East of Time (34 page)

‘What do I mean by “loftier monotheism”?' he resumed, as if the outside world was of no concern to him. ‘One's inner freedom, one's inward sense of justice, one's total rejection of barbarism.' Moulding his words like a sculptor shapes his clay, Aron endowed each phrase with an almost physical presence. ‘As I see it, such monotheism,' he concluded, ‘is quintessentially anti-religious! It rejects not only all forms of xenophobia, but widens the boundaries of one's intellect, and one's spirituality.'

These words I heard more than sixty years ago, while enveloped in total darkness but for the searchlights journeying over our blind windowpane. I heard them from a weak
man of steel, in death's vestibule, who ate metaphysics instead of bread.

 

 
Mythology
 

‘Psychoanalysis,' said Aron Wolman, ‘believes that the key to any individual's character lies in the story of his or her childhood.' He had just begun his lecture, held in the home of one of my friends, where we seven poets met once a fortnight.

To lend our meetings a festive hue, each of us would bring a slice of bread taken from our weekly ration — for as it is written,
Ein kemach, ein Torah
(without bread, no Torah). On this occasion, the contribution of our host's mother was a hot pot of chicory, plus a small dish of salt to dip the bread in. Having prepared this sumptuous feast, she removed herself from the premises, so as not to be tempted to appease with even a solitary crumb her own hunger-racked stomach.

‘Accordingly,' Wolman continued, ‘the roots of the present atrocities have their origins in the perpetrators' very mythology. In the beginning, their legends tell us, was the giant Ymir. He was the progenitor of all the terrible races that were to make the world ring with bloody battles. At times these races were threatened by their own gods, who intended to exterminate them but only saw them rise again, more numerous and stronger than ever. The first god was Buri. Buri fathered Bor. One night, when the moon did not permit Bor's offspring to sleep, they got up and slaughtered their great-grandfather.

‘But the gods were not content to have slain the giant — obviously there was no respect for the dead. From Ymir's blood they made the oceans, his flesh became the solid earth, his bones the mountains and his teeth shingle. With his skull they created the vault of heaven, with his brains the clouds,
and with his hair the trees.' Wolman paused. ‘As you can see, my friends,' he stated with some emphasis, ‘the marriage between murder and economy is not an accident, but rather the ancient principle of an everlasting mythological longing.'

At this point one of our group spoke up. ‘Given our daily experience, it might appear that your argument from psychoanalysis is valid. But Aron, is it not true that our own mythology is also intertwined with murder, incest, fratricide, and many other brutalities?'

‘Yes,' Aron replied. ‘And yet, the mere fact that after four years of anguish, fear, starvation and hopelessness, hardly any murders have been committed in the ghetto, must tell us something.'

‘And what is that?' asked a bushy-haired youth with a gleam in his eye.

‘Perhaps something to do with our being in exile...'

‘But all people are in exile, one way or another.'

‘True, but the majority are not aware of it.'

‘Do you mean to say that if we lost our awareness of exile, we would be capable of doing what
they
are doing?'

‘Some things are the more powerful for being beyond simple explanations,' Aron retorted. Then, betraying an agitation that bordered on anger, he sank his teeth into the last sliver of bread, threw his worn-out coat over his scrawny shoulders, and departed.

 

 
Why We Didn't Rise
 

The last confrontation I had with my party leader, Israel Binenberg, took place a world ago, yet every detail of that encounter, even the most trifling, is still vividly alive in the chamber of my memories.

We met in his flat and sat facing each other across his table, I the member of an unarmed cell of the ghetto underground, and he my political instructor. Israel was a small, stocky, well-built man, a carpenter by trade, with a moon face and foxy, mocking eyes. Although he had a rather nasal voice, he could colour it with both severity and irony, and he could galvanize a crowd like few others. Sitting opposite me now, clad in a blue shirt whose rolled-back sleeves nearly covered his strong arms, he kept adjusting the table-lamp with his short fingers, the better to scrutinize my face from the shadows in which he had securely planted himself.

‘What on earth has become of us,' I asked, ‘that we, the heirs of a great revolutionary tradition, should take all this lying down?'

Israel surveyed me impassively before replying in a voice wooden with gravity: ‘And with what arms, my great revolutionary, would you propose to stage our rebellion? Do you know that in our armoury, which is guarded by our faithful comrade Kusznierski, there sleeps peacefully one solitary gun, no better than a toy? And have you forgotten that not only are we encircled by barbed wire, but also, beyond, by an ocean of hostility?'

If I was taken aback, it did not prevent me from pressing ahead. ‘Well, you're the leader,' I retorted, my audacity mounting. ‘Wasn't it your responsibility to think of this when there was still time?'

‘Hold it, hold it, brave Jacobin!' Israel's voice was suddenly alive with authority and reproach. ‘We are living in an age when no leadership is answerable to its followers. We do what we think is right, for the whole community. The same rule governs the Zionists in ghetto, and even the ever-volatile Communists' activities.' He was arguing with incontestable clarity.

But I was bent on a different logic. ‘Look, our youth is ready to fight, and we
will
fight. We have a plan. First of all, at a time to be determined, groups of five will attack sentries throughout the ghetto and quickly deprive them of their weapons. We calculate that within ten minutes we may have as many as fifty guns in our hands...'

Israel was now visibly alarmed. Indignantly he lit a cigarette and, fanning the smoke away with his short arm, burst forth with a vehemence I had never before witnessed. ‘Don't you dare!' he exclaimed. ‘We will expel all mad hotheads from the party.' Then, withdrawing even deeper into the shadows, so that I could hear but not see him, he changed his tactic. He stretched his hand towards a drawer and opened it. For the first time after all the years of my ghetto life, I saw a whole loaf of bread and a sizeable hunk of juicy white cheese. Miracles like this appeared only in homes closely connected with the higher echelons of the pyramid.

Israel motioned for me to help myself. ‘You know,' he said, calm and reflective now, while I cut a thin slice of bread, broke off a small lump of cheese and sat back to savour this unexpected bounty, ‘I've coined a new maxim; it might just help our people more than guns.
Live and outlive
— I mean, of course, outlive
them
, our oppressors.'

‘Very nice. Very ingenious.' In no time I had gulped down my little feast. ‘You've just defeated our last hope of making a stand.'

‘Well, dear comrade,
a living dog is better than a dead lion
.'

‘That was all very well for King Solomon, but I can hardly see how it applies to
our
hopeless situation...'

It was long past curfew. Going home was a perilous experience, and in the dark a sentry's boots always sounded ominous. The moon I had once trusted had lately volunteered
her services to the devils; she was brighter than ever, and I was convinced she had overheard my plans and would soon pass them on to the enemy. Look! Was her black streetwalker's eye not beckoning to her new lover, the soldier?...

My parents were already in bed — the ghetto way of combating hunger and a total absence of fuel. ‘Where were you?' my mother asked nervously. I told them the truth; after all, they were both longstanding members of the party. Mother at once sided with Israel. I turned for support to father, the oldest revolutionary in town. All he said, to my astonishment, was: ‘One difficult day of life is worth a hundred years of glorious death.' I turned off the light.

Lying in bed, allowing my eyes to journey the windowpane, I took note of how the night, with her long dark hands, stacked black boulder upon black boulder until there were no more stars to be seen.

 

 
The Law at Work