Not Me (22 page)

I didn’t know how many days passed, but I kept building up my wall, one little clue at a time. He’d been calling me “Israel” a lot lately, so I wrote the name down.
Israel!
he’d say.
It’s good to see you! Israel, can you turn on that lamp! Israel, have a cookie!
It occurred to me that he was seeing some sort of angel or something. Maybe Israel just stood for the whole Jewish People. Maybe in his crazy mind he believed he was finally a full-fledged member of the tribe. Anyway, I taped the name
Israel
to the wall about midway between the train ticket and Josh’s report card, near the ceiling. I attached a Post-it, but I left it blank. I knew it was a clue, but I didn’t know what it might mean, not in the slightest.

For instance, a day or two before, I had gone to see him.

I had asked Lamar, the orderly, to bring in some soup, and now I held the plastic spoon up to his lips.

“Papa,”
I said,
“iss ein bisschen suppe.”

He opened his mouth. He had heard me.

A little bit of broth found its way in. He opened his eyes. Wide and sightless like gardenias floating in bowls of gray water.

“Israel!” He smiled.

“Hey, Dad,” I smiled back tightly. “It’s Michael.” I wondered if I’d ever hear him say my real name again.

“More,” he said in German.
“Kann ich bitte…”

His voice was reedy, insubstantial, but for all that, present. As usual, he should have been worse, but he was better.

I fed him another spoonful. And then another.

“You’re hungry,” I said. “That’s good.”

“I feel good now you’re here,” he said with a voice thin as wafer.

“You’ve been speaking in German.”

“I am?” He shrugged. “Who can tell anymore?” He studied me with those foggy eyes, thick-lensed, creamy. “You don’t look so good, my Mikey.”

“
I
don’t look so good?”

“Well,” he said, “I’m no beauty queen, either.” What he actually said was I’m no
Schönheitskönigin
. He was somehow lost between then and now, like a ghost trapped in a mirror.

“We have so much to talk about,” I said to him.

“Yes, we do,” he said.

“Do you think you are up for it?”

“I can try,” he said.

“Then let’s try,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s try.”

His face tilted benignly toward me, and he suddenly remarked, “Did you know that the word
holocaust
is Greek? It means a
burnt offering
—when the oracle would place the sacrificial bull on the altar and burn it in its entirety, until nothing was left but ash. Not a bite left to eat. Not a shred of skin or hide to make a scrap of clothing. Not an ounce of anything left for any useful purpose whatsoever. Burnt to nothing. That is what
holocaust
means.”

I must have known that, since I had briefly studied Greek in undergraduate school when my ambition was to be a philosopher, and yet it did come as a surprise to me.

“Tell me more,” I said.

“You know everything there is to know.”

“Then tell me about you,” I said.

“Memories come and go. Sometimes I think I’m still there. Sometimes when a bell goes off I think it’s the siren in the camp. You know what
selektion
is?”

I did. It was when they divided them into those who would stay and work, and those who would go directly to the gas.

“Sometimes when they announce bingo I think it’s
selektion.
I can smell the ovens, hear the footsteps of the prisoners—God in heaven! you cannot imagine what is that sound. A thousand feet all at once—quick step! quick step!—sloshing through the mud…”

“How do you feel then?” I said.

“How can one feel? A nightmare from which one cannot wake.”

“Why is it, do you think, you were never selected?”

“That’s the great mystery, isn’t it, my love?” he said, trying to fill his wooden lungs with air. “That’s what I live with. Why not me? There’s no answer, Mikey. Death itself is not fearsome, my darling boy. Only hatred and cruelty. Only the human mind, that engineers such wholesale destruction. They say to destroy one life is to destroy an entire universe, yes? What is it then to destroy a universe? Death is nothing—but what is fearsome is to look into the eyes of a man who has no human feeling, and see yourself reflected there. He is nothing, you are nothing. God has flown the chicken coop. That is what is meant by terror.”

“I feel that way,” I said.

“What way?”

“That God has flown the coop.”

“No! No!” he cried with great agitation. “That’s the thing. That’s the thing to actually understand.”

“What is?”

“We run from Him, not the other way around.” Then he wagged one finger at me. “Plus, He always catches up, my little one. That’s His game. You run. He catches.” He pointed to his oxygen tank. “As you can see.”

He made an attempt to wink at me, but it was more like he closed both eyes and then had a very tough time opening them again.

