If I Told You Once: A Novel (16 page)

That is what people said.

But I have seen many things. I know that anything is possible.

These stories the new arrivals told, they were too hideous for anyone to have made them up. No mind could twist itself like that.

I have told stories that no one believed. Stories I know in my heart to be true.

Shmuel voiced no opinion, but his eyes were sunk deep, lost in shadows, the color muted. His hands shook, the skin worn thin and transparent over his knuckles like trouser fabric worn through at the knees.

I wanted to hold him, those tensed shoulders. I wanted to comfort him in bed in the dark of night.

But lately he did not sleep at all, he sat up through the night at the kitchen table, writing letters to his parents and sister, beseeching them, begging them to save themselves, come over before it was too late. He wrote: You don’t have to forgive me. Come for your own sake, the sake of the children.

He sent the letters though he despaired of their ever arriving. He sent money. And more money. More than we could spare.

In the night sometimes he looked up from his writing and I felt his eyes travel over my body and shy away from my face. There was an anger in his look that I had never seen before, an accusation.
You made me do this. See what you drove me to do.

His sister’s identification papers, they hung between us like a shroud.

I will say for him that he never raised his hand in anger, never spoke a word of blame to me. But there was a cloud over our relations.

We both thought of home now. I thought of Ari as I had not in years.

Our life here seemed false and hollow, suddenly. Our children with their vigorous health and appetites were a mockery of something.

*   *   *

More refugees crept into our neighborhood. One moved in with the elderly couple who lived two floors below us. She was a young woman, the wife of their nephew. Or so she claimed.

The old couple had not seen their nephew since he was a child. But they took her in.

They were too stunned to object.

You see, she came to their door in the middle of the night, she came pounding and crying out until the entire building was aroused. We all came out in our nightclothes, barefoot, complaining, stood squinting in the hall, on the stairs. Her appearance shocked us all to silence.

We could see that she was young, perhaps not yet twenty; her body was starved but still had the pliancy of youth. Her skin un-ravaged. And yet her short-cropped hair was stark white.

She spun about and regarded us all. Her eyes were the most frightening thing: the pupils shrunk to pinpricks, utterly cold uncomprehending eyes, unmoving as if they had frozen in a moment of unspeakable horror.

She turned to the old couple then and told them that her husband, their nephew, was dead.

They swiftly took her in their arms, pulled her into their apartment and shut the door. The rest of us slowly drifted back to our beds, to uneasy dreams.

But over the next few days many of us returned to that apartment, to listen to this woman’s tales as she sat dwarfed by an overstuffed chair.

She spoke of hunger and cold and disease, and these were things we could all understand. The confinement she spoke of, the sudden violence—we all had known that. But she also spoke of a world where logic had gone awry, where babies were taken from mothers, husbands separated from wives, gold teeth drawn from living mouths, bodies piled up like haystacks, hay made into soup, people given numbers because names were an indulgence. A place where great fires burned constantly, black smoke filled the sky yet everyone was dying from the cold. A place of dogs and casual bullets meeting the backs of heads, everything as arbitrary as the made-up rules in a child’s game.

Telling us, she laughed at the absurdity of it.

Her pupils never dilated, not even in dim light, as if they were holding something in; they were the eyes of an animal that feels the cold shadow on its back and looks up to see the hawk coming down.

Impossible, my neighbors whispered.

Madness, they said.

She spoke on and on of these unspeakable things, gasping, babbling, letting out barks of laughter and choking on her breath. She could not get the words out fast enough, an endless stream; she watched us, her hectic eyes jumping from face to face.

She inhaled endless slices of bread and cups of tea, seemingly without pausing in her speech. She loaded her tea with sugar, she piled it on bread, she ate it from a spoon, her eyes rolling in a kind of holy ecstasy. She licked her fingers, she could not eat enough sugar.

She’s mad, people said. Her mind is gone.

She looked it, with her fingers in her mouth and sweet dribble on her chin. But even then you could see the beauty in her features, the grace of her thin arms inside the cheap dress. Her beauty clashed strangely with the ugliness etched in her eyes, with the raised scars on her neck and on her scalp beneath the white hair. Like fungus growth on a ripe fruit.

She would not tell us how she escaped from such a place.

When we asked she said only: I pretended I was dead. It was not difficult.

She ignored our questions, shook her head violently when we began the litany of names: have you seen … did you know … what happened to … have you heard of …

She droned on and on, shrilly, her hand going from sugar bowl to mouth, again and again the touch of grainy fingers to her tongue like a benediction, and she closed her eyes in bliss.

One by one the neighbors stopped coming to see her. This mad girl whose stories they did not believe, or did not want to believe.

As if to acknowledge these things would make them real; whereas denying them would somehow hold them back, keep them confined to the space inside the girl’s head.

She had brought the darkness close, brought it into our lives and living rooms and set it loose. People thought she was to blame somehow.

This mad girl stuffing herself with sugar like a child, this girl who would not sleep for fear of her dreams.

I sat with her long after the others had turned away. I watched her pluck at her dress.

Within weeks her teeth rotted away, and then her face was more jarring than ever, with the white hair and blue gums of an old woman, and the lips and cheekbones and eyelashes of a young one.

She ate up her aunt and uncle’s sugar ration.

Although they doubted more and more that they really were her aunt and uncle. To doubt her was to believe their nephew was still alive.

When I spoke to the reluctant aunt on the stairs, she said softly: If only she had some proof. Something to prove those stories. I would believe her then. How can we be sure? She doesn’t even have a wedding ring.

I hid my hands when she said that.

I watched her trudge down the stairs.

Couldn’t they see, the proof was right there, in the girl’s flesh, in those eyes, in that hair gone white from shock. What more proof did they need?

