Beyond the Ties of Blood (17 page)

“What happened,
m'hijita
?” she asked, placing her hand on Sara's back. But Sara could only lie there, on her stomach. Although she felt the tears wetting the pillow, she wasn't sobbing. She felt paralyzed. She couldn't say or do a thing. She could see the pieces of herself laid out on the bed, in the wrong order. She couldn't put them back together.

After waiting for an answer, and gently rubbing a hand back and forth across her shoulders, Mama finally left the room, closing the door gently. Sara could hear Mama and Papa whispering on the other side, then their footsteps retreating. After the door opened again and Tonia came in, Sara realized that they had gone to ask her for help.

Only Tonia understood. Sara didn't say anything to her, not a word. But when Tonia put her hands on Sara, she knew. When she rubbed softly at the knot under her shoulder blades, then moved her large hands up to massage her scalp, could Tonia feel the Star of David that was carved there? Every night, after Mama and Papa went to bed, Tonia ran her large hands from Sara's head, along her shoulders and down her spine, kneading out the pieces of her sorrow and putting her back together. Then she was able to sleep. She didn't know how many days had passed when she finally opened the door. In a few weeks she was even able to go back to school.

When she came home that first day, Tonia was at the counter of the tailor shop.

“Everything go all right?” she asked.

Sara nodded. “But it's so strange,” she said. “It's like everyone else belongs to a different country, and I'm a foreigner there. When they look at me the expression on their faces makes me feel like the old prejudice about Jews is true, and I must have horns growing out of my head.”

“I know what you mean,” Tonia said. “I feel like that all the time when I leave the shop. People look at me in the street like I don't belong.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“In my case it's because I'm Mapuche. I do look different, and besides, my mama keeps sending me these clothes to wear that make it even more obvious.” Tonia laughed, looking down at her colorful apron, her hand reaching up to check the kerchief she wore over her long braids.

“And in my case,” Sara said, “it's because I'm Jewish.”

“Do you look different, too?”

“Well, I'm shorter and darker than the other girls. Although, looking at my papa, it's clear that not all Jews are short and dark.”

“But the other girls at the school won't think about that.”

“Why not?”

“When people see you're different, they don't think about you in the same way. They don't care.”

After that it was easier for Sara to get up in the morning and face the German girls at school. She knew her sister would be waiting for her at home. Tonia's love was the amulet she needed to protect herself. Together they were safe on an island in the middle of a dangerous sea.

The year they turned fifteen, Tonia got sick. At first her dreams got longer and more frequent, but pretty soon she began running a fever and refusing to eat. Mama tried the home remedies she remembered from Odessa, chicken soup, plus various concoctions with raw eggs that turned Sara's stomach. Even her papa's old friend Dr. González, who had delivered her, came by to help. But nothing, not even cold baths, brought the fever down. And there was nothing they could do for the chills, the dreams, the crackling of her bones.

“There's nothing else,
compadre
,” Sara overheard Dr. González whisper to her father outside the door one day. “I think it's time you took her home.” When her papa hired a truck for the journey back to Tonia's community, Sara sat for a long while next to the bed, holding her hand.

“I'm sorry,
lamien
,” she said, using the Mapuche word for sister. “I broke my promise.”

Tonia looked at her with fever-shimmering eyes. “Oh no you didn't,” she croaked. “I said only if I didn't get sick, remember?
Kuku
just got too angry.”

Papa came in and wrapped Tonia up in a large blanket. Sara watched through the blur of her tears as he picked her up in his arms like a small puppy. She'd been ill so long in their house that she was nothing but skin and bones.

A gash opened up in Sara's life then, a before-and-after that would not heal. She refused to go back to school. Without Tonia's comforting presence, her mind sometimes traveled to a parallel world where angry spirits shrunk loved ones to a third of their original size. In this world, Jews got their heads shaved and stars of David carved into their scalps. Being a Jew meant that the pieces of your being got separated from one another, sent to different locations as soap, lamp shades, or gold fillings taken from your teeth. Being a Jew meant that your family was killed for no reason except that they were Jews. Her mama and papa's migration through Istanbul, their foggy story of love and survival, lost any vestige of romance in the world unfolding before her. Her mama, huddled in the Istanbul fog, was nothing more than her family's only survivor from the Odessa pogrom. Her papa, no longer a dashing, pipe-smoking suitor who swept her mama off her feet, was a scared working-class kid alone in the world. This harsh world had always been there, Sara realized, and it spared no one.

