East of Time (29 page)

‘No, the Germans will definitely lose the war,' my everdoubting father repeated unequivocally, ‘and those who live to witness humanity's triumph will also witness the way these once-pompous and arrogant Teutons will run like frightened rats to the seven corners of the world.'

‘What then?' I spoke up at last. ‘After everything that has happened, will mankind quietly return to the same old way of thinking — complete with all their ideologies, dogmas, beliefs?'

‘Yes. And do you know why? Because Sancho Panza cannot live without Don Quixote. Because one illusive beacon in a hopeless night is worth a thousand daylight suns.'

The late afternoon was bending toward dusk, our room darkened. Mother lit the kerosene lamp; she knew how father loved its smoky flame. It reminded him of his childhood home, his mother Perl Gittel, his strict religious father, the melamed Yeruchim, who would sit day and night studying the scriptures. For a good while, dad stood before the flame like one in prayer, and as his lean shadow began to sway on our green wall, I heard him take up a soft chant.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born and a time to die,

A time to plant and a time to uproot,

A time to kill and a time to heal,

A time to destroy and a time to build,

A time to weep and a time to laugh,

A time to mourn and a time to dance,

A time to cast stones and a time to gather them,

A time to embrace and a time to refrain,

A time to search and a time to give up,

A time to keep and a time to discard,

A time to tear and a time to mend,

A time to be silent and a time to speak,

A time to love and a time to hate,

A time for war and a time for peace.

And as an afterthought, he added: ‘In peace we prepare for war, and in war for another war. Madness has no seasons.'

 

 
Metamorphosis
 

Gerhard Reimer was born in the deep north-east, beyond the Gulf of Riga, where moons like lost yellow ships anxiously searched the interminable oceanic expanse of black skies for a secure port of call.

When he was eight his father, Herman Reimer, sent him away to a boarding school in Tallinn, where he was taught many useful things: mastery of the German tongue, discipline, songs, and nightly drillings. ‘Don't saunter!' his marching instructor shouted. ‘Saunterers think. Soldiers shouldn't!' Although little Gerhard
was
always thinking — for he was intelligent and perceptive — he nevertheless had no problem obeying his new teachers. Obedience had been an integral part of his strict upbringing.

Gerhard grew into an exceptionally handsome young man. At twenty-one he was an upright Christian, and a decorated leader of the Hitler Youth. He wore shiny black boots, a brown
shirt, and a red armband adorned with a black cross bent into hooks (at times he wondered how Jesus would have looked on a cross like that). He still hadn't forgotten those fearful nights when he heard Mama in the adjoining room grappling with Papa in their bed; and how one frosty winter's night he, little Gerhard, had crawled out of his own warm bed and knelt before the crucifix on the wall, praying that his father might show his mother some mercy.

One morning in December 1942, when the earth was painted with a coat of snowflakes, there was a knock on the door of Gerhard's comfortable apartment, which had belonged to a Jewish doctor who had been sent away. Clicking his heels and calling
Heil Hitler!
, he jumped to attention before the two uniformed officers, who politely but curtly asked him to hop into the car waiting outside.

They journeyed for hours without exchanging a word. Gerhard didn't mind, he was used to war games and secret missions. Gazing out languidly at the snowy Christmas landscape hurtling past, he dozed off, and all at once he could hear his parents in their bed again, and mother's whimpers and pleas, and he saw his homely cloud-streaked moon, but this time it was poking out at him an enormous slimy red tongue...

They arrived mid-morning and were greeted subserviently by an elderly gentleman. On his nose rested a pair of brown horn-rimmed spectacles; he wore a grey hat, a black-and-white herringbone coat — and a yellow star on his chest! ‘What's this?' cried Gerhard, reaching for his scout knife. ‘Are there still Jews left in our new Reich?'

‘Hold it, hold it!' commanded his humourless escort. He relieved Gerhard of his weapon. ‘From now on,' he said, ‘you will do as this man tells you.'

‘But why?' Gerhard shouted in desperation. ‘Please, it's all a big mistake — what have I to do with these people?'

‘You'll have to ask your grandfather's father,' responded one of the escorts. They jumped into the car and drove off in a cloud of dust.

