I Am Forbidden (3 page)

A man, a woman, a little girl.

The man was fastening a black cube to his forehead. His lips moved as he swayed back and forth. The woman was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. She was tying a blue ribbon in the girl’s hair. The woman raised her head at the sound of an approaching train. The train slowed around the bend, hissed, gathered speed. The woman’s hands came to her face. The man whispered in a language Anghel had not known he still remembered. The woman sighed. The little girl fell asleep in the woman’s lap.

Another train approached, slowed around the bend, stopped.

The man and the woman exchanged a frightened glance.
The man’s torso swayed more quickly, back and forth. His lips moved again.

One hand pressing her lower back, the other flat against the wall, the woman hauled herself up. She was pregnant, very pregnant. She peeked out of the shed’s window. “It’s him, the Rebbe, quick!” The woman’s face beamed.

The man’s brow lifted in bewilderment. He held on to the little girl as the door of the shed scraped open.

The woman ran to the train, a train of boxcars with wide-open doors and people milling about inside.

“Rebbe!” the woman called to a Jew who sat in one of the openings, reading a book.

One shot. The woman’s hand came to her chest, to the spreading stain. She stumbled.

The man rushed out of the shed, the black cube on his forehead.

Horses neighing, hooves bucking, Hungarian guards toppling the fence, crossing the Nadăş River.

The little girl stood in the shed’s doorway.

Anghel’s hand came down on her mouth. Her muffled cry under his palm, “Mama!,” as he pulled her behind the shed, to the ground, as he told her not to move, that her mother wanted her to live.

The train pulled away.

After nightfall, Anghel and the little girl crossed the trampled fence.

Peasants from nearby villages were dismantling market
stalls and loading the parts onto carts. One peasant told, over and over, how the militiamen had whipped the fleeing Jew, how the Jew had let out an astonishing cry. A bottle passed from hand to hand. There were belches and cheers, for the land that soon would be cleansed of Jews.

In the market square, the girl’s father was tied to a post. His shoulders folded forward, his head drooped. Sweat drew his beard and sidecurls to a point. The arms, thighs, shins were slashed—it was impossible to see; it was impossible not to see, where the legs met, the split flesh where blood spurted through crusted blood.

Three men in the Arrow Cross uniform kept guard, their black boots stomping the mess of crimson sawdust.

In the recess where they hid, Anghel and the little girl heard the moan: “Wasser.…”

The girl dashed to the village pipe, cupped her hands.

Anghel pulled her back, held her face against his chest.

“Tatta …” the girl stammered as water dripped through her fingers.

After the last militiaman had disappeared inside the tavern, the two children crossed the square. The girl brought her cupped hands to her father’s lips. “Tatta …”

The folded figure moaned, licked water from her fingers. Blood came out of the man’s mouth, and words: “
Mi-la
, your name now is
Mila
. Go to Zalman Stern.…”

Another gush of blood and words: “With my own, see to it, see that Gershon Heller is buried with his own.”

“I will,” the boy whispered and his hand pressed the girl’s
mouth to his chest, to his shirt of coarse linen, so her whimper would not be heard.

The tavern door opened. Anghel pulled the girl past the bullwhip and the wound. He led her to his hollow in the bluff where they heard Florina call across the fields.

“Anghel! Anghel!” And again, “Anghel! Anghel!”

When all the lights in the village had gone dark, the two children returned to the market square. The body had been untied from the post; it lay across the tray of a wheelbarrow. The boy took hold of the shafts and pulled. Behind, leaning against the barrow’s rim, the little girl pushed.

Under the poplars at the bottom of the sloping meadow, the boy loosened the earth with his shovel. The little girl scooped the soil with her bare hands. Together they pulled and pushed the body in the shallow grave. The boy heaped earth over the body; the little girl helped. When they were done, the boy said, “Later, I’ll see that he is buried in the Jewish cemetery.”