1948

When Samuel first came into the tailor shop, a shy, plump, slightly greasy young man, Sara took pity on his desire for her. He smelled of the yeast he used in his bake shop. After putting the offending item of clothing on the counter between them, he would take a thick roll of bills out of the right pocket of his pants and, not able to look her in the face while he talked, whisper what he needed: a button replaced, a seam repaired. Then he threw the money down on the counter and ran out of the store. Sometimes she ran after him, in his yeasty wake, just to return the extra money he left among the folds of his clothes. But he was long gone, surprisingly swift for such a pudgy creature.

It took him a long time to gather up his courage to ask her out, and even then he stammered so hard she could barely understand him. It took him so long to get the words out, it was as if the weekend went by while she was waiting. He couldn't look her in the face but stood staring down at his hands, the left one still clutching the shirt he'd brought in that day, the wad of bills glistening with sweat in his right fist. She put her hand over his fist and waited for him to look up. The minutes dragged by. Finally his gaze came up slowly, fear vibrating in the green irises of his eyes. She waited just a second for their eyes to lock. “I'm free on Sunday right after lunch,” she said. “I love to walk in the park and eat peanuts.”

Sara lost count of how many little triangular cones of peanuts he bought her Sunday after Sunday as they walked, in silence, around the plaza. Candied ones, salted ones. A fine haze of sweat would gather across Samuel's forehead, and somehow that endeared him to her. For weeks he barely opened his mouth. She occasionally made a comment about the weather, the hard work at the shop, how good the peanuts were. Anything to break the silence. He would nod gratefully, there would be an audible intake of breath, as if he were about to answer. Then nothing. Each week as she waited for him to arrive, she wondered what the point was. But then she counted the number of Jewish families in Temuco, added up the ones with young men more or less her age, and came to the unavoidable conclusion. If she wanted to marry, he was her only hope.

One Sunday evening when he brought her home, she took his hand. “Shmuel,” she said, using his Hebrew name. “Let's do something different next weekend. Why don't you come by on Saturday night, after the end
of shabbat
, and we can go out and have a
schnapps
. It isn't as if we're little kids, you know. Maybe we can even go to a movie.” He seemed startled. But he said yes.

The following Saturday, right after sunset, they took a walk to the river. A four-piece band with an asthmatic accordion was playing waltzes and polkas. Several older German couples were turning stiffly on the wooden boards that served as a makeshift dance floor. The remaining dusky light glittered in the beads of sweat on the bald pates of the men. They stood watching, and Samuel was silent as usual. But she noticed that, in spite of himself, he would tap his right foot when an especially lively number came along.

Suddenly the band seemed to come alive and launched into the new tango that was on all the radio stations. She was utterly amazed when Shmuel took her hand and led her gently out onto the floorboards. He swept her up into his arms, pressed his slightly sweaty cheek to hers, and carried her off in the wave of his smooth steps. She closed her eyes, letting him guide her; they dipped and turned for what seemed like hours and she did not stumble even once. She only opened her eyes when she realized they were back on the grass by the side of the bandstand. He was looking down at her, a smile playing along the edges of his lips.

“Where did you learn to do that?” she asked. His smile opened up and took over his entire face. He was almost handsome then, his green eyes sparkling.

“When I left Germany I lived in Argentina for seven years before coming to Temuco. The bakery business, it was too cutthroat, and I had no entry capital, so first I made some money bartending at a tango bar. Sometimes they needed an extra man to dance. I found I have a knack for it.”