That evening I sent Eli to their apartment bearing the last of our sugar.

He stayed there several hours and was silent when he returned.

The next evening both he and Wolf went down and sat with the mad girl as she lisped through her gums, her tongue thick and coated with sugar.

They returned again and again. They were fascinated by her decaying beauty.

They listened to her stories night after night. They sat on either side of her without speaking. They did not know what to believe. The things she spoke of were beyond their imagination.

Like the aunt they too said: If only there, were some proof. If only we could be sure.

In spite of this they were both falling in love with her, for she combined the aspects they both desired. For Wolf she was an older woman, with her white hair and weary knowledge of the world; for Eli she was a sugar-fed child, lost and helpless.

I had thought that if the two of them ever pursued the same woman they would be driven against each other, would punch and pummel each other as they had when they were boys.

But no, this love had brought them closer together. They puzzled together over the mystery of her. They stood quiet, respectful in the face of this thing they could not understand. They would never touch her. Their love for her was a protective, chivalrous love.

They wanted to be heroes, I think, they wanted to place themselves between her and the dark thing that threatened her. But they could not understand what that thing was. They did not believe her description of the beast.

One night after they had been with her for several hours, I heard their raised voices, heard their feet pounding up the stairs.

They burst into the kitchen and faced us, Wolf with his hair standing on end, Eli pressing his eyes with his fingers. They could not stand still, they rocked and paced.

We have to leave, Eli said.

Now. Tomorrow, Wolf said.

We’ve decided, they said.

I asked: Are you in trouble?

I thought of the girl, her bones and pointed breasts, and wondered if I had misread their feelings after all.

No trouble, Wolf said.

They began sorting their clothes, making plans.

You see, they had their proof finally. That night the girl had pushed back her sleeve and showed them the evidence. It was written on her flesh, just as I had thought.

A girl showed them her arm and it was all the proof they needed.

They enlisted in the army the next day.

*   *   *

I had known this time would come, but it happened sooner than I thought.

Shmuel had told me to expect it. He had warned me they would be drafted sooner or later.

Enlisting this way made them feel more decisive, more in control of their destinies.

I watched their broad backs as they folded shirts on the bed. I was inarticulate with grief.

I wanted to warn them.

I longed to say: Don’t go back there. Don’t go. You have no idea what it’s like there.

I touched their shoulders, but they brushed me aside. They were excited, they were boys leaving home for the first time.

If you go to that dark place, you will never come back to me.

What’s happening? Sashie said. Where are they going?

I ignored her. Shmuel told her the news and she began to weep.

Don’t you know that you can cross the ocean only once?

Make the journey more than that and you’re tempting fate.

Will you miss your boys? Wolf said, grinning.

More than anything.

Yes, I said.

Don’t go into the forest. You will never come out again.

We’ll write to you, Eli said.

Sashie, silly girl, was hugging one then the other, dragging down their necks.

How can I make you understand? There is no logic over there. Natural laws do not apply. Trees walk on human legs, houses walk on chicken feet, villages and oceans disappear without a trace.

I should have told you these things before. Now it is too late.

Why so quiet, mother? Eli said.

She’s wondering what she’ll do with her time, now that she won’t have to cook twelve hours a day, Wolf laughed.

This is the last time I will ever see you.

Bring warm socks, I said, it’s so cold there.

Wolf said: Is that all you can say?

Eli said: That’s her idea of giving us her blessing.

They went to their father then, and bowed their heads. He put a hand on each of their crowns and recited a prayer.

I embraced each of them then, they bent and I hugged their necks tightly with my cheek against their ears. I wanted to whisper something wise and final to each of them, but I could think of nothing to say. No words wide enough.

We’ll take care of each other, Eli said.

Wolf promised: I won’t go anywhere without him.

Eli said: Likewise.

Framed in the doorway they were strong shining men, their hair grown too long over their collars, their teeth chipped from childhood fights and accidents.

I hope you remember the fierceness of your boyhood.

You will need it where you are going.

I remember fierceness.

What, no tears, mother? Wolf teased.

Then Eli: Don’t you love us?

More than anything.

Wolf said: She’s waiting until we leave.

Yes, I won’t do it, I won’t cry until you leave. I swear. I’ll hold it in.

Wolf bowed and Eli gave a clumsy salute. Then they turned and jostled each other good-naturedly, both pushing to be the first one out the door.

I watched their backs. They clattered down the stairs, racing, neck-and-neck. I wanted to tell them there was nothing at the finish but death and a lonely place. But they raced on, just as they had once battled in my womb, both wanting to be the first out in the new world, the first to draw breath.

*   *   *

Eli and Wolf were at a training camp at first, and they sent letters regularly. Reading was still a struggle for me, so Shmuel read the letters aloud, or Sashie did.

The letters were cheerful and chatty but I did not trust them. I did not trust words on paper. Anyone could put words on paper, how could I be sure my sons had written this?

I knew other people trusted printed words; they thought once words were written down and embedded in paper they could not change, they preserved a moment. But I knew better. Words in print are slippery. They can conceal things, they can lie.

I thought of those identification papers I still had which declared I was Shmuel’s sister.

Anything that can be manipulated so easily is worthless.

Shmuel and I had never told our children that we were not married. How could we tell them they were illegitimate? They did not need to know.

As for myself I did not care. We were married in spirit, words did not make it more or less so.

But I think Shmuel, even after all these years, Shmuel still longed for a document, our union sanctified through official words on paper.

And Sashie loved her brothers’ letters, she took them to her brothers’ room which was now hers, and she read and reread them, sniffed them, tasted them, and squirreled them away. She papered the walls with clippings and photographs.