The Mascot (39 page)

“‘If events do not go to plan,' Solomon said, ‘I'll escape—take the family—in the middle of the night.'

“We had to be certain that nobody—not you, not even the neighbors—knew where we were. Hana would tell the neighbors that her husband had fled during the night to join the partisans and she had no idea if and when he'd return.

“‘We'll have to keep it from Ilya,' Solomon said. ‘He doesn't know how to keep a secret. We must tell him that I am gone.' It hurt your father deeply to have to say that.”

“My mother told me that my father was dead,” my father said. He looked perplexed. “I'm sure of it.”

“You were only a child. Gone must have seemed like dead in those days,” said Anya.

“We decided we would put the plan into action at the right moment,” Volodya continued. “It was another two months, October 1941, before we did so. The news had reached us that the Fascists were in the region of Koidanov. The remaining able-bodied men began to flee, and the streets became more deserted day after day. By the middle of the month, Solomon and I were living in the roof.

“Less than a week later, late one night, Hana told us she'd heard the Fascists would arrive within the next few hours.

“Solomon and I had had a lot of time to think up in the roof. We weren't as well protected as we should've been, so we'd decided to escape and hide out deep in the forest for a few days, until the Fascists had passed. Your mother and Sonya agreed with us.

“One night, when the children were fast asleep, Solomon and I let ourselves down. Your father wanted to see you before we left. He went quietly to your bed and kissed you. You stirred for a moment, calling out, ‘Papa.'

“I remember,” my father said. “He said good-bye, didn't he?”

“Exactly as you say,” Volodya answered. “Then we made ready to leave. Hana had organized a bag for each of us—filled with food that she'd prepared. I bid my farewell to your dear mother and your aunt Sonya.

“‘Come back to us,' Hana whispered.

“We promised we would, but in truth we weren't confident. We opened the door just enough to slip through. The last thing we saw were Hana's and Sonya's faces, peering at us with worried expressions. Solomon raised his cap to them and whispered ‘farewell' one final time. The door closed.”

“I saw you leave,” my father said somberly. “I'd woken again. I called to my mother and told her, but she said that I'd been dreaming. That Papa had died.”

Everybody at the table was silent.

“The night was cloudy, which gave us some cover as we left Koidanov,” Volodya continued. “But your father was still torn: no sooner were we on the outskirts of the forest than he wanted to return to Koidanov. In the end I talked him out of it.

“Over the two days that followed we trudged on. Each night we took a few hours' sleep while the other kept watch. On the third day disaster struck. We'd been going in circles and had ended up within minutes of Koidanov again. We huddled together for some time and then, when it was safe, we headed back into the forest.

“We'd only been on the move a short while when we heard the sound of repeated gunshots in the distance. Solomon stood upright, frozen to the spot.

“‘Get down!' I shouted at him. ‘In God's name, what are you doing?'

“‘I'm going back!' he cried. ‘There's something wrong.'

“I grabbed your father by the arm but he shook me off.

“‘My family is there!' he said.

“Solomon understood that I loved your family, too. But I knew that we could not stop whatever was happening back in Koidanov. ‘What good would it do if we were caught?' I argued with him. ‘We must move forward, wherever that is.'

“Solomon went mad. He gripped his head and wailed for what seemed like an eternity. I didn't know how to help him. Suddenly everything went quiet, and a terrible rain began. We were drenched and had to huddle together. It didn't stop all day. By the evening we had to head off—it was too risky.

“‘All right,' your father said. ‘What are we waiting for?' He looked defeated. We headed back into the forest.”

The room was deadly quiet. My father stared at his hands resting on the table.

“You know I was there that day?” he said.

“Where?”

“In the village. I saw what happened.”

Both Volodya and Anya seemed too overcome to speak.

“I saw it all. My own family. The others. The killings went on for two days.”

“I cannot imagine,” Anya said softly. “Our grandson is nine years old. Even a child of that age could not cope. Not even an adult…do you want to tell more of this?”

“I, too, ended up in the forest outside Koidanov on the day of the exterminations,” my father said. “What if you and my father had passed within reach of me with no idea I was there?”

Anya touched my father's hand. “We need brandy,” she said.

The fortifying liquor seemed to revive my father. “Tell me more about what happened to my father and you,” he said to Volodya.

“We were tired and hungry but kept pushing ourselves in the direction of Mogilev in the northeast,” Volodya said. “Sometimes a farmer shared his food or gave us shelter, but we never stayed more than a single night. We couldn't put anybody else in danger. Germans and Latvian and Lithuanian police battalions were on patrol everywhere.

“We made it to the outskirts of Mogilev. Solomon knew there was a risk, but he wanted to get into the town to find out if there was any word of life back in Koidanov. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't listen.

“That morning he set off for town. I agreed to wait for him until the next morning. If he didn't return by then, I wasn't to wait any longer. The following day came and there was no sign of him. I decided to wait a further night, but as another day dawned, I assumed that he'd been captured, that his fate was sealed. I never thought I would see your father again. Eventually I met up with a group of partisans. I fought with them in the forests, attacking trains, until the war ended.

