Hostage (6 page)

Luigi is thrown by what Shaltiel has to say, failing to account for the blindfold having been askew. He removes it. Shaltiel has won. He squints, adjusting his eyes to even the meager light.

Am I dreaming? Is it the dream that makes my body tremble? wonders Shaltiel. He is so afraid of torture, so afraid of fear. His brain is muddled, disoriented, especially when he must wear the blindfold. He keeps repeating prayers, but they are beginning to
seem less holy. His thoughts are bizarre; he’s not even sure he’s
thinking
. Does he cry for help? The cry may well be silent. But he hears it and he’s not sure it’s him. He suddenly sees himself surrounded by a group of masked children who are threatening him. They’re reproaching him for not having children. They demand a story, any story, as long as it’s beautiful. He suggests a poem; they refuse. He insists. They put their hands over their ears. He gets angry. A little girl makes a face at him. He finds it unbearable. Finally, he submits:

An awkward movement awakens him with a start.

• • •

To escape from the present, Shaltiel takes refuge in the delirium of the past: his father so pure in his occupations; his friends so compassionate; One-Eyed Paritus and his secrets; his brother, Pavel, and his metamorphoses; Blanca and lost happiness, unfulfilled love.

I feel an obscure desire to compare my imprisonment and my abductors’ death threats to the sufferings of my father, my mother and their parents. But I fight against the comparison. I confine myself to just recalling those years. Even in my imagination, I didn’t accompany them far enough into the darkness. I learned from my father never to yield to the temptation of comparing. Some memories are by essence unique and must remain so: Any resemblance can only be illusory.

How, in their flesh and conscience, did he and his companions live through the German occupation and its atrocities? How did they live with the dead and with death all around them? They may talk about it if they have the strength and desire; others have done so. As for me, I won’t allow myself to: I have no firsthand knowledge of Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. And there, the mystics are right: Those who know don’t talk and those who talk don’t know. And even the survivors who have decided to bear witness confirm it in their way: They almost all say that their experience can’t be related in words, and yet, as witnesses, they’re morally compelled to resort to them. Their silence, except if it is ontologically integral to their deposition, would not help truth triumph. It would only open the road to oblivion and, as one survivor put it, enable the executioner to kill his victims a second time.

To tell this story in its entirety, it may be useful for me to emphasize the role that the game of chess played in my life.

I like playing chess. I like the concentration it demands and the fact that imagination is essential. The notion that sometimes one needs to grant greater initiative and power to the pawn than the king. I welcome the need to anticipate the opponent’s moves, and turn them against him.

I also like this intelligent game because it brings me closer to my father. Facing the chessboard, even when I’m alone, I’m never
really
alone—my father is always facing me. I like his generosity and his way of educating me, of loving me, and doing it without flaunting it. He does everything to give me confidence. At first he went to great lengths to lose against me. Later, he went to even greater lengths to win. And when he would lose, he was happy. And proud, very proud.

I would sometimes play with strangers, and more often still, alone. There was a time, at the age of twelve, as I was preparing for my bar mitzvah, when I preferred the game to studying. In fact, I had already acquired a reputation as a budding champion in Brooklyn.

My father also liked chess, though he sometimes chided me for playing too much. Seeing me without a book in my hands or under my arm, he would gently reprimand me: “Are you forgetting that losing a game is an error or a lesson, but losing one’s time is a sin?” His rebukes never lasted very long. Afterward he watched me closely as I pondered the best way of exploiting the position of the mischievous pawn threatened by the horrid castle.

• • •

In Davarowsk, Galicia, several years earlier, I had the good fortune of meeting a German, Friedrich von Waldensohn, who claimed to be a count, though he didn’t make his lineage clear. Austrian, Hungarian, Estonian, Prussian?

He lived in a large apartment near the Jewish neighborhood, but our first meeting took place at our house, well before we moved to the ghetto. One evening, he knocked at the door and announced he was looking for me. My father was gripped with fear: Was he with the police? What possibly could it be?

The visitor, noticing me at the other end of the room, made me come closer.

“He’s young, barely seven,” my father said. “He didn’t do anything bad.”

“I see all of you are frightened. Don’t worry, I have no intention of harming you. I’m not a policeman. I’m here because I’m interested in chess; if I could, I’d spend my days and nights in front of the chessboard. And I’m told that you, my boy, are a good player.”

I didn’t know what to say. But my father quickly pulled himself together.

“Yes, that’s true, my son is a good player—at least people say he is. But I’m not competent enough to judge.”

“I am,” said the visitor. And he turned to me. “What about you? What do you think?”

I don’t know how I found the courage, if that’s what it was, but I replied, “Would you like me to show you?”

In a split second the table was cleared and the chessboard appeared. The count and I, face-to-face, started a game whose
repercussions would turn out to be considerable in all our lives. He spoke German and I, Yiddish.

I was nervous, anguished; I sensed danger. After all, I couldn’t crawl into the man’s head: Whether I won or lost, I risked sparking the anger of my distinguished opponent. I had to make an effort to concentrate. I had the luck of playing black. I had no trouble predicting his first four moves (the king’s pawn, the queen’s bishop …). I set up my attack. He repulsed it. After playing for over an hour, my eyes constantly on my fingers, I found myself at a turning point: Should I sacrifice my castle and then capture his queen three moves later and possibly humiliate him, and suffer his revenge? I wondered if he sensed I was hesitating. I sacrificed my castle—and I won the game. Stunned, frightened, my father stared at me, afraid that heaven would come tumbling down on us. But to our great surprise, my opponent, instead of being angry, showed contentment and approval.

“You almost kept the castle to keep me happy, right?”

