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South of Sepid Dasht, Iran, July 1942
The air flowed as viscous and foul as my mood. It was so bad that stowaways and crew alike had to jump off and trot alongside the train, crouching low to gain what little fresh air cowered at ground level. Spurred by the spewing locomotive, temperatures in the unventilated switchback tunnel climbed to oven levels. Terror of suffocation from choking coal smoke quickly overcame fear of losing a hand or foot by stumbling into the unforgiving path of the train’s hungry steel wheels.
I’d grown up in a city where trams were a way of life, and knew about the appetite of steel wheels for human flesh. From as early as I could remember, we ‘rode the tit’ everywhere we wanted to go. The ‘tit’, as every Praga boy knew, referred to the covered protrusion that housed a Warsaw tram’s rear coupling mechanism. It was a comfortable perch, out of sight of the conductor, easily accessible as long as you timed your run to match the tram’s pace, and—best of all—completely free.
Krystyn Broz had discovered the tram wheels’ hunger on a crisp and sunny winter Saturday afternoon.
***
Aron and I were riding the tit of the Little Jew—we had names for every tram line. Only outsiders used the line numbers. The #1 was the Truncheon because it went by the police station; the #5 was the Piss because it passed by Praga’s sewage outlet into the Vistula; the #4 was the Little Jew because it went to the Jewish section of town; and so on.
The cobblestones were slick that day with packed snow that had partially melted and refrozen. It had been a slippery chore, but Aron and I, and a number of other Jewish boys, had managed to mount the tit of the Little Jew, headed north towards the Zoo. We were halfway up Targowa Street when somebody spotted Krystyn Broz walking alone. Krystyn was my age, but he didn’t attend our szabasowka school, which was for Jews only despite being state-run. Still, we Jews knew of him, as did perhaps half of Praga. He was the small boy whose mother had no husband. Thus, most assumed her to be a member of the Oldest Profession, although nobody had ever proven this, or even knew of someone who knew someone who had. His nose was always runny, his jacket threadbare, his hat inevitably askew, and he had a leg brace—most likely the result of Polio, although the juvenile consensus was venereal disease caught from his mother.
Aron elbowed me, gave me a knowing ‘watch this!’ look, and cupped his hands to his mouth to better project his voice. “Krystyn! Yes you, debil! Got anything to do today? Want to come with us to the zoo? Come on up! Come on, you can do it! It will be fun!”
That winter morning of 1926, I saw in Krystyn Broz’s eyes perhaps the most genuine hope I’d ever seen. It was the hope of the dying who knew they were dying and the hope of the dying who chose to remain willfully naïve. It was the hope of mothers scanning endless lists of battle dead, and the hope of fathers reading deportation orders.
We cheered him as he ran. The brace made his normally halting gait spasmodic and hysterical. Yet we reveled surreptitiously via sidelong glances and hand-hidden guffaws disguised as coughing fits. Anything, so as not to spoil the rare and legitimate opportunity afforded to us Jews to mock a Christian boy.
Krystyn smiled a beam of pride as one hand touched the tit. Then he must have slipped on a patch of ice, because we saw the grubby hand slip off. Then we heard a deep thud and the tram jumped a bit. Then we were confused because the brace, glinting meanly in the sunshine and still in possession of its leg, receded on one side of the tracks, while Krystyn Broz lay on the other side. Then the sound of his screams caught up to us, and the cheers from the tit of the Little Jew grew quickly silent.
***
I shook off the memory and its familiar companion, guilt, and shuffled in the pitch dark, scowling and stooped. Even if I’d been closer to the front of the train, the ancient engine had no lights. Doubled over, I felt my way with hands and feet already accustomed to the task. I was 100 kilometers north of Andimeshk, Iran, heading south in an empty military freight train, deep in the black of a railroad tunnel that ran under the Zagros Mountains, and even deeper in the black of my guilt and grief at the deaths of Igor and Viktor, and Jacek. Bandar Shahpur, the train’s destination, remained hundreds of kilometers and countless tunnels away. The distance stretched in front of me dizzyingly. This journey, I knew, like the pain that bit into my sides deeper than time, would never truly end. The darkness in which I stumbled now would be the darkness in which I remained.
