After Auschwitz, no theology:
the numbers on the forearms
of the inmates of extermination
are the telephone numbers of God,
numbers that do not answer….
—Yehuda Amichai
1
The evening of the general meeting to approve the design for the new building was fiercely hot. Nate had debated wearing a tie, but in the end opted for an open-neck sports shirt, despite the magnitude of the occasion. He couldn’t recall an event of greater consequence for the future of the congregation. As he waited impatiently for Faith to call the meeting to order, it occurred to him that the heat could only advance his cause. The muggy sanctuary begged for air conditioning.
Finally, finally Faith was getting to her feet and heading for the mic. She looked very trim in a loose skirt and clingy tank top, over which she wore some kind of bolero thing. There are faces that shrivel and crinkle after a diet. But Faith’s recent weight loss became her in every way. Her skin was smooth and tan, her eyes sparkled with anticipation.
Below the bimah, the members of the building committee were arranged behind a long table. Faith introduced them in turn: Helen Stern, the chair. Melly Darwin and his son, Glen, experts in the management of properties, old and new. Sally Lightstone, representing donors. Stan Shifrin, the architect. Elliott Namer, the capital campaign co-ordinator. And “last but not least,” Rabbi Nate.
Faith was supposed to hand the meeting over to Helen at this point: there was a long agenda to get through. Instead, to Nate’s surprise, she cleared her throat and began to speak.
“We have so much to discuss tonight, but if you’ll humour me I’d like to share a small parable with you. The Talmud tells the story of a sage called Honi, who lived at the time of the second Temple. One day, this sage saw an old man planting a carob tree.
“‘Why are you planting a tree whose fruit you’ll surely never see?’ Honi asked the old man, knowing full well that it takes a lifetime for such a tree to mature.
“‘I was born into a world full of carob trees,’ the old man answered. ‘I enjoy the fruit of trees that have been planted by others. The time for me to plant for the generations yet to come is right now.’
Faith flashed a big smile at the audience. “I see in this little fable a paradigm for our situation tonight. A sapling is a commitment to the future, and so is building a shul that will outlast us.”
A flutter of applause greeted her words. Nate was thrilled but amazed. What had persuaded her to give this little homily? Had she really put her reservations aside? As she returned to her seat on his right, he gave her a spontaneous hug.
Helen Stern was already launched on a history of the process that had brought them here: the purchase of vacant land on either side of the existing lot, the needs’ assessment questionnaire members had filled out, the canvassing of major donors, the hiring of an architect and development of a design.
Next it was Glen Darwin’s turn. A strong and silent type, Nate guessed, since he hadn’t heard him utter more than a few token grunts on the occasions they had exchanged so-called pleasantries. It was surprising that he took the floor, rather than his father, but he acquitted himself honourably enough. Scowling at his notes, he spoke in a husky baritone about the questionnaire that had gone out in the fall. The wish-list compiled out of the returns included air conditioning (here a ripple of laughter ran through the stifling sanctuary), a social hall, function rooms, and better kitchen facilities. The membership would soon hear from the architect how the present design concept fulfilled those specifications. Glen concluded with some motherhood statements about how Les Entreprises Régales, his family’s company, would lend its expertise in a hands-off supervisory mode if the project went ahead. When he sat down beside his father, Melly slapped him on his broad back. Glen flushed with evident pleasure.
Short and slight, with a little mousy goatee, Stan Shifrin was up next to make the major presentation of the evening. At the time of Stan’s hiring, there had been controversy over his selection. Marty Riess (such a detail-oriented fusspot!, thought Nate) had argued that the job shouldn’t go to an architect merely because he was a shul member. Especially in light of the fact that Stan had never designed a synagogue in his life and had worked exclusively on restoring heritage buildings. Marty had recommended striking a search committee for an architect and issuing a call for submissions for a design competition. This would have taken way too long, Nate countered. Besides, Stan was an excellent candidate, an up-and-coming talented partner in a vigorous young firm, who just happened to belong to Congregation Emunath.
As it turned out, Stan had been a fount of creative ideas. Easy to work with, too; he was exceptionally accommodating about scaling back the design when all that to-do was made about its purported extravagance last year.
Now Stan wore tailored jeans, an expensive looking cotton shirt, and a small suede kipah over his fair hair. In order to explain his visuals, he faced the large screen at the front of the room and thus had his back to the audience. Soft-spoken and ill at ease, he quickly roused the ire of the older members.
“Speak up, man, speak up,” Simon Herscovitch growled, punctuating his demand with emphatic bangs of his cane.
