Among the Living (32 page)

Hirsch and Cohan — faceless names — lay on Goldah’s mind hours later as he stood atop the ladder among the shelves at the store. He had been finding this the quietest time to come in, the place empty and cool and with nothing more to think about than the mindless repetition of restocking boxes. Tonight, though, that was different. This time he had come to think. There had to be a way.

He was so preoccupied that he failed to hear the back door opening or the footsteps along the cement floor, and he certainly wasn’t prepared for the “Hey there, Mr. Ike,” which cut through the quiet air of his concentration. Had Goldah been cupping more than a single box under his arm, the whole stack might have fallen on Raymond’s head, but as it was, Goldah was holding just the one and now juggled it to his chest before reining it in.

“Guess you didn’t hear me,” Raymond said. “If you need a minute, you go on and take it.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“Looks like some kind a monkey tricks you got yourself going there, swinging back and forth, slipping them boxes in. Nice and smooth. You got to teach me that sometime.”

“I’ve still got one box up here. My aim is pretty good.”

Raymond laughed and said, “What you doing here, Mr. Ike? No reason to be taking on extra work.”

Goldah slid the last one in and started down. “You’ve been thinking all the boxes have magically found their way up onto the shelves over the last few weeks — is that it?”

“Ain’t been thinking about it at all. If the boxes get up, they get up. Just thought Jacob was doing it.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Goldah stepped off the ladder. “So what brings you down?” He reached for the glass of water he’d set on the ground and realized his sleeve was still rolled up. Quietly, Goldah let it down and chose not to see Raymond staring at his forearm. Goldah said, “I thought Friday night was shrimp and ribs out at the place in Pooler for you and Mary Royal?” Goldah drank.

“You been paying attention, Mr. Ike. No, we’ll head out in a little bit. Just thought I’d come down, take a look. Quiet here with no one around this time a night.”

“It is.”

One of the bulbs overhead flickered and Raymond said, “I can take that glass for you, Mr. Ike. Wash it out.”

“That’s all right. I still have a few more stacks to go.”

“I can help with them boxes, too, if you want.”

“No — no reason to get your shirt damp. Anyway, I like doing it on my own.”

“Okay … Oh, and Mary’ll probably want to know — Miss Posner doing better? She had quite a scare.”

Goldah always appreciated Raymond’s sense of things, more so the way he showed it. “She’s fine.”

“And I guess Miss Eva thanking her lucky stars for you.”

Goldah waited before answering. “I should probably get back to this.”

“Yes, suh.”

Raymond looked to go and Goldah said, “Why’d you really come down tonight?”

Raymond thought a moment, shrugged. “Guess someone needs to be keeping an eye on the place seeing how Mr. Jesler’s mind’s been elsewhere. Make sure everything’s okay. No trouble, really. Maybe I just like the quiet, too.”

The sound of a car passing in the alley broke through and Goldah said, “Abe didn’t send you, then … to check up on me?”

Raymond’s confusion lasted only a few seconds. “Mr. Abe knows you down here?”

“I don’t think so — no.”

“Well then he don’t, ’cause I come down on my own.”

Goldah nodded. Best to let it go.

“You okay, Mr. Ike?”

Goldah set his glass on the floor. “You’re a good man, Raymond. I’m glad Abe realizes what he has with you.”

Raymond’s concern became something more pointed. “Mr. Abe say something to you?”

“To me? About what?”

“About me and my place here?”

Goldah heard the change in tone. It seemed a strange question. “He appreciates you very much, if that’s what you mean.”

“He told you that?”

“He did, yes.”

“ ’Cause he said we wasn’t going to be talking to no one about my percent.”

Goldah realized he had overstepped. He had no idea what Raymond was talking about. Hirsch and Cohan flooded back and Goldah nodded and said, “I imagine he did,” hoping it would be enough.

Raymond took another moment before saying, “Makes sense, I guess, you being family and such. You got a stake in
the business, too.” He nodded in a way that seemed more to convince himself than Goldah. “You best get back to your boxes. I got to get myself over to Mary’s. You have a good night, Mr. Ike.”

Goldah listened for the door, then hoisted himself back up onto the ladder with a new set of boxes in tow, all the while unaware that Jacob, tonight quiet on his cot, lay staring coldly into the darkness.

15

IT WAS ANOTHER DAY
before Goldah was summoned. He rang twice, then knocked before Jesler came to the door. At first Abe looked puzzled — distracted by something, a cold sheen across his brow and cheeks — until, with a sudden recollection, he snapped himself into focus.

“Oh … sure. Here you are.”

Jesler had telephoned this morning, but it was Malke who was calling out to him.

Jesler ran a hand across his slick forehead and ushered Goldah in. Halfway down the hallway, he took hold of Goldah’s arm and stopped him. The look in his eyes was equally jarring. Jesler said, “I know you’re here to see her … I don’t want to get in the way of anything and I suppose this might sound a little crazy, but you haven’t mentioned Hirsch to anyone, have you? I mean … I can’t see how you would have, but just in case I wanted to ask. If you had … in passing or something?”

Goldah kept his gaze level, careful not to show even a hint of recognition. He owed Jesler that much. “No, Abe, I don’t recognize the name. You’ve never mentioned a Hirsch to me. Is everything all right?”

Goldah watched as the eyes ticked through some unseen list before the head gave way to a reassuring nod. “No — sure. That’s right. You don’t know him. How could you?” Jesler let
go of Goldah’s arm. “That’s all right. Okay. You go on up. She’s in her bedroom.”

“Is everything all right?”

The moisture on Jesler’s face seemed to gather in his eyes — the expression confused, lost, then broken. Ever so slightly Jesler shook his head and a faint shade of life returned. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

“It’s okay, Abe. Everything will be okay.”

