Morning in the Park Among the Nannies

WHEN YOU SHOWED up in the playground in the public park, I recognized you at once. It had been decades since I last saw you and still—the restrained tremor behind a curtain of languor, the unmistakable gait, the feet almost dancing, the peculiarly erect head with the neck thrust forward as if you were seeking the horizon, the quick glance lashing and sailing past. You were pushing a child’s stroller on the dirt path leading to the farthest bench by the water fountain when you passed me. I saw clearly the beauty that had withstood time’s wrecking powers, the sky blue eyes encircled by shadowy lines, the noble forehead arching back into the roots of your hair. I couldn’t take my eyes off you as you parked the stroller in the shade of a tree, walked to the sandbox, bent down, gathered a handful of sand, and raised it to your eyes to examine it.

“She’s counting the microbes,” the Bulgarian nanny chuckles, and the two nannies sitting with her burst out laughing. Every so often a new nanny appears in the park and becomes the butt of the Bulgarian’s mordant humor, especially if she chooses the farther benches. The others watch the impending duel with glee, hoping to fill another hour with giggles. But today I don’t join their hilarity. As soon as I recognize you, the scenes we witnessed together simmer inside me like poison. Few people saw those sights and lived.

For years, you know, I saw you in my dreams, always dressed in the Chinese silk kimonos, or in those lace blouses I made for you. I saw you coming down the palace stairs with your floating gait, or standing by the window in the upper room looking at the garden, a sapphire necklace always around your neck and your hair braided on your nape like twined gold ingots nestled in a fine net. In the distance, even in my dream, the Germans laughed thickly or sang their songs, or ran up and down the black marble stairs, now and then cracking a whip with a flick of the hand. In the background, like a nightmare melody, the girls screamed and cried and wailed day and night—but not you. You maintained your dark silence.

“That’s the child of the heart specialist,” the Bulgarian chuckles. “They interviewed two hundred women before they picked this one. She looks more like a lady than the professor’s lady.”

Even in my dreams you never looked me in the eye. You looked over my head with that distant, languid gaze, but I noticed that your eyelids trembled. I would wake from those dreams as if escaping from a fire, suddenly recalling scenes much worse than the dreams: the girls bitterly crying in their first nights, very softly, almost unheard in the rustling of the beds, and sometimes a shriek, ringing in my ears for a long time, like an echo in the desert. And the next day, their eyes were worn out with weeping, shadows creeping on their faces, and in the days that followed the spark of life slowly faded from their eyes.

A few weeks later the eyes were already dead, drained of tears, the lovely bodies wilting, and then the eyes would take on a puzzled expression, refusing to understand the surrounding reality.

In the cellar where I live with my sewing machine, I would prick up my ears to hear the loud thud in the back garden, learning to distinguish it from the other sounds of the house: one of the girls had reached the end of her endurance, climbed stealthily to the rooftop or to a windowsill, and hurled herself down. I would close my eyes and recite the only verse I remember from the Kaddish prayer my father used to say on my grandmother’s grave: Yisgadal veyiskadesh shmaia rabba . . .

Now you are vigorously shaking the grains of sand from your fingers and turning your head to the toddler strapped into the stroller.

“How fast she counted the microbes,” the Bulgarian grins. “I bet she won’t put her in the sand. God forbid the professor’s dress should get soiled.”

The day the German thrust you into my room and ordered me to find you a blue silk dressing gown, I stared at you as if hypnotized. The girls who were brought into my room were all pretty. But you—there was a fatal darkness about your beauty. Your glance flicked around the room and you did not ask anything. Did you already know what kind of place it was? Were you wary of me? You stood erect and regal when I dressed you, like a proud bride in her wedding gown.

