Margot: A Novel (6 page)

BOOK: Margot: A Novel
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I am not sure if he asks me to interpret I will be able to speak
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at all. Not because of the Polish but because of the tattooed
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number, right there, on her arm, in Joshua’s face. I wasn’t
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mistaken.
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Joshua shakes his head. “Miss Korzynski, I’m so sorry. I
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can’t even imagine.” His face turns for a moment, darkens in
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a way I have rarely seen from him, and I think it’s because he
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is a Jew. I suppose that’s why Bryda is here in his office,
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thrusting her arm in his face. If I were her friend, I would tell
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her that American Jews are different, that they don’t under
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stand what it was like to wear a yellow star, to not be allowed
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to ride your bike or even the bus. They will think they under
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stand, because religion is religion, and Jews have always been
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a persecuted people. But you cannot understand what you
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cannot really imagine, and they cannot really imagine it. No
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matter how much they think they can or how many books
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they’ve read or movies they’ve seen. In America the Jews still
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prosper. They are lawyers with houses in Margate and also on
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the Main Line. I cannot bring myself to hate Joshua for this,
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though, as it is not his fault, where he was born, what he was
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born into.
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“So,” Joshua says, “let’s talk more about what we discussed
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on the phone. You said you have a Jewish problem that you
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want me to handle because I am a Jewish lawyer, right?”
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She nods and she thrusts her arm in his face again. “You
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see this? I already suffer at hands of Nazi. My mother, she
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gassed immediately after we arrive to Auschwitz. Dominik,
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my brother, he sent to work and he die in Mauthausen after
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01
death march. My father, he die of cholera in Neuengamme. I
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only one to survive it.”
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The names of the camps fall in my brain, in her thick Pol
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ish accent. Her words hurt; they are sharp. Needles. Mau
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thausen, where Peter was said to have died, and I think
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uneasily of the tiniest of squares that has sat in the bottom of
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my satchel for nearly a week now.
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I look up, and I realize Joshua has said something to me.
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“I’m sorry.” I shake my head and pull my sweater tighter
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around my body. “What did you say?”
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“I was telling Miss Korzynski that you are also from
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Poland. But you were lucky that you weren’t there, during the
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war, right?”
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I nod, hanging on to the lie. It was one of the first things
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he’d asked me, at my job interview, and I’d forced myself to
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smile then as I’d told Joshua I had gotten the American ver
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sion of wartime, like him.
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Bryda Korzynski stares at me, as if she can see through
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me. Her eyes are hard brown stones. I wrap my sweater
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tighter around my body.
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When she turns back to look at Joshua, I exhale, not even
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realizing I’ve been holding my breath. “Anyway,” she says, “the
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Nazi take everything from me. My family. My life. My coun
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try. I don’t even sleep without the nightmares anymore.” She
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pauses, and shakes her head, as if she’s thinking about them.
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The nightmares. I know them so well, the way screams torture
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you in the dark. Voices of your family crying for help you can
28S
not give. My sister holding on to my hand with all her remain
29N
ing strength. The sounds of gunshots breaking my ears.
“I’m very sorry,” Joshua says, “But I still don’t understand
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how I can help you.”
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“My boss is Nazi too,” she says. “And now after the war
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and now that Anne Frank movie so popular, everybody know
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you cannot be Nazi anymore. Not in America.”
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I bite my lip, drowning in the mention of my sister’s name,
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said correctly, in Bryda’s thick Polish accent. And then I won
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der if Bryda has missed the articles in the paper about the
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hatred against Jews in Philadelphia. And not just in 1954, but
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even still, now, my eyes catch on something, all too often.
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Swastikas painted on synagogues. This was the latest I’d
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seen, a few weeks earlier.
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“Your boss?” Joshua is saying now, and he frowns.
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“Mr. Robertson,” she says.
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“Robert Robertson?” Joshua raises his eyebrows. It is a
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name I recognize. Robert Robertson is a prominent local
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businessman who owns several clothing factories, and who
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has once or twice brought some business to the firm. “I don’t
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even think he’s German,” Joshua says kindly. I could not form
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the words to speak, to tell him that not all anti-Semites are
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German, even if I wanted to.
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She shakes her head. “My friend, she nice Christian girl.”
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“Like Miss Franklin here?” Joshua smiles in my direction,
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and Bryda narrows her eyes at me, so I am forced to look away.
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“Anyway,” she says. “She work same hours as me and make
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two dollar more a week.”
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“Has she worked there longer?” Joshua asks.
