East of Time (17 page)

Time had embarked on a precipitous, irreversible journey, roller-coasting along the brink of a fathomless abyss. A smouldering breeze from the west brought evil tidings. Newspapers, radio and the politicians screamed:
War is imminent!
Yet the government in the land of my birth was more concerned with devoting all its energies to the Jewish question.

One million Jews must go! — to Madagascar, Palestine, Uganda. Janina Prystorowa, a reactionary member of the Sejm (the Polish parliament), in conjunction with her colleague, Father Stanisław Trzeciak, proposed in 1936 that
shechitah
, the ritual kosher slaughter of cattle, contradicted Christian ethics and should be prohibited on the grounds of cruelty.

If this bill became law, argued our city's
Kehila
, the Jewish council on which the anti-religious Bund held a majority at the time, it would not only infringe on the religious beliefs of the Jewish communities, but threaten their very livelihood. Clearly, as in all such cases, the whole thing was just another ploy of the antisemites, a smokescreen for their devilish intentions. After some deliberations a national strike was proclaimed, a strike that would bring all industry, commerce and education in our country to a total standstill.

I vividly recall the day of the general strike, 17 September 1937. The Jewish quarters were galvanized, and the foreboding whisper of an unbelievable daring, fraught with great danger, hovered in the air. Groups of Bundist militia waited concealed in nooks and shadows, prepared to respond to any provocation, while the mounted police, their presence visible and their bayonets fixed, patrolled the streets, ready to protect the local hooligans.

But as the day negotiated its last traces of light, and evening dropped like an impatient drape, and the slanting dimness of the forest of puffed-out factory chimneys resumed its cheerless eternal vigil, my heart sank. I watched the Bundist militia leave their stations for home, watched the mounted police disperse, and my disappointment was complete. I, the fifteen-year-old revolutionary, felt cheated. The general strike that I had hoped would lead our people to the barricades had fizzled out like a punctured balloon.

Dejected, I made my way home; but on turning a corner I came face to face with a small procession of people carrying a tall wooden cross and shouting slogans into the air. I stopped to watch, and as the cross passed by, one of the zealous marchers ripped off my woollen school cap and screamed: ‘We'll do to the Jews what they do to our cattle!' He was joined by the others, and they all chanted in unison. ‘We'll do to the Jews what they do to our cattle! We'll do to the Jews what they do to our cattle! So help us God!'

And they did.

 

 
Hotza-tza
 

Little Itzik, whom we called the Barber of Bałuty, was an aggressive leader and the acknowledged poet of the young Communists. He was constantly at loggerheads with his neighbour Bainisz, a Bundist and mechanic whom he both respected and hated. ‘I respect you, Bainisz,' he said, ‘for your brave stand against the antisemites... And hate you,' he screamed, poking a finger into his neighbour's face, ‘for your counter-revolutionary activities. Just wait, you Social Fascist,' Itzik boiled. ‘After our revolution, we will deal with your kind.'

The last municipal election here was like a war, albeit one in which nobody was actually killed. There were fights, to be sure, crude fights; but most of the confrontations were verbal. I recall little Itzik standing like a featherless rooster in front of Zombkowski's pharmacy on Limanowskiego Street, his Adam's apple jumping nervily up and down in his scraggy throat. The night before, he had engaged in another vitriolic exchange with his neighbour, who had dared to brand his beloved Stalin as Ivan the Terrible Incarnate; now Itzik was paying him back:

My Bundist neighbour has a scheme

Hotza-tza, hotza-tza

To go into partnership with Berlin

Hotza-tza, hotza-tza.

Now he spreads his toxic lore

Hotza-tza, tza hotza-tza

My neighbour is a hopeless bore

Hotza-tza, tza hotza-tza.

Sadly, it was not Bainisz's but rather Itzik's comrades who went into partnership with Berlin. A week after the real war broke out, the city of the waterless river was invaded. Next day Itzik, a small suitcase dangling from his hand, appeared on his neghbour's threshold. ‘I am prepared to forgive you, Bainisz,' he announced. ‘Let's go, we have no time to lose.'

‘Where to, Itzik, where to?'

‘To the land of the Volga, of course — to the land of freedom and brotherhood. Remember what even your own Social Fascist newspaper, the
Naye Folkstsaytung
, once wrote? Bertrand Russell was visiting Moscow and asked an ordinary worker “Why don't you take your holidays abroad?” “Because,” the man replied, “I don't want to lose even a week of living in our glorious country!”'