You slap your palms together and walk resolutely to the shaded bench. Your body is still amazingly supple, your legs handsome, unblemished by the years, and your narrow waist shows clearly when you bend down to loosen the little girl’s strap. I am watching you openly. Now that the initial shock is over, my eyes are as drawn to you as they were then. I see your iron hand gripping the child like a clamp, your fingers closing on the tiny fluttering hand. The sight awakens my hostility toward you and the sights that have been buried inside me for decades without respite. The time that passed hasn’t softened your heart, you damned woman. The black light in your eyes shook me from the start.

Outside, the German snorted with laughter, calling to one of his friends, “I’ve brought you a present—a rabbi’s daughter!” I looked at you and said to myself, trying to shield you from what I had seen, “Soon she will be found dead. Obviously she has no idea where she is, and when she understands she will want to die.”

The little girl squirms in the prison of your arms and you shake and scold her. I was not wrong about you, as I hoped. You understood quite well when you stood in front of the mirror in my room. How did you guard your soul in that place?

One of the nannies runs around with the carousel, panting, shouting, “If you don’t eat the apple right now, I’ll give it to Michael. You want Michael to grow up big and strong, and you’ll be little and weak? He’ll never let you go on the swing; is that what you want?”

At night, you remember, the girl with the auburn braid used to sing. She had the sweet voice of a schoolgirl. When she sang, the weeping in the room would cease. One night a new girl was brought to the room. The night before, she told us, she had married her beloved. In the camp to which they had been transported from the ghetto, two kerchiefs had been tied together to form a canopy and a rabbi had performed the ceremony. The girl with the braid sang bridal songs for her: “The voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of a bride and the voice of a groom . . .” Later, at night, the two would sing Sabbath songs and hymns.

One morning the two girls were found lying hand in hand by the fountain in the garden, the blood flowing from their wrists. A few days later I asked you about them and I noticed that your fingers did not tremble as you smoothed your hair.

A child jumps from the carousel and bursts out crying when his knee hits a stone. The nanny pounces on him: “Why do you jump without looking? Don’t you remember we couldn’t go out for three days because last Monday you jumped and hurt yourself? It was awful at home—you behaved terribly. Now you’re jumping again? You think I want to be cooped up with you again in prison?”

It was for you that the German wanted those exquisite Chinese kimonos. I wondered where they got them in such quantities. In my room you preened yourself as though you were going to a ball. You alone, of all the girls, were an enigma: girls came and went, tore out their hair, howled like wolves—you alone kept your head up. Week after week I observed you and saw no change in you, unlike the other girls—the clear skin, the rosy tinge fading into the neck, the dark halos around the limpid blue irises, the wide, rounded forehead turning to the high temples, the red lips, the proud chin, the sculptured body, rounded shoulders, slender waist, narrow feet, the waist-length hair, the supple body movements, the dancing gait.

Once I saw you being dragged from the parlor by an officer. Another time, when you left my room, I heard the laughter of the drunken men greeting you outside. And one day, when by chance I went through the hallway to wash the filth from the carpet at the foot of the stairs, I saw you on the floor—the Chinese kimono all awry, your hair wound around your face like roots, your hands tied with a rope between your knees. At night you staggered like a drunk down the stairs, your bleeding arms groping along the railing. The next morning you stood serenely, looking out the window, pieces of a broken vase at your feet, sipping soup, quietly sucking up the thick liquid, putting down the bowl, and, without looking, picking up a chunk of salami and biting into it noisily; and all the while your eyes gazed at the lilac bush and your right hand held the drapes. I picked up the pieces of the broken vase, my eyes drawn to your mutilated arm holding the drapes: fingernail marks like furrows plowed in your arm, on the back of your hand. And on your elbow, like a drawing, were three flower-shaped burns.

The girls aged overnight: their complexions became ashen, their eyelids swelled, their hair lost its sheen, their bodies lost their vitality. You alone never changed, as if accustomed to vicissitudes and knowing that nothing goes on forever. And I watched in amazement as the injuries on your arms healed and your lovely skin triumphed.

