Judenstaat (17 page)

The teacher was there. Five other students stood around her, most of whom Judit knew from her Bundist Youth Group. She held a paint-pot. A second pot of black paint was open at her feet, and the students all held brushes. She nodded towards Judit, neutrally, and gestured towards a brush already lying cross-wise over the mouth of the pot.

Of course, Judit picked up the brush and dipped it in black paint, but even as she erased each new
pashkevil,
she read it. This time, they were in German.

For twenty years, this country has labored under a master with a whip. What we produce is exported to the Soviets. What we consume is imported by the Soviets. The free press of our early years has all been broken. The artists of our early years have all been tamed.

We have been told our country is a monument to those who perished in the Churban, and in that name, everything is permitted. Yet is it permitted to deceive ourselves?

WE DEMAND
a full investigation of the truth behind the order to suppress the uprising in Prague.

WE DEMAND
the truth behind the death of Leopold Stein.

WE DEMAND
the right to form independent unions and an end to press censorship.

WE DEMAND
nothing less than a full historical reckoning.

That was the month when the television played endless loops of the children's show
Miss Heidi's House
, the one with the hand-puppets. Dresden suddenly felt provincial; history was taking place somewhere else. In railroad junctions, workers refused to load shipments of coal crossing Poland to the Soviet border. In Halle, the Stasi tracked down twenty deserters who'd been found hiding in a mineshaft, but the miners blocked their van; five miners were crushed in the fray. The University of Leipzig was shut down after a group of professors were arrested, and fifty more resigned in protest. There were rumors that every industry and college in Judenstaat had called a general strike.

Judit's secondary school was shut down, but not because of a strike. It was closed because there was no heat and only sporadic electricity. Leonora's great fear was that the Protective Rampart would be compromised, and Germans would invade. Rudolph spent a lot of time calming her down and telling her that Steinsaltz would never let that happen. In fact, that month, the country was under martial law for the first time since the '50s. Saxons were not allowed out of their homes. If there was no threat of treason, Leonora insisted, why would that be the case? Why would there be a curfew, and why would the radio keep playing that awful, slow version of Eisler's national anthem?

*   *   *

A week later, Judit's school would be re-opened. The electricity was on a generator, as they were understaffed at the plant, and coal was in short supply. Everyone wore a winter coat indoors. The algebra teacher was still there, though she never paid Judit any special attention. The physics teacher was gone. His class was assured that he hadn't been arrested. He'd simply taken a leave of absence to take care of his son who had just returned from Prague. Judit was never sure if the physics teacher came back; she never passed his old classroom, and by the time she graduated, no one talked about him anymore.

The soldiers would be home by the new year, and most of them had little to say about the events in Prague. There was talk of a victory parade along the Elbe in front of Parliament, and a rally in Stein Square, but somehow the weather was too cold, the tanks didn't have petrol, and on the whole, no one seemed anxious to get in a tank again.

Of course, it was clear that the period of upheaval was the work of American and German agents. All you had to do was look at those lists of demands and the signs the students held in Leipzig. Words like “free” and “open” were all code that any patriot could decipher. They were borrowed from U.S. counterparts who'd borrowed them from the French who'd borrowed them from Stephen Weiss.

Steinsaltz was the one who'd brought up Weiss. In 1968, Steinsaltz was still an imposing presence, with the grizzled face of the Warsaw Ghetto Fighter he had been. His hair was steel-gray, his suit impeccable.

“Comrades,” he said to both the audience in Parliament and to the citizens who gathered around their radios and televisions in community centers and in private homes. “We have gone through a grave crisis. And it is no surprise that we've come out the other side with our principles and our borders intact. The Cosmopolitans have been defeated.”

If it had been the '80s, there would have been several cameras, and those with televisions could watch members of Parliament rise as a body and applaud the man they'd voted out of office six months before. Back then, the single camera stayed on Steinsaltz. He paused to acknowledge the response with a lowered head. He checked his notes, and looked up through thick eyebrows until he could continue.

