My Bridges of Hope (6 page)

Barishna misunderstood my silence.

“He's rich, isn't he?” she went on. “Why don't you tell me the truth? You're his friend. You must know how much he owns. I saw his house. It's big. And then, when we passed the other big house, the white one on the corner, you said his uncle's family used to live there. And now it stands empty. The uncle's family was killed; nobody came back. So it's his. Grossman is very rich. You can't deny it.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I want to marry him. I
will
marry him.”

“What? You will what?”

“Marry him. I want to stay here and marry a rich man.”

She was surely insane. “He doesn't even know you. He's not yet spoken a single word to you.” I did not tell her how annoyed Miki was about her intruding on our walks. He obviously did not relish her company.

Barishna was undaunted. “That doesn't matter. I want to marry a rich man and settle down. I like this town. My unit will pull out
soon, and anyone who wants to stay, can. I want to stay here and marry Grossman. He will make a good husband, I can tell.”

This was too ridiculous for words. But I went along with the farce: “Don't you want to go home and see your family in the Soviet Union?”

Barishna shrugged: “I don't know what became of them. The Germans killed everybody.”

“Don't you want to find out what became of your family?”

“I told you, the Germans killed everybody.”

“And how about him, Grossman? How will you get him to marry you?”

“I will ask him to. He will marry me.”

“What if he says no? What will you do then?”

“I will ask him again, and again. Until he says yes. He will marry me.” Then, with a conspiratorial intimacy, she lowered her voice: “You're my friend, so I tell you. I'll ask him soon, before a girl from this town gets to him first. He's rich; I must hurry.”

The next day Miki greeted me with visible irritation: “Elli, I must speak to you.” He motioned me to follow him to his office, then
shut the door: “You won't believe what happened last night. I was awakened by loud knocking, and when I opened the door to see who the hell was making such a racket in the middle of the night, guess who was there? The Russian soldier, your protégée. She had a large, battered suitcase in her hand. ‘I want to live here,', she said. I was so astonished, I just stood there, speechless. ‘I'm moving in here right now,' she said, and started shoving the suitcase through the door. I told her sorry, but she couldn't move in, she had to leave immediately. She started crying and screaming about how heartless I was turning her away in the middle of the night, how she'd fought the Germans for three years and now had nowhere to go. Her unit deployed from the region, and all her comrades left. She said I was cruel to have so many houses and so many rooms and not even let her sleep in one of my rooms for one night. Tomorrow she'll go away. Tomorrow she'll find another place. What could I do under the circumstances? You've got to do something, Elli. She's sleeping in the back room. You must get her out of there. Let's hurry and get it over with.”

I felt elated to be so intimately involved in Miki's life, to be called upon to help. I felt really grown up. We walked into the courtyard and headed for the small room in the back. When repeated knocks brought no response, he opened the door slowly, and we walked in. The bed was made, Barishna's clothes were neatly arranged on a shelf, and her suitcase was tucked under the bed. There was no mistake about it: The
barishna
had moved in.

Miki's face turned red. “What does she think she's doing? Elli, you must get her out of here. You must speak to her.”

I promised to return in the evening. Barishna, however, was not there. The next day Miki greeted me with a look of exasperation. “She came back late at night, waking me with frightful banging at the gate. When I refused to let her in, she sobbed and wailed so loud, several neighbors opened their windows. It was embarrassing. I let her in for one more night but told her you'd be coming to speak to her. Please, go there now. She's expecting you.”

Barishna was busily humming in the
kitchen when I got to Miki's house. “It's working!” she exclaimed when she saw me. “He cannot get rid of me. He tried but cannot. Isn't it wonderful? I'm staying here until he marries me. I've made it! Before any of the other girls. Soon we'll be married.”

“Barishna,” I said seriously, “Grossman asked me to tell you to leave. He knows we are friends, and that's why he asked me. He wants you to leave at once.”

“Oh, that doesn't matter. He'll change his mind. I'm staying.” No pathos. No hysterics. A simple statement of fact.

