Louisa Read online

  Bela replied, “He didn’t sing because he loves God. He sang because he was afraid.”

  Later that night, when Dori, Nathan, and Bela sat in the kitchen eating leftovers and drinking coffee, Nathan said to Bela, “You shouldn’t have encouraged him. He’s going to see plenty of things here that Rabbi Hillel couldn’t have imagined.”

  Bela laughed and thought, not for the first time, that Nathan was an ass. He exchanged a complicit look with Dori and said, “Mouse, where’d you come up with the poem about the woman watchman? It’s awfully bad.”

  Stiffly, Dori replied, “I wrote it.”

  With the coffee cup in one hand, Bela rose from his seat and stood on one leg. He said, “Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.”

  Someone challenged Rabbi Hillel to summarize the laws of the Torah while standing on one leg, Bela wrote me, and that was what he said. It’s harder than it sounds. I told Nathan that we need to sum up the movement the same way and he accused me of wanting to turn everything into a slogan. Meanwhile, Dori was still put out because of what I said about her poem, and because I won’t call her Arielle.

  I wrote Bela that, as his conscience, it was my place to inform him that his mother didn’t want to go to Palestine and neither did his sister or her husband or my husband or my son, so he should stop badgering us about it. We would find Hebrew names absurd, and we had no intention of standing on one leg.

  One letter caught me like a blow. He had been wounded, not badly, but enough to keep him from a visit we’d been counting on that spring. I’m writing you instead of my mother or Adele because you’ll know how to break the news. It isn’t serious, but I think my knee will make me more useless than ever. I’m turning into an old man. Handling firearms was never my strong point, and they shot first.

  I wrote back: They?

  A letter cannot consist of a single word, and my thoughts flowed in two directions. One took me, to be honest, straight to Palestine. How hard would it be to take a train and then a boat and find myself there? How much harder than staying here and not knowing how much of what he said was true? He might have gangrene for all I knew. Then there were Aunt Moni and Adele. Who did he think I was, to tell them?

  Who did he think I was? Someone strong enough to write back, in rational German: Can you still stand on one leg? Your mother will be hysterical, of course, but Adele is tougher than you give her credit for. Her husband’s probably rich enough to buy an airplane and fly you to some hospital in Switzerland. As for my son, I know he would have liked to have seen a knee with a hole in it. Janos would have measured the hole. Since you have not met any of these people, you will have to take my word for it, just as I will take your word that this isn’t serious. We have to trust each other, don’t we? We have no choice.

  Of course, that letter wouldn’t do at all. The last line gave away too much. It went into the box.

  GABOR CAME IN from school one day and caught me reading those letters. He was eight by then, and quick, and I couldn’t manage to gather them together before he grabbed a page. “Did you write this?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said. I fought the urge to take it from him. By then, I knew it would only whet his curiosity. “I practiced my handwriting years ago, so I would copy out stories from books.”

  “Why did you take it out now?”

  “Paper’s expensive,” I said. “I thought I could use some of the empty sides.”

  Gabor picked up a few more pages, turned them this way and that, and said, “No, Momma. They’re covered all over.”

  “It was a good story,” I said, without really thinking about it, and I took my son on my lap and said, “It’s about a magic bear, a shaggy bear who found some magic bread. And as long as you ate the bread, time would stop, no one would get old, nothing would be lost. But it was such good bread, you had to eat it all up.”

  “I’m too old for your stories. I tell the stories now,” Gabor said. He was also too old for my lap. His bushy hair made me sneeze, and his long legs took up most of the couch and knocked a lot of pages to the floor. That was fine. He wasn’t reading them. Then he told me a meandering tale about an airplane, and he contradicted everything he said without apology, in the way of an eight-year-old who didn’t need to make sense to anyone but himself.

  3

  LOUISA’S PROGRESS struck the Israelis as miraculous. After less than two months in the transient camp, she spoke Hebrew without a trace of an accent. In the hat and shorts she looked less like a newcomer than an awkward, eager boy, and it probably seemed like a natural thing to the North Africans that she should take a seat in the cab beside the foreman. Leaning her elbow out the window, stray hair loose below the hat-brim, she would smile down at the black, dust-covered laborers who were left behind. She gave them a little wave.

