A Blessing on the Moon (13 page)

“Careful, Chaimka,” Reb Elimelech mutters through a fist, pretending to stroke his beard.

“Why, your rooms, of course. And all the facilities.”

The Direktor turns a good-natured and sardonic face to his staff, all lined up in semicircles behind him. In response, sardonic grimaces appear on each of their faces, as though each had placed a paper mask of the Direktor’s likeness over his own.

By this time, our town is catching up with us, straggling forward, sliding down the valley’s slope, gathering in a loose congregation at the river’s shore. They are nervously quiet, our Jews, uncertain what to make of this cheery group standing in neat lines, all in immaculate white. In the mirror of their robust cleanliness, our own bedraggled and betattered state seems all the more wretched. But the shame that otherwise might spread through us like a fever is quenched by a natural, if fearful curiosity. After all, who are these people blocking our path? And what do they want from us?

Behind me, I sense a stirring, as those not in the first line bob their heads and stand on their toes to get a better look. Quickly, words are passed from the front to the back of the crowd.
Herr Direktor, Herr Direktor
. Instinctively, I scan the grey, lowering skies. There is not a crow in sight. I glance, quickly, for reassurance, towards Reb Elimelech, but he is staring at the back of his hands. I clear my throat and address the Direktor.

“You say our rooms are ready,” I attempt a deferent smile. “However, I do not see a way across this river of yours.”

The Direktor smiles broadly, clenching a thick cigar in his sparkling teeth. He pulls at his earlobe and nods towards two burly porters. Stepping forward, they lift him onto their broad shoulders where he sits, between their heads, as though on a small divan.

“Guten Abend,” addressing us again through his gleaming megaphone. He is high enough that only those of insufficient height in the far back might have trouble seeing him. “Und willkommen. Welcome to the Hotel Amfortas.” He grins congenially. “You are our guests here. Unfortunately, good people, there is no way across the river except through it. A geographical anomaly. Although neither I nor any of my staff have made the trip—we were all born on this side of the shore—I can assure you there is nothing to fear. Previous visitors to our resort report that the waters are warm and refreshing, restorative, even delightfully so. Please do not be afraid, my dear Jews. You may leave your old clothes on that side of the river. We have fresh things for you here, which I am sure you will find more comfortable than the worn, traveling garments you now possess. So! Who will be the first to cross the river and share in the banquet we are preparing for you here!”

He sweeps a thick arm towards the building behind him. Reflections no longer obscure the views through the hotel’s many windows, and we can see waiters inside rolling enormous wheeled carts piled high with tasty-looking foods. They lay shining white tablecloths across long banquet boards. Elegant women arrange vases of bright flowers on each and every table.

“The food is kosher,” Herr Direktor notes, “and the flowers we grow in our hothouses.”

Although we cannot hear them, a quintet of musicians sways serenely in a corner of the banquet hall. Through the windows of the upper stories, chambermaids are fitting the beds with clean sheets and plump comforters. I imagine them leaving small chocolates or squares of marzipan on every fat pillow, and my mouth begins to water.

“As the day is quickly waning,” the Direktor commands in his booming voice, “and there are so many of you, we must begin now or we will never finish by sundown when the river freezes. Please, then,” he says, “who will be the first?”

Behind us, the crowd shrinks back, although I confess my reaction is entirely different. I find I’m obsessed with the idea of food. Food! How long has it been since I’ve eaten? My stomach growls like a bear waking from a winter’s nap. At home, with the Serafinskis, this never happened. My sleeping belly was indifferent, completely so, to the parade of food outside its cave. But now, to my growing alarm, I can’t seem to concentrate on anything other than the long tables behind the windows, which fill now with the fiery pink reflections of the sky’s fading light.

Still, no one moves.

“Juden, please,” Herr Direktor calls through the megaphone in order that no one might fail to hear. “Forgive me for being so impatient, so impolite. You are our guests, but the time is drawing short. Who will be the first?”

Our motley crowd shrugs, managing to avoid one another’s gaze, while prodding each other on with our eyes. A low, murmuring conspiracy envelops us like a dark cloud, casting us in shadow, removing us, if only by degrees, from the questioning eyes of the insistent Direktor and his benevolent staff. I can’t help stealing a glance, across the river’s waters, at his open, rosy face, so concerned now, his cheeks glowing in the winter wind, the little commas of his nostrils flaring. Our resistance is nothing he hasn’t seen before. The sun is failing, the temperatures are dropping, we are all dead. This he knows and uses subtly to his advantage. Why should we sleep another night on the cold, hard ground when there are warm beds, and hot soup is being offered? All we have to do is swim across a river but, still, our fear prevents it.

