Displaced Persons (9 page)

Still, Pavel had wanted an American for the wedding ceremony of his sister. He had faith in the Americans. He brought in his future brother-in-law and his friend to stay in his house a few days, and organized for them papers—legitimate ones!—and new ration cards. In gratitude, Marek offered to make arrangements—he had contacts. A lady friend knew some of the chaplains in the American zone in Bremen. Pavel did not want to ask too many questions. What a surprise for his sister it would be, a symbol of the new world to bring her into marriage. And as for entertainment, Chaim seemed to know a teacher connected with a group of musicians, hungry people who would be happy to travel out to the house for a reasonable fee.

F
ELA DID NOT LOVE
to cook. She loved to bake. Three sponge cakes and a platterful of cookies had been ready since early in the morning, and there was nothing for her to do but boil the cabbage for the chopped meat. Pavel had expressed a wish for stuffed cabbage, but
she was doubtful about the quality of the meats he had managed to find. The strong heat interrupted her concentration. Truth be told, she thought it a waste to cook a meat dish for the guests. She did not want to postpone any longer, but she thought that instead of beginning the cabbage she could perhaps work on to a small rack of turnovers with the basket of apples Chaim had brought home the night before. To keep the meal kosher, she could substitute a bit of oil for the butter in the pastry. Or should she just forgo the meat altogether? There was not so much that one could be sure every guest would have enough. Would it not be better to avoid the awkwardness and shame, to present the guests instead with the products of the flour of which they had plenty? No meat at all! It would be easy to sell it again before it went bad. Turnovers, cheese puffs, even another sponge cake, these would be plentiful, and would keep if for some reason the guests did not finish.

Sweating a bit as she sliced the apples, Fela heard the door open and close, Pavel’s nervous chatter, Chaim’s laugh, the voice that quavered between boyhood and adulthood. A stream of humid summer air pushed through the kitchen, mixing with the odor of warm cake. Kuba was not to arrive for another two hours, and the guests would be even later. There was time.

She had prepared for Hinda a little area in Chaim’s bedroom to arrange her hair and to wash, with a little soap and cream and tweezers, all from the cosmetology class she took in the camp. Fela would dress in her own room. They did not feel a warmth toward each other. Hinda was still a girl. A bitter girl, but a girl. She had never been with a man at all, Fela surmised, not even Kuba. No doubt Hinda disapproved of the morals in the house, but Fela thought she could detect in Hinda’s manner not just disdain but awe. Hinda’s body had suffered. Hinda had experienced what all of them had experienced and more, the emptying of the mind of any thought unrelated to physical survival, the obsession, the mania of hunger and cold—and no doubt
beatings, perhaps even tortures. But Hinda did not have what Fela had, a memory inside the body, a hidden cabinet of womanhood. And there was no one for Hinda to ask, to consult, no one with whom she could worry and laugh, as she might have with a sister, or a mother, even a girlfriend from school. Yes, thought Fela. Inside that coldness, Hinda felt awe. She resented Fela the way a child would resent an adored brother’s blooming new wife, and Fela was acting, after all, the part of Pavel’s wife.

More than acting. Fela felt that she was not performing a lie but living another life, a life next to her old one, the life of a twin. Sometimes she thought Pavel could see the twin next to her—in the evenings, when they smoked, or at night, when he touched the belly roughened by childbirth. But if he saw, he chose to ignore the twin. She did not ask him questions, and he did not ask her. She knew he assumed she had been married legitimately, by a rabbi, and she did not discourage his assumption. It seemed to her she had not been his first love, either. He too had a twin. And the twins watched them, each night, each morning, as they drew aside the curtains in their wallpapered bedroom or as they wrapped their heads in scarves before riding to their English class in the camp. Her mouth and face and hands felt new to her. She occasionally felt a flash of unsureness, as if the body working at eating and lovemaking was not completely hers.

But now it was she, Fela, cooking, baking, moving her hands through a busy but clean kitchen. She had crossed the border into this new body, after a time of being stateless, after a time of being no one, alone with only a memory of who she was, daughter, sister, lover, mother. She would pass into this new life. It was all right. She had crossed the border.