Once he got going, Stan warmed to his subject. He used words like palette, envelope, and footprint in ways that required you to listen carefully. The palette for sanctuary décor would be neutral beige to warm blonde, the envelope bone-coloured brick, and the footprint one and a half times that of the current building. His most persuasive point was to explain how his firm’s expertise in restoration architecture would benefit the current project. Because a historical perspective governed his approach, Stan said he looked to the past to inform the present. As he projected the images of ancient synagogues on the screen, he identified three traditional design features of synagogue architecture: a courtyard, two columns at the entrance, and something left unfinished to remind the faithful of the destruction of the Temple.
There were murmurs of approval as he illustrated his points with sketches and perspectives of the new building. It would have a minuscule courtyard in the rear, two minimalist columns at the entrance, and one interior wall that would be left unplastered. Without labouring the details, he cleverly mentioned that this was a second-stage design that had been pared back without compromising either aesthetics or the needs of the community. He sat down to measured and respectful applause.
Helen took the floor again. “What an act to follow,” she twittered. Since her job was to talk money, Nate tuned out a bit. All that business about soft and hard costs, long-term maintenance, contingencies, the endowment fund, mortgages, loans—so many hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, he’d been hearing variations on these figures for years. It was very important, yes, yes, but it was so tiresome. Everybody talking of bottom lines, Marty and Helen and Elliott and even Faith.
Nate’s private bottom line was that the money would be found. Somehow. In his mind, the project had reached the point of no return. By the time you convened a meeting like this, brought the community together, showered them with 3D images of a building that was so superior to the one they were obliged to inhabit, the momentum was too powerful to be checked.
He came out of his reverie as Helen, her copper face shining with sweat and the wings of her lacquered coiffure at half-mast, was going on about the cup being half full or half empty. At the entrance to the sanctuary, a large drawing of an orange-coloured pitcher with black graduated markings showed the figure of three million dollars at the midway mark. “Do the arithmetic yourselves,” Helen coaxed. “We are three hundred family units, with an outstanding balance of two and a half million dollars.
“Elliott and our canvassers will be calling all of you shortly. Think about what you planned to give. Double it. Then double it again.”
Restive murmurings suddenly rose in the hall, more or less drowning out the half-hearted applause.
The Rabbi was the last speaker. Nate stood up, smiled down at Helen and Faith on either side of him. Opening his arms, he gestured to the congregation to rise. People shuffled to their feet, looking puzzled, peeling away damp skirts and slacks from their legs. Many of the women fanned their faces with their agendas.
“I’d like it very much,” Nate said, “if you would all say Aleinu.”
“Aleinu.”
“Please be seated again.”
Amid much scraping of chairs, two hundred people sat back down.
“As you know, Aleinu has been the closing prayer at every Jewish service since the middle ages. It is a beautiful prayer that affirms God’s sovereignty over us and looks to the day when the Eternal will reign in harmony over all the peoples of the earth. The word Aleinu with which it begins means it is up to us.
“It is up to us,” Nate repeated. “It’s up to us to rise to the challenge. Forty years ago, some dozen forward-thinking Montreal Jews answered an ad our beloved rabbi emeritus, Moish Stipelman, placed in the paper, calling for the formation of a Reconstructionist chavurah. The group that came together was composed of bright, curious, energetic community-minded men and women who had little notion that they were trailblazers or pioneers. At the time they were simply trying to meet their own needs for an egalitarian shul where they could worship as modern Jews. A few months after that first meeting, they and some of their like-minded friends held High Holiday services in the basement of Mountainview High. Within five years they had reached a vital critical mass with the resources and vigour to erect and support our current beloved building. By then, I believe they were able to foresee that they were building not just for themselves but also for us, the next generation.
“So now it’s up to us to take the next step. It’s not just a matter of having outgrown this physical plant. We need to be able to keep on growing in every sense of the word. We need to develop into a beacon of light—certainly for our local community here in Montreal. But we must do more than that. You may not realize that the legacy of our founders has reached well beyond the boundaries of Montreal. In a few weeks, Reisa and I shall be travelling to Eretz Israel. We are to be guests of Kibbutz Darchei Noam which, through serendipity and word of mouth, has heard of our congregation and has chosen us as spiritual inspiration for how to be Jews in the modern age.”
At this moment of full rhetorical flight, Nate happened to glance down at Faith. She was looking up at him, elbow bent and chin resting on her thumb. From the vantage of the audience she must have been a model of rapt attention. Only he, intercepting her gaze, could see the merriment in it, and note the derisive flaring of her nostrils. As soon as his eyes locked on hers, she glanced away, but it was too late. Or perhaps not. Stung by her scorn, he brought himself back to earth. No, this wasn’t the Gettysburg address. This was a meeting to endorse a design. Had he scuppered it by getting carried away?
