The Mathematician’s Shiva (15 page)

I
n this country, people buy T-shirts extolling their survival skills after snowstorms and heat waves. I used to get angry about this behavior, which I considered to be a childish display of false endurance. How can a country be so weak to think that a little snow or a little spike in a thermometer is actual hardship? But now, and maybe this is because of the mellowing of age, I’m almost pleased to see these T-shirts appear every few years. Now they indicate to me that this country is so secure and wealthy that actual hardship for many is almost impossible. These celebrations of minor calamities are in essence a signal that the people of this country feel so safe that they’ve turned survival into a silly game. Unfortunately, most nations are not like the United States. Danger is real for almost everyone most anywhere else, including in the nation where I grew up.

We buried my mother in April 1941. I do not know the exact day. Later, I picked the seventeenth as her
yahrtzeit
, which would have been the twentieth of Nisan, during Passover. We didn’t celebrate any holidays, of course, Jewish or otherwise. We simply tried to live. To breathe another day was our goal. Survival, to my mind, implies a finite probability that without luck and cunning, you will perish. Given that definition I can definitely say that we tried to survive. My mother, however, did not possess the strength of will of my father and me. We tried to prop her spirits up, tried to keep her physically well, but we failed. It is a failure that I cannot and will not forget.

The level of sanitation in our camp was abysmal. We carried buckets of water from a hand-dug well. The pits for human waste were perhaps twenty meters away. In the wet of spring, the pits overflowed, and the mess washed along the ground. We tried to skirt the raw sewage as we walked in the camp. My father was aware of the potential danger, and made sure that my mother boiled the water before any use. But other families weren’t so cautious and the extra wood necessary for precautionary boiling was almost impossible to find. Cholera erupted that spring, and it’s likely that my mother, who would occasionally visit other women at the camp, had taken a drink of water from somewhere outside our apartment.

Given that manpower was so necessary for the war effort—the Soviets counted on beating the Germans’ technical superiority and splendid troop training with horrible weather, long distances of travel, and superior numbers—one would think that even a work camp for minor prisoners of the Soviet state would have been designed to keep those workers alive. But the Soviet system was always chaotic and inherently lazy, a continuation of the tsarist system. The average citizen’s life, even in times of peace, was made bearable only by the presence of vodka. During the war, there was not even food and basic sanitation, much less vodka.

One hundred thirty people died that spring in a camp of four hundred. Perhaps ten had died from malnutrition and exposure the previous winter. The bodies were buried in a fen five hundred meters from the camp. In this area designated for our dead there were small evergreens that clung to life in a habitat that was as unsuitable for them as it was for us.

It was my first funeral. There was talk in the camp that I wouldn’t be allowed to go, but I begged my father to let me attend. It had been horrible seeing my mother in her bed, its cushioning almost gone after a year of use. Her body was motionless, her skin pale. She looked so insignificant lying there, as if her life never meant anything at all. I can never forget the bleakness of what I saw. It left me with a doubt of life’s meaning that lasted for many years.

They wrapped her body in cloth—wood was too valuable for a coffin—and I held my father’s hand as I watched them lower my mother into her grave. There were no words said aside from those of prayer. It was all over so quickly that I almost didn’t believe my mother was actually dead. Maybe, I thought for a brief moment as we walked away, they had just pretended to bury her, that this was just a cruel little game. But the air, damp and cold against my face, told me the truth.

“Are we going to die here like Mother?” I asked my father point-blank as we walked back to our apartment.

“Absolutely not. I will not allow it.”

“But how can you do that, Father?”

“I know we will survive, both of us. We will see your little brother again. But you have to listen and follow me. I need you to do what I ask. It will take both of us to live through this. I cannot do it alone. But you and I, if you promise to listen, will live through this. Will you do that, Rachela?”

“I will listen, Father. I don’t want to die here. I promise I will listen.”

“And I promise then we will get out of here. We two can do it. I know we can. But first you must promise that you drink only our water. Only ours. Do you understand? That’s the most important thing right now.”