“I’ll do it,” a small voice pipes up bravely.

“Pillow?” An astonished Reb Elimelech protectively grabs onto the boy’s thin shoulders, holding him back.

“Efraim, don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “You could easily drown or, worse, freeze.”

“Eh? What’s this?” the Direktor calls delightedly from across. “Have we a volunteer? Very good, very good!”

“What does it matter, Reb Chaim?” the boy reasons with me. “I’m already dead.”

“You think they can’t kill us as often as they wish!” I snatch at the boy, pinning him tightly against my legs.

Still, shaking his shoulders, he is able to release himself from my grip. My bitten hand can’t hold him. Angry at himself, Reb Elimelech glowers at me, as if to say,
So this is how you abandon a child. Like you abandoned the rest of us!

“But Reb Elimelech, what am I to do?”

As we stare helplessly at each other, Pillow approaches the river. Its waves have whipped up fearsomely and are churning. Alone, in the snowy field, he looks smaller than ever. Before our cringing eyes on one side and the subdued urgings of the hotel staff on the other, he removes his flat cap without even a glance back and his frizzy sidelocks sway slightly in the wind.

“That’s right,” the Direktor calls. “You can throw it on the ground, that’s right. You won’t be needing it again.”

Pillow does as he is told and tosses the cloth headpiece into the snow. He lays down his crutch and unbuttons his coat, pulling it from his thin shoulders and leaving it near his cap. He unbuttons his wool vest and his shirtfront quite gingerly. The purple and scarlet bruises that decorate his narrow chest and his slender back send an anguished current through our crowd. There are gashes where the lime has eaten into him. With a nervous hand, he brushes away a group of maggots that are feeding on his chest.

He might as well be made of paper, he is so thin and frail.

Careful of his leg, Pillow allows his gabardine trousers to fall. Lifting the ruined leg to his chest with both hands, he manipulates it from the compressed cylinder of fabric, then hops once on his good leg, jumping from his fallen pants.

“That’s right, boy,” the Direktor shouts like a proud father through the silver megaphone. “Show these old fogies what’s what, eh!”

From the lines of staff, Pillow receives a polite smattering of applause. It sounds like distant rain. Their encouragement has a chilling effect on the boy’s resolve. He looks back, towards me.

But who am I and what do I know? I’m not his father, after all. What can I tell him? I shrug, my hands opening like a blossom before my chest.

Pillow nods, forgiving me my helplessness. He looks towards the river, dragging his mangled leg behind him, his scrotum tightening in the icy breeze. His back twists as he rows with his shoulders and elbows, compensating for the leg.

The staff stomps and cheers his every step and the Direktor claps his hands smartly, bringing forth, from the bathhouse, two big peasant women. Their hair is braided in tight loops against their heads and each carries a thick woolen towel, as long as a shroud. They kneel, on one knee, by the far shore, ready to greet the boy who trembles on the other side, from fear or cold I cannot tell. His efforts and all the attention have exhausted him. Before him, the river boils and rages, as if stirred by a giant spoon.

“Ready when you are, Pillow,” the Direktor trumpets, having
learned the nickname from our nervous calls. “Jump as far upriver as you can because the current will pull you down.”

Obligingly, Pillow limps two or three meters upriver, and before anyone can say anything, the moment has passed. The boy has jumped in.

“That’s it, that’s it!” the Direktor calls.

“Help! Help me!” Pillow cries out, flailing, his small head bobbing up and disappearing beneath the river’s flashing surfaces. With only one leg, how did we expect him to swim!

Laughing, the Direktor fishes him to the other side with his long and sturdy pole. Pillow latches onto its hook, sputtering and coughing, and the Direktor reels him in, lifting his slight body easily out of the waters. The river washes from his blushing torso, his teeth clatter, and the peasant women swath him in their towels. Hugging him between them, they smother him in their expansive bosoms, drying him with the long strokes of their bare and muscular arms.