The Bulgarian nanny jumps to her feet, dashes forward, and threatens, “Yuvali, get down this minute. Don’t climb up from the bottom. Can’t you see there’s a girl ready to slide down? Do you want such a fat girl to fall on your head? Go to the ladder and slide down after the fat girl like you did before. See how she hit the bottom—kerplunk! Lucky for you I noticed her, or you’d be on your way to the first-aid station.”

The night the girl from the Lodz ghetto told us about Passover Eve you were the only one who stayed in bed. All the others gathered around the girl, who told us in whispers how she and her mother had been left alone in the cellar where they were hiding. The week before her elder brother had gone out to look for food and never came back. The younger brother was sent to look for him, and he, too, never came back. The mother picked up some bread crumbs and flattened them into squares, which she moistened with water, and before she went out of her mind and ran screaming out into the street, calling for her sons, began to lay the Seder table, putting stones on the table in place of wine bottles, plates for fish, soup, and meat, put down the squares of bread crumbs for matzo. She walked around and sang: “How is this night different from all other nights? That on all nights we eat . . .” The whole time she was telling us about the ghetto I didn’t take my eyes off you. You sat with your back to us, motionless, as if you were a piece of furniture. Did you know, as I did, that the very next day the girl from Lodz would collapse and the Germans would throw her out at noon?

“Why did you hit her?” The nanny’s voice rises shriller than the children’s. “I saw you hitting her. Don’t lie to me. Why is she crying then? Just because you don’t know how to play on the monkey bars you have to come here and hit? Aren’t you ashamed to play with girls anyway? Look at all the other kids playing nicely. Only you go looking for trouble. You think you’re so smart picking on little girls? Where is your nanny anyway? What’s she being paid for?”

Often I wondered whether you would have triumphed over the place if it weren’t for the senior officer who took you under his wing and kept the others away from you. For a while we were both protected—I with my sewing skills and you ensconced in your benefactor’s room.

We both regarded the others as if their fate did not touch us. Do you remember the three girls who were taken out one night for an orgy? The Germans were drunker than ever. At dawn two of them crawled back, their bodies bruised all over. The third girl had been rolled up in a carpet, her long hair hanging out of one end, dragged out into the garden, and set on fire. The drunken Germans stood and watched the hair, flaring up readily, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the rooms until the wind blew. One of the girls told us, before she was taken to the doctor and never returned, that the Germans had strangled her friend while violating her body. In the morning the other girl began to spew blood. She came to my room for shelter and showed me the fist marks on her lower abdomen.

Sometimes, when I sit here on the park bench with the nannies, listening to them bickering and chattering, watching the toddlers playing in the sandbox under the trees, I am reminded more and more of the trees at that house: the linden tree tops converging above the fountain, the thick foliage, the somber shade, the goldfish swimming among corals gleaned from the ocean depths, the dew stored in the grass, the sky on clear nights. What are they doing now, those girls who sat on the Germans’ knees, who wallowed on the floors? Are they living their lives, carrying the memories from night to day, from day to night? I try to figure out how old they would be today, and the thought alarms me.

Do you remember that time, at a party, when our eyes met over the back of a girl crouching on all fours, her forehead touching the pulled-off boots and licking the bare feet of the officer who stood like an artist’s model, a hand on his hips, his trousers down and his underpants sagging around the pillars of his legs? His companions laughed. One of them said, “Not many of them can brag that they’ve caught a German officer with his pants down.” What was the girl thinking of, crouching there in the noisy room? Her mother? Her father? The boy who peeped at her from behind his prayer shawl? What were you thinking of?

A young woman is dragging a weeping girl to an adjacent bench. “Tell his nanny, dear heart. Don’t cry, sweetie. There, there. I’ll tell her! Your kid spat at her. Is that how you teach him? Sure you’re responsible. You sit here chatting about wages and gossiping about your employers while he’s spitting at other kids. Some nanny! Come to the faucet, my heart, I’ll wash your dress.”