I could see how tired he was. More than tired, the kind of tired that only happens once in a person’s life. I wanted him to rest, but I was too afraid to let him go. Not until we spoke of it.

But before I could say anything, he suddenly reverted to English and announced, “It’s really about you, I want to talk.”

“Me? What’s to talk about me?”

“Well, for one thing, are you happy?”

“Happy?” I said.

“Ya. Happy.”

“How could I be happy?”

I looked at the floor. “I’ve lost Ella. I can’t seem to connect with Josh. And then you.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about me,” he said.

“No!” I said. “Those journals you wrote. I need to know, Dad. I need the truth. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see how desperate I am for the truth?”

“Yes, desperate. That describes you.” Somehow, he reached out with his hand, the translucent skin bereft of all fat, his fingers corroded with arthritis, and laid it upon mine. “Don’t be so desperate, Michael. Everything is all right. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Everything you need, you have. Or you can get just by snapping your fingers. You know how to snap your fingers, don’t you? You don’t need to go, go, go. Always go, go, going. That was you, even as a little boy. Looking everywhere. Never finding.” He wheezed out a little laugh. “It’s all in that crazy
keppela
of yours,” he said, trying to jab his finger at my temple, but his touch was as light as snowfall.

“I don’t know how to be anymore,” I cried. “I’m totally confused.”

“Not the end of the world,” he replied, sinking back into the crumpled bedsheets.

“They think you should go to hospice,” I said. “Are you ready for that?”

“I’m happy here,” he said. “I won’t take long.”

“Oh, stop!” I said.

Again he laughed. “I’m telling you, death is nothing, Mikey. Nothing. After what I’ve seen.”

Finally! I thought.

“Then tell me what you’ve seen.”

“Everything a man could see. Everything you should never see.”

“The camps.”

“The camps.”

I held my breath and forced myself to take his hand, this hand that pulled me back to safety when I leaned out too far that time on the Staten Island Ferry; the same that caught me as I careened out of control down those rapids on the Russian River, snatching me out like a ripe plum just before I hit the rocks; and the same that often was raised in anger but never, ever came down, and yet was strong enough to crush walnuts in its bare palm when, after the dishes were cleared, the grown-ups sat around the table talking politics. It was the same hand that today was like flatbread, dry, brittle, lifeless—I could have cracked it in half with a flick of my wrist, and now I held it and waited. A minute ago I might have been repulsed by this shadow of a hand, and by this rancid smell that seemed to float around him, by the sunken, bony eyes—but now I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all. I felt something else. I couldn’t exactly say. But I sensed I was closer to him in this depressingly stupid, two-bit nursing home than maybe I’d been in my whole adult life.

“Tell me,” I said as gently as I could, “in the camps. Which side were you on?”

He looked at me for a long time, and nodded as if he had told me the answer, but his lips had never moved.

“Why won’t you tell me?” I whispered.

“Like everybody else,” he barely said, “I was on my own side.”

Almost immediately he fell asleep, as if he could no longer carry the burden of speech. I let go of his hand and set it carefully at his side, stood up, arranged his blanket and tucked it in, brushed his hair back with my hand the way he liked it, straight back, the long white tendrils pressed behind his ears, and gently I ran my hand along his forehead and down his cheek.

Back at home, at his apartment, rather, I could not see how anything on my wall made any sense. What else could I do? I picked up another volume of his writings, and ruefully began to read.

They sat together speaking in Yiddish, Moskovitz smoking a cigarette and Levin absently wiping down his PIAT. Lieutenant Rosenheim watched them with growing annoyance. The moon had moved across the sky, and soon it would be dawn. With first light the attack most likely would begin, and before that he expected a heavy bombardment, the likes of which few of these people had ever seen or even imagined. Over the hours of this night he had thought about many things; he had planned with his cadre how best to meet the enemy advance; he had gone over in his mind variations and permutations of attack and defense; he had tried to bring to mind the many people who were counting on him, the people who had somehow become his friends; he thought long and hard about his own plans for surrender, and what ultimately he would have to do about Levin, but mostly he thought about Fradl
—
or Yael, as she was now called. Levin was flirting with her; it was obvious. He watched to see how she reacted, if she touched him, or leaned in toward him, how she laughed
—
politely or seductively. She mostly seemed to keep her distance, as if she sensed how dangerous he was
—
but then, all of a sudden, she would giggle like a little girl, or allow him to light her smoke.

