This turned out to be the last conversation that I ever had with Rosa. At nights I heard her walking around her room, and during the day, although I stationed myself in the kitchen so that I might see her should she venture out, Rosa seemed determined to be by herself. And then, one late spring day, we received the fateful news that at six-thirty the next morning we were to report to the train station with clothes for a journey. All valuables were to be surrendered, and all who failed to report would be punished. I watched as a defeated Mama and Papa prepared themselves in silence. I could see the terrible truth in Papa's dead eyes. His flame of hope had gone out long before the arrival of this latest gust of wind. And Mama, having reluctantly removed her wedding ring and her mother's antique necklace, simply sat with her head bowed.
But my thoughts were not with my parents. I wondered about Rosa. Had she truly been abandoned? I turned my mind back to that first afternoon nearly two years ago, when Rosa caught me standing on the wooden crate, a shaft of light illuminating her face, a young woman waiting for her husband. And I remembered how, after she had gone back to her room, I had again looked out of the window. However, unable to concentrate, I had climbed down and sat at the table and simply stared at her closed door. When Mama and Papa arrived back, they were extremely angry to find me sitting in the kitchen. Papa stormed off into their room, but Mama stayed with me. I explained in a low voice about Rosa, and how wonderful but frightened she was. And Mama listened. Then, having heard me out, Mama looked in the direction of Rosa's room and spoke quietly, but firmly. 'She married outside of her people.' Mama spoke as though she wished me to understand that this was the greatest crime that a person could commit. Then she smiled at me, rose to her feet, and left me by myself. It was our secret. I had no idea that Mama possessed such attitudes. That night, I lay in bed and listened to the immensity of the silence coming from Rosa's room. Nearly two years later, the same silence.
I discovered the body. We were packed and ready to go. By now, my parents possessed little of value that had not been hidden, or confiscated, or sold. Just their wedding rings and the necklace. Papa decided to hide these treasures, although I don't believe that he truly expected to reclaim them. However, at the darkest hour of the night, a floorboard had been lifted and carefully replaced. But it was futile. Even I knew this. And was it worth the risk? They had promised that for every item discovered, one hundred would be killed. But these days. One hundred. One thousand. Who was counting? As we stood with a suitcase each, I asked Papa if I might say goodbye to Rosa. Quickly, he said. Quickly. I knocked and then carefully opened the door. I sensed immediately that it was rat poison. Rosa was fully dressed and lying on the bed. Beside her lay her suitcase. She was ready to leave. Then, at the last minute, she couldn't leave. Abandoned. She stared at me from her deep, long-suffering eyes. Then I felt Papa's hand on my shoulder.
'Come, Eva. We have to go.'
In the sky, there shone a solitary morning star. The three of us joined the flood of people pouring down the street towards the train station. A human river of shattered lives, and at eighteen I now understood how cruel life could be. The men who lined our way with their machine guns and angry dogs were unnecessary. All of us knew that at this stage we had little choice. I gazed up at the church clock. It read five o'clock. It was the same clock that I could see from the kitchen window. For almost two years, it had read five o'clock. Here, among these houses which had become our prisons and our tombs, there was no midnight, there were no bells, there was no time. I looked around at the miserable and crumbling buildings, knowing in my heart that those who were hiding would soon be found. And killed. Buildings would be looted, contraband discovered, and whole streets burnt. In time, there would be no evidence that any of us had ever lived here. We never existed. According to Papa, we had followed the advice of our prophets. 'Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.' But it appeared that there would be no end to the indignation. Mama and Papa marched on with grim resolution, and I scurried to keep up with them. My suitcase was heavier than theirs, for it was filled with books, but I was determined that I should carry it myself. I knew that they did not want to talk to me about Rosa. For them, Rosa was already a thing of the past. My eyes were full of tears. Their eyes were firmly trained on the future.
DURING the winter when we sorted through our family belongings, in order to prepare for the move from our four-storey house to the small apartment on the other side of the city, Margot and I came across the old photograph album. The black one with the gilt trim and the specially reinforced edges. Mama kept it on the top shelf in the drawing room, where she imagined that it was out of our reach. Well, it used to be. Mama had forgotten that Margot and I had grown up.
Mama took it from us and then swept her hand along the shelf to make sure that nothing else was up there. Then, instead of stuffing it into a suitcase or a bag, or leaving it on the huge pile of materials whose fate was yet to be decided, she set it down on the drawing-room table and dusted its cover with a cloth. Beneath the skin-like layer of dust, a new object appeared. Mama opened it, and Margot and I gathered at her side, eager to see who or what it might reveal.
There were pictures of people we had never seen before. Old formal portraits, with photographers' names embossed at the bottom of the print. Portraits of old ladies perched on the edge of white wicker chairs, profiles of bearded men, people about whom, when Margot and I asked after them, Mama simply shook her head. They must belong to your Papa. The fact that she could remember neither these people nor their names clearly disturbed her. She looked particularly closely at a yellow-edged photograph of an old man in a suit. He had a doughy face, and an ugly sack of flesh which swelled beneath his chin, yet he insisted on leaning against a cane in a dandyish manner. No, she couldn't place him, either.
In the photographs of Margot as a child, I noticed that she always flirted with the camera. Head thrown back, eyes deliberately bright — she played the coquette.
'Look at you, you show-off,' I said. 'Always looking up at the camera.'
In my photographs, I had a tendency to look down. My head was always lowered, but my eyes looked up, as though I were framing a timid request. Such a contrast in manner.
And then we saw the photographs of Uncle Stephan. He was tall and strong, and he stared confidently into the camera with his soft eyes. Seeing him again sent my mind spinning back six years to when he visited the house. I was about to speak, when I felt the outside of Margot's shoe scuff my ankle, and I knew that I should not comment upon these photographs. Five of them spread across two pages. Uncle Stephan. Always on his own. Always staring directly into the lens of the camera. Always standing.
Uncle Stephan was Papa's only brother. He had journeyed to the British colony of Palestine, for he wanted to defend the new Jewish settlements against attacks from the Arabs, and to prepare the land for large-scale settlement by Jews of all ages and backgrounds. However, his journey was made all the more arduous by the fact that in order to visit this so-called promised land he had to leave behind a young wife and child, and break off from his medical studies. If I think now of Uncle Stephan, I can see a man who, if truth be told, did not know how to handle us children. There was a part of him that was secret and inaccessible, and we could always sense this. Children are able to pick up on such weaknesses and they can be ruthless. As time went by, Uncle Stephan learnt to protect himself against his nieces, although he never held himself distant from either one of us. He had about him a warm detachment, which must have been his way of enduring the pain of his life, but I suppose the truth is that we girls did not really know him. But then again, we did not make much of an effort.