Two Jewish policemen respectfully chaperoned Gerhard to his new quarters, where he threw himself on the cold bunk and cursed, screamed, wept, and perhaps thought of escaping. But the habit of obedience would not permit him even now to rebel against authority, and after a month or two of self-isolation Gerhard bowed his head before the Eldest, the man with the yellow star who had welcomed him, and embarked on his career as a weaver in Kaszub's textile factory.

At first he was rather confused. He had never seen Jews like this — gaunt, haggard, yet upright and proud Jews, some of them even good-looking. Even their noses looked normal! Oh, heavens, they must all be like me, he thought, neither Gentile nor Jew. And there behind one of the huge machines he spotted my former school friend — petite, dark-eyed, with waves of shoulder-length auburn hair — the beautiful Debora, whose white skin would have been the envy of many a fine Aryan lady. Was she Jewish too? He soon found himself wondering what she thought of
him
. And so, after days of curiously searching each other's faces, there began to grow a longing for words, and then for the touch of hands.

Gerhard took a strong liking to Debora's wise father, David Wajnberg, who spoke about his Jewish agnosticism with a great deal of pride; who, with reference to many historical examples, pointed out that nations which had oppressed Jews had always written out their own curse; who, despite all the setbacks, believed that the only way for humanity to survive was through socialism. Lying on his bunk at night, Gerhard pondered his life, his flame for Debora, his attachment to her father, the meaning of destiny, and his mysterious bond to these ghetto people of whom he had known so little...

In September 1945, on a sunny morning in Rome, I was strolling near the Piazza d'Espagna when I came upon my old friend Debora. Her face, against the blue Roman sky, looked paler than it really was, and her black eyes much blacker. We practically fell on each other, and stood for a good while locked in a tender embrace. With an almost mischievous smile, she invited me to visit her room.

After an arduous climb up a precipitous winding staircase, we stood in an unlit corridor. I could sense Debora's tension, and thought I detected the old fire in her eyes as she reached for the key that was hanging on a chain around her neck. Quickly she unlocked the squeaky door, and there — oh, my God, there on an army bunk, white as a ghost, lay Gerhard Reimer! He was somewhat astonished to see me, but his greeting was warm and friendly. We drank hot coffee without exchanging a word. There are times when silence is the most natural condition. When I rose to say goodbye I kissed Debora more fully on the lips than I should have, and noticed the jealous glint in Gerhard's eyes.

‘Please forgive him for not getting up from the bunk,' she whispered. ‘He is in agony. You see, it's just the third day after his circumcision.'

 

 
Riddles
 

My former schoolmate Yossele, who had assisted our sport teacher Laibl Grundman in burying within the schoolyard a list containing the names of all our school's students, a kind of time-capsule, was a fellow of simple language and complex ideas. Yossele espoused the theory that there were no grey areas in life, everything was either black or white. Outside of that equation, he declared with his characteristic extremity, dwelt only the absurd.

Yossele maintained that the central pillar of our social structure was hypocrisy. Without it our system would collapse, he said, like a house of cards on a windy day. Adam and Eve, he further argued, had sewn leaves together to make not loincloths but masks. Those masks, he proclaimed triumphantly, had transformed the earth into a living paradise!

Yossele was fond and proud of his Yiddish school, which he completed just before the outbreak of the war. His secondary education would be the ghetto, his university Auschwitz, and he would gain his postgraduate credentials from prestigious Bergen-Belsen, with high distinctions in remembering.

I had lost contact with Yossele in 1939, not long before we were all consumed by that cataclysm of blood and fire. It was in New York that I met him again, many years later, in a room full of strangers. He was happy only when he spoke about his miseries: life in camp, the beatings, betrayals, how he was sold for a kilo of sugar, his interrogation by the Gestapo, his escape, the night he spent in a kennel with a dog — probably an angel, he explained.

But when he spoke of how, one summer's night, he had been caught by some villagers and hung by his legs from a cherry tree, he just couldn't stop laughing. People thought he was crazy. What they didn't realize was that Yossele was reliving his youth.

 

 
The Absence