“I understand.”

I believed in my father. I certainly did not blame him for my mother’s death. I blamed myself because I felt, however illogically, that I should have watched her more carefully, that I should have ensured that she be sensible. This guilt stays with me still even though I know it makes no sense. The mind is far from a perfect machine for reasoning and logic. We have to force it to make the correct calculations.

I put all my faith in my father. He and he alone could do what he promised. When I think of it now, I wonder why I wasn’t fearful of my own death. It made no sense to have such an ironclad belief that we would survive. There should have been some degree of fear of failure. But perhaps there is value in wishful thinking; not delusional thinking, but in holding a positive and optimistic view. It gives you strength to overcome long odds.

I had not thought of mathematics all winter long. Of course, I still went to school. I still studied, but there is a profound difference between charting an original intellectual path and the mechanical work of repeating what others have already done hundreds of millions, if not billions, of times. My tutor had fallen ill that winter. There were no more lessons from him. Even if he had tried to tutor me, I doubt his presence would have had much of an effect. I thought mostly about my stomach and its dull emptiness. When I went to relieve myself, I worried about where I would find the sustenance to replace the spent fuel that I had just lost. My body, I knew, was an engine. It needed energy to process and use.

We received twenty kilos of flour every month that spring. This mixture of milled wheat and I don’t know what else (it was rumored to be sawdust) was nothing truly edible, but bake it and eat it we did. I learned how to bake from a neighbor. Our allotment of cooking wood for the summer was inadequate. In the night, my father would keep watch from a distance as I climbed a fence like a monkey to steal split logs from a satellite storage area I found while hunting for wild onions. We planted seeds that summer and hoped that potatoes, onions, and cabbage would actually grow. But in the meantime, we had to wait and eat what little we had and what little we could supplement from foraging the surrounding land.

The previous summer while foraging I had found a patch of what looked to be lilies. I dug around them and yanked one by its bladelike leaves. The bulb was far larger than anything I could have imagined, bigger than my fist. I hid them in my blouse, not wanting anyone to see what I had found. My father, fastidious and careful as always, washed one, cut off a sliver, and placed it against his lips and then his tongue. It was bitter, he said, but he was convinced it wasn’t poisonous. We cooked them up, and when no one was watching I’d go back for more.

I went back the following summer to find some more to cook. I brought along a spoon to help me dig, and at the last second I decided to bring our one sharp knife for protection. Food was so scarce. I was worried someone would follow me and not only try to steal what I had found, but perhaps do something worse. The mood in the camp was more than somber after the outbreak of cholera. People would do anything for food.

I walked to the little rise in the fen where I had found the bulbs. My mother’s grave was along the way, but I didn’t have any desire to be reminded of how she had died. As at her burial ground, little trees dotted the landscape where I dug, gnarled and weather-beaten. I was digging with my spoon and wasn’t aware of anything else. My focus was entirely on getting us a little sustenance. I didn’t know whether the bulbs had any nutritive value, but I did know that it was exquisitely pleasing to dig for them. I can’t fully describe just how uplifting it was to have the normal experience of cutting into something steaming hot at a table, putting that piece of food in your mouth, and feeling it against your tongue. It was more than just the eating of it and whatever calories and nutrients it did or didn’t provide. It was about the dignity of being able to be something other than a slave to your stomach. We would be civilized again for just a little moment, reminded of what we would have once the war was over.

I dug, lost in the image of what it would be like to see that look of approval on my father’s face when he saw me cooking the bulbs, and by the time I heard the noise from the short grass, it was already upon me, so close that I could sense its warmth.

It was a black bear, a cub born the previous summer, already a little bigger than I was. With me stooped over, he seemed like a giant. I flattened myself carefully and deliberately against the ground and lay still, trying not to breathe too heavily. I could smell his stench, like something rotting in a cellar. I assumed the mother bear was nearby. My heart beat loudly. I was certain that the cub could hear it.