The girl nodded. Then: “Tatta said if anything happens I must go to Zalman Stern in Nagyszeben. The train will say Sibiu but it’s the same as Nagyszeben. If I can’t get on the train I must run from the border. Tatta said I must run right away.”

“I’ll help you get on. Don’t be afraid, all the trains go slow around the bend. I’ll jump on over there. You’ll wait here. When I come by, grab my hand. Don’t be afraid. I’ll pull you up fast. Just look at my hand. If the conductor comes by, say
you lost your ticket. No, say your parents are in the next car. Say it in Hungarian and don’t speak the Jew language. You’ll know when to get off when the conductor calls, ‘Sibiu!’ ”

The boy brushed the dirt off her coat. He tied the ribbon in her hair.

“Mila,” she said, pointing to her chest.

“Anghel,” he said, pointing to his chest.

“Where is your mother?” Mila asked.

“Florina—”

“Your mother, where is she?”

“Mama is dead. Tatta is dead. Pearela is dead.”

“
Shayfeleh
.…” Mila’s hand stroked Anghel’s cheek, and he remembered that it meant little lamb.

T
HE
S
TERN
children were not to open the front door, so when four-year-old Atara heard the knock, she ran to her mother in the kitchen.

A little girl was standing in the doorway, her coat torn, a dirty ribbon in her hair.

Hannah squinted at the child. “Mila Heller? The daughter of Gershon and Rachel?” Hannah took the little girl in her arms. “Zalman! Come quickly!”

The little girl collapsed.

Hannah would tell so many times the story of Mila’s knock—blessed be the Lord who kept watch over the little girl, how else did a child so young find the right train, how did she find her way from the train station to their home? Hannah would tell so many times how she washed the soil out of Mila’s hair, how she scoured the heavy dirt from under Mila’s nails, that Hannah’s children born years later thought they remembered five-year-old Mila Heller arriving on their doorstep.

Hannah also told of Mila’s silence. “What happened to your parents, child?”

All summer long, Mila Heller did not speak. But she did cry at night in the bed she shared with Atara, and Atara held her hand.

On the eve of the Day of Atonement, Hannah circled a rooster above the boys’ heads, three times, then she circled a hen over the girls’ heads, three times. She lowered the cackling fowl to the ground. “Place your foot on its neck,” Hannah coached Mila.

Mila shook her head, no.

“Surely you remember this from home,” Hannah said. “You need not press on it. Just brush your foot against its head and repeat after me:
You to death and I to life
 … do it.” Then, softly: “You don’t have to say it aloud, child, but think it to yourself.”

Tears filled Mila’s eyes.

Atara cried out: “Why does the chicken have to die?”

“So the children will not die.” Once more, Hannah lowered the fowl to the ground.

Staring into the hen’s darting eye, Mila extended a shaking leg.

Hannah coached: “You to death.…”

Mila pulled back her leg.

“Why, why does the chicken have to die?” Atara insisted.

“So we won’t die for our sins. The chicken is our Kappures. It will die instead of us.”

Atara frowned. “But don’t we empty our sins into the river?”

Hannah sighed, placed the fowl back in its crate. With her apron, she dried Mila’s tears and her own.

That evening, as Atara held her breath in the dark, still surprised by the proximity of the orphan girl with whom she was sharing her bed, Mila spoke: “Atara is a pretty name.”

Mila had spoken; she had spoken to Atara.

From then on, Mila spoke to Atara every night. During the day, she was silent, but the two girls talked in the dark. Atara learned about Mila’s unborn sibling, about Mila’s mother running toward the open boxcar, calling,
“Rebbe!”

Later she learned that Mila had decided she was allowed to love Hannah.

One night, Atara was half asleep when Mila asked, “Do
you
believe me about my mama running out to save the Rebbe?”

Atara was silent. When Mila was not around, Zalman had said that Mila’s mother could not have seen the Rebbe. Boxcars did not have open doors, not when they were full of Jews, not in the spring of ’44, not in Hungary, Zalman had said.

