Cafe Scheherazade (5 page)

‘The next day I was entrusted with my first mission. I was to find my way to a village, twenty kilometres distant. I was to make contact with Henryk Erlich, a renowned Bund leader, and his wife Sofia. They had both escaped from German-occupied Warsaw. I was to escort them back to Pinsk, where it was hoped the Polish government might regroup and fight back.

‘I travelled by horse and wagon. We approached a bridge over the Pina, on the outskirts of Pinsk, the river on which Alter the lumberjack once guided logs on the first leg of his journeys to the Black Sea. Polish soldiers guarding the bridge warned that I might not get back. The bridge was mined. The Red Army was approaching.

‘I remember that moment clearly. It was the moment of my first big decision. My first independent decision. Somehow I knew it would be the first of many decisions which would be matters of life and death.

‘I decided to go ahead. We stole across the bridge to the village in which the Erlichs were hiding, about five kilometres away. And we returned just in time. Hours later the bridge was blown up and, the next day, the Red Army marched into Pinsk. They also attacked by river, with troops that had sailed all the way from the Black Sea. The city was in chaos.

‘I remained in Aaron's house with Erlich. His comrades fetched a barber to cut off his beard. They wanted him to change his appearance. He was in danger from the Bolsheviks, they claimed.

‘“From the Bolsheviks I do not hide,” Erlich replied. It wasn't that he trusted them. He was well aware of the purges, the Stalinist terror, the show trials, the Siberian camps. But now that the Red Army was advancing, now that the Nazis were destroying Poland, we would all unite against a common enemy, he reasoned. Whatever has happened in the past, we still come from the same family, the same roots.

‘This was also my father's thinking. This is what he told me when I returned to Vilna, weeks later. By then, as he had predicted, the Red Army occupied the city. As in Kiev, two decades earlier, the buildings were draped in red banners, the streets festooned with red flags. My father was about to flee Vilna, but when he saw the Bolsheviks marching through the streets he changed his mind. Surely they would form a united front. After all, they were all revolutionaries, united in a common cause. After all, he had done time in Siberia, on the frozen shores of Lake Baikal.'

Avram strokes his chin, then brushes a hand across his eyes. He sees armies on the march, villages ablaze. He sees the clash of dictators, the clash of ideas, and the sprouting of tears. The roads of Europe were littered with betrayals. Avram recalls the fierce arguments between Bund comrades. Anna Rosenthal was the leader of the Vilna Bund at the time. ‘The same legendary Anna who had participated in the “Romanov uprising” of 1904, in eastern Siberia,' Avram tells me, with his customary gleam of pride.

‘Avramel? Where are you taking us now?' interrupts Masha. ‘This is another story.'

‘Yes, it is another story,' Avram replies. ‘But it is important that Martin understands Anna Rosenthal was a woman of great courage, with an honourable past. Someone who would not let down her friends; a woman who, in Tsarist times, had spent years in Siberian jails. Yet it was the same Anna Rosenthal who, just after the Bolsheviks marched into Vilna, went to the offices of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, and supplied them with lists of Bund members. She did it in good faith. They were allies, the police assured her. They required the names and addresses so that they could be contacted in times of need. Even then we were still naive.

‘A week later, Anna was arrested, as too were many of her comrades. My father was forewarned. A friend had seen his name on the police lists. His arrest was imminent. His comrades urged him to leave with them, immediately.

‘“Me? Yankel Zeleznikow? Arrested by the Bolsheviks?” father replied. “So what! I am not afraid of them.”

‘He stayed put. And they came at midnight to our apartment on Benedictinski 4, in the old quarters of Vilna. This had been our home for the past ten years, our one bit of security after a lifetime on the run. Mother loved the apartment. It was a three-storey building and we lived on the ground floor. We even had a mahogany piano. My sister Basia was a concert pianist. She had graduated from the Vilna conservatory. Music was in the family. After all, Avram Stock, my mother's father, was once a fiddler, a lifelong player in a klezmer band.

‘Have I told you this story? My mother had a brother called Jonah, who also played the violin; he was a member of the Leningrad symphony orchestra, but he too disappeared during the Stalinist purges. Sooner or later, they all disappeared.'

