We conserve our batteries and listen to the radio only at night. Ever since we’ve had a radio, our lives have changed. At exactly seven in the evening, if there’s no alarm or sudden alert, we huddle around the receiver and eagerly listen to the news. In Kamil’s opinion we are overly wedded to expectations from elsewhere. Training our hearts is more important.
When Kamil speaks, we have the feeling he is not speaking to our handful, but to the many people who are on their way to us.
For now, only three have arrived, and we held a party to mark the conclusion of their training. Tsila and Miriam baked cookies filled with plum jam. A few days ago Hermann Cohen, with the help of two fighters, set up a field oven, which has now proved its ability.
We all respect Kamil, but it’s hard to accept his insistence that holing up in the mountains is a journey into ourselves and to the God of our fathers. There is a strong light in this mysterious man that pulls us toward him but is scary and intimidating at the same time.
His deputy Felix is closer to us in all respects. Felix may be a silent man who will rarely utter a complete sentence, but his broad, steady body inspires peace and quiet. Raids with him are not wrapped in weighty thoughts, like raids with Kamil. His whole being says, Act and don’t talk and don’t interpret. Whoever wants to talk and debate should do so at night by the campfire. Too many thoughts undermine concentration. One has to focus on the mission. The mission is the main thing, and the rest is unimportant. It’s best to sleep after the mission and not end the nights with arguments. A person who talks depletes his spirit for nothing. Sleep makes us ready for difficult struggles; it not only refreshes our energies but also cleans out the debris within us. So says Felix, without uttering a word.
I sometimes think we harm Kamil, and ourselves, when we argue. But what can you do, the arguments arise spontaneously. It’s good that on recent nights Isidor has been telling us about the last days in the ghetto. There’s a melody to his words. He chooses them carefully so that each word and phrase paints a picture.
In the final days before the last deportation, Isidor told us, the people stood at the high fences and pleaded with the Ruthenian women, “Take one child; we’ll pay you for every day.” The farm women waved their hands in refusal. More maddening still were their gestures toward the heavens, as if to say, it’s God’s doing, not ours.
Isidor’s two friends are still in a state of shock. The three train all day, they saw wooden beams, and they help in the kitchen. They’ve gone out on small raids, but the two of them don’t talk. When they train and work, they resemble us, but when they sit, eating or gazing, they seem stupefied. What happened to us?, their eyes say. How did we get here; was it all by chance?
Even in the midst of a fireside conversation, their puzzled look remains the same. I sometimes think it’s not bewilderment but dread about what the future holds for us.
SINCE THE ARRIVAL of the three young men, I again see Anastasia’s face clearly. When the war broke out, I was certain that the dangers would only strengthen our relationship.
Once, on our way home, smitten and saturated with love, Anastasia asked, “Why do people hate the Jews?”
“It’s prejudice; Jews are no different from other people.”
“I know,” she said, her lips pursed in an alluring smile. She had the grace and beauty of a girl who grew up outside the city, with fresh air and a big garden, and a stable and cowshed beside the house.
Within the gymnasium her manner was reserved and she spoke little. She was a good student yet didn’t excel in any subject. She did her homework, paid attention in class but didn’t ask questions. She always looked wary, as if she didn’t belong. But outside of school her movements were free, her speech unrestrained, and by the river and at the park she would laugh loudly. Every little thing would make her laugh. Once, when I told her I wanted to learn to ride horses, she let out a rather scornful chuckle. When I asked why, she said, “I was already riding when I was seven.”
In those besotted days I didn’t look at the details but at the whole, and the whole was Anastasia—a kind of living miracle who keeps amazing you: the magnificent neck, the head bobbing like a young bird’s, and the body sculpted like a statue. I was sure she’d be with me forever and we would always be young.
When I was with Anastasia, talk seemed superfluous. To hug, to kiss, and to laugh seemed the right things to do. To write, do homework, excel, take part in a debate—they seemed to me unnecessary, artificial, and pointless.
Not surprisingly, my schoolwork deteriorated. Classmates were jealous of me, and I was once kicked by a bully who yelled, “Stick to your own kind and don’t bother our girls.” I hit him back twice as hard. In truth, I wasn’t looking for confrontation at that time. I was overflowing with happiness.
My parents’ world darkened as my studies suffered. At first they said nothing and sat sullenly at the table. But after they were called to the school for a meeting, they cried out in pain, “What’s happened to you, Edmund?” They looked at me as if I’d been struck by a hidden illness.
“Nothing; soon it’ll all be back to normal,” I said, knowing I was keeping the truth from them.
Disaster followed disaster. First I was expelled from school along with my Jewish friends, and right after my expulsion, my mother’s illness got worse.
I would occasionally bring Anastasia home, to show off her beauty. My mother didn’t say a word. My father would joke with her. Her beauty apparently impressed him, too.
We were still allowed to walk on certain streets. But then walls were erected around the Jewish area. Money ran out and food was lacking. People stood alongside their homes and sold clothes and household goods. But I ignored the turmoil around me. Even my mother’s illness. She would sometimes turn to me and ask, “What has happened?” She didn’t realize I’d been swept into a whirlwind.
The meetings with Anastasia had become dangerous, and she hinted that we should keep them to a minimum. I wasn’t afraid. I was smitten with Anastasia and I said, “We’ll always be together. Fate will not separate us, cannot separate us.” Anastasia responded with a thin smile that I took as agreement. In those days I saw only what I wanted to see.
And then came that fateful Tuesday. We had made a date to meet at seven o’clock at Lilac Lane. I waited a full hour and Anastasia didn’t appear.
I was about to go to her house but held back. Her father with his peasant’s face didn’t much like me, and one time he’d said to me, “We don’t stay long at parties. An honest person goes to bed early.” I knew this was a warning, and I avoided going to her house.
That same week we were banished to the ghetto. I was sure that in the evening I would see Anastasia at the fence. I looked for her among the farm women who came to sell bread and vegetables, and I gave one of them, a woman who used to work at our house, a short letter and asked her to give it to Anastasia. “I’ll wait for you by the fence at five o’clock,” I wrote to her. “Love always, Edmund.”
That entire time I was certain her father had locked her up at home, and this was why she didn’t come. I imagined her sitting by a barred window, her eyes filled with yearning.
I planned to slip out of the ghetto, come to her house, and rescue her. But all my attempts to mix in with the workers going out to their jobs nearly ended in disaster. I was stubborn. Day after day I went back to the fence, surveying the people strolling on the sidewalk, looking intently for Anastasia.
As I stood waiting by the fence, I saw from afar a young girl coming out of Lilac Lane, a tennis racquet in her hand: Anastasia. She was headed for the tennis club. I couldn’t believe what I saw and became very emotional: my eyes filled with tears.
Only the next day did I realize: Anastasia’s daily schedule had not changed. Tuesday afternoons she goes to the tennis club. The next morning, I saw her walking to the gymnasium, schoolbag on her back, surrounded by our classmates, joking and jostling. I couldn’t hear her voice from far away, but all her movements said: What was, was. Life goes on and let’s enjoy it.
For months we were imprisoned in the ghetto; every day we saw the face of death. A man was shot because he went too close to the fence, and people were removed from their homes and sent by truck to unknown places. Someone who tried to escape was punished by being hung in the square.
Dangers lurked everywhere, and eventually we also began to starve. But for some reason I was sure that in another day or two Anastasia would appear and show me a breach in the fence through which I would squeeze my way out to her.