“Everything and nothing,” he whispered. “They took life out of our hands and placed it in the hands of others. They took from us what we knew and let people make decisions about us who did not know us.”
“I pretended to be an Aryan, one of them.”
“You were under duress.”
“I knew I could stay alive as long as I wanted. As long as it depended on me.”
She did not want to make the rabbi cry any more, or they would never sit down to supper. “It could have been worse,” she added.
“To them we were ants, to be stepped on with impunity. Parasitic vermin. A blood poisoning.”
Throughout the past ten days, even though he resisted it, the rabbi had identified her with his daughter Erzika whom they took away when she was 14, nearly 15.
“They robbed you both of your childhood,” he said under his breath.
He chased away the image of her being passed from man to man twelve, 13 or 15 times a day. It was not she who had desecrated the Sabbath or any other day. In her place he would have gone mute. In his mind he saw the waters over which she had flown. She had no butterfly wings, only arms, legs and a belly. To him she seemed like a moon which had disappeared for three years and for 21 days and nights before rising again as a slender sickle and ripening into a full moon.
What was the medication the Oberführer had prescribed to the girls? The injections he had given them? Might Erzika face another rabbi the way Skinny was facing him? Might she, like Skinny, encounter the captain and the Obersturmführer? Had fever come upon him to burn away such thoughts? He had been afraid, right up to this tenth day, to answer the question: what had happened to his wife and daughter, to his sister and brother? He did not want to imagine details. Every one of those who had been lost had been somebody, a mother, a father, a daughter or a son, or a child who had died all alone. On the tip of his tongue was another question he dared not ask. Could Skinny have met his daughter or his wife somewhere? Would he wish to meet them himself?
“Just as there was an ice age, a stone age and an iron age, so in the future people will speak of a concentration camp age,” he said.
She remembered what her mother once told her — that a rabbi was not a priest but a teacher.
He saw blackness before his eyes. He shut them. He opened them again and still saw blackness.
“Aren’t you feeling well?”
The rabbi was thinking of his daughter Erzika, his wife Else and his sister Ella. Ofhis brother, ofhis father and mother. Of all his family whom the Germans had killed while he was in hiding in Hungary.
“Maybe their defeat will make them human again,” Skinny suggested.
“Maybe. I hope so. Maybe their children.”
The rabbi looked into the flame of the candle, which was burning down, and at the slices of bread on the plate. At the foot of the candlestick small piles of wax had congealed.
“What use is an oasis in the desert to those the wind has swept away?” he asked.
She thought this might be a fragment of a prayer. Once she had prayed in No. 232 Ost. She had accused herself of her failings, even though she had not given herself away and no-one had discovered who she was. It was a Wednesday, she was waiting for Thursday. She wouldn’t have minded if she didn’t wake up the next morning. There were worse things than not waking up in the morning. The bread and butter on the table made her think of her brother.
At last the rabbi realized that she wanted to eat. He blamed himself for what he described as his unfeeling dilatoriness.
“Let’s eat,” he said.
In her mind she saw the army kitchen at No. 232 Ost, where the girls had peeled potatoes for the Waffen-S S cook during the night. They would eat the raw peelings, wondering if they’d be allowed to take the frozen potatoes away with them.
“They did not know the Commandments,” the rabbi said.
“They had their own.”
“You were living with the devil,” he said.
“Perhaps.”
“The devil had twelve, 13 or 15 names each day.” The words felt heavy on his tongue.
She could have recited to him the names from her last day.
“The local commander here was called Hans Manfred Wunderkind,” the rabbi said.
“They sometimes had odd names.”
“Every devil has a name.”
“And doctor’s degrees.”
“Devils with doctor’s degrees. With military ranks, birth certificates and citizenships. Every devil has a face.”
“I remember some of them.”
“Some you will forget.”
“I’ll try.”
“Others you’ll never forget.”
“No. I hope not.”
She found it easier to agree with him. She really wanted to eat now. At last they sat down.
“Help yourself,” he said.
“After you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Thank you.”
She took a slice of bread and spread some butter on it, more thinly than the rabbi would have liked. She ate while he thought of all the blood shed during the past six years. He thought of people who no longer needed God, a heart or a soul, who had embraced a new religion. He thought of the problems awaiting those not yet born. What would they wish to know and what would their fathers not want to talk about?
“Isn’t it better not to think about it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” the rabbi said, using her well-worn phrase.
“I would have given a lot to eat like this at least once during those days.”
“You’ll be dreaming of food even when you’re not hungry.”
“I hope I won’t be hungry. But I have nothing against dreams about food.”
“Dreams don’t forget,” said the rabbi.
“And I’d give a lot to be able to forget.”
“You are still innocent.”
“It would be nice if that were true.”
She swallowed another mouthful. “While I have something to eat and a roof over my head, an open larder, food on the table three times a day, a bath full of hot water, and no longer the fear that I could lose all that at any moment, I don’t feel I have anything to complain about.”
She added: “Here I don’t feel envious of anyone else.”
“You’re a grown-up child,” said the rabbi.
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
“I don’t know, I really don’t,” she said again.
“Nothing is any longer only good or only bad.”
“It’s better not to look back.”
“Can you manage that?”
“I’ll have to,” she answered.
He was watching her intently as she ate with gusto. She was pretty the rabbi noted, but too thin. She would grow, he told himself, she was still so young. At the same time she had been damaged beyond what was visible, countless times violated and humiliated and whipped.
He could find no words to express this, or numbers to sum it up. He guided himself by the cabbala, in which the sum of one plus one was three. Twelve, 13, 15, 21 days. Not even the cabbala had a solution for such numbers. They remained a mystery.
“You must be hot,” Skinny said.
“Ill undo my jacket.”
“You could open the window if we switched off the light.”
“Not till it’s night.”
“I’m no longer afraid.”
“That’s good. You’ve nothing to be afraid of.”
They both knew that this was not entirely true.
She has beautiful green eyes, Rabbi Schapiro thought to himself. His wife and daughter had had such eyes.
“Go on, eat,” he encouraged her, to prove to himself that he could still speak.
“Thank you. I’ve had all I can eat.”
“Have some honey.”
“I’ve had some.”
“You’ve a lot of catching up to do.”