“You're kidding!” my father said. “I used to guard the supply trains. The soldiers would hoist me up onto the carriage roofs, where they'd make me shoot into the air with a rifle to frighten off the partisans.”

Volodya shook his head in disbelief. “Imagine if I'd been shooting at you,” he said.

“Thankfully you missed.” My father laughed darkly. “Later I was sent to Riga and, after a few happy days there, it was decided that I should again join the soldiers. This time they took me to the Russian front. It was terrible. The humidity was unbearable. And the mosquitoes at night were the worst. We slept in dugouts that were always full of water.”

“When was this?” Anya asked, sitting up in her chair.

“The summer of 1943.”

“Where exactly were you?” Anya asked.

“The Volhov swamps,” my father said, “south of Leningrad.”

“This is beyond belief!” Anya interrupted. “I was in the Volhov swamps with the partisans at the same time as you.” She rose and crossed to a shelf. “See this,” she said, indicating a framed certificate there.

My father and I joined Anya and examined her award.

“For bravery in the war. From Stalin, no less. Before he decided Jewish partisans needed punishment and not reward.”

My father's eyes then moved to a photograph perched on the shelf.

“That's me,” Anya said. “Taken during the war.”

He picked it up. Suddenly he gave a very slight start that nobody else seemed to notice. His face went pale. “You were beautiful,” he said.

Anya laughed, pleased. We returned to our seats and my father continued with his story.

The late afternoon wore on. My father and Volodya jumped from one topic to another as my father devoured what Volodya knew. But there was still more that my father wanted to hear about his father's survival.

“Early one morning,” Volodya began, “there was a loud knocking at the door. When I opened it, before me was Solomon, disheveled, dressed in an SS overcoat, haggard but smiling. I couldn't believe my eyes.

“He had the hunger of a bear. I let him gulp down the food without interruption until he could eat no more. Your father told me that after we'd separated, he had in fact made it into Mogilev. But almost as soon as he entered the town he was stopped by a policeman wanting to see his papers. He had none, of course, and was arrested. At first he worked in a number of labor camps, until finally he was delivered to Auschwitz. He survived there for over two years. You know what saved him? His skill with leather. He looked after the guards' boots, and for that they kept him alive.

“Much later he was transported to Dachau. He told me he wouldn't have survived there for long. The conditions were even worse than in Auschwitz—but liberation turned out to be only months away. That must've been around the end of April in 1945.

“The Allies even gave him the chance to emigrate to America. But he wanted to return to Koidanov to see if his family was still here. Your father then made a journey back from hell. He walked all the way across Europe from Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

“When he'd entered Koidanov, only minutes earlier, he'd found his house deserted. He decided then to find me. I had to confirm the awful truth about his family: that all had perished, even you.

“Solomon was exhausted beyond belief, but still he insisted on seeing the mass grave. He went by himself. It was many hours before he returned. For some days after that he never said a word. And then his silence broke, and Solomon returned to us, changed—we all were—but stronger.

“He began a new life, but he never forgot his first family.”

Anya reached across and gently took my father's hand. “Try not to despair,” she said. “He never forgot you, his little Ilya. What a happy, friendly, and good boy you were. You have the same feeling as Solomon.”

“My only inheritance,” my father said sadly.

“No!” Anya sprang to life. “You have more than that! Your family were good people. You carry that goodness in you. The Nazis took you, but they never touched your goodness. I can see that. Don't ever forget it—you must always keep it close to you.”

My father shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the vehemence of Anya's emotion. He signaled to me with his eyes that he wanted to leave. He sighed loudly and looked at his watch.

“We've been here over three hours,” he said, feigning surprise. “We should make a move. Mum'll be wild.”

We made our farewells. Volodya and Anya remained on the veranda, vulnerable and frail, waving as we passed through the gap in the broken fence. I wondered whether we would ever see either of them again. As it turned out, we did not. They both died within months of each other before we had the chance to visit again.

The following evening, our last in Minsk, we found ourselves in Erick's modest apartment in one of the city's inner suburbs. The room was dominated by a very large table laden with food and drink prepared by Erick's delightful wife, Sonya.

At one end of the table, Erick showed my father the few photographs he had of Solomon during the postwar years until his death.

“If only I'd spoken sooner,” my father said. “We might have found each other.”

“You weren't to know,” Erick replied.

“I thought everyone was dead,” my father continued grimly. “I had nobody to look for. And nobody was looking for me. I was dead to this world.”

“Even if you had spoken, it would have been impossible to find anybody here,” Erick added. “Can you imagine what Belarus was like under the Soviet system?”

Later, as the evening drew to a close, my father tapped on the side of his glass and rose. All filled their glasses and then quietened down.

My father held his glass high. “I am not a very good toast-giver,” he joked. “I just want to say that it's been a long way home, but it has been worth it. We have found each other now.”

My father united with Erick Galperin and his family in 1998.