“
You
Atara, do you believe me?” Mila insisted.

“I … maybe we should pray, now, for the coming of the Messiah?” Atara liked to pray with Mila. She could tell that in Mila’s prayer, the messiah’s coming was not the glory of the Temple rebuilt but a kitchen with Mila’s mother in it, a bedtime with the story Mila’s father had not finished telling her.

F
OUR
months after Mila’s arrival at the Sternses’, Soviet and Romanian forces recaptured her hometown. As soon as Jews could travel again, Zalman set out to mark the sites of Jewish remains. He wanted the bones undisturbed, especially the small luz bone connecting neck to spine, the first to feel the Dew of Resurrection when Trumpets called the End of Days.

In the astonishing emptiness he found when he crossed into northern Transylvania, Zalman prayed:
Dear Lord, show me why You spared me, show me toward what end You spared Hannah and our children and the little girl, Blimela—daughter of Gershon and Rachel Heller
.

Zalman had intended to stay at the Rebbe’s court, in Szatmár, after his wedding, but his parents had insisted he return home to Sibiu, south of the new border, when Transylvania was divided between Hungary and Romania, in August 1940. Unlike his yeshiva mates in Szatmár, Zalman and his community in Sibiu had not been deported.

*

A
NGHEL
watched the Jew who stood on the ice ledge.

The Jew cast a net in the river and disagreed with himself:

“Sanhedrin 97b. Also, 98a.… Will the dead rise naked or clothed?

“What of Isaiah 26:19? What of Ezekiel 37:12–14?”

The Jew extended his arms; he bent, extended, and drew the line draped with dangling algae. He dragged the net with the bodies, the two sisters who returned from deportation and were drowned by neighbors. He laid one body on the horse cart, then the second body. The net’s leaded lip meandered through the splintered reeds. He seized the edge of the flatbed. The horse’s iron shoe struck the frosted earth.

Hidden in the undergrowth, Anghel followed the Jew who followed the dray horse along the Nadăş River. The Jew continued to argue with himself:

“But Zalman, what of those who never went to the grave, whose bones are licked by wolves?

“They will not live again.

“What about Kethuboth 35b?

“Ah, on this our rabbis are
not
unanimous.”

Anghel shouldered through the bushes, onto the towpath.
He stood in front of Zalman and pointed to the line of poplars. “There. Another dead Jew.”

Zalman’s gaze followed the boy’s finger pointing to hardened clumps of soil.

“Yes, there,” the boy insisted.

“How do I trust this here is a Jew?” Zalman asked.

The boy pointed to Zalman’s coat.

“Anyone can put on a black coat,” Zalman said.

The boy frowned.

“You mean, who but a Jew
wants
to put on such a coat?”

The boy tapped his forehead. “He had a black cube.”

“Tefilin!”

“ 
‘With my own,’
he said.
‘See to it, see that Gershon Heller is buried with his own.’
 ”

Zalman looked stunned. “Gershon Heller? Heller from Cluj?”

The boy shrugged his shoulders. He pointed beyond the river. “They came from over there but the woman ran to the train.”

“
To
the train?”

“She recognized someone.”

“When?”

“Last spring.”

“In a boxcar? …”

“The doors were open.”

“How is that possible?”

Again, the boy lifted his shoulders.

Zalman looked at the patch of upturned earth. “If this
here is a Jew.…” He looked at the farm boy. “This Jew truly said,
‘See that Gershon Heller is buried with his own’
? He
said
it? Unless he requested it specifically, it is a terrible sin to exhume a body.”

“With my own. See to it, see that Gershon Heller is buried with his own.”

Zalman took the shovel from the cart and started to dig. Again, he argued with himself. Of course Gershon Heller requested it, Gershon Heller would want to be buried within close range of the Trumpets’ call. “When the dead rise, the dead in Jewish ground.… It is noble, what you are doing—” Zalman lifted his head. “What is your name?”

The boy had disappeared.