Moshe slips out his hand from between mine. Fruit growing freely on trees. Yes. Take it straight from the branch. Yes. He cannot understand. My years in the underground army. Enough killing. Now there will be a homeland. Yes. We can share. And so to finish my medical studies. And for some time now, simply a doctor. I never tried to find my wife and child. She wrote to me, saying that she respected my choice and she asked me to respect hers. She never wished to see me again. And now it is too late. I have let them go. Let them go. And in Cyprus, I have tried for two months to help those from the old world enter the new. The young with revenge in their hearts. Enough killing. Now there will be a homeland. We can share. But for these people on the hill, I imagined a smoother transition. A passage, not a rupture. In Cyprus, I have watched as Europe spits the chewed bones in our direction. (The flesh she has already swallowed.) I have encouraged my young Moshe to think only of the future. Here is some money. Go. And remember, we will kill you if we ever see you again. Tell me, what will be the name of the country? A good question. A fine question. It is difficult for me. My mind is tormented. You will marry a beautiful girl and have wonderful children. Israel. Moshe, think only of the future. My young friend, Moshe.
I WATCH as the trucks come roaring into the camp, dust and mud flying up behind their wheels. As the men jump down to the ground, they whistle and shout to each other. Then silence descends over them. They shield their eyes and look about themselves in disbelief. Silence. I count fifteen vehicles. The men are standing and staring at us. These men who are bursting with health. Some put their hands to their mouths and noses, while others pull handkerchiefs from their pockets and jam them into their faces. It is hard to know what they are thinking, but, whatever it is, they are struggling. This silent scene of us facing them. Skeletons facing men. Former prisoners facing liberators. We will no longer have to endure this captivity. We are free. These English men have arrived on this warm spring day and now we are free. Some among us begin to stumble and crawl towards the men. Weeping. Bodies twisted in bony gestures of supplication. I marvel at the fact that some of these men actually leapt from their vehicles. Leapt into the air. I sit with my back propped up against a hut, my spindly and scabrous legs stretched out before me, and I watch. Then I tilt my face so that I might soak up what little sun there is. I have no strength to be happy. My thin bones would shake and fall apart were they to be subjected to such an emotion.
It is some time before the man comes to me. I have been watching him. He is dressed in a heavy khaki uniform. He looks young. In fact, not much older than I am. He offers me some water and a piece of chocolate, both of which I take. And then he stands back and looks down at me as though unsure of what to do next. I want to tell him that it is fine. He can leave me now and attend to the others. I will be fine. There is nothing to worry about. I have survived this long. And then he speaks to me. Do you have any family? I swallow hard, and feel the brick of chocolate begin to slither its way down my throat. He continues to look at me and he waits for my answer. If I say, I don't know, will he think I am rude? I decide not to say this. Instead, I shake my head. His colleagues behind him are working furiously. The doctors wear gas masks, but we are used to the stench. People continue to die in their own excrement. Everybody is covered in lice. I am covered in lice. My body is withered. The light breeze fingers my stubbled head. The few teeth I have left are either broken or misdirected. I can feel them with my tongue. And still this man stands and looks down at me. Does he not understand that he can leave me? Because they have come today, and not some later day, I have survived. That is enough. I am grateful. But he does not move.
My Mama has left me alone. I do not tell this to the man who stands looking down at me. One morning, she did not wake up. She lay asleep and I spoke to her all day long in the hope that she might answer back I had managed to convince myself that by the time the spring arrived, and the leaves were on the trees, Mama and I would be able to begin the task of forgetting. But, one night, her strength ran out. I spoke to her all day long, but I never received a reply. I wondered how, in the midst of all this misery, she managed to look so serene. And then, after my day of talking, the other women took me away from her and out of the hut. When I returned, there was another woman. My Mama was gone. The new woman understood why I could not find the words to talk to her.
I watch as he drifts away to join his colleagues. He stops and turns to look at me again. A nervous smile plays around the corners of his mouth. One of his fellow soldiers shouts at him, as though annoyed. He turns and breaks into a short run and joins him. And then I watch the friend point towards a place where men are carrying bodies. Now I understand. This is to be his job. To assist in the movement of dead bodies. Perhaps this will temper his idle curiosity.
Mama married beneath her. Of this she was sure. Her husband was a well-respected man, a young doctor, who eventually provided her with a beautiful four-storey house and two daughters. But Papa's was first-generation wealth. His parents were merely shopkeepers, and Papa had worked extremely hard to achieve his station in life. On the other hand, Mama's family were bankers, who, on both sides, were born to wealth and privilege as far back as one looked. Mama's sense of herself became the source of much of Papa's unhappiness, but Margot and I did not understand this until it was too late. Mama and Papa hid much from us. Perhaps we were too sheltered. It grew difficult for Papa to talk to Mama, and he spent increasing amounts of time in his surgery. And Mama grew to distrust her daughters, for her husband clearly preferred his children to his wife. She was isolated. She had married beneath her, and suddenly she found herself marooned between her distant husband and her difficult daughters. Mama never really knew how to talk to any of us.
On this first evening, they provide us with hot soup. Not hot water with a single potato thrown in to give it some body. This soup actually tastes of something, though of what I'm not sure. I sit by myself and marvel at the smell, the texture, and finally the taste of real food. Then I look up and gape at the disciplined manner in which my fellow inmates are lining up to receive their food. There is little pushing or shouting. All are hungry and anxious, but nobody usurps anyone else's position. Is this sheer fatigue, or have the good manners of the old world suddenly reimposed themselves? Darkness is beginning to fall, and the gloom casts a shadow across the camp. The sky, however, is streaked with red. Tomorrow will be a good day. I decide to drag myself to the end of the queue for more soup. Maybe tomorrow there won't be any. I don't know how to stop. At the moment, these men seem to possess an endless supply. In the distance, the soldiers continue to drag bodies towards the mass grave, the legs and arms forming convenient handles.
Papa hated taking us with him to the village near the border where his parents lived. Even as children, we could see that the poverty of his past embarrassed him. After all, what was his hard work for, if not to escape from such places and put this peasant life behind him? Some time in mid-afternoon, an impatient Papa would leave his parents' small cottage and stride across to the large oak tree. He would announce that we were returning to the city, but Margot and I would already know this. Long before he reached the oak tree, we would have pulled ourselves to our feet and dusted off our dresses. In the distance, his parents stood framed in the doorway, an anxious smile painted across their faces. Margot and I knew that Papa would have already prepared for our departure by bestowing a gift of money upon his parents; a gift which, I now realize, they would have gladly exchanged for more time with their son and their two granddaughters.