A Dove of the East (20 page)

Leon threw on the coat and checked his wallet. “I will get some food,” he said, “before it's all gone.”

“Please, try to get some meat or fish.”

“Maybe there will be a restaurant. Then I will return with just an invitation—steak, watercress, and wine.”

“Of course. I'll dress for the occasion in my dress. Go before it's too late.”

He jumped from the train and ran enthusiastically over the many tracks and through the munitions until he came to the town, where restaurants were closed, except for one just for soldiers. There were some farmers with old trucks, selling vegetables and poultry. He bargained with them and afterwards stuffed a chicken, leeks, and potatoes in his big pockets. The coat was unbearably hot but the pockets served well. Again it would be chicken soup, not bad, but he wished he had some beef, especially since Ann had asked for it. Because it was hot he walked slowly back to the yards singing to himself a Jewish song he had learned in camp: “The Day Will Come.” Off to his right he heard a humming noise like swarming bees but with a sharpness which offended the ear. Over the glowing terra-cotta tiles of an old house he saw six dots coming almost directly for him from a sky of very pleasing blue. They came so fast that he hardly knew what was happening until they began in terrifying immediacy to strafe and bomb.

At first he had no idea of the target, but then his sense of general danger became a much greater fear. Obviously, they were after the train yard. He began to run, his heart giving him much energy by its beating and fear. It was only after he saw the fighters diving at the yards that he decided to throw off his heavy coat with all the food, and even then he paused for half a second to take his wallet, without which he knew he could not survive.

Bombs were exploding all over the yard, tracer bullets, barely visible in the sun, making puffs and ricochets on the earth and steel. It was the part of a bombing attack comparable to starting a cold engine. Inside, things had not begun to catch, and bombs often fell isolated and without effect. But there were six planes and it was not long until the engine began to go—secondary explosions, walls of flame, freight cars blown apart so that their sides and doors flew like chaff.

He was running as fast as he could, with the incredible grace and energy of instinct. He never in his life had run so fast, nor had he been as sure of foot or as quick to dodge as then in the freight yard.

The train on which he had spent the previous few days was pulling away. The engine had gotten up steam, a track had opened, and it was gathering speed. Ann was in the window of their compartment, throwing things out the window and herself about to jump. “Leave them,” he shouted, “stay,” even though he was far away and the train was really beginning to move. He cut over toward it with incredible speed. He could hear feet that seemed not to be his own pounding the earth and stones. All was well; he had gone between the fires and bombs and shells, and he was running magnificently. “Stay,” he screamed to Ann even as she pulled away with the train, because he knew he would make it. He tried to open one of the doors, but it was shut tight. He began to panic, for he knew there wasn't time for her to help him and the train was passing over cross switches on which he lost a lot of speed.

But then she said, “Other side, other side,” and he felt great relief remembering that there the doors were open. He stopped for breath, nodded his head to her confidently, and pointed to the other side of the train. He would wait, get some wind, and then when the back of the train had passed him, make a break for the open doors. She understood this and they were confident that he would succeed. He stood there while the accelerating train passed him car by car and the bombs fell all around. But not one had struck the train, and he had not been wounded at all.

When the last car passed he set out with everything he had, leaping across the rails in one jump, and running furiously to an open door which was banging to and fro. He had room and time to spare. Even though the train was already going fairly fast he could have run beside it and entered by any door, but he wanted to be safe and he began to close on the first. He knew he could do it. It had become a great adventure—what a story to tell. He was sorry about the coat and the food, but he still had his wallet. He and Ann would be safe; he smiled.

And then he heard a terrific roar. A fighter plane's engines came so close he thought it was going to hit him. The deafening noise was followed by a string of explosions rapidly overtaking him. They were incendiary bombs, phosphorus. One exploded some meters in front of him and the world went white. He could see nothing, and he tripped and flew forward crashing onto the railbed of stones and slate. He heard whistles, bombs, and engines, and then lost consciousness thinking he was dead.

When he opened his eyes it was pitch dark except for some orange fires far away He could hardly see, but that was nothing. Ann was gone.

The old conductor had said the South of France. He raised himself and tried to sense what was around him, thinking only of how to get to the house of Pellegrin in Aix where she and his parents would be waiting.