An unnerving calm swept over Jesler. He tried a smile and patted a hand on Goldah’s shoulder. “You go on up. She’s waiting. Hard to say what for but … Take care of yourself, Ike. That’s the most important thing.” For some reason Jesler nodded again before moving off. Goldah had no choice but to head for the steps.

Upstairs, her voice was faint through the door, stronger with a second stab at it.

“Come in.”

Goldah pushed through. The room was dark. “I’m here, by the desk,” she said, though Goldah struggled to find her. “I prefer it without the lamp. You can sit on the bed.”

He waited for her outline to grow clearer. A few shards of sunlight broke through the drapes and he sat.

“You see,” she said. “Isn’t this more pleasant?”

Goldah felt as if he had lived through this summoning before, not with Malke but with his father: childhood essays submitted for approval, hours waiting outside a door in anticipation of the verdict — final and absolute. Goldah could recall nothing of kindness from those sessions by the desk, no indication of pride or love, only a search for the truth, the frustration and the humiliation scrawled across each line in his father’s pen, and shredding what little of himself he had put on the page. Goldah had always received top marks for his
writing, but he had never once considered the work his own. To still live with that sense of deceit …

“Much more pleasant,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“They’ve let me sleep a good deal. The medicine has been good for that. A bit woozy.” He thought she might be drinking something at the desk but he couldn’t be certain. She said, “I can’t stay here anymore, Yitzi.”

“No, of course not.” He had been anticipating this. “We’ll find you some rooms.”

“No. I can’t stay
here
 … in this place … with these people. Any of these people. I feel the shame too much.”

“I know,” he said. “It will pass. No one sees what happened on the beach as anything other than what it was. You had a reaction. How couldn’t you?”

“What are you talking about?” Her tone was suddenly more strident. “I don’t care what these people think.”

Goldah tried to gauge her expression but the shadows were falling across her face. He said, “I don’t understand.”

“Yes you do. Of course you do. You know exactly what I mean. The shame. For being here. For being here at all. They can’t understand that. They never will.”

She was taking them back to the camp, but he knew full well it was Eva who was causing her shame.

She said, “Don’t tell me it isn’t there with you every moment. The things we did … the things no one should know you’re capable of doing … and yet here we are, and you think a bit of shouting at the water has anything to do with that? Don’t sit there so quietly and think I don’t know.”

“And what is it you think you know?”

“Plenty, Yitzi, I know plenty. Trust me.” She leaned forward and her eyes caught the light; he saw how empty and unwavering they had become.

He said, “Why don’t we talk about finding you some rooms of your own?”

“Would that be easier for you? Would that make this place real, have them all thinking you’re just as real? But of course you’re not, and I’m the only one who knows it.”

She had always taken aim at him with a willingness to wound, but this … he could feel the depth of her hatred.

He said, “You’re upset. I’ve put you … us … in a difficult position. I’m sorry for that.”

“I’m not upset, Yitzi. I simply know what we both live with.”

“And if I see it differently?”

“Because of this woman? You think because of her?”

“Why not?”

“ ‘Why not?’ ” He heard the disdain in her voice. “Should I laugh? Where was this man before the war … before the
Lager
? Does he exist even now? When the guards came, when they moved through the bunks one by one, girls screaming until they had given everything of themselves, even as the guards would beat them to death afterward. The guards couldn’t let anyone know how they had defiled themselves with a little Jewess … the shame of it. But I never screamed. Not once. I chose not to and my beatings were easier. And when they made me pregnant, I found someone to kill the baby inside me because you couldn’t have the guards finding that. There was always someone to kill a baby in the blockhouse … always someone who knew. The women laid me on the ground and held me down and covered my mouth so I wouldn’t give myself away with my own screams. And when they were done, this face … it was a blessing because the guards saw what I had become and they no longer wanted me.
Then
they beat me … my cheek, my nose … shattered them because they had so liked my
face before and now it was gone. And if ever I said anything … A blessing, the palsy. We all had such blessings, didn’t we? And now you have this woman.”

She spoke without life, the words cold, and only then did Goldah see the wet creases along her cheeks.

He said, “You want me to say I regret living through it? I won’t.”

“Good — why should I want that? I don’t. It’s only the moments when I chose to survive — the hundreds and hundreds of them when I couldn’t let myself die — that I regret, not the surviving. The instinct to live … It’s a terrible thing, isn’t it, unless you give in to it among those who understand how truly terrible it is. In there, in the
Lager
 … no one cared to be forgiven for living. No one saw it as life. But here … It’s not their pity I can’t stand, Yitzi. It’s their innocence. These are the ones who would have screamed and died and been freed from it all. They can’t know the shame and it’s too much for me to see them every day.”

Goldah felt nothing at hearing her story. This was his lingering horror. To feel nothing for such things. And if this atrocity could stir nothing in him … was all feeling just a shadow?

“No,” he said aloud, hardly aware that he had spoken.

“So you do see?”

He had lost himself in the shifting light on the floor, a scattering of narrow spikes, each one tapering to the darkness by the door. Even they, it seemed, could find no escape.

“What?” he said.

“I can’t stay here.”

“I know. And where will you go?”

“
You
?” For the first time she spoke with surprise. “Is that what you think? No, Yitzi — it’s where will
we
go.” Her face came full from the shadows. “Even if you love this woman, it
won’t change a thing. You’d see your shame in her every day. Can you imagine that, the loneliness of it? I’m saving you from that by taking you away.”

“You think Palestine will be any different?”

“No one there will see us this way. No one will have lived this easy life of a Jew.
We
won’t see ourselves this way and we’ll live again. Here … here we have no chance at life, not the way we knew it. Is your love worth so much more to you than that?”