They danced several more sets, wrapped in a silken cloud softened even further by several glasses of wine. She was sorry when the moon began to set, and the band packed up its gear. They walked back through the deserted streets, arm in arm, her head resting on his shoulder. “So,” she asked, looking up at him, “how did you end up in Argentina?” He stopped and let go of her arm. “What's wrong?” she asked. His face closed up, harsh and jagged. He didn't say anything for a long time and just kept staring at her, his eyes suddenly flat. His right hand, claw-like now, clutched her left elbow. They walked in silence to her door. He didn't even say goodnight.

For several weeks he did not return to the tailor shop. What had happened to him that he had reacted in such a way? True, he wasn't her knight in shining armor, and maybe she should be glad he was gone. But as time went by she realized she missed him. Why had he been so upset when she'd asked him about leaving Germany? Finally she decided to ask her father about it.

“Papa,” she asked, putting her hand on his shoulder as he worked at his pedal-powered sewing machine. “Was there something that happened to Jews in Germany before the camps?”

As usual it took her father a few minutes to react. She could see he was working on an especially demanding design. “Germany? Well, I'm not sure exactly, but as soon as the Nazis came to power, you know they weren't kind to the Jews.” He took off his sewing glasses and turned around to look at her. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, it's just that … Shmuel immigrated to Argentina before the war, and I think something pretty terrible must have happened to make him leave Germany.”

“Well, then, why don't you go to the library and look in the European history books? Maybe you'll find something there. Or if not, maybe the old newspapers.”

She went to the library every day after they closed the shop and finally, in a new European history book they'd recently received at the Temuco library, she found a short paragraph. “On November 9-10, 1938,” she read, “throughout Germany almost every window in every synagogue and Jewish-owned business was shattered. In German,
Kristallnacht
means night of broken glass. Ninety-one Jews died and thirty thousand were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Survivors tried to leave the country, but only the lucky few made it out.” Sara shut the book. That must have been it, she realized; the dates worked with when he arrived in Argentina. Shmuel was one of the few who got out alive.

One Thursday right after lunch, he walked in and stood at the counter. His eyes were a muddy shade of grey, and under them his lack of sleep had gathered in smudges of soot. He had no clothes to put on the counter, no wad of bills. He just stood there and looked straight into her eyes. He still smelled of yeast.

“I know about
Kristallnacht
,” she whispered. “Your family … you were the only one who got out.” His eyes closed. “My mama and papa,” she continued softly, “they were the only ones, too. From Odessa.” He opened his eyes, then his mouth. But nothing came out. She reached a hand across the counter, but he turned away. He stood, his back to her, for a moment. Then he walked out.

When he came back a month later, he placed a small, worn velvet box on the counter between them. She opened it to find a diamond ring. It had been recently cleaned and polished, but the setting was antique. Though he never said anything, over the years she grew convinced that it had belonged to his mother, perhaps even his grandmother. She pictured him smuggling the box out in the pocket of his pants.

They were married the following week in a civil ceremony, her parents the only witnesses. Mama and Papa never took a shine to him, she was never sure why not. Maybe it was because they saw her Shmooti, as she took to calling him, the way she'd first seen him, plump and sweaty, shy and needy. They'd never seen him dance tango. Sara had been sure that, after that first magical tango evening, and especially after she told him about her mama and papa, he'd slowly open up to her. The more he's in love, she'd thought, the more we live together, the more he'll want to tell me. Over the years she'd come to realize what a worn and weary masquerade that was. She lost count of the number of women she met who fell in love with the ideal man into whom they hoped to turn their husband. She, too, hadn't married Shmooti the man, but the smooth tango dancer who would surely become the man she'd imagined. And they stayed together, she'd come to understand, largely on the strength of her imagination.

When she lay awake in the night, listening to the keening and rumbling of his frequent nightmares, she imagined the scene of his dream by focusing on his movements. She watched him as he turned and groaned in his sleep, protecting his head with his arms from what must have been the soldiers' kicks when they broke into his family's house and shop. She began to imagine the other side of his reactions, to visualize a
pas de deux
in his lonely, frightened movements. To every protective move Shmooti made, she added the opposite aggression, until she pieced together a narrative of a battle to the death. It was a battle she relived, almost on a nightly basis, in her matrimonial bed. It was a battle scripted only on one side, to which she added her own stage directions.