But it would all be over soon, he told himself. The whole charade. In death or surrender, he would once again be Heinrich Mueller. The name sounded as foreign to him as Heshel Rosenheim once had.

Finally Levin got up and made his way into the darkness. Probably to relieve himself. Heshel grabbed his Sten and cantered over to Post 5. He slid down next to Moskovitz and asked for a light. She looked at him briefly and without feeling, and then gave him the hot end of her cigarette.

“Have you ever been in battle?” he asked.

“I’m not afraid,” she said.

“I wish to God you had gone with the others.”

“Why? Don’t you think I can handle it?” Impatiently, she spit some tobacco onto her fingers. “I wonder where Levin is?”

“I don’t like him,” Heshel said. “He’s a fanatic. The worst kind.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“I know him well enough. He was at the massacre at Deir Yassin. A man with no regrets. What kind of man is that?”

“I would think you’re jealous,” she said, “if I thought you were capable of any feelings whatsoever.”

She said this so matter-of-factly, so without a hint of cruelty, that it pierced his gut like the sharp end of a bayonet.

“He thinks we were in the
lager
together,” he picked up the thread as best he could. “He’s wrong about that, by the way, we were never in the camps together. He has me mixed up with someone else. But he won’t leave me alone. He keeps badgering me. If I were you, I’d be careful around him. He’s not stable. In battle, you want to be with someone stable.”

“Why the sudden concern?” she asked.

“Fradl…”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Too late,” she said. “Here he comes.”

“Walk with me.”

But Levin was upon them, and Heshel had to move aside to let him come down. Levin’s lips convulsed into a small caustic smile. “Do you want a break, Yael?” he said. “Go ahead.”

“I’m fine,” she said.

Heshel wanted to take her by the arm, by the hair even, and drag her away, not even knowing what he would say to her, just to be near her, drink in her presence. It was suddenly clear to him. In the last vestiges of night, he saw what he was looking for.

“No, really,” she said, “I’m fine here.”

Briefly he closed his eyes and sighed. Then he jumped up and ran back to his post.

“Wait,” she called after him in the half whisper of those under watch.

He heard her and turned around. She was splendid, standing up, the first rays of sun red-hued on her olive skin, bringing the gleam back into those dark eyes, and rimming her hair, wild and black, with fire.

“Put on your helmet!” he cried back at her. For he could suddenly hear the whistle of shells and the drone of aircraft coming in for the kill.

It was an enormous bombardment, unlike anything they had experienced before. They all hid in the shelters and trenches or under their makeshift bunkers, shaking uncontrollably, their eyes shut tight, their fists clenched over their ears. Those who were caught in the Bet Am were killed within the first moments, hit with incendiaries and a massive barrage of artillery. The fields of alfalfa were ablaze, the bananas were leveled and burning, and the orange groves were hollowed out, the few standing trees leafless and broken. Heshel had seen Moskovitz dive into her foxhole, but after that he could not tell if she was alive or dead. They had no walkie-talkies, and few dared lift a head above the trench line. They stayed put and waited for the silence that would announce the Egyptian assault.

But Heshel couldn’t wait any longer. Three of his men had made it to the post before the bombardment, and he signaled them that he was going out to check on Post 5. He dashed through the trench and then jumped up on solid ground a few yards from Fradl’s post. Standing thus he could see what no one else could
—
the world on fire, the twisted earth studded with body parts like strange new vegetation, the banana trees like fountains of flame, the precious soil charred black with soot, the main house virtually gone from sight, and fire coming up beneath it as if from the ground itself, like demons rising from hell. He saw the plane coming, a German Stuka, and jumped into her foxhole just as it began to strafe.

“Where is she?” he said in horror.

“I don’t know,” Levin replied breathlessly. “There were wounded over by the Bet Am, so she ran to them.”

“Wounded? There’s nothing there. Why did you let her go?” He grabbed Levin by the collar and started shaking him. “She’s supposed to be with you! That’s her job! She’s the PIAT assistant! Why did you let her go? You’re her commanding officer!”

Levin pushed off Rosenheim and collapsed onto the dirt floor. “She wouldn’t listen,” he moaned. Pathetically, he looked up at Rosenheim. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You think I want to be here all by myself?”

Rosenheim was panting, filled with rage, his face contorted and blazing.

“You fucker!” he cried. “I should kill you! You pig!”