The rustle of a body falling heavily to the ground, and a curse in Russian, told of a fellow traveler tripping over one of the countless boulders that lined the tracks, and often blocked the tracks themselves. Rock fall was a constant problem in these hastily built tunnels, just as it was in the route’s countless bleak mountain passes, which were held back by massive yet flimsy retaining walls. We’d spent hours at a standstill in the plantless lunar landscape of a switchback, watching the water flow by, shit-brown, in a nameless river far below while helping the train crew clear the tracks.
The train picked up speed, and my knee banged into a rock of its own. I cursed in Polish, just a short expletive. Burgeoned by the anonymity the darkness afforded, I took a breath and geared up to shout a satisfyingly juicy string of epithets. Just then, barely audible above the din of the wheels and the curses of the other tunnel-walkers, my darkness-enhanced hearing picked up another sound, this one markedly more pleasant.
A woman sang a song—in Polish—and a familiar song at that! As quickly as it started, however, it stopped—so suddenly, I thought perhaps I’d imagined it.
The train gave the familiar series of complaining clanks and squeals that indicated an impending halt, and the cars slowed and stopped. Expert at conserving my scarce energy, I immediately sat beside the tracks and leaned back against the rough rock wall. My eyes strained for a hint of light that never materialized.
I’d been on the Trans-Iranian Railway for nearly a week, and had grown used to this hop-on, hop-off, sit-down, get-moving routine. I’d found the train right after the fishing boat delivered me, broken and shivering in the night’s chill, to the port of Bandar Shah. Despite my fears of imminent arrest by the NKVD—compounded by my lack of papers, money, or even a full set of clothing—it had been easy to bypass the Soviet checkpoints. The trains came from the south in a never-ending stream, bringing desperately needed war materiel provided by the Allies to the Soviets on a lend-lease basis. Once the boxcars and flatbeds had regurgitated their tons of armored personnel carriers, trucks, ammunition crates, and other wartime burdens, they were so urgently needed back in the Persian Gulf that no one paid much attention to what they carried. I ended up in a spacious boxcar at the end of a long train pulled by an ancient-looking coal-fired engine. My car had obviously recently carried machinery, given its pronounced oily taint, but it was shaded, and I was comfortable on a scrounged pile of dusty sackcloth for the three-day journey south to Tehran, where Allied and Soviet jurisdictions overlapped.
In the bustle of the rapidly growing rail hub in the Iranian capital, Soviet engineers handed over control of empty southbound trains to their English counterparts, and took control over northbound, materiel-crammed cars. Once, a railroad official looked into my car, nodded at me, and walked on—no papers checked, no questions asked. We were soon on our way for a week-long southward odyssey to Bandar Shahpur.
Once again, I had nothing but Danuta’s letters, partially preserved from their Caspian Sea baptism by the oilskin in which I’d wrapped them. I dried them page-by-page over the course of the trip south, careful to weigh each down with its own rock. In fairness, “I had nothing” was not entirely accurate, as I did have new and dry clothes, along with a nearly intact pair of Soviet boots. The owner of both, a dead Soviet soldier lying by the tracks in Bandar Shah, had needed them no more.
I also had leftovers to eat and a regular supply of tepid water from compassionate British railroad workers. And thanks to the efficiency of the British consul in Bandar Shah, I had—miraculously—received papers enabling me to travel to Palestine and “rejoin” my compatriots in the Polish Army, which had begun to coalesce in a camp near Beer Sheva.
The Polish song started again, this time closer. I scanned the darkness with aching eyes for the source of the sad waltz, popular before I left Warsaw: Trzy Listy—Three Letters—a story of a woman writing her final farewell to her lover. It should have made me homesick. It should have brought tears to my eyes. It should have made me long for Danuta’s comfort. It should have made me feel something—anything—except the black emptiness that coursed through my veins like crude petroleum. It did not.