Apparently not, because his sudden silence elicited a wave of applause. He smiled uncertainly, tugged at his beard, and sank into his seat.
Faith chaired the question period, a mostly tame affair. There were some mealy-mouthed inquiries—nothing dangerous—about why the anticipated costs were so high. Stan handled them deftly, at one point even suggesting that, being only at the concept stage, when working drawings and schedules were refined, the project could conceivably cost less than expected.
One of the stickier questions came, naturally, from Abigail Rosen. She declared herself in favour of the project before launching her zinger.
“I happen to be a pensioner on a fixed income, but I’m not asking on my own behalf. I can only congratulate Stan. This design is quite lovely and so resonant in its historicity. But I’m speaking on behalf of several of my friends who are too embarrassed to own up publicly to being unable to give anything at all.”
Helen stood and said, “Tell your friends that no one will be pressured to contribute if they can’t afford it.”
Cheering and resounding clapping followed this promise.
At this point, Faith recognized a question from Rozalee Zelniger in the front row. Sans walker tonight, Rozalee squinted in the direction of the chair. “I’ve heard repeated references this evening to needs assessment, to questionnaires,” she said. “But no one’s bothered to ask the Social Action Committee, of which I am the chair, for our input.”
Faith turned towards Helen.
“An oversight,” Helen said.
“We’re very anxious to give you our suggestions,” Rozalee brayed. “We have a strong ecological mindset. We want to see as much recycling of existing materials as possible.”
Faith said, “You’ve heard how Stan plans to make use of our existing stained glass windows.”
“We’ve also heard how he plans to put in air conditioning. Air conditioning is highly pernicious to the environment. We want something that will enhance the health of future generations.”
A buzz of rising impatience rippled through the hall.
Faith held up a hand. “We hope to have the full input of your committee, Rozalee. It’s a very important committee, and surely must have many valuable ideas to offer. May I suggest we break for refreshments at this time, and continue the discussion over coffee? And you’ll all want to take a look at the sketches of the design that Stan has mounted on the back wall.”
2
The Graces were grouped around Rhoda’s kitchen table. The Tiffany lamp bathed the room in soft light. Rhoda was cutting a thick slice of carrot cake with cream cheese icing in two. On the plate in front of Faith lay a shaving of mandelbroit.
“Faith, you’re responsible for my increasing girth,” Erica complained. “We used to share a piece of cake like this three ways.”
“A balanced diet should include some sugar and fat. Also additives,” Rhoda said. “Just tell me you’re not going to stay off cake forever.”
“Yes, forever,” Faith said, “except for the most special occasions. And even then, just a tiny piece.”
“Well I think this is a special occasion,” Erica said. “You did great yesterday.”
“Don’t get me started on yesterday,” Rhoda snorted. “A beacon of light! Yup, that’s our little collectivity for sure.”
“‘We’ve been chosen by Kibbutz Darchei Noam as a spiritual inspiration for how to be Jews in the modern age,’” Faith tugged at an imaginary beard on her chin.
Erica choked back a laugh, looking guilty. “Stop it, you two. Cut the poor man a little slack.”
“Please,” Rhoda said. “We’re cutting him a building that’s a shrine to his inflated ego. And what the hell does Darchei Noam mean anyway?”
“Ways of pleasantness,” Faith said. “It refers to the Torah …. Speaking of pleasant ways, how’s Melly Darwin these days, Erica?”
Erica started. “Melly,” she said and then trailed off, looking ill at ease. “Melly is … Melly. You know. Cock of the walk, tough, and full of himself. I had another interview with that guy your father knows.”
“The policeman?” Faith asked, immediately curious.
“Yes, and this time his wife was also there.”
“And what’s she like? Another lovely Bubbles?” Rhoda said sarcastically.
“Not at all. A nice lady. Grandmotherly, friendly. She served cookies and homemade bubke and very good coffee. There were doilies under everything.”
“Did she add anything new to the picture?”
“N-not really.” Erica began fiddling with an amber ring on her right hand. “Nothing useful about Melly.”
3
In the car on the way home, Erica was conscious of how evasive she had just been. She had always found it best to hold things in, not to talk them out, when getting close to the core of her subject. And so the more her thoughts circled around Melly, the less she wanted to discuss him. But there was something else she needed to keep back. At least until she’d talked about it with Paul or perhaps with Rhoda. Something Gershon Lieberman’s wife had intimated.