“Look, Barishna. You can't do things like this. In this country you can't stay where you're not invited. Grossman doesn't want you to live in his house. You can stay with us, my mother and me, until you find a place to live. Pack your things.”

Barishna swung around and stared into my face. Her freckles stood out as sharp black dots on her round, pallid face: “Leave me alone! Just go away, I'm staying here. I like this house.”

Miki was furious: “Tonight she's leaving whether she likes it or not.”

The next day Miki waved his hand in a
gesture of resignation when I inquired about Barishna, and I did not ask him to elaborate. From then on Miki never referred to the matter, but it was common knowledge that Barishna lived in the Grossman house. Our walks ceased, and whenever we met, Miki averted his eyes. We barely greeted each other.

At first everyone was appalled, and criticized Barishna's conduct. But she ignored it all. In time snickering replaced collective outrage in the Tattersall, then indifference replaced the snickering. Miki-and-Barishna became an accepted fact.

Later in the spring rumor spread that Barishna was pregnant. A young Talmudic scholar was brought from Dunaszerdahely to perform the wedding ceremony. After the ceremony, Mr. and Mrs. Grossman left for Palestine.

How was it possible for this to happen? How was it possible for Barishna's selfish manipulation to succeed? How was it possible for immorality to be made holy through a religious ceremony?

And Miki. How could he? How could he?

Barishna and Miki both had committed an unforgivable breach against human ethics,
and yet their act was socially endorsed, legally authorized. They were a married couple now, respected members of society, soon to become parents. Who would care to remember how this came to be?

Something terribly wrong happened, and no one seemed to care.

In my bitterness and confusion I lose interest in my schoolwork and my friends. Is this what jealousy feels like? Is this the taste of rejection? I feel my sense of loss comes from more than just the feeling of personal betrayal. My sense of reality has been violated. I want to comprehend life, people, relationships. I have been observing and learning and drawing conclusions about the secrets of love, sex, marriage. And now the set of concepts I constructed has collapsed.

I have hoped someone would say: “Look, Elli, what Miki and Barishna did was wrong. This is not the way things are. This is not the way the world is.” But no one has. The rabbi married them, and the others shrugged, wished them good luck, and bon voyage. No one was outraged or hurt or even indignant.

Only I am losing weight in my anguish.

Šamorín, April 1946

I have grown very thin, and Mommy is worried about my health. She is convinced that I am harboring some dread disease, tuberculosis perhaps, a widespread legacy of the camps. After weeks of Mommy's nagging, I agree to see Dr. Tomašov, the local physician.

At the end of his examination Dr. TomaÅ¡ov ceremoniously declares: “If you don't gain at least ten kilograms, you'll be dead before your sixteenth birthday.”

Now Mommy's panic is justified. She launches a feeding campaign. Large bowls of bean or potato soup with
chipkelech,
bits of boiled dough; mounds of noodles topped with fried cabbage; enormous slices of bread smeared with chicken
schmaltz,
are daily obstacle courses I must tackle. I lack the appetite even to start the meal, let alone “finish every last bit on the plate,” as Mommy warns.

Ever since last fall the girls and boys of the Tattersall family have started to marry, one by one, and set up their own homes. Most have married within the family and stayed in Šamorín. Others have married survivors from nearby towns and villages and left. In some cases new members are added to the Tattersall family through marriage.

Several members have found employment. Money has come back into style. And so has rivalry for material possessions. For bigger and better material possessions. The dark shadow of the past has not been converted into a guiding light for the future. What has happened to the lessons of the past?

The trauma of the Miki-Barishna episode has become a dark filter through which I perceive my world. Life flows from basic instinct, from urges demanding instant gratification. It moves in compulsive spurts, defying direction and meaning. There are no questions asked, and no answers given. There is only movement, mindless, haphazard. Life goes on simply because it is the immutable law of nature.

I am deeply troubled. Although Mommy's
communication with me has been reduced to “eat,” “eat,” “eat,” I have actually grown thinner since Dr. TomaÅ¡ov's dire oracle. In her despair, Mommy summons Bubi from Bratislava for a family consultation.