The singing grew in intensity, as the singer gained confidence both in her own anonymity and in the emerging power of her contralto.
I sighed. Tel Aviv, Aron, and Danuta were only weeks—no longer worlds—away, yet I could take no comfort from this thought. Three Letters. To whom would I write my Three Letters? To Jacek, who died owing to my hubris? To Igor, who died owing to my desperate fear of being alone? Or to Viktor, who had been to first to offer himself on the altar of self-sacrifice?
It should have been you, the Voice reminded me.
I yawned and closed my eyes, loath to argue with the Voice, which I knew would prevail, in any case. I’d fought it in the beginning, but had quickly conceded defeat. It was there, like severe tinnitus, resounding in my head day and night: It should have been you. It should have been you. I tried to ignore the Voice for a moment, let the song slither warmly up my consciousness like a down comforter pulled over winter-chilled flesh, and opened my eyes once again to face the darkness. I had slept little these past days, to avoid the dreams. No longer the haven of Technicolor Danuta, they had become black-and-white vignettes of Jacek, Igor, and Viktor—my Trzy Listy. In my short nightly snatches of sleep, and the inevitable daytime naps into which I was lulled by the potently somniferous combination of heat and train rhythm, I saw each die in new and increasingly graphic ways.
The engine stirred to my right, and the train groaned to life. I stood and instinctively brushed dust from my clothes. The singing stopped, and I started walking, then trotting—doubled over to detect rocks, and alert to avoid losing my car, especially since it was at the end of the train. Inevitably, owing to the blackness and the confusion of keeping up with the train, people made mistakes—meager possessions lost, travelers left behind by the tracks until the next train came by.
Several minutes elapsed and a pinprick that rapidly deteriorated into a searing spotlight peeked from the darkness of the tunnel. I straightened on trembling legs and, after one last breath of untainted air, boarded the car next to me, happy to see the bed I’d scavenged. It was my own car.
When the train jauntily forayed into blinding sunlight prior to entering the next tunnel, I saw that I had a new car mate. He sat with his back to me, and I caught only a glimpse of him before the train plunged into the darkness of another tunnel. This tunnel was blessedly short—no need to get out to breathe. In the briefly renewed darkness, the haunting song began again, this time from within my car.
***
I called her Vera, after Vera Gran, the cabaret alto to whom Danuta and I had so loved to listen—on the radio, on my parents’ gramophone, and once even live at Warsaw’s legendary Adria club. Born Dwojra Grynberg, Vera had been the belle of Warsaw’s dazzling 1930’s cabaret scene, which was not surprisingly dominated by numerous other Jewish artists with Polonized names.
I had to call her Vera because she never spoke—but she listened, and she sang. Oh, how she sang.
Vera sang others’ words, yet spoke none of her own. Occasionally, her songs degenerated into wordlessly lyrical, soul-scraping laments. In these times, she seemed to have foregone the power of words altogether, recognizing their futile impotence. For which words will we ultimately treasure, and which will we forget? She sang in a language beyond language. Which will we heed, and which disdain? Which of these words—which pour so casually from our breathing souls that most are lost before they're ever heard—will we ourselves ever recall?
As a writer, for whom words represented the sum of all being, I was bewitched by Vera’s forays into the realm of musical muteness. As a man who had been alone for so long, I could not help but admire her high cheekbones, straight white teeth, small hands, and slim figure. Through the dust that streaked her smooth cheeks and frosted her short hair, I saw beauty. It was beauty I tried to ignore. It was beauty I truly did not want to notice. I had eyes for Danuta, I told myself, and only for Danuta.
***
She came silently across the car in the dawn of our third day together. Her hands were rougher than I’d imagined, her lips softer.