You were beautiful in those days. You must have found some makeup somewhere, or else your benefactor gave you some. You put on mascara, rouged your cheeks for him, and I, who knew your features like the back of my hand, noticed a new sparkle in your eyes. You braided your hair and searched in the jewelery box in my room and took out a necklace of sapphires to put around your neck. You examined yourself in the mirror and waited for his arrival. Once, when you were in his room, the two of you came out on the little balcony. He hung his jacket around your shoulders and you talked the whole night long. I saw you from my window, talking earnestly. What did you tell him, sitting so erect, wrapped in a German officer’s jacket? What did he tell you?

In the spring the garden suddenly burst into my cellar in all its glory: the spring azure of the Polish sky, the light clouds, the air laden with buds and pollen, heavy clusters of chestnut blossoms peering through curtains of leaves, young leaves thickening the treetops day by day, the gurgling of the fountain in the garden, the row of white lilac bushes along the fence like ornate gowns lined up for a fashion show. In the middle of the garden stood the palace itself, where a prince used to live before the Germans came, with huge murals, molded doors, embroidered tapestries, inlaid cupboards, lion-footed armchairs, heavy silverware, crystal chandeliers—and at rare hours, a profound silence between the walls, when the screams of the women and the stomping of jackboots on the marble stairs subsided. In that silence I could sense the staring eyes, the quivering flesh, the nameless fear. And one morning, in the sweet lilac fragrance, I lingered by the wall in one of the rooms and noticed little dabs of blood behind a chest of drawers, the dabs forming letters: Shifra daughter of Shimon. What possessed Shifra to leave her father’s name in that accursed place?

“You get down this minute! We’re going home now! You want to tear your pants again? Your mother won’t buy you a new pair so soon. All right, just a little more, only get off those bars and come play in the sand. Better play with the girls.”

On exceptionally fine summer nights the Germans would sit in the big garden, drinking beer from huge mugs, singing with their heads thrown back, sometimes amusing themselves by sitting a girl on their knees and bouncing her from lap to lap around the circle. From my low window I followed you with my eyes. Your German had seated you on a chair by his side and offered you a drink, but you declined. Gently he caressed your cheek. I was shaken. In that place the sight of endearment was intolerable. You said something to him and he immediately bent his head to you to catch it, nodding attentively. You both rose and walked down the path to the end of the garden. A few minutes later shots were heard from that corner, and the Germans jumped to their feet. The girl they had played with remained sitting like a statue. It quickly became clear that your officer was only showing off his marksmanship to you. Loud laughter rose from the edge of the garden.

You make sure the bench is meticulously clean. You pick out cigarette butts and popsicle sticks from the sand and put them in a trash can nailed to a tree trunk. Then you spread a napkin on the bench beside you and feed the child, wiping her mouth constantly, picking crumbs from her blouse—and all the while your back is straight, your thighs pressed together, like an actress in a movie.

In the days that followed you were protected, sleeping in the officer’s distant, overheated room. Sometimes you stood by the window, watching the summer showers fall on the garden. Every day, by your master’s orders, your food was brought to you on a tray, and you received it like the mistress of the house, sitting in an armchair and gazing at a painting over my head while I changed the sheets on your bed. Unlike the other girls, you never asked me anything. Did you not want to understand more than you had to? I knew more about the Germans than about you.

The nanny beside me pulls a crying child to her bosom. “And his father is a doctor! Can you believe it—a big doctor, with such a stupid son? Always sticks his head where he’ll get hurt. Why don’t you watch your head? Ask your father, he’ll tell you how important it is to watch your head.”

One night the house was suddenly empty and silence fell on the lawn and on the grove behind the palace. The girls, made tense by the unwonted silence, gathered like sleepwalkers in the parlor. Some lay on the sofas and on the carpets, eating candy from ornate boxes, drinking wine, whispering. One burst into tears and couldn’t stop. In the morning we were woken by the stomping boots of the returning Germans, and it turned out that the officers had been summoned to a special conference. In the afternoon it was discovered that the golden-haired girl who had been brought the day before from Majdanek had taken advantage of the commotion and disappeared. They sent the dogs after her and found her hiding in the bushes, under the porch columns. We saw the dogs dragging her to the bottom of the garden.