She had located Lieberman’s address and phone number quite easily. He was listed in the phone book on Shalom Street in Côte St. Luc. But before placing a cold call to him, she decided to broach the matter with Melly. Without his blessing, she could hardly approach other sources.
At the tail end of a dryly factual session about his arrival at Auschwitz—“we had heard of the place and would rather have been anywhere else”—she hesitantly dropped Gershon Lieberman’s name. She was sitting across from Melly in his office, her equipment spread out on his huge untidy desk.
“Would it be all right,” she asked, “for me to speak with Lieberman regarding the book?”
Melly cast her one of his mercurial glances.
“Some time I’ve been waiting for this question. It’s taken you long enough.”
Erica felt herself flush. “What do you mean? If you wanted me to speak with someone, why not say so?”
“People who work for me, I like to make sure they know their business.”
Stung, Erica stood up and began packing away her gear with indignant emphasis. She pulled the mic out of its stand and wrapped it with exaggerated care inside its small, soft-cloth pouch. She stowed the recorder in her briefcase.
Squaring her shoulders, she looked him in the eye. “I work for myself, Mr. Darwin.”
“Sit down and don’t be so huffy. I’m pulling your leg. Good for you for finding him. What have you turned up?”
“I’ve learned that he’s quite a bit older than you, well into his eighties. So I should speak to him as soon as possible. If he’s willing to speak to me, that is. And also, that he was a Jewish policeman in the ghetto.”
Melly picked up a pen on his desk and began tapping rhythmically against the dark wood. “You’ve done quite well. There’s something else important about him, but perhaps he’ll tell you that himself.”
“How do you know he’ll even see me?” Erica was still rattled.
“I don’t know. But I will call him to let him know who you are. And I’ll tell him you’re a smart lady. That should get you through the door.”
Though it was late April when she looked up Lieberman, Erica still needed her winter coat. Shalom was a residential street lined with large, newish brown-brick duplexes. A Filipina housekeeper opened the door and escorted her to a spacious ground floor den. Erica had not been sure what to expect, but it was certainly not a floor-to-ceiling book-lined study furnished in leather. A cozy fire roared in the electric fireplace, and the man she had come to see rose to greet her from behind a solid looking desk piled with a stack of Yiddish newspapers. He was tall and still well built, and his handshake was firm. Soft, silver, tufts of hair stuck out from the sides of his nearly perfectly bald pate, over which he wore a small black kipah.
He asked where she wanted to sit, and she gestured toward the armchair for herself and the sofa for him, so she could place her apparatus on the coffee table between them.
As she set up the tape recorder, she felt herself being appraised by keen, pale blue eyes. She tried to square her imaginings about the former ghetto policeman with this well dressed, dignified old man in his tailored white shirt and neatly pressed slacks, his hearing aid, and liver spots.
It was Faith’s father Ziggie who had relayed to Erica through Faith that Lieberman had been a member of the Jewish police force in the ghetto. The Internet helped to enlighten her about what that meant. With typical cunning and efficiency, the Nazis had ordered the various Jewish Councils under their control to organize a special constabulary to keep order in the ghettos. At first it appeared that the recruits might be of actual service to their community, but step by step they became cogs in the machinery of terror, executing for the Germans the daily tasks of control and destruction. Senior members of the Radobice force were imports—German or Austrian Jews—with no ties to local people and a rabid enthusiasm for ingratiating themselves with their masters. Sadism and corruption were rife. But according to Ziggie, Lieberman had been a local boy who kept a low profile. Ziggie thought he had likely joined up in order to secure a preferred situation that might provide him with freedom of movement, immunity from forced labour, and opportunities to lay his hands on food and money. “Lieberman was relatively benign,” Ziggie had said.
“So Melly has sent you to see me,” Lieberman said with a wintry smile. “How black a picture did he paint?”
“I’m writing a book about him,” Erica said, “but I’m not at all sure why I’m here. He said he’d provide me with an introduction to you, but it was Peter Stein in Toronto who originally told me to see you. In what way are you part of Melly’s story?”
Lieberman studied her with unhurried interest. “Do you maybe have two or three days to spend here?”
There was a silky, almost sinister undercurrent to his voice. Erica was nonplussed. He did not appear to be joking.
“Perhaps you can tell me a little bit about yourself first?”
“My life, like that of every other Jew in Radobice, was broken in two. The part before the war, and afterwards. And what came afterwards is so complicated, you would need many different kinds of experts to make sense of it. So perhaps I should stick to where my story connects to the Wiener family. You do realize that used to be Melly’s name: Meyer Wiener?”