“They’re squeezing the life out of him!” a woman behind me screams in protest, but when the two women release him from their cloth prison, the boy jumps up on two sturdy legs, waving happily across the river’s rush.

The two peasant women smile, dimples in their apple cheeks.

Gone are the bruises and the scars, the deep red gashes where the rifle butts tore his flesh. Pillow is whole again, his body healed. He stands, naked, his arms raised in triumph above his shining head. His thin belly is curved slightly, bending back, and his hairless penis hangs to the side.

“Pillow, tell your friends what the river is like,” Herr Direktor
urges, while the one attendant wraps the boy in a thick white bathrobe, and the other places thongs upon his feet.

“The water is warm and alive!” Pillow calls in a happy girlish voice. “Almost toasty!”

“Warm and toasty,” calls the Direktor. “Did you hear that, Jews?”

The staff roars its approval, and it isn’t long before the whole of us are shedding our worn, worm-eaten, bullet-pocked clothing, and moving in a naked, talkative throng towards the river’s lip. The snow freezes our bare feet and we hop and skip and jump in, splashing like children on a hot summer day.

The river is warm and alive, indeed, with a quality nearer to light than to water. It whirs and hums electrically, buzzing against our ears, clothing our nakedness in shimmering cocoons. Its spangling incandescence fills every hole in my body. I open my mouth, below the surface, and let the golden, lambent, flashing phosphorescence fill it.

I can’t help laughing, so painfully ticklish is the experience. Kicking with my legs, I force myself down, away from the dull sky, and towards the river’s bottom, curious about its substance. It seems to be of ordinary mud and I let the handful I’ve lifted float between my fingers.

The burlap bag with the German’s head falls to pieces in these stinging, electric waters. The head sinks to the bottom of the river floor, its eyes closed, its hair floating upward. Before I can grab it, a jolt of searing pain courses through my chest, knocking me back and away. My lungs have expanded within me! I struggle not to breathe the river
in and swim blindly towards the surface. A flurry of hanging legs blocks my way. They dangle in the water like thick river weeds. I can’t get through and am drowning!

Hands break the silvery surface, but I am too slippery. Like a fish, I slip continually from their grasp. More hands grapple for me, bracing me, hauling me up. My head, finally, cleaves through the light and a thick knot of peasant women drops me, naked and dripping, onto the shore.

I cough and sputter, vomiting up lines of liquid light, the salty air caustic in my nose.

Smirking through his plump and golden-ruddy face, the Direktor kneels in the snow and slaps me on the back.

“Too much of a good thing, old man?” He laughs. “Eh? Too much of a good thing!”

The peasant women swaddle me roughly in their towels, rubbing them across my face.

“Careful of my wounds!” I shout, but I can tell by the way their towels caress my face that they are gone. I hold up my hand and see that the wolf bite has healed.

My suite is spacious, with warm cream walls above a coffee-brown wainscoting. Bouquets fill the rooms. Lilies, white roses, an explosion of chrysanthemums. From the hotel’s greenhouse, or so the attached
note says. A woven basket in the shape of a whale holds fruits and chocolates, wheels of cheese, and a bottle of plum brandy in its mouth, all tied with ribbons and fancy strings. There are two shot glasses, next to the brandy, and I wonder if I will be sharing the suite with someone else. Perhaps Reb Elimelech. If so, there is much, I’m afraid, that needs saying between us.

In the spirit of experimentation, what will it hurt if I take a taste, I remove a red pear from the wicker whale and shine it on my sleeve. Reciting the blessings for the first fruits, I take a bite, not too large, in case I have to spit it out. Since my death, food has been like wood pulp in my mouth. Hard, tasteless, dry. Impossible to swallow, it blocks your throat, until you must painfully cough it up.

And so the bite of pear I take is small and of a manageable size. I allow my teeth to caress the outer skin, ripping the barest hemisphere of meat. This I lay, provisionally inert, upon my flat tongue. Slowly, the juices leave the small coin and drop bitingly across my tongue, filling my mouth with its searing delights. Unable to keep still, the tongue lifts itself, pressing the fruit against the roof of my mouth, and I am stunned by the sweetness flowing into my throat, where the taste now explodes. Impossible to restrain, my unprepared tongue shifts the fruit between my teeth, which pulverize it into gritty paste, extracting every ounce of its flavor. The tongue rolls in this paste, like a delirious bridegroom in his wedding bed.