Displaced Persons (21 page)

I can’t think of anything bigger.

Yes you can, said her mother. Think of something very big, something that takes a long time to come true. You have to give these things time. And you can keep it a secret.

What had Sima wished for? She could not have been more than five, and thirty years had passed. Of course she did not remember. But in the end her father had returned, and they had lived, and they had come to Palestine. Was that what she had wished for? It would have been like her, taking her mother’s cue. A country, a real home, no need to run from anywhere. Absolutely, that would have been just like her as a small child, wishing her mother’s wish without even knowing it.

And then, of course, it would have been like her to move away anyway, to leave her mother and father, just for the love of a man.

For a time, Chaim could leave her parents’ apartment flushed with an enthusiasm for living in the heat, working with his hands even as he studied, safe, almost safe, in control, as Berel would remind him, of his own destiny. But the optimism would leave him. He did not feel in control of his destiny. He had no parents to cling to, and he felt a constant numbing fear. And Sima felt the fear too, of the monthly calls into the reserves, of their Arab neighbors whose poverty and resentment seemed to accuse them of some ongoing crime. Chaim felt it more, he felt it even of his own people in uniform—it scratched at him from inside, so much that he confessed it to her once in a while. He wanted to go.

And at that time she had not felt Israel to be her home. Her father’s attachment to a country, her mother’s too—perhaps this was what they had in common, this was a dream they had shared, for all their differences in temperament—they had been devoted, accepting, even eager for this new life, where her mother cleaned houses and her father cleaned milk vats and Sima—younger, stronger—cleaned of
fices. Really, what did it matter to them? Her mother still had vanity of course—she bought a pair of gloves that she used for the sole purpose of putting on her nylon stockings without tearing them, stockings she wore twice a year on the High Holidays—but for Sima, the pain of her job and her ugly hands and her two worn dresses was overwhelming. She had worked hard to look cheerful and pleased for her parents, and to push down the darkness inside her in front of her new friends, and even in front of her oldest friend, a hard girl she had met somewhere in Russia, then found again in Rehovot in the first years. Sima had worked hard to ignore the darkness, to make her outside light.

Her mother had had difficulty with Hebrew—at least her father had his boyhood schooling—but to Sima it was just another job, learning the new language, the experiments with her teeth and tongue to imitate well, to laugh properly, to slide in like a native. A false native. She always felt some anxiety in Hebrew, as if about to be caught, recognized, accused: Sheep! Soap! It had happened to her maybe once or twice when she had arrived, the mockery of schoolmates for being among the weak of the diaspora, the old Jews, the ones who let themselves be slaughtered for fear of fighting. The name-calling had happened only once or twice, maybe three times at most, but it was enough.

By now she spoke English very well. She spoke English to her daughter. She had lived in New York twelve years, longer than in any other place in her life. And soon, she felt, it was inevitable, she would speak it better than the languages she had been born into but did not speak outside her home. It was something to be proud of, her English, and it made her excited, the ability to move things in and out in a new language, the language the world thought of as powerful and important. In her head sometimes she would search for a Hebrew or Yiddish word, once in a while even something in Polish or Russian. Occasionally something indeterminate and jumbled, a private language whose sound she could not name but which was the language inside her, the language of a lost place, would bubble up. But her mouth spoke a
careful and lilting English. And even this was something to be proud of, the accent people took to be European, of uncertain origin but sophisticated. Even at the beginning, sleeping on the sofa bed at the Queens home of Fela and Pavel, she had felt herself an object of admiring curiosity. It was more than her youth, she thought, but she had responded by acting young and cheerful, flirting with Larry and painting rouge on Helen’s cheeks, Pavel standing at the threshold of the living room, watching in silence, happy.

Chaim had felt it too, she thought. Not just in the Mandls’ house, with Fela touching his arm constantly as he washed dishes with her, but everywhere. When they had come to America it had been a pride to be from Israel. All the things she had not felt when she lived in Rehovot, she felt in New York, people impressed with her service in the army, with what they presumed to be her knowledge of the land. Not like now, all the criticism, all the judgment. That’s right, feel sorry for the Arabs! Well, she had been poor too, poorer yet, without a home either, without anything! And who had spoken out for her?