Erica nodded.
“I was maybe five years old when I was first in their house. It was after the birth of Melly’s older sister, Sarah. Mrs. Wiener, as I later learned, had had a series of miscarriages, and this was her first live birth. And, as I later also learned, it had been very difficult, Sarah’s birth. Melly has had a lot of luck in his life, and perhaps this was his first piece of luck, that he even ever came into the world, because his mother had so many problems in the female department.”
“How did you come to be in their house at such a time?”
“I was getting to that. It was the custom among the Jewish people there that when a baby was born, some cheder boys were picked to visit the home and to say a prayer. And me, being from a middle-class family, I was one of the ones picked. Now, you might ask, what is middle class in Radobice at that time? You have a roof over your head and food to put on the table, that was middle class. Us little boys stood around the bed where Monia Wiener lay with the baby beside, and the custom was the lady passed out candy, red and white striped candy. So everybody got one. And I was the smallest child there. She called me back, as we were trailing out. ‘What’s your name, little boy?’ I said my name is Gershon. ‘Whose boy are you?’ I said, ‘I am Leibish Lieberman’s.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, and she smiled. She was a very pretty lady. And she gave me another candy. Because my father and her husband davened at the same shtiebel. We lived not far from them. And so this was my first time there, and being a little boy I didn’t pay much attention to the baby. But Sarah grew up and she became my wife.”
Startled, Erica sat bolt upright in the leather arm chair and stared at him. She was too surprised to say anything.
“I see Melly has left it up to me to fill you in. Typical.” He made a large circular gesture with his hand. “Sarah was a beautiful girl, but not just beautiful. She was a great reader and a dreamer and an idealist. Hashomer Hatzair. Socialist, Zionist, she would have made a great pioneer in Palestine. We were sweethearts in the ghetto. She was not in favour of my volunteering for the Jewish police force. But I saw the way things were headed, and I knew that that family needed a protector. By then, I was on my own. My own mother died when I was ten; my father remarried and had not much use for me. And Sarah’s family, well let’s just say that her father—Melly’s father—with his big-shot store on the main street, Mademoiselle de Paris—well, Bronek Wiener was a strong man in good times. But in the time of the struggle, he was good only for catching typhus. He was not just sick in his body, but all the spirit went out of him. Monia, now she was a force! Fierce and beautiful. But in the end, she couldn’t do anything for Melly or for the little boy.”
“Little boy?” Erica whispered.
“Melly didn’t tell you he had a little brother?”
“Yes, yes, of course he did. Seven years younger than him. I just didn’t connect.”
“They needed somebody to look after them. And don’t you believe Melly’s story about miracles. There were no miracles in German-occupied Poland. I was the one looking out for them. Me—the Jewish police man—and the Germans. Who do you think sent that German officer to save him with his broken leg? And how do you think he landed in an auto repair shop in Skarzysko? But of course all he can do is blame me for when things went wrong.”
He made another large gesture with his hands. “It was all luck. One misstep, and we were finished.”
The fire had died out, and the room had become gloomy and cold. Lieberman suddenly looked shrunken into himself on the couch. “I told you, you need two, three days for my story.”
Erica began to gather up her things. “I’ve tired you out. I’m sorry. But may I ask you just one more question?”
Again, a frosty smile. “I have reached the point in my life where attention, even if it’s disturbing, is welcome.”
“If you and Melly are on bad terms, why are you talking to me—and why did he send me to you?”
“Melly and I don’t see our past in the same way. But I owe it to Sarah’s memory to speak to you. To tell you about her. And to tell you things Melly doesn’t know. The Baal Shem Tov said, ‘Forgetfulness leads to exile, but remembrance is the secret of salvation.’ Remembrance, Ms. Molnar, is a sacred obligation.”
Erica forgot her resolve to ask no more questions. “Are you a believer, then?”
He gave a short, dry laugh that sounded like a bark. “Why? Because I can quote the Baal Shem Tov?” He raised a bony finger to his bald head. “Because I wear a kipah? After all I saw and experienced, what to believe in? Goodness? Let’s just say I believe in remembering.”
Paul kept Erica busy with a string of spring books and their authors, so she had almost no time to work on the Melly project. But she often found herself wondering about Gershon Lieberman. She’d been hired to tell Melly’s story, not that of his former brother-in-law. She felt almost guilty at finding him more interesting than her actual subject. The idea that he had been a collaborator repelled her, yet she had found herself unaccountably liking the man. Or perhaps it wasn’t unaccountable. She appreciated his honesty with her. Over and over, she dwelt on the fact that he had used his position of power in order to help those close to him. What might she have done in like circumstances?