‘Avramel,' interrupts Masha, ‘where in this bitter world are you taking us now? Please, concentrate at least for a moment on Benedictinski 4.'

‘Yes, Benedictinski 4. I grew up with interesting neighbours. In the apartment opposite ours lived Reb Chaim Ozer Grodzinski. The rooms served as the
Beth Din
, Reb Ozer's rabbinical court. For years they had flocked to him, the believers, to receive his blessings, to sign marriage papers, arrange divorces, resolve squabbles. Reb Ozer sat day after day in a black caftan, stroking his white beard. He would sway from side to side whilst the litigants argued their case.

‘He once called upon my father, even though Yankel was an avowed non-believer. This particular case could not be decided by rabbinical law, Reb Ozer told him. It required the help of someone well-versed in the laws of economics, and the demands of the secular world. Yankel was brought in to advise.

‘The dispute concerned a factory owner and a worker who claimed he had not been adequately paid. It was a difficult case to decide. Since World War I, Vilna had become a city of great poverty. Beggars wandered the streets in packs. Children ran about in bare feet. The alleys were crowded with hovels where whole families slept on a single mattress or a pile of sacks.

‘When Poland absorbed the city in 1920, it was cut off from its pre-war markets in Russia and in countries by the Baltic Sea. So, when it came to manufacturing, there was little money for either owner or worker.'

‘Avramel!'

‘Masha,
loz op
! It is important that Martin should know that Vilna was also a city of paupers. This is why there were so many peddlers, selling their rags on its poorer streets. This is why there were so many smugglers and black marketeers. Have I told you this story? There was a man whom everyone called Rasputin. No one seemed to know his real name. He was a giant of a man, with a long black beard, and an unkempt mane of wild hair. He could always be found in Wolfke's, drinking in the outer saloon.

‘Like his namesake he was surrounded by many women. He ruled over them like a king. He was not a pimp, but a prince among beggars. In exchange for looking after them, the women would give him a cut of their earnings.

‘Rasputin's women roamed the Jewish quarters from sunrise until dusk. Each woman had her territory, her assigned beat. They would go from house to house, through every alley, and, whether you gave them a donation or not, they would always leave you with the same blessing:
May you have, and may you give
.

‘“So why the same blessing?” my father once asked him.

‘“Ah! It is a blessing with two very different meanings,” Rasputin replied. “If you are one of the givers, we bless you so that you should have more, and therefore be able to give more. And if you do not give, we bless you to have the good fortune to be sick, and be condemned to give out groans.”'

‘Tell Martin the story of your father's arrest,' exclaims Masha, ‘or we will go insane.'

‘They came at midnight,' murmurs Avram, ‘the secret police. They searched our apartment. They interrogated my mother. They arrested my father. But he was well prepared. After all, he was a seasoned revolutionary. He had his overnight bag packed with essentials. He would be back within weeks, he assured us.

‘I accompanied him to jail. My father was a heavy smoker. I slipped him several packets of cigarettes. He grasped my hands, kissed me goodbye, and disappeared through the prison gates. I never saw him again.

‘Over the years we received reports. Glimpses. Crumbs of information from former comrades who had shared a cell, a prison yard. He had been sighted in a Siberian camp. He had been interrogated by the secret police. He had been beaten and severely bashed. The NKVD wanted him to write a book exposing the false ideals of the Bund. He had refused, so he remained in jail.

‘Stalin was like the tsars of old. It was the same bitter wine, despite the new red bottles. Like Uncle Jonah, the fiddler, my father vanished in the labour camps of Siberia. So many vanished without trace.'

‘My family did survive Siberia,' says Masha.

Until now, she has deferred to Avram's monologue. She has sat by his side, alert to his every word. ‘Compared to Avram, I led a sheltered life,' she adds. ‘Compared to Avram, my story is trivial. Compared to those who remained in Lithuania and Poland, we spent the war years in paradise. For many years, I thought my story was not worth telling.'

