If anyone thanked the sun, it was the garden plants. A stunning profusion spilling from one garden to the next, a large wave of lawns and bushes and flowers and fruit. Trees stood in every lot, their shadows falling on the lawns and bursting onto Katznelson, where they skipped over hedgerows of hibiscus and Turk’s cap, oleander and wild roses. Crazed bees and flies flew around dizzily, not only in the springtime. Jostling one another, the bushes concealed an anonymous array of creepy crawly life. Ants crossed the paths, foppishly bearing colorful petals and pitanga berry carcasses. The treetops were abuzz with wind and birds, among the roots emerged toxic fungi, shoots and mole whiskers.
Even Mr. Bergner, who was highly educated, and only in Israel had become what he’d become, God help him, had a soft spot for the sun. When given a cup of tea, he would recount to whomever wished to hear that it was at Jagiellońska, the ancient university of Krakow, that Copernicus had first conceived the notion that the earth revolves around the sun. And since it had been back there in Galicia that human thought had first restored the sun to its rightful status at the center of the planets, and since many of the Galicians in the neighborhood remembered that in school they had dwelled at length on this affair, which illuminated Galicia with a scientific glow — somewhat surprising in a land of shopkeepers and small-time farmers — many of them turned to the sun with arrogance in their eyes. Just a little patronizing. Here you go, they seemed to be saying. Now it’s your turn to repay the favor. They shot it secretive, Copernican sideways glances, as if they were partners in a galactic voyage.
And there was Asher Schwimmer, a man of the sun, who had been a Hebrew poet in Poland before the war and had taught beautiful Hebrew, and his poems had even been published in HaSolel newspaper. But after the war his Hebrew had simply disappeared and to this day he has no grasp of it, not even a word. This man who had once written, in intricately fluent Hebrew, lines like “Fleeces of raindrops unearth life from the inanimate,” now has trouble understanding the bus driver. He no longer lives in the neighborhood, they say he’s in Acre, or perhaps on a kibbutz with his brother. Sometimes he turns up and sits with the neighbors on hot khamsin days. Chatters in startled Polish, uses his hands a lot, doesn’t laugh, sometimes in the middle of a cup of tea he gets a nosebleed.
The seasons bubbled in the neighborhood as if they were bottled up. The winter rain was cruel, cutting out paths for itself between the houses, appearing in windows like a frightened face. Summer entered the closed apartments, where it went mad, multiplied its heat, and danced and danced, sweat pouring down the blinds, the air turning practically white. Spring was lovely. The bauhinia flowers fell to the ground. The huge bombax tree blossomed. The bottlebrushes waved their spiky red wands. Tiny flowers rose up from the wild shrubs, frantic beetles flipped onto their backs. Spring was lovely, but people were unhappy. Gershon Klima, his own brother, tried to hospitalize himself almost once a week instead of every two months. Feiga would complain and suffer in her room. Mr. Bergner would do-what-he-would-do, only more so, and Mrs. Tsanz couldn’t bear it any more.
There were not many possibilities in this neighborhood, only cracks of possibilities. Every day the same people walked to the same places with the same problems. Every day before sunrise, Rachela Kempler stood at the window of her house, 4 Katznelson, and stared into the expanses that ended at 3 Katznelson. Opposite her, with closed blinds and aching joints, crazy Itcha Dinitz, in love with himself, winked and blinked, some say giving his body to young men. This was no neighborhood for mortals. The great catastrophes had already happened to them long ago, in the war. Now was the time for the little catastrophes. Aging. Bad backs. Weak hearts. Brothers from Ness Ziona dying suddenly. So young — what happened?
Tragedy was commonplace, a daily occurrence, like drinking. They passed it by in much the same way that their looks skipped over the uninteresting hibiscus shrubs in the yards. Those who had not lost their entire families in the camps got no respect. Loss of a spouse didn’t even register. Loss of children was a little more touching, but one child was usually not enough. Simple dramas were dwarfed when compared to the lot of Rachela Kempler, who had lost her three children and a baby she had carried in her womb for nine months in Plaszow and had managed to deliver thanks to unspoken sins — a silence fee. Her mantle of grief cloaked the entire neighborhood, casting a dampening shadow on such petty losses as that of one child, a husband, brothers, parents. Nickels and dimes against the gleaming piece of gold she had paid to the author of history, a glistening coin that rose into the neighborhood’s sky every day disguised as the sun (not fooling anyone), a reminder of the cursed silence fee, a simple, daily act in the reality of those days, because what else did a woman have to sell, after all, and yet it would not let up, that reminder, perhaps because of the failure, perhaps because the baby she had paid for was also lost.
The loss of Feiga’s young rabbi was, for some reason, emotionally captivating, acknowledged with profound grief despite the relative shallowness of the case. No one felt sorry for Adella Greuner because “she did it with Germans of her own free will.” No one apart from us, that is, even when we were older and understood exactly what she had done with Germans. Her home, 7 Katznelson, first floor, remained for us a pleasant sanctuary of aromatic smells. Against the cooking odors that permeated the neighborhood — the cholent, the gefilte fish, the chicken soup turning the sky a pale shade of yellow — Adella Greuner’s window insisted on infusing the air with French perfume, floral bouquets, dried retama flowers, and the eau de toilette that every proper woman should wear. Adella Greuner had rows of neatly arranged colorful little parasols, white gloves and very light purses. She stored lipstick, bottles of cosmetics and photographs on immaculate shelves. Her closets held corsets and pantyhose and hairpins, all burning with the heat of her body. It wasn’t only the scents tickling the air outside her house, but also the radio, which was always playing dancing music. Birds gathered to chat there, hopping along the branches of the dying bauhinia. And Adella herself, in the evening hours, behind closed curtains, sometimes leaned out the window and called out, “Kalman, vi geystu? Vi geystu?” and on rare occasions poked her head out the door, distraught. Adella Greuner took the quick route to the streets beyond Katznelson, to the bus stop, to freedom, wearing a handsome hat, a delicate dress, gloves and impeccable makeup. “She goes with men.” “Wanton.” Words said with ease. Who could be bothered to deal with other people? The Angel of Death would see to her. “He’ll put gloves on his hands when he takes her,” another venomous spark erupts. And more than that, no one could really be bothered.