Melly saw it differently. After she had been to see Lieberman, she asked Melly about his sister. Though she intuited that the story must be painful, she did not anticipate Melly’s response.
Sitting behind his desk, he buried his head between his hands.
“What happened to her?” Erica whispered, unnerved by this departure from his normal brash persona.
He raised his head and looked at her, his eyes swollen. Reddish splotches were breaking out on his forehead against the bristling silver hairline.
“She was executed.”
“Executed!”
“Yes. Because of him. Because he tried to play a double game, and he got caught. He hooked up with the Polish Resistance. I think probably to please mine sister. She never wanted him to be working with the Germans, carrying out their orders.
“Mine sister, mine beautiful sister. Whatever she wants, she was the top. Mine father sent her to private school, because she was exceptional, very intelligent. She was always reading books. That’s how I see her in mine memory. The early morning sun was coming into the room, and her bed was by the window, and she would get up at dawn, and read books. As soon as she’d wake up, she had a book. She wants to know everything what’s going on.”
“How? How was she executed?” Erica could barely get out the words.
“It was public. I only heard afterwards, because I was still in Skarzysko. It was a public hanging. Him, Gershon, they didn’t kill. At gunpoint they made him prepare the scaffold. And afterwards, right after, they shipped him to Auschwitz, as a political prisoner. This was before the liquidation. He was there in Auschwitz longer than anybody else from Radobice. I don’t know what he did to survive all that, but the idea was not to kill him, but to let him live because that was worse.”
He turned a piercing gaze at Erica. “Why are you crying?! Mine sister died because of him. She might have had a chance, if he hadn’t tried to be too smart. And now he goes around full of religion, how you say, holier than thou?”
Shortly before the annual general meeting, Erica returned to the duplex on Shalom. This time, the windows of the den were flung wide open, and the sounds of bird song and the scent of orange blossoms heralded the finest time of year. She found him waiting for her, already seated on the couch. When he rose, his movements were stiffer than she remembered, and he seemed more fragile.
“So you’ve come back. I did not expect to see you again.”
“I had to tell you that I never heard of anything so cruel.”
“Never say that. When you try to wipe out a whole people, there are uncountable ways of being cruel…. I will tell you something that nobody else knows except for my wife, Chavaleh. Sarah was pregnant. Very early. She didn’t show yet. I don’t want that you should write this in your book, if you write about this at all. Because it would seem to lift the burden of guilt from my shoulders, a little bit. And I don’t want it to appear in any way lighter. But because she was pregnant, by the time of the liquidation she would not have been chosen to go to the right, with the living. She would have gone straight into the gas.”
Erica sat as if turned to stone. Was there no end to this chain of horror? She felt chilled to the bone, despite the balmy June air wafting in from outside.
There was a tap at the door. A plump, pleasant looking elderly woman smiled at the threshold. “Gershon, remember what the doctor said.”
“This is my wife, Chavaleh. She worries too much about the doctors.”
But, as if in accordance with doctors’ orders, he stood up, wincing a little.
Chavaleh entered the room, bearing a tray of refreshments. Lieberman shook his head when she asked if he wanted a snack. For a moment he held Erica’s gaze with his pale blue eyes. He said he looked forward to reading her book, and left the room.
Chavaleh was generously proportioned, her white hair drawn back in a tight bun that pulled at her half-moon pencilled eyebrows. Her broad lips were painted plum, and they smiled readily, though there was a hint of guardedness in her brown eyes. She said she was not from Radobice, but that she had met her husband in a DP camp after the war.
“We all had stories, and most of us were left all alone. He was always a quiet man, mine husband. It took a long time for me to learn what happened to him. I can only tell you that he has been a very good husband and you couldn’t find a kinder or more generous father.”
She poured coffee into a rose-sprigged china cup and changed the subject.
“Your friend Faith, I knew her mother in one of the camps. Did she tell you that?”
“Faith doesn’t talk very much about her mother, Mrs. Lieberman.”
“Call me Chavaleh. Everybody does. Yes, that’s too bad what’s happened to Freda Guttman. She was such a smart woman. And strong for someone so tiny! When I first saw her I never could have thought she’d recover from what happened to her.”
“What happened to her?”
“Oy, if you don’t know it’s not my place to say.”