In the end Itzik managed to persuade his old adversary and they went off to the East together, though circumstances eventually drew them apart and they lost contact with each other. In October 1943, in the company of a military officer, Bainisz was sent beyond the Urals to repair some equipment. Their train broke down just outside a gulag (‘a camp for dangerous enemies of our state,' the officer explained, though Bainisz didn't need any explanations). They would have to
spend several days at the camp, since the next train was almost a week away.

One can picture Bainisz's astonishment when, as he walked through this camp of dangerous enemies of the state, he spotted little Itzik, lying uncovered and miserable on a wooden bunk in the freezing night. ‘Itzik!' he called. ‘Itzik, is that you?' His former neighbour stared at Bainisz in disbelief. Bainisz wore a woollen uniform coat, fur hat, high boots, and seemed to be well fed. ‘Why are you here, Itzik?' he persisted. ‘What have you done to deserve this?'

‘Bainisz,' the other replied at last. ‘I can see that you are in the company of a high officer. Maybe you can help me.'

A while later Bainisz returned to Itzik's bunk with a pot of hot thick soup and a black sweater. ‘That's all I can do for you. But tell me, Itzik, what crime did you commit?'

‘I mentioned to my foreman,' the poet stuttered through his soup, ‘that the lice were eating me up. The foreman reported this to the authorities, who were convinced it was a metaphor for something else.'

In August 1946, right after the Kielce pogrom, Bainisz returned to the city of his birth. There, to his joy, he discovered little Itzik again, reborn in a white jacket and standing in front of his barber shop. ‘Itzik, thank God you made it!' he cried.

‘Yes, and so did you,' his old enemy replied. ‘Thanks to the East.'

Over coffee, Bainisz made it known that he would shortly be leaving for America. Itzik was unimpressed. ‘You shouldn't go, Bainisz, you shouldn't. We're building a new life here, a new order.'

‘Yes, complete with pogroms,' Bainisz retorted. ‘Tell me, is there any other land in Europe where Jews are still being murdered after the war?'

Itzik didn't answer. But next morning, when Bainisz dropped by his shop to say goodbye, the old poet was ready for him:

The American Imperialists are a pest

Hotza-tza, hotza-tza

For spies and snakes a rotten nest

Hotza-tza, hotza-tza.

Over there things are harder

Hotza-tza, tza hotza-tza

Stalin is still our beloved Father

Hotza-tza, tza hotza-tza.

 

 
A Chat
 

Sergey Nutkiewicz, our tutor in political economy during our school days, was a corpulent five-footer on short legs. In defiance of nature's unkindness, he carried his frame with great dignity and resoluteness. He had a face like the open book of an illustrious spirit, a pair of big sad blue eyes, and a velvet voice that drove the fairer sex to distraction. He was a leading Bundist in our city of the waterless river, but much more a Fabian than a fanatic.

We would meet many years after the war, at the tail-end of a beautiful summer. Sergey was already rich in seasons but still very much awake. We sat in a little garden, sipping black coffee across a marble table. The warm afternoon breeze played havoc with the last three grey hairs on his head. We sat for a good while before I finally broke the silence.

‘I recall one of your talks — to a group of us, when we'd already left school. It was in the late thirties, after the Moscow purges...'

Sergey was stunned. ‘Really? How can you remember a thing like that?'

‘Well, Sergey, the gods have endowed me with a long memory — which by the way is not always a blessing.'

He smiled, still shaking his head.

‘Yes, this may sound incredible to you,' I went on, ‘but I can still hear, in vivid detail, your emphatic avowal of the importance of a strong socialist brotherhood, of the unity of mankind. And how, in the wake of the Moscow trials, you said: “History may for once contradict nature. I think the time has arrived for the sun to rise in the west.”

‘Well, it seems to me,' I continued, ‘that this will never come to pass. Not only are western skies too narrow for your rising sun, but the ideal of a united humanity has surely been killed off at the roots.'

Sergey wrinkled his brow, and as his sad blue eyes scanned my face, I could sense how carefully he was composing his thoughts. I waited, and this time it was he who broke the silence.

‘Dulcinea del Toboso never existed, my friend,' said Sergey. ‘Don Quixote de la Mancha dreamt her up. Yet for his Dulcinea he was ready to lay down his life.'

 

 
The Spaniard