On the morning when your officer was found dead in his bed, you were no longer in the room. The doctor was called in and suddenly there was panic in the palace—people dashing to and fro, exchanging short phrases like a secret language, passing each other on the stairs. Through the door I could see him lying in bed like a mountain, his neck red even in death. The doctor declared that his heart had given way. When the body had been removed, covered in a velvet blanket, the others pounced on you in your upper room. All that day and night the Germans kept going to your room one by one, to do to you what they had been prevented from doing while your protector was alive. In the morning I saw you staggering on the doorstep. I recognized you by the kimono.

You take no part in the general hubbub in the park. The child, too, keeps her distance from the other children; she only pushes her stroller in circles around your bench. Her pretty sandals sink into the sand. For a moment your eyes seem to focus on the baby sitting on my lap. Did you recognize me?Your hand seems to have lost control; your fingers grope along the bench, grabbing the metal edge of the board. Your body maintains its calm, your back is erect, there is only the tremor of your whitened fingers clutching the metal.

One morning the Germans were suddenly gone. They left in haste, but still took two girls with them. We got up in the morning—seven girls—to a new silence. The doctor’s daughter from Lublin was the first to realize what had happened. She climbed to the fourth floor and opened all the rooms one by one, her roar growing louder the farther she went. Leaning on the top floor railing she shouted, “The swine are gone!” She shouted in Yiddish, defiantly, and a shiver went through me at the sound of those words. The girl who had been the last to arrive, her pallor glaring in the dark room, started rocking to and fro, raising her eyes to the high painted ceiling and chanting, “Blessed art thou, our God, Lord of the universe . . .” A moment later another one burst out laughing and started destroying the paintings on the wall with her bare hands.

The Bulgarian, who is as easily overcome by compassion as by cruelty, cries, “Look what a heart of gold he has! Every day he gives his chocolate milk to the cat. I tell his mother he shouldn’t be so softhearted. When he grows up the girls will make his life miserable. You know what girls are like when they get hold of a nice guy—they ruin him.”

We still didn’t know that the Russians were already in town. We were still delirious, roaming through the rooms. You were the first to leave. You cocked the beret on your head, packed a small suitcase, broke into my room, opened the jewelery box, scooped up a fistful of jewels and put them in the bottom of the suitcase, chose two dark sweaters and a gray woolen skirt, packed them quickly, and left. At the main gate the vicious dog leapt at you, and you bent down, picked up a rock, and threw it at his head. As soon as you left, all hell broke loose, as if you had given the signal for a new life.

You gather your things, harness the child in her carriage, rise, and turn to the park gate. Once again, when you are a pace away from me, I see the icy eyes surrounded by black halos. The nannies fall silent, following you with their eyes as you pass by. For a moment I seem to feel your glance lashing at me. Have I awakened a memory in you? An echo of German voices? The touch of flesh against your flesh? The fluttering of silk against your skin? The smell of the chestnuts? Have you succeeded in forgetting? The girl who had aged in days, the one who wiped the marble tiles, who removed the soiled sheets and spread fresh ones, who sewed the glamorous dresses, ironed and stitched, and never took her eyes off you all, lovely daughters of Israel. How they gathered all that beauty and then destroyed it—were you able to forget?

Suddenly the steely eyes are on my face. And you say in a dull voice devoid of wonder, “What sandals?”

I reply, “The little girl’s.”

You look directly at me: “I don’t know. I didn’t buy her the sandals. Her mother did.” And you propel the carriage onto the gravel path and walk away.

I stumble back to my seat on the bench. The Bulgarian makes room for me and peers into my face, concerned.

“What’s wrong, dear heart? Come, sit down.” She pats my back amiably and smiles. “How you ran after that lady! As if in her you’d found Cinderella’s slipper that she lost at the palace.”

And they all join in her laughter.

Translated from the Hebrew by Marganit Weinberger-Rotman