We offered no whispers, no romance, no love except the intrinsically fleeting variety shared by anguished humans. She never looked in my eyes. She was just there. Her small hands sandwiched my cheeks. Her tongue tasted of dust as it explored my mouth. Her warmth below enticed then engulfed me. She was there. I was there. We were together.
It was glorious.
Wordlessly, she moved on me to the rhythm of the train, slowing as the train slowed on a steep uphill climb. Her breath blasted a gentle fire onto my neck. As the train crested the rise, her hands grabbed double folds of the back of my shirt. I could feel her nipples on my chest through our layers of clothing, as she levered herself tighter against me. The train began to regain speed, and her urgency grew. The seam in my shirt complained and then split, and still she moved. The couplings between the railroad cars joined in the cacophony with their own complaints, as car followed car around a near 90-degree hairpin turn. The air of the car filled with the smell of scorched steel, sweat, and sex.
Now she ground harder, gasping. Now her dry tongue found and filled my ear. Now she gave a mute grunt. Now we both shuddered simultaneously. Now the couplings gave a final orgasmic scream of their own. Now a loud metallic crack! sounded from the front of the car.
Our breathing slowed as the ceaseless clackity-clack of the wheels abated.
Vera climbed off me. A sobering rush of cold air chilled both my wet nakedness and my mood. She wiped herself unceremoniously with a corner of my rag bed, the sight of which intensified the unbearable sordidness of the scene.
What have I done?
Vera caught and defiantly returned my somber, resentful stare. Her eyes answered wordlessly, kindly: Only what’s natural. She moved towards her side of the car, and we didn’t look at each other again. She began to sing, and our car began to move again. Backwards.
In the post-coital, guilt-ridden fog on our opposite sides of the train car, neither Vera nor I realized immediately what was happening. Only as the train rapidly gained speed did we realize, as simultaneously as our orgasms only minutes before, that the train was moving in the wrong direction. Or, at least, our car was.
“The couplings! We’ve separated from the train!” My voice came out in a morning rasp—she had woken me—and I had to clear my throat to make myself heard. I repeated myself, and shouted that she should grab her things.
I gathered my own meager possessions, rushed to the door on the valley side of the tracks, looked out, and gasped. Far below me, malevolently bare rock scraped the bottom of a brown river’s chasm. The sheer drop, lit by pale morning sun, rushed by with rapidly increasing velocity. There could be no exit from this side.
I threw myself across the car, moving with difficulty against its now violent swaying. I yelled over my shoulder for Vera to follow me, and managed to get one hand on the handle next to the open door. I stuck my head out to get a better view, and almost had it removed by a jutting boulder. The car was traveling, now insanely fast, just centimeters from the mountain wall on one side, and just centimeters from a sheer drop off on the other.
The probability of exit without breaking a neck, skull, or back was low. The probability of decapitation under the razor-sharp bouncing steel wheels of our chariot was high. A sudden image of Krystyn Broz’s severed leg shot through my mind, raising a dust trail of guilt. The car wheels rhythmically chanted: It should have been you. It should have been you.
The car wheels screamed, and through the open door on the gorge side, I saw around the tight curve through which we were barreling. The car leaned alarmingly in the turn, and the centrifugal force threatened to wrench my hands from the door handle. Desperately seeking a way off the car before it derailed, I followed the tracks with my eyes. Ahead, at the base of our current descent, a low curving bridge mockingly straddled a nearly dry riverbed. Thereafter, the tracks climbed slowly into a long tunnel—the very same tunnel which we’d passed through in flagrante delicto.
“I think we should jump into the riverbed,” I yelled over my shoulder to Vera. “The water and sand will cushion our fall! Be ready!”
She didn’t answer.
I turned towards where Vera should have been, seeking some hope, solace, or even empathy in what might easily have been our final minutes. Yet the car was completely empty. Vera—like Igor and Viktor, like Jacek, like Krystyn Broz’s brace-clad leg, like my once-lovestruck soul drowning in Danuta’s bottomless well—was gone.