He was looming over Levin. Levin was pulling himself back into a protective ball, like a dog…when suddenly he lifted his face and, with swiftly changing expression, eyed Rosenheim with a kind of detachment that turned suddenly into a look of triumph, as if he had just solved a difficult mathematical equation.

“You spoke to me in German,” he said, rising. “And I cowered out of habit, didn’t I? To my old master. Right? I cowered like a sheep, like a dog, to the sound of that German. A voice I have not heard in some time, except in my dreams, every night in fact, in my dreams. And I begged for mercy, didn’t I? And you, with your German, with your very special German
—
my God! Now I do know you! I do know you!”

It was Levin who was now backing Rosenheim into the corner, pressing closer, jabbing at him with his finger, spit flying as his words cut across the burning air. His face was a lantern.

“I remember you! You were not with my friend Rosenheim, you were not in his commando. No. You were his SS keeper! You were
der Buchhalter,
yes? The bookkeeper of Majdanek! I remember you! Counting shoes! Counting eyeglasses! Counting wedding rings! Counting gold fillings! Yes, I remember you! Marching out to greet the new shipments
—
of food for you and gas for us! Strolling up and down the boxcars you had us load with hair and trousers, shoes and silk underwear, making little checkmarks on your bill of lading, stopping only to kick some mud from your fine boots, all that loot on its way to Berlin and Leiden! What a hero you were! How could I
ever
forget you? What? Nothing to say now, Mr. Palmach man? Skulking about the warehouses, watching us from afar, afraid almost to show your face
—
but I saw your face! We all saw your face. Oh…what’s this? Are you going to kill one more Jew now? Haven’t had enough?”

For Rosenheim had pulled the cocking lever on his Sten, and was pointing the barrel directly at Levin’s head. “You can’t tell anyone,” he said.

Levin laughed.

“Why, because you’ll tell them I was a
Kapo
? And a trustee at that. And a cruel one? All right, I was. So what? Who will believe you, and who will care? How do you think half these people survived? By being nice? Don’t you recall anything of what you did to us? What you turned us into? Is it all to be forgotten with a change of name? Is it all to be washed away with a few good deeds? Unless of course you’re a spy…Oh!” His eyes brightened even more. “What else could it be? How else do they know where to hit us so easily? Oh yes
—
and at the glorious battle of Deir Yassin
—
where
we
lost more than they did
—
attacked on every side!
—
gunmen hiding behind children, women firing from beneath their burkas…. But you
—
you could see only their suffering and not ours. A spy!”

Around them the sky was on fire, the bombs falling, yet they were standing up in the foxhole, their heads and shoulders visible above the embankment, eye to eye, the Sten pointed at Levin’s face, a bit of oil dripping from the end of the barrel.

He had to decide what to do.

Suddenly there was silence.

The bombardment had ceased.

Everyone would now be running to their posts
—
in one second the place would be a beehive, soldiers and kibbutzniks scurrying along the trench lines and across the fields.

“It’s now or never,” sneered Levin.

It would be now, he decided. His finger tightened.

But then Levin’s head was gone. A fountain of red shot up from his shoulders, three feet into the air, raining down on Heshel and covering him in hot, sticky blood.

“Tanks!” someone cried.

Levin’s headless body fell upon him, propelling him into the dirt and out of harm’s way. But he was confused, disoriented. He hadn’t fired. Hadn’t shot him. He squirmed out from under Levin. There was no head to be seen anywhere.

“Oh dear God!” It was Moskovitz, jumping into the foxhole.

“It was the tank,” Heshel muttered.

“Oh my God,” she said again. Her hands were shaking, but she bent down and covered the body with a tarp. Then she caught her breath. “Where’s the PIAT?”

“The PIAT? What PIAT?”

She tried to calm him. “We have to stop the tanks, Heshel! I need the PIAT.”

He saw it sticking out from under Levin’s feet.

“You’ve got to get back to your unit,” she said to Heshel.

“I’ll stay with you.”

“No,” she said firmly. “I don’t need you here. They need you.”

But she pulled him close until there was no space between them, not an inch, so close he could feel her breath enter his own open mouth, and she looked into his eyes, and then, with sudden, swift resolve, she kissed him, she kissed him now as she had once before under the fragrant, blossoming orange trees, holding his blood-soaked face in her hands, and fitting her lips over his to feed him the love of her mouth.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Now, go,”

He did as he was told. With soaring spirits, he ran back to his men, firing as he went in the direction of the advancing Egyptians.