To the Edge of Sorrow Page 5

  When Danzig goes on a mission, he leaves Milio with Tsila. Hermann Cohen set up a secure cradle for him between two trees, and Tsila doesn’t take her eyes off him. When Danzig gets back, she says, “I’m returning your deposit.”

  That’s how our life goes here. But there are also moments of great emotion. Last night in a waking dream I saw my father as I had not seen him for a long time: sitting at the table on the balcony, a Singer company brochure open before him. But he’s not looking at it. He’s looking at the garden.

  Our garden isn’t big, but it’s full of miracles. Mama takes care of it. It has two cherry trees, an apple tree, and a pear tree. The trees are no longer young, but they blossom every year and bear fruit. The vegetables grow in two rows beside the trees: cucumbers, peas, tomatoes, onions. Every vegetable gets its own special treatment from Mama. Once she placed a basketful of cherries on the table and said, “Enjoy, children.” I was momentarily surprised that she called us both children. She sat beside us and said, in a voice I hadn’t heard before, “Shouldn’t we make a blessing over this beautiful fruit that grew in our garden?”

  Our garden makes Mama into a wondrous creature. It fills her with silence and awe, and in the evening, when she serves dinner, her eyes go wide, as if seeing us in a new light.

  As Papa sits alone on the balcony and looks at the garden, he concentrates fully, seeking to absorb Mama’s handiwork. The longer he sits, the more focused his gaze.

  And then he suddenly pulls away, looks around, and seems to understand that Mama’s world is beyond his reach, his attempt to fathom it futile. His face slowly relaxes, and a thin smile graces his lips; he’s like a man who tried to penetrate a world not his own and came up with nothing. He stays at the table a long time. The smile grows smaller but doesn’t disappear.

  15

  Time in the wetlands is a stream of thick and humid darkness. We trudge through it half blind and sometimes ask, “Where are we? What have we done till now, and what lies in store?” My father and mother, having been suddenly revealed to me, no longer show themselves. Now and then I think that our life from now on will only intensify: the darkness will deepen, the rains will turn into a torrent, and movement from place to place will be more difficult. Sometimes I have the growing feeling that, all in all, we are marching toward inevitable defeat.

  The formidable army deployed along the roads and mountain ridges will not let us alone. One of these days they will decide to surround us and simply crush us. Escaping to this place is an illusion; it’s self-deception. An empire that decides to destroy a people will destroy it. The empire is patient. It will let us squirm in this mud for another month, two months. Wetness and cold, not to mention disease, will put an end to us, and when the Germans arrive, they won’t find human beings, just human shadows. It’s too bad that we were seduced by Kamil’s fantasies. It would have been better to go with all the others and not prolong the agony. The ambushes and patrols are basically childish games. The moment the army decides to destroy us, we will have nowhere to run.

  One can assume that such dark thoughts occur not only to me, but no one talks about them. Kamil will not let depression gain a foothold. That’s a luxury, he argues. Our fight must be unwavering and without weakness.

  Do dark thoughts visit Kamil, too? He most likely secludes himself not only to read maps and plan routes of advance and escape but also to calm his agitation and suppress his sorrow. It sometimes seems that he is not merely our commander but carries each of us inside him as well, and his isolation in his tent is a communion with our secret suffering. More than once I’ve heard him say, “We are one soul, and we must protect it.”

  I sometimes think that this tall man derives his inner strength from Grandma Tsirl; he visits her regularly and hears things from her that she heard from her forefathers. She is filled with teachings and sayings of the rabbis.

  Salo says her existence is miraculous; not only doesn’t she eat properly, she also fasts. But she believes fiercely in this world and the next. The sight of a bright morning, a setting sun, rain pouring from the sky fill her with awe and make her as happy as a child. Kamil maintains that Grandma Tsirl should be visited at least once a day. She is the essence of the tribe.

  Occasionally we forget who we are, what we were bequeathed by our ancestors, and what has happened to us in recent years. These ups and downs impair our minds, and we see nothing but darkness with no exit. Grandma Tsirl, by her very existence, is a fantastic guide. She has crossed the rivers of fire and her mind has remained whole.

  Sometimes I feel that if I took part in heroic raids, dark thoughts would not afflict me. Daring action ignites the will to live, and you return to the base not merely as someone who performed his duty but as someone who defeated his fears and worries. Patrols and ambushes are inherently static. When you’re patrolling or waiting in ambush, you’re like a rodent rushing to find a hole to hide in, but when you go out on a raid, your very presence says death does not deter me. The body grows from moment to moment and attacks with redoubled force.

  I disclosed some of my thoughts to Salo. He’s thirty-seven but looks older, perhaps because of his sloping right shoulder. He is always ready to listen and will always provide a pill or spoonful of medicine to alleviate pain. Salo feels that the main thing now is to persevere. A day without casualties is a blessing.

  * * *

  —

  EVER SINCE Danzig’s squad brought the cartons of medicine, Salo has been of greater help. He doesn’t act like an ordinary medic or doctor but like a man who is driven by his dedication to other people. “Thank God we have not lost our humanity,” he always says. Once he told me, “It’s too bad we don’t know how to appreciate what we have. We were rescued from the talons of the beast and are able to help the weak. Why don’t we know how to accept what we have with joy?”