“It is not the first time we have faced such a crisis. In 1951, our founder Leopold Stein discovered that his own house was unsound, and he took measures to secure our future. Weiss and his followers had infected our young country so deeply that even now, we see their long, sinister shadow.” Then he said, “There are times when ruthless cynicism calls for a ruthless response.”

The television in the Ginsberg apartment went dark. The electricity had been going on and off all day, and Rudolph fiddled with the prongs on the plug. Neighbors had crowded into their living room, filling the couch and standing behind it, dismal and shivering in their coats. It was February, and everyone knew someone touched by what had happened. Most of the neighbors were old enough to remember the wave of arrests that had followed Weiss's exile in '51. Would the traitors go to Soviet prisons now? More likely, Leonora said, Steinsaltz would send them across the border to Poland where he'd gotten all those scars on his face, and he knew they would welcome Jews.

The television picture flashed back on and caught Steinsaltz clearing his throat. His face had darkened. He had clearly said a few things in the interim, and now he finished a sentence: “—must face this challenge with another challenge and guide our youth in such a way that they will answer their Cosmopolitan professors: I have roots here. How can we honor our workers and soldiers, enriching their Bundist education so they understand that they are the very foundation of the state?”

Leonora whispered to her husband, “What's he saying? I don't understand.”

“He's pardoning them,” Rudolph said.

Judit broke in. “Who? What do you mean?”

The others in the room whispered to each other, as though testing the acoustics. Rudolph did the same, as he said to Judit, “There won't be any more arrests. A general amnesty. There must be some change in policy. He must have been told.”

“By who?” Judit asked, and she didn't lower her voice at all. Everyone looked at her and hushed her because Steinsaltz was still talking: about pensions for veterans and a new trade policy with Poland and Hungary, and also Switzerland and Finland, which had a particular interest in economic and cultural exchange.

Judit felt cross and went to bed. In a few years, she'd be in Leipzig, where vestiges of 1968 lingered: in a curfew at the dormitory and an initial prohibition against gatherings of more than five students anywhere on campus, in a JDF veteran who got into an argument with a girl who wore a T-shirt with a Czech flag on it, and especially in those empty offices, the doors all open, books tossed off the shelves and left there, though it wouldn't be too long before the university would hire replacements and the doors would close again. But that night, through the wall, Judit could only hear the sound of muffled, grown-up conversation, energetic argument. She knew that if she got up and went in, they'd stop talking, so she just lay there and listened to what she couldn't understand.

 

5

SHE
was in a different room. That much was clear. Someone had taken off her clothes and put her in a nightgown. She'd been tucked into one of two twin beds. Her hair was stuck to the side of her face, and her skin felt clammy. The beds were pink. Her blanket was pink. The little nightlight on the wall was pink too, and through the pink walls came voices, and a clattering of dishes. There were no windows. She couldn't tell what time it was or how long she'd been sleeping.

With effort, Judit managed to kick the blankets off and sit up. That must have been when Charlotte heard her because the door opened right away, and there she was, looking sober and elegant in a long-sleeved black wool dress, same wig, but a lace cap now and a string of pearls. “Well,” she said, “I didn't think you'd be up so soon. You were in quite a state.”

“How did I get here?” Judit asked.

“You really can't remember? It was quite a production up there. Can you imagine, all the men coming up to the dome to daven, and then the Rebbe suddenly stops, and his eyes twinkle the way they always do, and he says, ‘The Shabbos Bride has arrived early.' He says it in Russian, of course, so the guests will understand. Then he looks right up at the trapdoor.”

Judit squeezed her head in her hands like a big sponge. She must have been carried, and there must have been a struggle because everything ached, her joints, her neck, her shoulders, and especially her head. “I'd better go,” she said.