  “Queenly,” one woman said to me in Yiddish. “She wasn’t so queenly when she was eating grass. Must have been down on her luck by then. No one would have her. On her hands and knees like a dog. My husband almost shot her, but she looked too low to waste a bullet on.”

  Thankfully, most of the Europeans were gone now. They had been replaced by a group of Egyptians who did not take much notice of Louisa or, for that matter, of me. They were first-rate black marketers, and three sisters did a lively business in pink scented hand-cream. The place was beginning to smell like a bordello. I would pull my blanket over my head and write in the little notebook for Levin.

  The camp personnel were fond of Louisa, particularly the language teachers. One day, when I was eating one of those strange cucumber salads at a table alone, a big, homely woman pushed herself right against me and began babbling in Hebrew, clearly beside herself with enthusiasm, and I could hear Louisa’s name bob up and down on the flow of nonsense. She seemed to expect some response. I kept a bit of cucumber and mayonnaise on my fork suspended between us and let time accumulate. Then I put it in my mouth and swallowed.

  I did not see her go, but as she pushed back her chair, I did hear her say, clearly: “Sabonim.”

  DOV LEVIN HAD sent a letter to Kibbutz Gan Dahlia and another old kibbutz called Beit Shemesh that had been established not far from Safed in 1908. A week had passed with no reply. Perhaps to get my mind off waiting, one afternoon, Levin found me coming out of the barracks and said, “Wear this.” He presented me with one of those little white cloth caps. “It’s getting towards summer now. Hot sun. I don’t want you fainting on me.”

  “Why should I faint?” I asked him. “Are you going to show me something shocking?”

  “No,” he said. “Only my daughter.”

  I took the hat. It had a frilled brim and little strings to tie under my chin, and it was so clean and white and I was so grim and dark that the effect must have been comic. Or tragic.

  “Levin,” I said, “why am I meeting your daughter?”

  “Miért nem? Some medical staff are visiting today. I told her about you.”

  I squinted below the brim of the hat. “She’s a doctor?”

  “A psychiatrist,” said Levin. “Trained in Zurich.”

  He led me towards the medical tent they had set up on the outskirts of the camp. A thought occurred to me, and I stopped dead. I said, “You’re not having me committed, are you, Levin?”

  Levin didn’t smile. “You don’t think you’re costing the state enough already?”

  “You must admit, I’m a pretty interesting case,” I said.

  “You’d be surprised,” he said, “how ordinary you are, Nora. Now come on.” We pushed through the crowd to the shaded area where men had stripped down to their boxers and women’s dresses were slung across a curtain. I hadn’t a clue what a psychiatrist would do under those circumstances, and when we found his daughter, she looked equally bewildered, holding a clipboard, standing between two hampers of towels.

  She shook my hand and said something in Hebrew. After one look at my face, she switched to German. “Entschuldigung, Frau Gratz. The day has been endless. Lunch is ou
t of the question, a break is out of the question, life is out of the question.” Her manner put me in mind at once of her father, as did her homely, sheep-like features.

  “Nami,” said Levin, “nothing is completely out of the question.”

  “For example.” She thrust her clipboard at her father. “You see this? They want me to treat people who have been in the camps, ordinary, unhappy people. And their symptoms. You know, some of them steal cutlery. One woman hoards sanitary napkins and she hasn’t menstruated in six years.”

  Levin threw her a gentle look of warning, which she shrugged away. I didn’t begrudge her the need to blow off a little steam, and I was enjoying the shade of the tent and the girl’s excellent, Pesti-accented German.

  Then she said, “Frau Gratz, do you know who I’d like to meet? Your daughter-in-law.”

  The request took me by surprise. “What would you want with her?” I asked, maybe a little harshly.