I stammered some incoherent words. He interrupted me.

“Don’t insult me by lying!” he snapped.

I didn’t answer. But, as if at the edge of a precipice, I implored the God of my ancestors to protect us.

The visitor resumed in a friendlier voice.

“That was Alekhine’s defense you used in the beginning, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t understand …”

“You’re lying again! Do you think I don’t know the gambits, the openings and defenses of the great Russian masters?”

My body in a sweat, all I could do was repeat, “Sir, you have to believe me …”

“My son never lies,” my father interjected.

“I’ve never heard the word ‘gambit,’ ” I said. “I’ve never heard that there were … there were masters, great or small.”

The visitor scrutinized me for a long time, then gave me a faint smile.

“I believe you. And I like you. I’ll take my revenge next week. Okay?”

“Of course, sir,” my father replied, in my stead.

The war had been going on forever. Davarowsk was occupied by the Hungarian army and suffering under its yoke. Our Jewish community was soon to be subjected to the first anti-Semitic measures. Meanwhile, the number of disastrous decrees kept growing.

Friedrich von Waldensohn—or “the count” as we called him—came to see us every week. Our games were becoming more intense for both of us. They took place even in the ghetto, where we had moved with a few pitiful objects and utensils. Whenever he visited, he brought us food and sometimes much-needed clothes.

Usually, when we played, we hardly spoke about the political situation and the war, about which, in any case, I understood virtually nothing. The count alluded to them occasionally. “The world,” he said one day, “is a huge chessboard. And we play for or against fate.”

He was interested in everything that concerned me: my mother, who had become ill, my father’s past and the education of my cousin Arele. Once, when we were alone, he dropped a remark, as he moved a pawn, that seemed innocuous.

“Apparently you have a brother, somewhere, who is older than your cousin.”

I blushed. My heart began to beat very hard.

“Yes,” I said.

“His name is …?”

“Pinhas … Pavel.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does your father know?”

“No.”

“So, who does know?”

“No one.”

He caressed his chin as though he were thinking about his next move. Then he played his knight and endangered my castle.

“We know where he is,” he said

I almost asked, Who is “we”? but restrained myself. Given how much time we were spending together, I had stopped worrying about his origins. Going by his name, he was surely German.

“He’s in Russia.

I bit my tongue.

“We know a lot of things about a lot of people,” he continued.

A sudden rush of fear made me commit an error—I took a pawn and lost my castle. I saw everything in a blur. No game had ever required so much concentration from me; it was both painful and exciting.

He raised his head and looked at me.

“I can see I frightened you. Fear is a luxury to which chess players are not entitled.”

Interrupting the game, he took advantage of the fact that
we were alone to confide in me: As a German, and thanks to his authentic aristocratic titles, he had been recruited by the intelligence services of the occupation authorities.

“As long as I’m here,” he said, “you and your family have nothing to fear.”

That evening, I told my father about this latest development. He was returning from work in the forest. My cousin hadn’t yet returned from the clandestine school where he was in charge of a dozen children younger than he.

“I should have suspected it,” said my father, his face clouding over. “How else could he go freely in and out of the ghetto? And now that we know, how can we trust him? In fact, now that I think about it, I’m worried by what he just told you. As long as he’s here, probably we have nothing to fear. But that means that the other people here have everything to fear—that’s what his comments mean. There’s a new danger threatening our community. I’m afraid this foreshadows horrible events for the ghetto.”

“Why do you see everything as so dire, Father? Yes, he’s German, but he’s not like the others!”

“You say that because he likes to play chess?”

“No, because he’s never been cruel with us. He never takes advantage of the situation to humiliate us. And you have to admit he’s always shown lots of consideration and even been generous with us.”

“With us, yes,” said my father, looking more and more worried. “But with the other Jews? What do we know about his attitude toward them? Maybe he’s preparing to unleash even greater misfortunes on our people?”

My cousin Arele joined us then, bringing bad news.

“The Germans have learned of the existence of the schools
in the ghetto,” he said. “They’re outraged. A member of the Jewish Council reported it to us. A German officer yelled, ‘What’s going on here? It’s unthinkable, intolerable, illegal and criminal! While German and Hungarian soldiers are fighting in Russia around the clock, gloriously serving the Nazi ideal, some little Jews are sitting here quietly studying the Bible as if nothing were happening!’ I’m afraid our schools are going to be banned.”

My father looked at me. I had seldom seen him look so troubled.

For one or two weeks, the count, even-tempered, came back for our chess games. As usual, he brought bread and sometimes even butter or plum jam. In principle we were equal opponents before the chessboard. He found my game increasingly daring; his was inspired. We always learned a great deal from each other.

“When I was thirteen,” he remarked one day, “I was as good as you are. And then I lost my father. He was killed in action. For a whole year, I couldn’t look at a chessboard. The image of his mutilated body haunted all my thoughts. I swore I would take revenge.”

I felt my opponent was becoming increasingly preoccupied, perturbed, melancholic. Could my father be right? Was the count a harbinger of turmoil and renewed harassments?

Now, in the place where I am, between these four filthy walls, a toy in the hands of my torturers, I discovered that in life, though man doesn’t know it, he sometimes plays with or opposite Death. Is the choice in our hands?

Yes, my father had been right in his apprehensions.

• • •

That afternoon we had expected Friedrich von Waldensohn at the usual hour, but he had not arrived. While we waited for him in our little room, Father boiled water and Arele studied the Midrash of the Psalms. I was in front of the chessboard trying to work my way through the game that had been left unfinished at our last meeting. At twilight, the count walked in without knocking, empty-handed. He didn’t take his place at the table, as was his habit, but remained standing and addressed my father.