S
HE GOT UP TO
stretch her legs, use the bathroom. Seven hours left. When she came back to her seat she had to tap awake the woman on the aisle. She looked at her watch again. Six hours and fifty minutes left. She had had no communication with anyone in her family for the last six and a half hours.

She sat down, rustled under her blanket. To be alone was a terrible thing. In Russia the people who had their families with them lived; those who came there alone starved, fell ill, took risks that led to arrest again and again. It amazed Sima that her husband could have emerged alive out of Poland alone as he was, without a friend or a brother to accompany him.

It amazed her, and yet she forgot it all the time. Chaim’s face had
a smooth health, his blue eyes had a flatness that made him seem untouched. Like the sea, her mother had said all those years ago, and Sima had felt a thrill that her boyfriend had looks worthy of comparison to something so grand and enveloping. But in time Sima thought: Not the sea, but the sky. Not something she could dive into, searching and breathing, not something she could cross. Unreachable.

Chaim had opened up to Sima’s father. Berel had remembered him from the DP camp in Belsen. When Chaim walked through the door the first time, on one of Sima’s weekends home from the army, Berel had given him a sharp look that Sima took to be suspicion. But it was recognition: two questions later, Berel knew for sure that Chaim was the young man who had worked as an aide in Sima’s camp classroom. Sima had been surprised—it had changed her view of him. Chaim had taught her when she was a child, he had stopped her from crying, he had held her hand on outings. The excitement she felt when she saw his slim frame now seemed to be part of something deeper, fate or destiny.

In those days Sima had known nothing about him. He was her boyfriend, a swaggerer like all of them, but also kind, quiet in private, gentle. The cocky walk seemed to her an imitation of his fellow soldiers, a public gesture to show he had adapted to the desert. He was from Europe, of course—their shared accent in Hebrew had made them exchange a smile when they first met, at a café one night, among a large group of young people. So few in her group were from Europe—so few of his friends, too. No one talked about such things then; they tried to blend in. But their little cadences, softer than native Hebrew, slower, less confident, made them feel they already knew each other without saying so much; and alone, outside the hearing of native Israelis, they could speak in Yiddish.

They spoke in Yiddish at Sima’s home too, and with Chaim Sima did not feel the embarrassment of her mother’s shaky Hebrew, her father’s pointed ventures into Yiddish, diaspora phrases he uttered just
to irritate her native friends. She could see how Chaim felt special, touched to be recognized, moved by the ease with which her parents welcomed him into their tiny home. He became warm, relaxed. Questioned, he told fragments of his history to Sima’s mother and father that Sima herself had never heard. And even as she felt driven to hear them, she hated hearing them, hated their light, harsh detail. Her father would be laughing, and her mother too: Chaim in a girl’s dress, wobbling on low heels; Chaim managing to be fed and sheltered for a few weeks by a brothel; Chaim wandering through the forest and coming upon an isolated town, convincing a Pole with an enormous dog to take him in. They really were very funny snippets—the only time, before or since, she had heard him say anything longer than a sentence or two about his past—but Sima had begun to cry a little. The other three, caught up in the tales of escape and trickery, did not notice.

S
HE AWOKE SUDDENLY AS
the plane began to shake, her neck stiff against the window shade. Four hours left. She heard the coffee cart being wheeled down the aisle and dug into her purse for a washed apple she had wrapped in a paper napkin.

She wondered whether his surgeon would make an appearance. Avishai. Probably not. She hadn’t even noticed him until lunch one day with Netta, not far from the hospital last summer. Her father had sent her away, telling her he needed to rest. She had been relieved to go, a chance to gossip with a childhood friend.

I think I am the only person I know who does not sleep with men other than her husband, Netta had said.

You are one of two, at least, said Sima.

That’s different, you’re in America.

There must be others. What about Yael?

You’re joking, right? Every time she goes to a convention there’s something else. Being a doctor—you can’t imagine the opportunity.

Sima giggled a little.