Horrible, inconsistent thoughts raced through my mind. My father would be upset with me for going out here alone and getting attacked by a bear. He would spank me hard, I was sure. But then I thought no, he won’t spank me, because I will be dead, or mauled if I were lucky enough to survive. There was something about this inconsistency that brought me to my senses. I needed to find a way to distract the cub. If the mother wasn’t nearby, I could perhaps outrun him once he wasn’t so close.

I slowly grabbed a bulb I had dug and then, with my wrist, flicked it so it rolled a few feet away. The cub heard the noise. Perhaps he was as hungry as I was or perhaps he thought he found a toy. I could sense him walking to where the bulb had stopped. I turned my head and watched him. He picked it up and gnawed at it. Part of me was angry and jealous at watching him eat what I wanted to have and had found all by myself, but another part was elated. He was chewing on the bulb after all, and at least for a moment I was safe. I stood up and quickly looked around. There was no mother bear to be found.

I stepped away from the cub, slowly at first, and he suddenly lost interest in the half-eaten bulb and looked at me. I stared into his eyes. He was skinnier than he should have been. He was like me, I thought. He had no mother, I was convinced. I threw another bulb at his feet. He picked this one up as well and apparently had found the first one to his liking, because he immediately brought the new one to his mouth.

I should have run away then and there. It wasn’t sensible to stare at the bear like I did. Perhaps it was something as simple as loneliness on my part that made me stay. I am used to being alone. I prefer it actually. It allows me to think in an undistracted manner. But at the camp the lack of human contact was severe. My father worked long hours. My mother was gone. The other children, the ones who were left, were like ghosts. We didn’t play because our spirits were low and we simply didn’t have the energy. We barely talked to each other. In contrast, here I was in contact with a live being that was struggling, but still had life in his eyes. I think that I was responding to that life force inside him. He was lonely, too, with the sharpness of loss that only the young can feel. For a brief moment, a few seconds perhaps, although it seemed longer, I felt a connection to an animal unlike anything I had felt before or would feel again. He was about my size after all. He liked the food I was giving him. I was nurturing him. I could imagine him following me to camp. My thoughts went wild with possibility. Then I heard a gunshot.

I swear I heard not only the sound of the gun, but the bullet itself as it traveled, a high-pitched howl. The cub fell to the ground. I was scared that I would be next. But there would be no second shot. I turned and saw a man trudging toward me across the fen in tall boots, his gun slung across his shoulder.

“You’re a brave one, little girl,” he said. “What are you doing way out here?”

I looked at him carefully. His skin was dark, weathered, and full of pockmarks. With his moonlike face, he looked like he was from the East. My blond hair was in braids, so he couldn’t see its curl. My face doesn’t hold a hint of my religion but instead tells anyone who pays attention to such things that I come from the Russian steppes. I am a good mimic, and in the short time I had lived in Russia, had quickly shed my Polish accent. I sounded like a little Russian girl. People would tease me about how Russian I had become.

I held up the remaining bulb in my hand. “I was harvesting these.”

He smiled at me. “You cook them, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Smart girl. You learn fast. You won’t get rickets if you eat them.” He looked at the bear on the ground a meter away. “But a bear,” he said. “Eating bear meat is even better. The big ones are greasy and horrible, but the young ones are tasty.”

He approached the cub, a knife in hand. “You need to grow big and strong,” he said to me. “When the war is over, we’ll need young people like you. Who knows how many of us will be left?” He pulled out a canvas sack from a bag, thought for a moment, and then pulled out another. “I’ll tell you what, little girl. You were so brave that I will share this with you. Have you ever dressed a bear?”

“No, sir, but I have a knife. I can learn.”

“Let me see your knife, little girl.” I knew that I didn’t have a choice, that I had to give my knife to him. “This?” He laughed out loud. “This can barely cut bread. I have something better that you can use.” He pulled another shiny blade from his pack. “The bloody insects will be all over us if we take too long. We need to hurry. I’ll cut out the entrails. Then you watch me cut on one side. When I leave, you take what’s left. OK?”