Sunrise West (12 page)

I was speechless.

‘Before we decide,' said Mendel, ‘let's have another cup of coffee.'

‘Right, absolutely!' our impresario agreed excitedly.

But almost before he had time to look about for a waiter, Mendel's fist had landed with a loud thud in the middle of Piotrek's face. As we walked away, my friend turned back to him and remarked: ‘At least you won't have any more dental expenses.'

 

 
Departures
 

Topography shapes a river's character. Chance is a man's topography.

My friend Mendel Goldman was a restless individual, possibly because of the demons that pursued him. He was a stocky youth, with a ruddy face, eagle eyes and a flat nose, a legacy of his junior boxing days. He seemed unable to bridge the horrible recent past with his vacant present. He was haunted by a simmering rage, yet terrified to recall the things that nourished it — scenes that dwelt outside of any human logic.

‘I am leaving,' he told me with a wry smile one day, a few weeks after our arrival in Naples. ‘I'll be crossing the border below Innsbruck.' His plan was to bring items of clothing from Austria to Italy and sell them at a profit.

‘I'll come too,' I said at once. We had been doing nothing in Naples, just walking the streets aimlessly.

‘No you won't. The road is hard, and dangerous. You haven't got the stamina. Stay where you are, I'll be back soon — perhaps a week, ten days at most.'

‘Don't go,' I pleaded. ‘Surely it's safer, especially now, to stick to a familiar place instead of wandering off to some uncertain nowhere.'

But he had made up his mind.

Ten, twenty days went by and there was no sign of Mendel, not a word. The director of the displaced persons' house, whose name was Herman — a smallish condescending man who always wore a white shirt with a black tattered bowtie — called me into his compact office. The room reeked of nicotine. On one of the walls, which were green and painted with red flowers, hung an imposing portrait of the legendary Theodor Herzl.

Herman addressed me from behind the enormous desk that occupied almost the whole room. It was a mess of papers and documents, pencils, rubber stamps, dirty ash-trays and unwashed coffee cups. ‘Young man, this place is not a permanent abode but a transit house for wayfarers.' His words were measured, grave, aimed straight at my conscience. ‘You must take other people into consideration, people who have been on the waiting-list for months. You're to vacate your room not later than noon tomorrow.'

It was well known that, during those ‘months', Herman's lover, nephews, cousins and other distant relatives had occupied the premises.

So I returned to Santa Maria di Bagno. Soon afterwards Mendel turned up as well. He looked as if the ground had been wrenched from under his feet. He had lost everything, all the money and possessions he had carried — but not that blue resolute fire in his eyes, or the daring alertness of his flattened nose.

‘I was apprehended at the border,' he began, almost apologetically. ‘They couldn't find anything on me — I managed to throw away anything incriminating — but they still arrested me. I was sent to a prison for former camp guards. And you won't believe whom I met there! One of our custodians from Wolfsburg,
Unterscharführer
Henk — the one who used to practise target-shooting on dying inmates. Remember how he made us walk barefoot on broken glass?

‘Well, after roll-call I beckoned him over into a corner and asked politely if he knew who I was. No, he said, definitely not. So I said, “Do you have any recollection of
Häftling
141139?” He replied that he didn't know what I was talking about. “Then let me refresh your memory,” I told him. And before Henk had time to as much as burp (which, as you'll recall, was one of his great pleasures), I let fly with a left and then a right — creating a deep dent in his ribcage and redeco-rating his mouth. “Henk, this is just a deposit,” I told him. “I haven't finished with you yet.” But I wasn't given another chance — I got a week in solitary for engaging in a brawl. When I came out I heard that a delegation from the Vatican had paid a visit while I was in the cooler, and Henk had vanished. Apparently he had received a landing permit for
Australia
from those black-robed heavenly lieutenants.'

Perhaps because of the strong sun, bread grows stale quickly in the south of Italy. To eat it, we found that we needed to dip it in water or red wine. We preferred the wine. It was something the local populace would seldom have done, but to us young men, accustomed to drinking wine only on festive occasions, the practice made wonderful sense.

