One Generation After (7 page)

The world has remained world. Men have not changed nor have they learned anything: perhaps there was nothing to learn. Love, vanity of vanities, jealousies: life goes on. Vacations, automobiles, demonstrations: one follows the trends. Yesterday’s myths give way to today’s prefabricated heroes and idols. Scientists succeed artists. On all continents, nations, large and small, get ready to kill one another. Business tycoons make deals, and politicians speeches. Profiteers worry about their reputations, and artists about their art. As for me, I too like to attend a good concert or smile back at a pretty girl. I bless bread and sanctify the wine, and no one is happier than I when, under my pen, words fall into place, fit into a design and create the illusion that they are leading somewhere.

In truth, I know where they lead. To where there are no words. To the mysterious forests where fathers and sons, Jews already marked by the executioner, always the same, tell each other a story, always the same. To where women with dark dilated pupils, violated and drunk with pain, escort their children to the altar and beyond.

Then there arises from the very depths of my being an irresistible desire to let everything go. To throw away the pen, burn all bridges and start to run and curse and leave the present far behind. To seek the moment that gave birth to these images, and never again to hear the laughter, and the moaning of the wind whipped by the shadows, always the same shadows.

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For my bar mitzvah, I remember, I had received a magnificent gold watch. It was the customary gift for the occasion, and was meant to remind each boy that henceforth he would be held responsible for his acts before the Torah and its timeless laws.

But I could not keep my gift. I had to part with it the very day my native town became the pride of the Hungarian nation by chasing from its confines every single one of its Jews. The glorious masters of our municipality were jubilant: they were rid of us, there would be no more kaftans on the streets. The local newspaper was brief and to the point: from now on, it would be possible to state one’s place of residence without feeling shame.

The time was late April, 1944.

In the early morning hours of that particular day, after a sleepless night, the ghetto was changed into a cemetery and its residents into gravediggers. We were digging feverishly in the courtyard, the garden, the cellar, consigning to the earth, temporarily we thought, whatever remained of the belongings accumulated by several generations, the sorrow and reward of long years of toil.

My father took charge of the jewelry and valuable papers.
His head bowed, he was silently digging near the barn. Not far away, my mother, crouched on the damp ground, was burying the silver candelabra she used only on Shabbat eve; she was moaning softly, and I avoided her eyes. My sisters burrowed near the cellar. The youngest, Tziporah, had chosen the garden, like myself. Solemnly shoveling, she declined my help. What did she have to hide? Her toys? Her school notebooks? As for me, my only possession was my watch. It meant a lot to me. And so I decided to bury it in a dark, deep hole, three paces away from the fence, under a poplar tree whose thick, strong foliage seemed to provide a reasonably secure shelter.

All of us expected to recover our treasures. On our return, the earth would give them back to us. Until then, until the end of the storm, they would be safe.

Yes, we were naïve. We could not foresee that the very same evening, before the last train had time to leave the station, an excited mob of well-informed friendly neighbors would be rushing through the ghetto’s wide-open houses and courtyards, leaving not a stone or beam unturned, throwing themselves upon the loot.

Twenty years later, standing in our garden, in the middle of the night, I remember the first gift, also the last, I ever received from my parents. I am seized by an irrational, irresistible desire to see it, to see if it is still there in the same spot, and if defying all laws of probability, it has survived—like me—by accident, not knowing how or why. My curiosity becomes obsession. I think neither of my father’s money nor of my mother’s candlesticks.

All that matters in this town is my gold watch and the sound of its ticking.

Despite the darkness, I easily find my way in the garden. Once more I am the bar mitzvah child; here is the barn, the fence, the tree. Nothing has changed. To my left, the path leading to the Slotvino Rebbe’s house. The Rebbe, though, had changed: the burning bush burned itself out and there is nothing left, not even smoke. What could he possibly have hidden the day we went away? His phylacteries? His prayer shawl? The holy scrolls inherited from his famous ancestor Rebbe Meirl of Premishlan? No, probably not even that kind of treasure. He had taken everything along, convinced that he was thus protecting not only himself but his disciples as well. He was proved wrong, the wonder rabbi.

But I mustn’t think of him, not now. The watch, I must think of the watch. Maybe it was spared. Let’s see, three steps to the right. Stop. Two forward. I recognize the place. Instinctively, I get ready to re-enact the scene my memory recalls. I fall on my knees. What can I use to dig? There is a shovel in the barn; its door is never locked. But by groping around in the dark I risk stumbling and waking the people sleeping in the house. They would take me for a marauder, a thief, and hand me over to the police. They might even kill me. Never mind, I’ll have to manage without a shovel. Or any other tool. I’ll use my hands, my nails. But it is difficult; the soil is hard, frozen, it resists as if determined to keep its secret. Too bad, I’ll punish it by being the stronger.