  Hearing his words I was embarrassed by my thoughts; they suddenly seemed small and selfish, and I said to myself, I hope Kamil will assign me to the raiders so I can take part in brave actions that will train me to be devoted with heart and soul, like Salo.

  “What we are doing,” Salo corrects me, “is not just marking time but making progress. We have to compare our situation here with the ghetto. In the ghetto we were subject to the malicious whims of the soldiers and police. Every week they would snatch children and grandparents and send them into the unknown. Here, a bit of our fate is in our own hands.”

  Salo, too, is connected with each and every one of us, especially the weak and the elderly. In the ghetto they took his wife and two daughters. Since then, his life has been devoted to others. When he speaks of our lives and those who were taken away from us, you feel he has effaced his own self.

  He has uprooted the word “I” from his vocabulary and uses only “you.” When he speaks to me, I feel he exists entirely for me, and everyone else feels the same way. Salo has rescued more than a few people from the jaws of death and returned them to life. He refuses the title of “resurrector” and insists that his knowledge of medicine is minuscule. He did study medicine for four years, but what he learned was incomplete, and there are areas of medicine of which he knows nothing. Everything he does, he says, is guesswork and improvisation.

  That’s not the opinion of others. People trust him fully. Often after a fighter recuperates from his wounds, there’s a party for him and Salo, and despite his protests, people say that Salo does God’s work on earth.

  So it is, day after day. Kamil has decided to train us to fight in built-up areas, because the day will soon come when we will have to raid the military camps set up along the main road and in the foothills. We have to establish principles of combat so that one day, when additional fighters join us, we will have a solid set of rules.

  I spoke to Kamil and asked him to include me in the big raids. “I feel ready and strong,” I said.

  Kamil looked at me and said, “Let me think about it.”

  “I feel like the patrols and ambushes demoralize me.”

  “Banish that feeling; a patrol is also an act of self-sacrifice. Everything we do in this land is self-sacrifice. Only in due course will we know what we have accomplished.”

  “I’m sorry,” I replied. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “You did nothing wrong, my boy; there’s no reason to apologize. I’ll think about your request.”

  16

  The darkness of autumn grows deeper every day and threatens to engulf us. Kamil believes this foul weather works to our advantage. The army won’t risk attacking us. And yet, to be on the safe side, we don’t stay long in one place. Movement in the muddy ground is heavy going, but we step quickly, as we were trained to do.

  The summit is our destination. The summit sits high on a cliff, and the climb is steep. On a clear day it looks like a wide cone, its walls covered with thick moss. We’ll set up our base there and build bunkers. One squad went up to survey the summit and confirmed that the approach from all sides is difficult, but the panoramic view is clear and amazingly beautiful.

  Kamil knows this mountaintop. In his youth he camped there with other students who dreamed of making a better world. Danzig was also supposed to join that group, but for some reason it didn’t work out.

  It will take time for us to reach the summit. The rain, mud, and cold deaden the soul. But in daylight the visibility is good, and you feel you are doing your duty and even a bit more.

  Michael comes and sits beside me. The boy and I haven’t yet had a conversation. He shows all the signs of an educated, privileged upbringing; even his tattered clothes fit well. Maxie, his tutor, doesn’t stop praising him for how quickly he learns; someday he will become a famous mat
hematician or physicist. I love to observe his unhurried gaze. He pays attention to detail, to the colors and contours of the landscape.

  Does he comprehend our situation? “Without a doubt,” claims Maxie, yet Michael often says of his parents, “Immediately after the war they’ll come to get me.” These words always startle us and break our hearts.

  Michael surprises me and asks, “What do you want to study at university?”

  “I haven’t yet decided,” I say, though I should probably have mentioned that because of the war I hadn’t finished the gymnasium.

  “And what do you want to study?” I turn the question back to him.

  “I want to be a veterinarian, like Papa,” he says with delight.

  “Do you have animals at home?”

  “Lots of them,” he quickly replies. “Papa finds them in the street and brings them home, and whoever wants to adopt them comes to us.”

  “And do you have a dog of your own?”

  “I do. A collie; his name is Niko. I assume our neighbors are taking care of him. He’s a sweet and smart dog, and everyone loves him.”

  “He sleeps in your room?”

  “Yes, he wakes me up in the morning.”

  I love the way Michael stands. Every time he mentions his father, his eyes light up. He recalls his mother in a different way. “Mama reads me bedtime stories. I love stories, and Mama loves to tell stories. Papa knows how to talk to animals, but telling bedtime stories is hard for him.”

  “What does your mother do?”

  “Mama is a teacher, and in the morning we go to school together. Mama doesn’t teach my class, but I see her during recess. Sometimes I go to her.”

  As he speaks, I get the feeling he’s still there, with his father and mother, studying or playing with the animals in his yard. When he sits by my side, I am deeply touched.

  Michael doesn’t speak about his parents in the past tense but like someone who went to summer camp and expects his parents to come and pick him up.