T
HE MUSICIANS ARRIVED ALL
at once, in a line, almost marching. A man with a black-market violin—he once had played cello; a woman
flutist, whose cheeks seemed puffed for a trumpet; and two men with identical wide guitars. Guitars, of all things! Pavel was not sure he had seen one outside of pictures. Rayzele had mentioned some kind of horn, a quiet horn, she said, but no one appeared with one. Still, this was more than satisfactory.

Pavel was wearing a plain dark jacket and trousers, made from thin Swiss wool. The others would arrive in their charity suits from America, used and mismatched. Pavel’s shirt was pressed stiff, and his hair had been clipped in the barbershop of the DP camp. The red-and-brown skullcap he wore had been knitted by Rayzele, a gift.

Waiting for the rabbi and guests as the women prepared the table and the musicians took a bite to eat, Pavel and Chaim played cards. Chaim was good, but not so good. Pavel took pity occasionally, dropping a card he could see the boy wanted.

The men with guitars chatted with Kuba. The flutist held back, nervously cutting bits of dark bread into her hand and hopping them into her mouth, like a bird.

The rabbi arrived in a soldier’s uniform, with three other men from the American zone in Bremen. Pavel jumped up when Rayzele came to tell him. It was starting! He felt a chill of excitement. Not warmth in his heart, not quite, but movement, a flutter of leaves at his ribs. A marriage. It seemed like a folktale, a story from outside his lifetime. But no! It was a normal event, part of the everyday.

The men withdrew to the sitting room downstairs to prepare the contract. The rabbi sat himself down at the center of the narrow table, Pavel standing behind him. Had he ever been witness to a signing? Perhaps as a child he had seen something like this, with the door ajar, the thin curtains flapping from the autumn garden, the smell of chicken boiling in the kitchen, the taste of apple cake stuck to the roof of his mouth, he had taken a piece without asking and no one had seen. His grandfather—

He called to Chaim. The boy should see.

But something was happening. A mutter, a flurry. From his place
behind the table, Pavel floated back from his grandfather’s house to the room in Celle, to the half-frowning faces staring at the rabbi, whose words Pavel could not quite make out.

He concentrated. The rabbi was saying: Yes, yes, but how do I know? What do I know about them?

Pavel forced his mind on the figure of Marek, who observed the rabbi and Pavel with a weary sneer.

The rabbi went on, in stilted Yiddish, with a few Russian words thrown in: They say we are in the family’s house, but there are no documents. How should I know that her mother was Jewish? And we have nothing on the man, who looks as Jewish as the Pope. Now how can I perform—

Excuse me—Pavel interrupted—excuse me—

You understand—

Excuse me! Pavel turned to face the front of the man. He peered at the rabbi’s mouth, as if to change the words coming out. What are you saying? You are saying you don’t think we are Jewish? After all we’ve been through?

It’s not what I think, it’s the issue of documents—

Documents! We—documents—

Calm, calm, whispered Chaim.

But Pavel could not breathe. The words in Yiddish came out in chipped pebbles. My sister—how—brother—musicians—so much food! Around him the men were still, watching him.

And then, from the silence, soft tones of that odd sound, English. It was Chaim’s voice, the voice of a growing boy, and his words seemed to Pavel to flow easily: “Perhaps, Rabbi, you do not understand. Our documents are ashes. In smoke. In the sky.”

The rabbi’s face turned stiff. “Yes, yes. Of course.”

Pavel breathed again.

But the rabbi continued, returning to Yiddish. It’s a question of my—you know, I must prove that I know, and how can I know? There
is no proof. No certificates. I understand, but how can I show it? I have certain obligations, not just to the rabbinate, to the army—

Come, Mr. Chaplain, said Pavel, forcing a smile. Sit with me for a glass of schnapps. I have a fresh bottle for you to take back to your family in America—

No thank you.

Or to your friends in the barracks—

I said no.

Pavel looked down and saw his fingers folding and unfolding. The muscles in his arms had extended. He knew that his chin was out and his lips were trembling over his teeth. This was impossible! The musicians were here. He had paid a small fortune, for travel, for food for what was it?—thirty guests! God in heaven would laugh if he still had the nerve. A rabbi, an American, but an idiot.

