In Paradise: A Novel (14 page)

D
ANCING AT
A
USCHWITZ
!
A diabolical idea, insists Jim Glock, the very phrase a profaning of the martyrs. Any moment now those holy ghosts at Birkenau might come thronging down around the heads of the intruders, hissing bitter prophecies and imprecations.

Dancing at Auschwitz!
One hardly dares speak it aloud, Anders slyly agrees, for fear of being incinerated in one’s tracks. Since the Dancing, Olin’s roommate looks half-crazed, ice-blue eyes fired by his northern lights, his aurora borealis. What portent can this be?

Precisely
what
has taken place?
Something
occurred, as all who took part are eager to attest, but to call it “the Dancing” seems self-conscious and a bit trivial at the same time. In the absence of any sensible definition, “the Dancing” is inevitably reduced to “It,” and reverberations of this “It” are all around them, inside, outside, everywhere.

Clements Olin is relieved that so many others will testify to “something not known to anyone at all but wild in our breast for centuries” (a favorite line from an Akhmatova poem that when quoted to Sister Catherine had evoked a gasp of enchantment, a girlish skip and clapping of the hands.

With the advent of this something-not-known (which he scarcely dares consider lest it vanish), the metastasizing animosities among the witness bearers are dissolving, as if the Dancing were sealing their acceptance of all woebegone humankind in all its greed and cruelties as the only creature capable of evil and the only one—surely these two are connected—aware that it must die.

I
F ONLY IT WERE SO SIMPLE
!
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Evil as a piece of every heart—a truism no less true, he thinks, for being disputed by the righteous. When he shows Solzhenitsyn’s observation to one of the Buddhist teachers, the man dismisses it as romantic or incomplete or both. “What a blessing spiritual insight is,” he sighs a bit too comfortably, “which cuts through all self-lacerating partial truths while good and evil fall away.” Well, yes, one could say that. But surely that old gulag survivor wrote those words not as a man blessed with spiritual insight but as the cry of a tormented being whose insight had been hard-wrung from dire suffering. How many of these humble penitents braving the weather every day all day out on that platform have been blessed with the leisure or the means to pursue a so-called “spiritual practice”? And how long would such delicate attainments have withstood the death camp’s horrors?

Yes, something has happened here, is happening, will happen. Even those sophisticated Poles, who did not dance and are rather snide about the epiphanies of those who did, seem less disgruntled and even a bit humbled. And most astonishing of all, perhaps, the guilt Olin thought certain participants might suffer in the aftermath has not emerged. Is that because this phenomenon sprang forth of its own accord? He thinks so. “It” simply
was
. And those who had been open to this “It,” including a few of the Orthodox Jews who might have been expected to condemn it most severely, seem not in the least plagued by doubt but on the contrary, in this atmosphere of aimless gratitude, look sort of goofily transcendent.

“Horror penetrates our bones but at the same time there is joy,” says the daughter of an SS doctor. “Who would have expected joy at Auschwitz?” Her more cautious companions rush to hush such an unthinkable idea while others nod and smile in affirmation.

Or is this “joy,” as Earwig and Glock and other naysayers insist, not transcendence at all but mere wishful thinking? “Superficial, unearned, irresponsible,” complains Rabbi Jim, who from the outset has been self-appointed spokesman for the indignant and uneasy. That foolish Dancing, he asserts, was no more than mass hysteria born of that residue of death and darkness in the hall. Rabbi Jim’s carping is so vehement that it risks being dismissed as envy of Rabbi Dan, who in his new eminence as the Rebbe Who Danced at Auschwitz is the gracious recipient of awe and deference from every side.

What had happened was no miracle, of course; nobody dares claim any such thing. But by next morning, even so, the words “miraculous” and “mystical experience” start cropping up. Together with Ben Lama and Adina, Olin worries that the force of the event will be weakened or dispersed by facile labeling, much as a rare bird might be put to flight out of the back side of a thicket by enthusiasts out front, crowding it too close for a better look.

“What the hell is ‘mystical experience’?” scoffs Earwig, who had stood with his arms folded tight, refusing to join the Dancing, or turn his back on it, either one. “Olin? Don’t be an idiot, okay?” His voice is urgent. “I was watching the whole time and
nothing happened
. There was no
event
.” What galls him most is the emotion on display among the more awestruck and devout—the “spiritual groupies,” as he calls them, “soft and runny as one-minute eggs.” He derides any notion of the Dancing as “transformative,” far less “a blessing” that banished “the trauma” of those first few days. Less still was it a “healing” or a “closure” of the wounds—he spits all these New Age terms with contempt. “Hey,
nothing happened
, folks, okay? That wasn’t ‘dancing,’ for Christ sake, that was goddamn ring-around-the-rosie!” Yet even Earwig can’t quite deny the shift in atmosphere, which he ascribes to barometric pressure, negative ions or whatever, the mistral or something.

Isn’t it at least
conceivable
, Olin proposes to Earwig and Anders, that days of strong meditation in the cold by so many sincere pilgrims might actually generate some sort of—well, you know—
power
?