What, don’t you think about Avishai? The man’s attractive. And the way he dotes on your father—surely—

What, flirt with the doctor while my father is so sick? I walk outside the hospital and am shocked to see people walking, laughing, buying groceries.

I’m shocked you don’t notice people looking at you—your clothes—

Netta!

Really, you are so fresh, Sima, and pale—

No, no, no! You’re making me feel—I feel like locusts are about to come down on my head.

The sky doesn’t open every time someone gets cancer.

I know, said Sima, I know. I have to tell you—it’s strange to hear you say the word. In America they whisper it.

You don’t think Chaim does it?

What, whisper?

No! Sleep with women!

Netta! It’s different there. You just said so yourself.

Oh, yes.

Besides, he’s a man who doesn’t like anything in his world to be upset or overturned. He likes things calm. And believe me, if I found out something like that, a storm from the sky would not be—it would not be—

They were giggling.

Really, though, said Sima. She thought seriously for a moment. The truth is, I don’t think so. I really don’t—we—she stopped, then began again. I do wish he would be a little more hysterical. It’s lonely to be the only one screaming at Lola.

Well, I don’t have that problem, said Netta. Uri is the screamer. I think the children are angry with me for how quiet I am.

They are right. Lola is the same! She tries to see how long he can ignore her.

So it makes Chaim a good cardplayer.

Ha! Good liar, that’s what.

You have to lie to keep things peaceful, said Netta. Even if just to keep the car running smoothly.

I’m not so good at it. When Lola used to fall, she would look at me to see how terrible my face looked. That’s how she knew how loud to scream. Chaim could cover it up more.

Netta laughed. My kids just screamed no matter what.

Chaim had a habit of closing his face. After twelve years of marriage Sima could occasionally detect that moment when his face was half-open. And just as suddenly it would shut itself. It made her more attentive to his every blink and twitch—it made everyone more attentive to him. But once in a while, once in a while, could he not react? Could he not betray himself even to her? Could he not see how the calm bothered her? He could see through everything else. She still listened for the elevator stopping at their floor around dinnertime, bringing him home.

Walking down the hospital corridor, she had seen Dr. Avishai walking out of her father’s room and felt her face grow pink and warm. Ridiculous! A word from Netta and already she was distracted. But he did have a nice chest—not too broad, but fit—she loved that part of a man’s body, Chaim’s too, Chaim’s too.

She had entered her father’s hospital room smiling. But Berel’s face was stiff. Where were you?

Hmm?

Did you think I had already died? Underneath the sarcasm, Sima could detect something new: a desperation, his voice rough, as if he were trying not to cry.

I—said Sima. But you told me—

What did I tell you? I suppose you think I also told you to move across three oceans, to keep my granddaughter from me—

Sima’s shock stopped any tears. Her mouth was open.

You dare to laugh at me?

I wasn’t—I’m not—

Yes, you are. Now Berel was weeping openly. You are, and you are right.

Sima sat down, grabbed his hand. Her lips were trembling; her hands were shaking; her father’s was calm, a little cool.

Sima, he whispered after a moment. I am empty.

She looked at her father’s wet face, skin hanging from his jawbones. He had stopped crying, he was still, but he did not bother to wipe his cheeks.

Sima waited another moment, forcing herself to swallow and breathe. If he saw even the beginning of a tear, he would—she did not know what he would do.

Finally she answered: Maybe you want something to eat. I bought some halvah near the café. She reached into her purse. Just a
bissl
, she said.

Hmm, said her father, watching her unwrap her little package. Have you broken a rule for me?

Perhaps.

Ah, he said. He couldn’t help smiling. All right. Of all things, this won’t kill me. So when I go, you tell the doctor it wasn’t the halvah, and even if it was, I absolved you.

Don’t tell jokes, please, not about—

Who said it was a joke?

I
N THE AIRPLANE LAVATORY,
she washed her hands twice to rid her skin of the odor from that terrible beef they served. She hadn’t even eaten any, just opened the plastic wrapper and pushed it to the far end of her tray once she smelled it. Her hands looked dry, and the
soap smelled like artificial cedar, terrible, but it made her feel better. When she returned to her seat they had already taken the tray away.