Bubi and I go for a long walk in the nearby woods, and I pour out my anguish about life's lack of meaning. About my fellow survivors' great betrayal: “They laugh and grow fat. They marry, and make money, and buy things. All they care about is new leather boots and leather jackets. All they dream about is a motorcycle. They are either owners of motorcycles or hope to be. They are either proud of what they own or envious of what the others own. They fall in love and care only about each other, forgetting about everyone else. Everything else. I do not understand. I cannot make sense of anything. . . .

“We have just lived through a thousand deaths. The deaths of little children, babies, beautiful cuddly babies . . . suffocating in gas . . . burned alive in open pits. . . . Our brothers and sisters . . . our friends, people we loved so, frozen to death on roadsides. Starved to death. Our darling aunt Serena
gasping for air in the gas chamber . . . her gold teeth yanked out. Her skin pulled off to make lamp shades. Her meager fat made into soap. Her delicate bones made into fertilizer ...”

I go on, and Bubi does not attempt to stop me.

“And we grow fat on potato soup and noodles. And make vulgar jokes and laugh. Dance at every wedding all night through. At every silly wedding we dance and sing and shriek with laughter. This hysterical merry-go-round of flirtation and courting and laughter . . . it's maddening. Maddening.

“We never talk about what has happened to us. Never. We keep staring into the sun and don't see the shadow. Frantically we keep turning our faces to the sun. . . .

“I cannot bear the sun! It's cruel. It's a hoax. Sunlight is mockery. So is music. I cannot bear the sound of music, loud and brash. It's deafening. I cannot bear all the food we are gulping down as if in a contest. It's nauseating. It's insanity. I cannot bear any of this. . . .”

I begin to weep, and Bubi walks by my side in silence. His voice is soft and somewhat hoarse when he speaks: “I understand your feelings,
Elli. It's an understandable reaction to what has happened to us. I am very sorry you suffer so. You are very young. I believe you suffer so keenly because of your youth. You see, this thing you call ‘merry-go-round' is a good thing. The search for marriage and money and the sun, this is life. They are lonely, these young survivors without parents, families. They need to find new relationships, reaffirm life. They must do this in order to keep from going insane, from being destroyed by memories. They must eat and dance and laugh in order to keep from crying. When one laughs hysterically, it is because one needs to cry hysterically.

“I know it seems abnormal, this rush into relationships, marriages. This constant reaching out for merriment. But can we be normal? Will we ever be normal?”

A wave of gratitude sweeps over me. My brother is so wise. He understands. Why haven't I seen all this? Although my anguish does not dissipate, Bubi's answer liberates me from the burden of my indictments, and I am grateful.

But what about him? He does not brood like me, and neither does he go into hysterical
excesses like them. He lives a temperate life, is involved in studies, passes his exams, and enjoys the company of intelligent friends. His leg wound has almost completely healed, the scar on his forehead from his bullet wound has turned from red to pink, and the boils on his arms have disappeared without a trace. Have his emotional scars also healed?

Bubi stays in Šamorín for the night. Mommy cooks a festive meal—cheese blintzes—and enjoys watching his hearty appetite. Bubi's appetite was born in the camps. He used to be a poor eater. He used to be a thin, gangly boy. Now he is well built, tall, and striking, with wavy, dark blond hair. Before the war, like all yeshiva students, he had close-cropped hair, and earlocks tugged behind his ears.

“I think Elli should go away on summer vacation,” Bubi says after dinner. “Children's camps are being organized, mostly in the Tatras. The mountain air would do her good. She would have appetite, gain weight. I'll see what can be arranged.”

Mommy is delighted and presses Bubi to make inquiries about the summer camp immediately upon his return to Bratislava.

Šamorín, May 1—4,1946

On Wednesday morning Bubi unexpectedly appears, his face beaming triumphantly. I know that smile: It means good news.

“I've found the perfect vacation for you, Elli. A summer in the High Tatras,” he announces in lieu of greeting as he walks through the kitchen door. “The fresh mountain air will do wonders for your health. It will improve your appetite, and you'll surely gain weight....”