I glance at the glowing lamps, the ashtrays, the white serviettes laid out in readiness for the evening meal. I take in the counter display of the day's cakes: almond rings and apple-strudel, marzipan sticks and nougat delight. Behind the counter, the mirrored backdrop reflects a steady procession of customers disappearing into the St Kilda night. These are the touchstones, the props to a tale of a journey towards the Empire of the White Bears. A journey which began on a sunlit autumn day in September 1939.

They ran in fear. They ran for their lives. Twelve-year-old Masha, her mother, her younger sister and brother, from the Polish city of Sosnowiec. For the first of many times they were refugees, just four among the thousands who choked the single road which led out of town.

‘Father had told us to run,' says Masha, ‘and make our way to Siedlce, a shtetl hundreds of kilometres north-east of Sosnowiec. My parents, Josef and Yohevets Frydman, were born and raised in Siedlce. They were also Bundists. In the 1920s they had been sent to Sosnowiec to organise trade unions. Sosnowiec was a city in the south-west, and Siedlce was to be a stepping stone to the east, to the River Bug, the new border between Russia and Poland.

‘Grandfather Hershl Frydman was a rabbi, a follower of the Bialer Hasidim. He spent his days in a
shtiebele
, a tiny prayer house in Siedlce, where he studied and taught Torah. He was known as Hershl “Mruk”, the brooder, because he did not talk very much. He was upset with his four children. All of them had forsaken their religion. All had become trade unionists and revolutionaries. One of his daughters was a communist. She rose through the ranks to become the party secretary in Siedlce. She was a passionate woman. I was impressed by her independence. I liked the straightforward way she dealt with people. I wanted to be like her.

‘And my father was also a renegade. When he was a young man he would deliberately go to the Siedlce synagogue, his head bared, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, a day of fasting and repentance; and he would stand on the steps, and eat; and my
bubbe
would try to keep the peace.

‘“Yossel, please, if you must eat, can't you go and eat somewhere else,” she would plead. She was a gentle woman. She had reared twelve children of whom only four survived. In a crisis she was always there, always ready to provide shelter, a warm meal, a clean bed.

‘In September 1939 we ran for Siedlce, for the comfort of our
bubbe
and
zeide
. We ran until we were surrounded, in a field. Everything was burning. Even the trees were on fire. But because we were children the German soldiers spared us. We returned to Sosnowiec. It was the first of many miracles.

‘Two weeks later we set out again, this time by train, for Warsaw. Poland was under siege. I was afraid. And I was excited. I had been entrusted with a mission. Father told me to take charge. Mother remained silent because her Polish was heavily accented. She could be easily identified as a Jew. I was to do the talking. I loved the responsibility. I felt like an adult.

‘In Warsaw we boarded a horse-drawn cart and continued our journey east. I was very proud of myself when we arrived in Siedlce. I had accomplished my mission.

‘Father joined us one month later. He walked all the way from Sosnowiec. He walked by night, and hid by day. He walked in a hurry. He wanted only to move east, away from the advancing terror. After he arrived safely in Siedlce, he did not stop. He took the four of us under his wing and we set out for the east, for the safety of the Soviet empire.

‘On New Year's Eve, we arrived at the border, on the banks of the River Bug. The water was frozen over. On the first day of 1940, we walked across the ice into Russia. In broad daylight. The entire family. I will never forget it. I still dream about it. The sun was shining. The snow was high. It dripped from the skies. It hung from the trees. It clung to our clothes, while from afar there drifted the voices of Russian soldiers on patrol.

‘They were singing a folk song. I can still hear it now, the harmony, the voices floating in the air. Anyone who has lived in Russia knows this song.' And Masha finds her way back to the words, which she recites haltingly, without the melody, in fragments of barely remembered verse:

‘The apple and pear trees have blossomed;

The mist on the river has gone.

Katyusha has left for the riverbank,

To sing of the soldier she loves.

Oh heart-felt song of my longing,

Fly far on the rays of the sun.

Katyusha will cherish her precious love

Until her lover from war shall return.'

They walked for their lives. They walked with rucksacks on their backs. They walked until Masha's ten-year-old brother, Lonka, refused to go on. They stood in no man's land, between contending empires. The sun shone, the snow twinkled, the strains of a Russian folk song wafted upon a breeze.