“
Power?
Oh, come on, Olin.” These two very different men, the one caustic and the other antic, refuse to dignify such nonsense with debate. Yet since the Dancing, Olin has noticed, Georgie Earwig has mostly kept that savage tongue of his under control. He even joins some of the meditation periods on the selection platform, where in his determination to sit cross-legged and remain as still as “those stupid-ass Zen monks,” he is rigid in infuriated agony.

C
atherine comes down the convent path next morning as Olin is leaving for the camp. Seeing him, she smiles a little—
She must think I’ve lain in wait for her all night!
—and joining him, she no longer looks behind her for the other novice. It turns out that Sister Ann-Marie, in nervous collapse, has withdrawn from the retreat and will be sent for. And their chaplain (she never speaks his name) has intimated that Catherine should leave, too, since with the other novice gone, she will be “unprotected,” by which, of course, he means unchaperoned.

Don’t go
, thinks Olin.
Just refuse to go.
Has Father Mikal any authority over her, he asks, besides the threat of a negative report?

“He is
ordained
,” she says, as if this settles the matter. To question the Church’s wartime entropy by seeking forgiveness from the Jews as she had done was not her place. “Poverty, chastity, obedience”—she recites these like a catechism—“
that
is my place.” Is she being ironic? He cannot be sure. (Is she a virgin? The question slips furtively across his consciousness, all but unnoticed.) Her “keeper” had no choice, she says, but to report an unruly novice already on probation who won’t go to him for guidance, far less Confession. And inevitably it will be decided that this disrespectful person is quite unsuitable for holy orders. “‘
This one we dismiss from her novitiate
,’” she rules in stern diocesan voice. “‘
She is a troublemaker. She is unworth it.
’”

“Unworthy
?
”
He tries not to smile. “What nonsense.”

You will have your life back! Wonderful!
—that is his first reaction. He has no idea what he is talking about, yet even so, he is convinced from their discussions that this passionate young woman is too intelligent to accept the archaic strictures of the Vatican, too independent to pursue the narrow path defined for nuns by decadent male hierarchies in a corrupt structure that in the Western world, in Olin’s view, is nearing the point of historical irrelevance, collapsing slowly into its own garish remains like that golden pumpkin in the autumn field.

She says nothing. In trying to comfort her and calm his heart, he talks too fast, and what he tries to say sounds irresponsible even to him. “Catherine? When you said, ‘that priest’—?”

“Church business!” She is close to tears.

Retreating, he asks how she feels now about the Dancing. She looks wary, then she says, “It made me very happy.” And yes, it must have been authentic: in her opinion, those who joined in with an open heart had been those most open to this whole experience of the death camp, transported by compassion to the same degree that they were truly penetrated by the horror.

She seems uneasy about walking further with him unescorted. When he moves aside to let Adina catch up and take his place, she looks relieved.

“
W
HY ARE YOU MESSING
with her?” rasps Earwig, coming up behind. “Shame on ya.”
On a so-called spiritual retreat? In fucking Ausch-witz? In a goddamn death camp?
—that’s what he means, this unshaven, scowling Georgie, erstwhile scourge of nuns.

Adina, too, looks askance at his association with Catherine, and presumably Becca as well. What ails these people? Any unseemly dalliance in such a place would be unthinkable! He
knows
that, goddamnit. In no mood for rebuke, he snaps at Earwig: what makes him think this is any of his business?

The other rounds on him, enraged. “None of my business? That what you’re saying, shithead?”

“You’re very quick to jeer at others, I’ve noticed. Why are you always so pissed off? How come you don’t tell us your own story?”

“
Bear my own witness
, you mean? What’s that got to do with you and your little nun?” He snarls in disgust. “I never came here to bear no goddamned witness and I’m not some spiritual type like all you ecumenicals or whatever the hell you people call yourselves. You want to bear witness? Go bear witness, then. Because they haven’t heard one peep out of you either.
Snotty Polack from the U.S.A., my sob story
, coming right up.”

But then, abruptly, Earwig interrupts himself. “Okay, okay,” he says in a low voice. “Here’s all I know. The Jew list in our Romanian village was turned in to the police by the local priest, probably with Vatican approval.
These are dark times, Father, play it safe, don’t get the Church in trouble.
See why I’m so hard on the Church? So these Jews got the hell downriver to Constanta on the Black Sea coast, leased an old river scow, sailed for Palestine one jump ahead of the
fascisti
.” He coughs. “Only thing, one dumb kid got left behind.”

“That’s you? That’s terrible!”

“I was mouthy, never wrong no matter what. Must have snuck out past the pier guard, gone exploring down along the docks. I kind of remember running back, running all the way out that empty pier.
‘
Wait, Mama. It’s me!
’” Earwig’s voice has thickened oddly and his head looks skewed.

“You never seen emptiness,” he says, “until you seen all that harbor water in the space where your ship should be. Darkness coming, nobody to call out to, nothing to eat, nowhere to go. And Mama out there on that ship, staring back north, maybe weeping in the dark. I see those red pinch marks yet today.” He raises thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. Though he lost her face over the years, he has never forgotten those marks made by cheap glasses.