  Nami said, “My special field of study is the psychological foundation of pure altruism. I don’t mean resistance. Resistance is a completely understandable response to save your own skin. I mean selflessness.”

  “Galut sentimentality,” said Levin, with affection. “In my own daughter.”

  “Not sentimentality. It seems to me common sense that altruism has a completely selfish foundation. To create a whole self. To become a mature, productive citizen. I’d like to write up something for the popular press. And then we could arrange a tour.”

  Levin laughed out loud. “Nami, kedvesem, if you put that poor girl on a tour through Israel, she’ll have to travel in a cage like a circus animal or she’ll be torn to pieces. You haven’t heard those Poles go at her.”

  Nami sighed and rubbed her hands straight up through her thick hair in a gesture identical to her father’s. “There is no excuse for prejudice and barbarity. Frau Gratz,” she said to me, “I am serious. My father’s told me all about Louisa, and to me it seems like a typical example of displacement. Survivors look at her and see Germany. They can’t believe in innocence anymore. But if they knew her story, she could be a symbol of—” She paused, and proudly found the right word. “A symbol of redemption.”

  “Don’t get out of hand,” her father said.

  Nami was determined. “If she could tour the Aretz, if she could sing—just imagine that girl singing songs by men like your own son, men who have been martyred—”

  “You don’t want to hear her sing,” I said.

  Nami frowned. “But it would keep his name alive—don’t you understand?”

  “Nora,” Levin said in Hungarian, “do you want to go somewhere and sit down?”

  I continued in German. “I want to make clear,” I said, “to your daughter the psychiatrist that she doesn’t want to hear Louisa sing.”

  “But the power of music,” Nami said, “the universal language—”

  “Yes, music is a universal language, Doctor Levin. How much do you want to understand?”

  “Sit down, Nora,” Levin said again, but I did not sit down.

  From our corner by the hampers, I could hear the mingled babble of those waiting to see real doctors, people who could heal them. There were distant groans of men whose bodies were pressed on sore points, and from far off, a sound unmistakable, a woman in labor.

  Nami said, “Frau Gratz, I know I can’t fathom what you’ve been through.” She cocked her head and smiled at me as though I were a child. “Surely, music is a way to heal us and bring us all together.”

  Then I laughed. At that moment, medical personnel pushed in and started taking clean towels out of the hampers, and I kept on laughing, not quite enough to sound hysterical, mind you, but enough to meet the eye of a middle-aged lady doctor with blond hair who looked me full in the face for long enough for me to catch my breath.

  I started to call out, but she’d propelled herself towards the mesh gate of the restricted area, and without thinking twice, I followed and almost knocked over a passing technician, who gave me an odd look and produced a telegraphic line of Hebrew.

  By now, the doctor had opened that gate, and it had closed behind her. I gestured towards her. I must have had a really desperate look on my face because the technician called out to her.

  She paused and turned. I got another look at her face through the mesh, and now I had the nerve to shout: “Dori!”

  I had only known the face from the photograph of the chicken coop, but if I’d had doubts before, they were gone now; the small, bright eyes, the round cheeks, even the texture of the hair I’d seen only in black-and-white, though now it was clipped to a professional bob, and if that wasn’t enough, the way she responded to that name as though someone had opened shutters on a window. She took a step towards me.

  I approached the closed mesh with caution and very hesitantly spoke Hungarian. “You don’t know me.”

  After a pause, she answered in the same language. “Is this urgent? I have a baby to deliver.”

  “Yes, it’s urgent,” I said. “Please, don’t disappear. Give me a minute. That’s enough. I’m Bela Hesshel’s cousin.”

  What impact did I think those words would have? She said nothing for a moment, but gave a clearly false glance at her medical chart. Then she said, “My name is Arielle Ginzberg. No one has called me Dori in twenty-five years.”

  My God, what the hell difference could that make to me? I swallowed, trying to clear a path through the lump in my throat. “Couldn’t you tell me, please, where he is?”

  “Where who is?” she asked me, looking at that damned chart again.

  “My cousin. Bela.”