Erica also thought it wasn’t her place to gossip about Faith’s mother with a near perfect stranger. But it had been this cryptic allusion that prompted her to speak so cagily about Chavaleh Lieberman with the Graces on the night after the annual general meeting.
4
After Erica had left, Rhoda and Faith adjourned to the living room. Faith curled up on the couch, tucking her small feet beneath her. Rhoda sat opposite her in her favourite comfy wing chair with its fat plaid cushions.
“I don’t know how she can stand doing this,” Faith muttered. “I know I egged her on in the first place, but I still don’t know how she can go through with it. I know I wouldn’t be able to. You know it was the Jewish police who carried out quite a bit of the Germans’ dirty work. Horrible stuff like burying people in mass graves and rounding up people for transports. He couldn’t have had a choice, but I wonder if any good can be served by bringing this stuff to light.”
“You mean,” Rhoda said, “that it’s better to sweep it under the rug and not talk about it in front of the goyim?”
“Oy Rhoda! Who said anything about goyim? I don’t know what I mean. It’s just that Melly’s such an operator. And she’s going to have to dress him up and make him look good ’cause that’s what he’s paying her to do.”
“Don’t worry about Erica. She may not know where she’s going with all this, but she’s starting to sink her teeth into it.”
“I’m not worrying. I just wonder how it’ll all turn out. And if you want to know the truth, the whole subject of the war fills me with fury! If I really let myself think about it hard—and I don’t usually, because what’s the point? Why think about it when you can’t change what happened and it’s over? Even if it’s not done with, it’s over.
“But if I think about my parents, and what they went through. It’s true that if it wasn’t for the war they’d never have got married, and I’d have never been born. Or not as me…. And it’s not like they’d have had such fantastic lives, either. My mother would have had a dozen children and lived under a wig and waited on her husband hand and foot. And my father—well, actually I can’t imagine him without my mother. I can’t imagine what he’d have been like if they never met.”
“How did they meet?”
“Back in Radobice, right after the war. But that’s not the first time they saw each other. They passed each other on the street many times before the war. They caught each other’s eye, they liked the look of each other. But they never spoke to each other ’cause my mother was Hasidisheh and my father was a Zionist—and that would never do!
“But of course none of that mattered anymore when they met afterwards. And they did fall in love and somehow found their way to Sweden. That’s where they were married. She was pregnant with me by the time they arrived here. And she said that I was her reward for having gone through the war.”
Faith took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. Rhoda felt her own eyes prickle. The chair creaked as she stood up and moved over to the couch next to Faith and took her hand.
“I’m sorry,” Faith said, her lower lip quivering. “It’s just so hard with her now. And I know there were things she wanted to tell me and I didn’t let her. I think she never spoke of them to my father because it would have hurt him too much. Female things.”
“What are you saying, Faithie? That she was raped?”
Faith shrugged.
“Something happened. She tried telling me, she dropped hints. All I needed to do was ask the right question and she would have said. You know what great friends we were before she became someone I don’t even know anymore. But I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t want to know. I actually still don’t want to know, except that I wish I hadn’t let her down by not listening.”
There was the sound of a key turning in the lock. Rhoda let go of Faith’s hand.
“Here comes the conquering hero from his squash game.”
Hershy stood in the doorway, surveying the room.
“What are you two doing sitting in the dark? Where’s the third Grace?”
He flicked on the overhead light.
“What’s wrong, Faith?”
“Nothing,” Faith said, bending over to search for her sandals on the floor and hiding her wet face.
“Erica went home early,” Rhoda said. “We were just sitting here reminiscing.”
“Reminiscing? Are you coming down with something? No wonder Erica left! Are you sure she went home? Maybe she made an early getaway so she could have a little roll in the editorial hay in Mile End.”
“Hershy, really! That’s all over, as you well know.”
“Don’t Hershy really me! Maybe that’s what you need too!”
“I’m leaving,” Faith said. “Have a good time, you two.”
5
Hershy was sprinting around the bedroom in his shorts, his chest bare, lobbing imaginary balls at the full-length mirror. He could see Rhoda’s reflection in front of him. She was sitting up in bed, three fat rollers on the crown of her silver head, applying cold cream to her neck in deliberate upward strokes. He turned a pirouette, then feinted once more with his racquet towards the mirror.
Rhoda rolled her eyes and tried to suppress her urge to grin. This was an ancient routine of Hershy’s, and she knew what was coming next. The fact that she knew didn’t negate how hilarious she still found it.
“I played with my gynecologist tonight and I destroyed him.”