This is impossible! Pavel croaked aloud. What you are saying is impossible!

Pavel, Pavel. Fela had trotted into the sitting room, pulled him away from the rabbi, pulled him into the front hall. His right arm was raised in an L, his fist was a stone. His voice was a whirring river trapped in his mouth. Pavel.

She is getting married today. He shook the words out of his mouth. The musicians are here. All this food!

Yes, yes, said Fela. Something will work out.

He won’t take a gift! Nothing! Americans! So rich and so stupid, stupid!

Pavel, we can have the party today and the wedding tomorrow. Or someone else—we don’t need a rabbi—

Absolutely not! Who ever heard of the party first? Hinda is getting married today, and by this rabbi, if I have to kill him.

You will not kill anyone. Fela’s voice rolled flat, exhausted. Now is not for killing, Pavele. She pulled him down to the sofa, smoothing her dark blue skirt. Please, Pavel. Now is for thinking.

They sat in silence. Pavel was shaking. Fela’s hand was rubbing his arm while she whispered at him: Shh. Shh. Now is for thinking. So? Let us think.

S
IMA THOUGHT HER MOUTH
would make steam when she exhaled, but she was wrong. It was strange: in the hardest winter of her childhood, her breath had come out of her mouth like smoke from a chimney, white clouds that took more than a moment to vanish. But here, where everything was heat, the perspiration on her skin, the tears in her eyes, even her burning hair, her mouth could not make steam. She told her mother of her discovery—but her mother lay still, her face toward the corner of the sheet that separated them from the others, the coolest part of the oven. It had been three months in the barracks already, and in that time the health Sima’s mother had regained in the camp hospital had faded. She spent the painful August afternoons half-undressed, a wet cloth across her head and another on her neck. She was weak, her father said to Sima, very weak, and Sima was to be quiet around her, not to move so much, not to generate more heat in their small space.

Sima rinsed her mouth and swallowed from the container of potable water her father had brought for them at dawn. She stepped outside the sheet that sheltered their possessions and climbed down the barracks steps. She knew where to find her father. He had a card game that began in the late afternoons, when the men would emerge from the shade of their dwellings. Some of them had been in the refugee camp six months, nine months, a year, trapped behind the barbed wire that surrounded the low buildings.

It’s Berele’s daughter, someone said. Coming to help her father win.

I need the help, said Berel. Believe me.

Sima believed him. His worn blue shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, and his undershirt was yellow with dirt and sweat. But he concentrated on the damp cards in his hand. A red queen, a seven of spades. Sima was seven. She smiled.

Don’t give me away, said Berel. Under the metal table he crossed his feet: a good hand.

Our mother is resting, Sima said, to no one in particular. She is weak.

Sshh! Sima! said Berel.

Our mother, chuckled a man at the table. There it is, Berele. Still tied to your
mammele.
She loves you to play cards, mm?

A man does not let his wife stop his leisure, said Berel. He put down his hand: three queens, a row of spades, three kings. Aha! You see?

Sima watched him grinning, happy.

Now have your mother tell me our luck hasn’t changed, Berel chuckled. Hmm, Simale? If this doesn’t tell her, what does?

It’s the boy teacher, a man said. Sima turned around. Chaim walked with a quick thin step in spite of the heat, dressed in a slim blue suit. He looked different outside of the classroom, bigger and more sure. She backed into her father’s arms, flushed with sudden shyness. He came toward them.

Pan Makower, he said. I would like to ask you a favor.

B
EREL HAD NOT FOUND
another opportunity for office work, but now that he had an assignment in the camp kitchens, he could convince Dvora that he had the luxury to sing on the Sabbath. She did not give too great an argument. Perhaps she was relieved that he had accepted a bit of religion, this late in life. He sang at the large Sabbath services at the Roundhouse and once performed Yiddish folk tunes at the close of a short concert in the camp.

He came into his family space in the barracks to tell Dvora of Chaim’s offer. A Jewish wedding outside the camp confines. A man who wanted a traditional service, a cantor’s voice, of course Berel was not officially a cantor, but who worried about such things now? He would first discuss it with them at the Roundhouse, and of course all three of them would go. Unless Dvora felt too ill, and he would just take Sima—