting over the side of the bed, I let my pee slide down my legs on to the floor. I suppose I needed to feel I still had a working body.
Maybe that’s why the inmates of sanatoriums sometimes soil themselves – to remind themselves they are alive. Pee and shit as the only mirror they have left.
While gazing at myself in the real mirror in the bathroom, I repeated that small incitement to life over and over, but in truth I seemed to be just a vessel for one more breath and then another, an instant in time receding towards a quiet so deep it would never end.
Our thoughts don’t make us alive. Something else does. But what?
The ghetto taught me to ask that question but never gave me the answer.
If you want certainties then I’m afraid you’ll have to read about a different time and place. And different men and women. In Warsaw in 1941, we had none to give you.
A knock at the door woke me to myself. I found Izzy standing on the landing.
‘I just heard about Stefa,’ he told me.
He embraced me so hard he nearly knocked me over. Afterwards, we sat together on my bed. I couldn’t speak. But there was nothing to say.
We were old men exiled from the lives we’d expected to have.
When I could talk, I told him where to find money for Stefa’s funeral. He promised he’d organize the ceremony. He put me back to bed.
I awoke on and off all day. He was there watching over me the whole time. Then night fell. I awoke once just after midnight. Fearful, I shouted for Izzy, but he’d gone home. I went to the window. Standing in the darkness, I imagined that if I offered up my life to God, he might spare someone who wanted to live – a child with decades of life left in him. But even if I could convince the Lord to make that bargain with me, how could I decide who was most worthy?
I awoke the next morning to a young woman in bare feet bringing me breakfast in bed. A fried egg looked up at me sceptically from the centre of one of Hannah’s Chinese dessert plates.
‘Time to eat!’ the girl said cheerfully, throwing open the curtains. The light caught the floor and travelled up the blankets to my eyes, making them tear.
The girl had dark hair cut in a pageboy, and an olive skin tone. She wore a man’s coat that fell to her knees. She walked with an upright posture, and gracefully, like a ballerina.
‘Bina – is that you?’ I questioned.
‘That’s right,’ she replied, beaming at me as though I were her prize patient.
‘You can’t be here,’ I told her in a tone of warning.
‘Why not?’ she asked, her eyebrows knitting together theatrically.
‘For one thing, you’ve let in too much light,’ I said, shading my eyes.
She tugged the curtains together but left them open a crack. ‘A little light will make you feel better,’ she suggested.
‘You can’t really think the sun can bring back the dead.’
‘No,’ she agreed, gazing down, adding timidly, ‘not even our prayers can do that.’
‘Just leave,’ I pleaded, but she stood her ground.
‘Will you at least drink some tea?’ she asked in a small voice.
I changed tactics. ‘How on earth did you get in here?’
‘Izzy gave me the key.’
‘You know Izzy?’
After stooping to pick up one of my socks, she replied, ‘I met him yesterday evening when he left your building. And this morning, when he came back, I asked him what was the matter with you. We talked. He’s a nice man. He bought some gherkins from me and my mother.’
She picked up another sock and an undershirt. Without looking at me, she said, ‘I wanted to tell you I’m very sorry about your niece.’
‘Did Izzy come by this morning?’ I asked, passing over her sympathy, since the last thing I wanted was to discuss what had happened.
‘Yes, he brought coal for you. When he came out to the street, he told my mother and me that you slept through his visit.’
It was only then that I noticed that the room was warm for the first time in months.
‘Where the hell did he get coal?’ I questioned.
‘He didn’t tell me.’ She folded my trousers neatly and draped them over the back of the armchair. ‘You need nourishment,’ she observed.
‘My God, girl!’ I snapped. ‘How could you think hunger is my problem?’
She ran into the kitchen. I was sure I’d achieved my goal of making her burst into tears, but I didn’t hear any sobs. When she returned, she sat down in the armchair, on the front edge of the cushion, and looked at me as if ready to wait for me to tell her what to do. Her eyes were so needful that I turned away. After a while, I noticed her staring at my breakfast plate. I didn’t want to be kind to a girl who didn’t have the courage to ask for food when she was famished, so I said nothing.
‘Do you mind if I eat your egg?’ she finally asked in a fearful voice.
‘Be my guest.’
After she’d gobbled it down, she licked the plate. Then she realized how she must have looked and blushed.
Imagine living like an insect for the last six months and worrying about etiquette. Only Jews could raise such absurd children.
I threw off my blanket and kicked my legs over the side of the bed. My feet found the puddle of urine I’d made. Good for me.
I asked her to turn away from me while I dressed. While I was buckling my belt, I said, ‘Bina, for the love of God, find someone else.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, looking at me with a puzzled face.
‘Go earn some points with God where you’re wanted!’ I told her.
But even my bullying didn’t make her cry. Tightening her lips, she did her ballerina walk to the front door and left. She never looked back, thank God.
Leaning back against the wall for support, I told myself I had saved her from wasting her time on me, but in truth I’d wanted to slice one more wound into the only enemy I could reach.
Izzy came over again late that afternoon. I was sitting in bed with my dream diary, scribbling a list of all the cities I would have wanted to visit if I weren’t where I was.
‘You’re up!’ he exclaimed, astonished. ‘What are you writing?’
‘I’m deciding where I’ll go when I get out of here.’
Only after that reply popped out of my mouth did I realize it was true. I went over what I’d written. Genoa seemed my best option – a former colleague of mine from Vienna was living there, and I could probably catch a steamer to Izmir. Or England. Hannah and I had spent our honeymoon in London – and two other vacations there – and we’d always loved it.
‘A man from the Jewish Council came over last night,’ Izzy told me, sitting down at the foot of my bed. ‘He said his name was Benjamin Schrei.’
The mattress sagged towards Izzy. I felt I was made of broken and rusted metal, and all those useless pieces inside me were sliding in his direction.