 

W
ITH MUCH
difficulty he stumbled across the rails until he heard a train passing slowly in front of him. He judged it a freight and somehow managed to catch hold of a ladder on its side and climb to a hatch through which he let himself fall without much caution. He landed on bales of some sort of cloth, perhaps felt or even velvet, and lay on them quite comfortably except for his wounds and some burns on his feet and ankles. He could see the sky through the opening, but not the stars, as he was partially blinded. The train had been a shadow, but since they had lived in the summer near the railroad he was always able to distinguish different trains even without sight of them.

Passenger trains were light shells, whisked effortlessly after the engine in delightful relief. The slower freight trains continued to grind the track as had done the engine, with little contrast. Once in a great while he had seen flat-bed trains loaded with tanks and half-tracks. Always on these one could see soldiers perched on the vehicles. Regardless of the time or place they seemed to have the same expression, a combination of the joy of riding carefree and a grim feeling of predetermined death. They would be either eating, casting off nut shells or fruit pits into the wake of their convoy, or scanning the countryside while at the ready on doublebarreled machine guns in flimsy sand-bagged positions. It was like riding the back of a dragon. Before the war he had echoed Anns feelings, that there were too many tanks and soldiers and that these were likely in themselves to bring about conflict, like the spontaneous generation of snakes from a horses hair in rainwater. But lying on bales of cloth which had been packed before the war and would be unpacked during the war, he wished there had been more tanks and guns, since a lack of them hadn't stopped anything. And he wondered why Ann, who was so weak and willing to be weak, had been attacked as if she were armed to the teeth. With this thought, and a terrible hollowness and fear that at last he had been broken, and in one blow, he fell asleep on his bales under stars he could not see on a train which by pure luck was quickly making its way south.

He was startled suddenly upon waking up in a motionless silence. A blue sky shone through the hatch, and for the first time in days he was able to see perfectly. He had been lying on bales of black felt. Several bees had flown into the car and were having difficulty finding their ways out. The air was different so that he knew he was far away from the yard and sidings of the bombing attack. He looked at himself and felt his face. The cuffs of his pants were burned away and his ankles blistered. His clothes were ripped and full of dried blood, and he felt a wound on his skull and across his forehead. Really awakening he breathed in tensely and thought of Ann. He felt his wallet in his pocket, cursed himself, and prayed that her train had gone directly south. He climbed out of the dark into a freight yard in Provence, in a town he knew well. For some reason, even though he had money, he set out by foot for Aix, fifty kilometers distant. But he was more exhausted than he thought and when he stopped to rest by a bridge he fell asleep and did not awaken until evening. Then he drank water from a cool stream and his rest, the fresh water, and the descent of evening made him feel again like a man. Nevertheless he did not look like one, and when he stopped a truck loaded with mirrors for a ride to Aix the driver would take him only if he rode in the back. “You are ugly, that's why,” the man said, and Leon watched himself for an hour or more in the very dimly lighted mirrors. He looked like a Napoleonic infantryman in the Russian winter. This, the fact that he had survived, and the joy at closing the distance between himself and his wife whom he imagined in the garden at the house of Pellegrin made him laugh out loud over and over. He was rugged. What a tale to tell the Pellegrins. He was alive and soon he would see Ann. But his wounds began to pain him and he realized how hungry he was.

The driver rapped on the panel of his compartment. ‘Aix, Aix,” he said, and Leon climbed out just before the truck drove off into the dark. He was in the main square by the fountain and could not believe what he saw.

Literally scores of young men and women, in tuxedos and white ball gowns, were clustered around the fountain, talking and laughing, with champagne glasses in their hands. Telling the virtues of the town, the fountain splashed clear water on clear light. The night was one of those early summer nights which is thick and beautiful and yet cool enough to accommodate the pale light of the moon. They had just graduated. To him it was unbelievable.