  “It’s boring for you here with us,” I say, to goad him.

  “No. Maxie teaches me arithmetic and geometry, and soon we’ll start learning French.”

  I remember myself at Michael’s age, walking with Mama to the flower market or the clothing store to be outfitted for summer. Swimming in the River Prut has already begun. A fat sun sinks over the gazebo. This memory removes me for a moment from my routine and returns me to our house and its surrounding streets.

  It is clear to me that I will not be forgiven for what I did to my parents in the past year. Will I ever be able to repair what I ruined?

  17

  Last night Kamil attached me to one of the squads that is soon to go on a raid. He’s noticed that in recent weeks I’ve gotten stronger. In training I’m often quicker than my friends, and my time has come to participate in a daring raid. Until now I’ve taken part only in patrols and ambushes and minor raids. This period of time, I must admit, prepared me for the trials ahead.

  I went to Grandma Tsirl. Grandma Tsirl knew my parents personally, as well as my grandparents and even great-grandparents. She calls my mother “my little Bunya.” My mother was a late-in-life child, beloved by everyone. Her sisters were pretty and smart, but my mother, Grandma Tsirl told me, was beautiful. In addition, she graduated from the gymnasium with honors.

  When you’re alongside Grandma Tsirl, it’s as if you’re back home, and life is not broken and arbitrary. Even our trudge through the mud is not meaningless.

  “What are you doing, my son?” she asked.

  “What everyone is doing.”

  She looked at me and said, “You will tell future generations what these despicable people did to us. Don’t be caught up in details; get under the surface. Details, by their nature, confuse and conceal. Only the core endures.”

  I was shocked and I said, “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Grandma Tsirl.”

  “Did I say something that isn’t clear?”

  “All the same, I don’t understand.”

  “I will explain: Your grandfather, of blessed memory, was a sofer, a religious scribe, like his father. I remember him wrapped in a prayer shawl, bent over the parchment and writing with great devotion. I would stand outside his window and watch him work. As I did so, I understood the meaning of the Hebrew words hamavdil bein kodesh lekhol, the One who separates the holy from the mundane. When your grandfather was writing, he was totally holy. Your father, like most of his generation, did not walk in his father’s path, but the angel of poetry watched over him. He wrote poems of longing. Everyone was surprised that a prominent lawyer, who represented big companies, wrote poems of longing. I was not surprised. The soul of his holy father, your grandfather, sang within him. Those who looked at him closely could see that his eyes drifted into higher worlds, even when he worked on temporal matters. Four generations of writers have preceded you, my dear, but you have seen so much in your short life; you must tell future generations where they came from and where they are going. If one knows where from, one knows where to.”

  “Grandma Tsirl, writing is very hard for me. Even writing a letter is hard.”

  “A person doesn’t know what’s hidden inside him until he works at it.”

  “I want to be a fighter, not a writer.”

  “My dear, a person’s fate is not always in his own hands. Forgive me for telling you about the past and guessing about the future. Believe me, had I not been shown what I see, I would lock my lips with seven locks.”

  I stood up.

  “I see you’ve grown tired of my talking.”

  I wanted to say, “I’m not tired,” but the words didn’t come out of my mouth.

  * * *

  —

  THAT NIGHT ONE of the fighters read a few verses from the Book of Numbers. We spoke about the purification before entering the Promised Land. The idea of purification took hold in a few hearts, perhaps because of the words of Kamil, who spoke of purifying ourselves for the life awaiting us after the war. In his opinion, we will be privileged to witness the downfall of the enemy and the final victory. The question is whether we will be worthy of this. Doubt and despair must not be allowed to infect us with their poison. We have a great obligation. We are not fighting for the body alone.

  “We are what we are,” remarked one of the fighters.

  “We must be more than that; we have seen evil incarnate,” Kamil insisted. “To be silent means standing on the side. We have come here to fight against the worst evil, and we will not give up.”

  One of the fighters again asked what the religious rites of ancient times had to do with us. Purification is not relevant to modern man. If a person believes in God, so be it. But as for us, faith does not dwell within us.

  Kamil listened attentively. The fighter’s voice was clear and understandable and inevitably exposed a few of our hidden collective thoughts. For a moment it seemed that Kamil would rise to his feet, gather his words, and shape them into a manifesto, as he occasionally does. But this time he sat hunched over, like a man gone mute.

  One of the fighters, who had never expressed his opinion publicly, suddenly burst loudly into tears. His wailing shook us all. What’s happened? What’s happened? Everyone reached out to him. But the man did not respond; his whole being wept. Even Salo, whose words are always soothing, stood beside him silently. The man’s weeping grew stronger, as if he had just realized what we had lost.

  So it goes here from time to time. The weeping is usually pent up, but when it breaks out, it comes in great waves. One time Tsila, the strong and friendly woman who feeds us tasty food and lifts our spirits, broke down into muffled weeping and trembled all over. This happened on a day when nothing much was going on. Danzig went into the kitchen with Milio in his arms and asked for some soup. Tsila looked at Milio and said he was adorable and making progress, and that there was no reason for worry. He will speak not only in syllables but in complete sentences. Every child develops in a different way.