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Bryda shakes her head again. “No, I work there two year
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more than her.”
N29
01
“And you think this is because you’re a Jew?” Joshua asks.
02
She nods. “All the Jews, we make less money. But every
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one afraid to complain. President say there hard times. Who
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else will hire us?”
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“I’m sorry,” Joshua says. “That’s really awful.”
06
“You no be sorry, Mr. Rosenstein. You help me.” She
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pauses. “My English, it not so good. So maybe I confuse you
08
little bit.”
09
“I think I’m understanding you,” Joshua says. “You want
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your boss to pay you what he pays your friend.”
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“I want him to pay, yes,” she says. “But not just money.
12
Understand what I say?”
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“I understand,” Joshua says. But I wonder if he really does.
14
In German, the way to say it would be
Jedem das Seine
. But I
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am not exactly sure what the right word would be in Ameri
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can English.
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Bryda sighs. “For so many years I suffer as Jew. Why I still
18
have to suffer, here, in America?”
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Joshua nods slowly. “Well, on your own I’m not sure we
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really have a case but . . .” He rubs his chin the way I’ve seen
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his father, Ezra, who has a thick white beard, do. Only Josh
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ua’s chin is smooth, like a boy’s. “If we get others. A group
23
litigation.”
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Bryda frowns, clearly confused, but from my studying I
25
know exactly what a group litigation is. But I cannot speak,
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even if I might want to. I am frozen, Bryda’s words about the
27
suffering of Jews echoing in my head.
28S
“That means we’ll get other people from Robertson’s fac
29N
tories, like you, to join in on the suit,” Joshua explains. “If we
have more people, we’ll have more power to fight.” He rubs
01
his chin again. “I’ll tell you what, let me talk this over with my
02
father. His name is the one you see on the sign out front.” She
03
nods. “And in the meantime, can you do something for me?
04
Can you make a list of everyone you know who might be
05
interested in joining you?”
06
“Yes,” Bryda says, and her eyes follow Joshua’s face in the
07
way mine so often do. Suddenly Joshua is her Jewish Ameri
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can hero.
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01
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Chapter Nine
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06
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Even after Bryda leaves the office, I cannot
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concentrate on my work because I cannot erase the image of
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her number, right there, so horrible and obvious, on her fore
17
arm. I want to forget about it. But I cannot.
18
I stare at my typewriter for a while after she leaves. I can
19
not exactly remember the look of Bryda’s face. But the look of
20
the numbers, the way they were preceded by a sharp dark
21
blue
A
, I can remember without hesitation.
22
I know it’s because I
was
in Poland during the war, just
23
like Bryda. I did not want to be there; I did not really know it
24
at the time. But I was.
25
In 1944, Mother, my sister, and I waited in line after we
26
were unloaded from the cargo train by thick black-booted
27
men. They had pulled our arms, throwing us off the train as
28S
if we really were cargo, laughing, joking with one another in
29N
German as they did it, cigarettes hanging loosely from their
mouths, thick rings of smoke swirling above their heads.
01
We’d just been transported from Westerbork camp in Hol
02
land to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland. It was the
03
beginning of September, a month after we’d been ripped from
04
the annex. The sun was shining. To walk in it, it actually still
05
hurt my skin, as if its rays were overexposing me, after so
06
much time hidden away.
07
We stood in line, and I held on tightly to my sister with
08
one hand, my mother, with the other. Mrs. van Pels was
09
somewhere behind us.
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“We’ll be killed,” my sister whispered to me as we waited
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there for what felt like forever, the soles of our feet beginning
12
to burn from standing still. It was warm outside, and we were
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sweating, thirsty. Even my sister’s whisper sounded hoarse.
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“Shhh,” I told her. “No, we will not.” I felt I was lying to
15
her then, but it seemed a necessary lie. I was terrified she
16
would hear the pounding of my own heart in my chest. “Just
17
do what they tell you,” I whispered slowly. “Don’t struggle.”
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The woman in front of us in line was an older lady, older
19
than Mother by twenty years at least, and her back was
20
already hunched; her arms fell frail around her sides. The
21
guards yelled at us in German to undress, and when she was
22
naked, her flesh hung off her bones, loose, wrinkly. It seemed
23
she was too old to be so naked.
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Then the guards came to shave us, and she began shout
25
ing.
“Jestes diablem. Jestes diablem.”
She shouted it, over and
26
over again. So loud, her voice hurt my ears.
27
“You are the devil,” Mother whispered, translating. “It’s
S28
Polish.” Mother knew a little Polish from a childhood friend.
N29

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