He went to the fountain and washed himself. Several of the young people came up to him and one boy handed him a glass of champagne, saying, “Don't drink from the fountain, drink this.” Leon drank it with the speed of a trout catching a fly, and he was poured another, and then several others until his pain was gone and he began to feel some energy and a great deal of dizziness. They had gathered around and were looking at him as if he were a nice little dog. He felt no anger, and just looked at them and at the lights and water. “I was one of you,” he said, “indeed I was, and in just a few days I have become someone else, never to return. Consider that. Consider that here in your summer of trees and fountain.” He was swaying back and forth, not unpleasantly, and his eyes could not focus.

“There is an ice age up there you know, in the North. It's falling down here and will slide over here any time. You know that. You know what's happening.” The boy closest to him nodded. He had finally spoiled their party, a spoiled party anyway. Here was a wretched creature who said he was from the North, and they became frightened down to the soles of their patent leather shoes. “There's a war, a war, and I was in it,” he said. He began to weep, swaying back and forth, staring into the fountain and its intoxicating random envelopments, stunning the adolescents all around him. “Take me to the house of Pellegrin,” he commanded forcefully. Two boys helped him to their car.

The effects of champagne retreated as the little car weaved its way, headlamps beaming, through the walled and gardened countryside quiet but for a din of crickets and the rushing of dark overhead branches. They left him at the gate and he walked up a familiar stone drive to a familiar house which was shut, and dark, and terrifying; and he wailed a cry of despair and horror which silenced the night animals, for even they could sense the upwelling of Hell.

 

I
N
S
EPTEMBER
of 1947, after he had been with the Free French, and then for several years searched as best he could the D.P. camps and the German records, he went to Palestine. Both sets of parents had never left Paris except on a train to Poland. Beyond names and numbers there was nothing more to be heard of them. They had vanished into the soil. They had not even a grave. He returned to the family houses to find other people living in them, quite happily; all the furniture had been taken; the books, diplomas, letters, photographs were gone. He found that under law he still owned his house. An eager lawyer told him of how it could easily be regained. Leon thought for a moment and then simply said, “What would I do with it?” and walked out.

He went to photographers in the neighborhood to try to find a photograph of his wife or his parents. They made him pay exorbitantly to search through their files. Thousands of men, women, and children stared out at him, but he found nothing. He had been arrested and his papers had been confiscated. Because of that he hadn't even a picture, or signature, or anything at all of his wife or parents. He remembered his father in the station, in his jacket. Where was his jacket?

He went to friends to inform them that he was alive and to seek information. They had none. He did not wish to hear of his mother and father, for they were dead and there was no point in reconstructing those days when he had been absent. But Ann was still alive. Of this he was convinced, since there was no record of her anywhere. No one had seen her, her name was to be found on no lists, there were no rumors.

It was said that beautiful women survived better than anyone else and he hoped for this. She might have been in England, Russia, France, America, Palestine, anywhere. People in the camps were going to Palestine. He knew that she might not even have been able to return to France, and hoped that she had been in Palestine all during the war. On the train they had discussed it, for although their first choice was America they knew they had no chance of entry. He spent weeks and months imagining her healthy and dark, farming the land and changed. And anyway, although he loved Europe he could not bear to put one foot down after another there. He left for Palestine from Trieste, illegally, but by then he had a talent for such things.

The Mediterranean—bright and dark, covered with mists of glowing air, surrounded by coasts of white rock and fish-eating cities, divided by islands of pine and citrus, rapid carrier of heat and conflict—enlivened him for a time. Three weeks on the deck of an old ship, with men and women as broken, defeated, and numb as the rusting iron and toothless rails, made him aware of his strength once again. He was moving once more, as rapidly as when he had fallen into France by silken parachute, or followed an armored column across the Rhine. These wretched refugees even sang, and despite its age the ship went forward, and the waves went eastward, waves which would become a new state, sweeping through it as it grew. They sang “My Thoughts Are Free,” and they sang “The Day Will Come,” and many other songs, so that at night on the small ship by yellow lantern light the new state took shape, in waves of feeling and energy, like a song. The children were given life, born here. And Leon, who had begun to crumble, had a part of him braced. He was again in the deep flux of history, nurtured only by events and hopes. The sun rose and beat upon the green sea. It set, and left its mark of bronze and red on the faces of those who had cast their eyes always to the East. I love, he thought, I must love. If I cannot love Maman, and Papa, and Ann, then I must at least love this land a little.