“Crept into a cargo shed, whimpered all night, almost froze to death. Scared of big wharf rats. First light these Roma people came out of hiding, took me with ’em. They wanted to escape on the same ship—the
Struma
—but those nice Jews refused ’em.
Dirty Gypsies! Can’t even help
pay the freight unless they rob us first!
He pauses. What he can’t remember was where his Roma band had wandered, which borders had been crossed, which countries. He mainly recalls being on the run after his band was arrested and a scorched summer day somewhere in eastern Europe, and a dead silent cattle car stranded on a siding, and an old belt lowered through the floor and drawn back up over and over only to be dropped and left behind in a puddle between rails when the transport jolted forward. Earwig clears his throat. “Very generous people, shared any food they could scrape up, always joked no matter what. Taught the little Jew boy how to steal,” he adds. “Came in handy all my life.”

“So you’re here to honor them.”

“Pay my respects anyway,” he grumps, uncomfortable.

Olin nods. “And that’s Gyorgi Earwig’s story?”

“No such Jew, man. I made him up.”

Earwig has no interest in going up on stage and bearing witness to that nightfall on the docks, far less what became of him after Constanta, or how he wound up in the U.S., one of thousands of refugee children, all desperate to locate their lost families. In later years, he tried to track that ship on his makeshift income as a merchant seaman, cabdriver, and part-time thief. He returned to Europe regularly, he says, and speaks five languages, all of them poorly.

Earwig’s youth and middle age and all his savings have been used up in futile attempts to trace the
Struma
in the Old World ports; he found no record of that ship or her arrival in Palestine or anywhere else. As for her passengers, nothing but false leads and dead ends, like this damned place. “But coming from back of nowhere, see, with nothing to my name—no rightful name, even—it seemed like this search was all there was. Who could believe such a stupid story? What makes it even more ridiculous was not knowing the name of the people I was looking for, my own damn family. I just hoped to run across somebody who might have heard about an old Danube River scow lugging refugees to Palestine, and maybe even a young couple gone half crazy because their stupid kid got left back on the dock.”

Scowling, he resumes walking. “So anyway, how can I bear witness to their story? I don’t
know
their story, not how it ended.

“That guy Rainer, he’s getting wartime records checked in the archives in Berlin. Same guy who dug up those name lists you people recite while you freeze your butts off out on the platform. I never stick around for that, because even if my family’s name popped up, I’d never recognize it.”

“Probably not,” says Olin. “Certain common names take up whole columns, page after page.”

“Still, I figure I must have heard it as a little kid, so maybe I would kind of
feel
it if I heard it read out loud with the right first name. Feel the good fit of it, see what I mean?” He looks embarrassed. “Don’t say it, man. Even if I stumbled over the whole story, what do I do with it after all these years?” His voice is pitiless. “Who needs it? Nobody, right? Not even me.”

A
DINA AWAITS HIM
at the cave entrance. Watching the novice passing through the tunnel, she declares without turning to look at him that “trying to undermine a devout young person’s calling is a grave responsibility, whatever one’s opinion of the Church. All her old doubts have been stirred awake under the influence of certain older people she respects.” She eyes him coldly. “The point is, Clements, you risk doing her great harm, you and our detestable
ewige Jude
—”

“Hold on a minute, damn it! What gives you the right to lecture me like this?” For all her irritating ways, he respects Adina and her disapproval bothers him, but having watched her hover over Catherine, he has to wonder if this overbearing lady might feel possessive, even jealous.

“I just thought I should warn you,” she is saying. “Catherine’s intelligence and a brave spirit do not necessarily protect that girl from the sort of sophisticated older man who might stoop to the careless theft of a human heart.”

“And you suspect I may be that sort of ‘older man,’ is that it? A stooper, so to speak?”

“Are you assuring me you’re not? I’m delighted to hear that, Clements.” She smiles then, warmly, hastening to mend things before he can protest further.

Well? Why should this woman trust you when you don’t quite trust yourself?

Olin’s brief marriage ended in divorce on grounds of what his wife’s attorney cited as “alienation of the affections.” In the years since, more than one lover has complained that Clements Olin can be quick to anger, remote, moody, ever ready to withdraw without offering himself fully in the first place: he is spoiled, they say, too accustomed to being courted. “Successful with women” is how his male friends might describe him, yet he feels just the reverse—he feels hollowed out by loneliness, in fact, that sense of something missing that is said to haunt his more distinguished poetry.

Although he fantasizes about remarrying, he tends to wander into passive liaisons with women already married or hopelessly enmeshed by their life dramas. One beautiful creature, said to be wasting away of a rare terminal disease, must have been misdiagnosed, he decided, since on intimate occasions, there always seemed to be plenty of her left. Another was certifiably unstable, and at least one was socially unacceptable—“quite out of the question,” ruled his grandmother. He’d ignored the old lady’s snobbishness, of course (or had he?), but the girl hadn’t worked out anyway except in bed—the one lover, in fact, he had ever encouraged to stay with him overnight. In short, it was commonly agreed that Clements Olin was incapable of true commitment to one woman, a judgment he resisted for a time but has reluctantly come to share. Certainly he is not a man who should try to deflect a devout novice from the path of holy orders, even when convinced that she has no business on that path in the first place.