  “No one calls him Bela,” Dori said. “No one’s called him that since ’twenty-three. I think he knows you’re here.”

  “You think?”

  “We forwarded your telegrams. Listen: You’re Nora Csongradi, aren’t you? Could you come back in an hour?” Just as I was recovering from hearing this woman say my maiden name, she tapped her fingers on her clipboard and said, “No, on the other hand, don’t bother. I’ll be gone by then.”

  Almost to myself, I said, “Where is Tilulit?”

  “Not Tilulit,” she said. “Gan Leah. We changed our name in ’forty-two. But you won’t find him there.”

  My hand squeezed around the mesh. It was difficult to get words out. “Where is he?”

  “No one knows. We forwarded your telegrams on through the military. I can’t stay. It’s a difficult delivery, and, frankly, I think you’ve done enough damage already.”

  Dori’s tone remained businesslike to the point where I hadn’t thought I’d heard those last few words correctly, and if I had sense I would have taken what she’d given me, not pressed for more. But I didn’t have sense and so I shouted, “I don’t care what you call yourself and I don’t care what happens because I’m keeping you for five minutes to get a straight answer!”

  “No,” Dori said, maybe lightly. “You don’t care. You didn’t care about his mother or his sister either, or they’d be alive and here in Israel now.” Then, she pulled on her surgical mask, like a pale-green snout, and walked off into the restricted area where I couldn’t follow.

  I lingered by the gate, staring after Dori Csengery until I felt Levin come in behind me. He said, “Well, you’ve had a hell of an afternoon.”

  I still couldn’t move. The sounds of the woman in labor filled the silence again, regular as the whistle and the pistons of a train. It must have been delusional; no real labor could have sounded so steady and musical.

  “Gyere,” Levin said, as though he’d hoped Hungarian would cut through something. “Don’t make an ass of yourself.”

  I let him take my arm and tuck it in his own, something he hadn’t done before. Nami came towards us to lead us to a bench near the canteen. I was too stunned to put up resistance, and I even let her take my hand and look at me earnestly. She made a fuss about getting me a cup of lukewarm water. “You know, I really could help you both.”

  “No more, Nami,” said Lev
in.

  I barely heard any of this, and I was compelled to say, “You don’t understand. Something wonderful has happened. I found the place I’ve been looking for since I got off the boat. And he knows I’m here. My cousin knows I’m here.”

  All of this came out in a soft, cultivated flow of German I didn’t recognize as my own voice. Levin did not release my arm. As for Nami, her eyes grew as penetrating as her father’s because in spite of her earlier manner, she was no fool. She could tell something didn’t add up. Yet I had told the truth.

  That’s what I said to Levin as he walked me back to the barracks. The heat was intense and I felt sheets of sweat slide down my neck and gather between my breasts and thighs.

  “You want to go to Gan Leah tomorrow?” Levin’s voice was gentle.

  I felt my head go white for a moment, and I realized I’d taken off the cotton cap. Levin was holding it. “No,” I said. “To be honest, I don’t think I’d be welcome.”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Levin told me he had received a reply at last from Beit Shemesh. Dully, I took in the news: Yes, Tilulit had changed its name to Gan Leah, after a girl who’d died during a skirmish with the village. Of course, they remembered a Bela Hesshel, but he’d left the kibbutz in ’44 and worked with the Rescue and Relief Committee smuggling Jews from Hungary into Palestine. No one had heard from him for over a year.

  “Yes, that’s what I gathered,” I said.

  “And?”

  “They’re not going to help me,” I said.

  “On the basis of some bitter woman he jilted? That’s probably what that doctor is,” said Levin. “Look, have a rest. Think it over. Have a cup of coffee.”

  “Coffee isn’t what I want,” I said. I had to get out of that office. I didn’t want his help anymore. What had it gotten me?

  His coffee was too sweet. It didn’t make a dent in my headache and didn’t make it any easier to believe what he said about Dori Csengery. Her anger came from somewhere, and the rest of them would share it. Perhaps with cause.