“You're not going anywhere, young lady,” Charlotte said cheerfully. “I tell you, the way you cursed, like the devil was in you, and when some of the lady guests—I took them over myself in the van—when they came out from behind the
mechitzah
to get you out of the room and help me get you down that ladder, once you're on solid ground they start chattering away in Russian and you almost knock them over. And the cursing! Poor ladies. They were from the neighborhood. It was their first time at Chabad.” She laughed, and said, “I shouldn't laugh. So Rabbi Schneerson, he just stood there, facing you between these great big Russian ladies. Then he laughed too, right out loud. I guess it was either that or perform an exorcism.”

Charlotte would have gone on and on, and Judit would have been relieved to have nothing more expected of her than to keep sitting with her legs tangled in the pink blanket she'd thrown off the bed.

Then Charlotte said, “Don't you want to see him?”

“See who?” Judit asked.

“The Rebbe. Rabbi Schneerson. He asked for you. He always has a big
tish
in the ballroom after we daven. It's so beautiful, Judit, all the children running around, and the guests, and those songs without words, beautiful, beautiful melodies from the first Lubovicher Rebbe hundreds of years ago. And he shares out little morsels of whatever's on his plate. You know, he gave me one when my Dahlia was in the prenatal unit and nobody thought she'd have a chance. And I ate it, and look what happened. A miracle.”

“I'm not hungry,” Judit said. She tried to pull the covers up again for emphasis, but felt resistance. Maybe they'd caught on something. Maybe Charlotte had stepped on them. Judit went on. “Listen, you're confusing me with someone else.”

“You know, Rabbi Schneerson studied at the Sorbonne. In France,” Charlotte added, to clarify. “He speaks a dozen languages. He's not like they are in Loschwitz, though he'd never say a word against them because they're all fellow Jews. Honestly, most people, they don't understand how open he is, and how he wants to reach out his hand to everyone.”

“Look,” Judit said, “I'm sorry I caused so much trouble. But honestly, just tell me where you put my stuff.”

“I know why you're here,” Charlotte said. “It was only a matter of time. After all, with everything you've been through, all your tragedies.” Now she sat down on the other bed and faced Judit. Her face softened under the wig. “It's human nature, wanting to confront the man upstairs. But then you realize that's not the point. It's not the point of living. And it's not the point of all those tragedies. Honestly.”

“Tragedies have no point,” said Judit.

“You sound just like I did, when I first came,” Charlotte said. “After I failed my exams and my father died so suddenly, I was just drifting. When I lit the Shabbos candles, they told me, just go through the motions and the rest will follow. I said it was dishonest. But face it, we can't know what's honest. And we can't judge. We have to stop being afraid of the dark.”

Judit looked at Charlotte. “Don't tell me what I shouldn't be afraid of.”

Then she lay back in bed and turned to face the wall. It was so easy that it was amazing that she hadn't done it as soon as Charlotte walked into the room.

*   *   *

There was always a time after she'd lost each of the girls when Judit would sit in her sewing room, and she'd be grateful that there were no clocks or windows. She'd find a length of dull blue cotton and a pattern that she'd gotten years before, and she would cut and sew and mess up all the seams, and have to pick the stitches out; there was never enough light, and she didn't care.

The third time they tried, she'd injected herself with heparin every morning, and on Thursdays, she arranged to leave work early to take the express to Leipzig for a sonogram that was performed by that technician with the gray hair and the gray smock who checked her progress week by week. At week sixteen, the pattern had repeated. Judit didn't wait it out. She took two days off to have a procedure under anesthetic. Maybe a month later, the doorbell rang. It was early evening. Judit had been sewing the same piece of cloth over and over again with an intensity that was so like her rhythm as a film editor that it felt like real work, like salvation. The stitches were so neat that they were almost invisible, and she couldn't explain why she didn't ignore the doorbell, but instead, got up, and when she opened the door, there was a woman in a wig who smiled across the threshold and handed Judit a little booklet of psalms.