Hershy’s gynecologist was Murray Goldfarb, a retired obstetrician he had met at the Hampstead Squash and Racquetball Club. In his time, Murray had delivered thousands of babies. He had no idea that half of Jewish Montreal called him Hershy Kaplansky’s gynecologist.
“Cut it out,” Rhoda said. “It’s late and I’ve got to be at a school in Beaconsfield for eight tomorrow.”
She switched off the light as Hershy grumbled his way to the bathroom. “Don’t lose your sense of fun, Rhode. If you stop laughing at me, we’ll have nothing left.”
She rolled onto her stomach, her favourite position for sleep, but she knew it wasn’t going to come easily tonight. She was much more upset over what Faith had told her about Freda than she had allowed herself to show.
Did every family have these pockets of vital information kept hidden even from each other?
She had known Faith’s parents longer than she knew Faith. Their bakery on Monkland and Grand was a favourite destination for her father on Sunday mornings. Josh Gutner used to say it was the only place for a decent loaf of kimmel west of St. Lawrence Main. He used to drive over from Westmount with her to pick up a few loaves for the freezer, along with Guttman’s prize party sandwiches and chocolate rugelachs. Her Dad liked to chat with the owners. Tiny Mrs. Guttman always had her blonde hair tucked under a hair net. Her spare, dark-haired husband was always smiling, always cheerful.
Rhoda met Faith in first year McGill in Moyse Hall. A cross between lecture hall and theatre, it was the setting for English 100 and the histrionics of Professor Walker, an actor manqué who swooped about the stage in his black academic robes like a great bat, declaiming Shakespeare. A corps of bloodless teaching assistants took attendance, which was mandatory. To make their task easier, seating was by alphabetical order. Rhoda Gutner sat beside Faith Guttman.
Faith was the first member of her family to go to university, and she took to heart the dire warning at freshman orientation that one-third of first-year students flunked out. She was an assiduous note-taker, while Rhoda sat back, closed her eyes, and relied on her memory. Faith privately thought Rhoda was riding for a fall. Rhoda smiled her crooked smile and assumed Faith was a drone. At the end of term, when the marks were posted, they were tied for third place. By the end of the school year they were fast friends.
Rhoda never connected Faith to the bakery until she was invited to Friday night dinner at Faith’s house. Faith had been reluctant to issue the invitation. Though Rhoda wore torn jeans and work boots to school, she sported chunky gold pieces around her neck and her curly head was shaped and straightened at Charles of Westmount, her mother’s hairdresser. Everybody knew Bijoux Gutner on Greene Avenue. But still Freda and Ziggie urged Faith to bring her friend home, and she finally gave in.
Rhoda loved Faith’s parents, their demonstrativeness, their sweet and funny accents, their absence of affectation. She had never witnessed a blessing of children and watched, her mouth slightly agape, as Ziggie placed his hands first over Faith’s diminutive head and muttered a benediction, then reached up to bless Daniel who, though younger than Faith, was a head taller than his dad. Rhoda’s Bubbie had used to light Shabbos candles, but after her death the custom fell by the wayside at home. Now Freda, echoing the gesture Rhoda could just recall, swooped her arms over the lit candles, then covered her eyes with her fingers and sang the blessing under her breath.
Rhoda enthused so much about the Guttmans at home that her parents, who were always a soft touch where she was concerned, reciprocated the invitation. If Leah looked down her elegant nose at Freda and Ziggie, she never said so. A back and forth began to take place between the family on the hill and the one in Snowdon. Each attended the simchas of the other: the girls’ weddings, the brises and bar mitzvahs of the grandsons, and Andrea’s bat mitzvah.
Rhoda started awake, one arm bent awkwardly underneath her trunk, her face hot. Hershy was snoring on a stentorian scale next to her. She poked him but he continued to wheeze and gasp, so she jabbed him, less gently this time. He rolled onto his side, taking the bedclothes with him.
Her mind was processing the cacophony she had just woken from, its jarring notes still reverberating in her head. There she was, pacing up and down on a stage, garbed in graduation gown and mortar board. The stage was actually a classroom with a blackboard behind her. Children sat in a row on the floor, but all sorts of adults crowded around them. Faith and Erica were there. So were Rhoda’s parents, a youthful Leah in a white sundress with a scooped neck, her blonde silky hair tumbling to her waist. Curiously, Josh—jeweller’s loupe in his eye—looked grey-haired and old.
Rhoda jumped off the stage and, arms flailing, began haranguing Erica. “But don’t you see, fidelity isn’t natural at all!” she was yelling. “It’s infidelity that’s our default setting. And that goes as much for women, too—otherwise who would the assholes be doing it with?”