One morning, as Zakhor, Mendel and I sat around chatting vivaciously after a joyous breakfast of this kind, Mendel stood up to make an announcement: ‘My friends, I am determined to give luck one more try.' I knew what he meant but I kept my peace. No one could have changed Mendel's mind, and it was useless to try.

So Mendel left, never to be seen again.

Years later I learnt that my daring friend had gone to Trieste, illegally boarded a ship bound for Palestine, joined Haganah, the Jewish underground military organization, and rose to be an expert machine-gunner. In one of the clashes with the invading Arab armies in 1948, he covered his infantry detachment's retreat and kept the enemy at bay, until he ran out of ammunition. I was told his body was hacked to pieces.

There, amid the golden dust of the Negev, Mendel's rebellious spirit was stilled at last.

 

 
En Route to the Republic of Hope
 

We had been promised fair weather but it didn't stop drizzling. ‘The southerly winds are tearing my world apart,' complained my new acquaintance, a fellow survivor, as we
emerged for a respite from the bus that was ferrying us to Santa Maria di Bagno, after my Naples interlude. We had met in the bus and quickly struck up a conversation. ‘I took a decent dose of tablets, yet the cough still keeps hammering at the door of my rotten lungs. Is it possible,' he continued, as if addressing himself, ‘that the weather forecasters have shares in the pharmaceutical industry? Or have the politicians usurped the job of prophesying our weather?'

‘Hope is one's best remedy,' I proclaimed solemnly, not believing a word.

‘A strange panacea,' he remarked. After every cough he furtively inspected his white handkerchief.

As we travelled deeper into the heart of night, I noted the yellow moon's grimace of indifference. And why not? Wasn't creation intrinsically a reflection of its Creator? Didn't painters, writers, composers, recompose
themselves
in their work?

The man turned out to be an intelligent, stimulating companion. ‘I believe we're born to utter abandonment, to tragedy,' he said, holding back an oncoming cough. ‘Something that has never happened to other nations. And why should anyone care? Soon, everything that has ever happened to us will be forgotten.'

‘I don't agree,' I objected, again doubting my own words.

‘It's your privilege to disagree, but forgetfulness is what makes existence on this planet possible. Remembrance carries the seeds of sadness. Look at us survivors — we're all a bunch of hopeful paupers, demanding a place under the sun. But it's written that a pauper's wisdom is laughed at; the stupidity of the wealthy is what's praised.'

At dawn next morning I awoke on the bus to the awareness that we had almost arrived. Arriving and departing, coming and going, had become a way of life for displaced persons. We were forever en route, always in groups, streaming towards the next transit station, sojourning at preconceived illusions. Togetherness had begotten a camaraderie, a warmth, a homely homelessness.

There is an old folk saying: the misfortunes of many are the solace of one.

Santa Maria, situated on the western shore of the Italian heel, offered plenty of scope for dark imaginings. I'll never forget those utterly secretive dawns, the flaming sunsets, the murmur of the heat, the smell of the night, the mystery of the full moon — nor the ceaseless tongues of the buxom women, their swinging childbearing hips, their opulent breasts, their sweaty unshaven armpits' aroma that could rob a man of his senses. There was also the laughter of sunburnt fishermen, and sometimes, in the small hours, the slither of naked stilettos...

Not long ago this village had been reigned over by the Mafia; some of the peasants had viewed them as ‘dark knights', sinister benefactors. But when the Fascists' elite invaded these hazy shores, their white villas transforming the place into their private sunlit paradise, they made it quite clear to the dark benefactors that there was room here for only one regime.

Our life of mobility had made me ponder the relation between a people's language and their feelings within a constantly changing environment. I also thought about the
soul
of a landscape. How did Santa Maria, this remote
corner of civilization, respond to the Yiddish that had never been heard here? What was the reaction of the white church tower, the peaceful melodious chime of its Sunday bell? (In the land of my birth Jews
feared
the sound of churchbells tolling.) Did these hearty villagers understand that the newcomers residing in the once formidable Fascist leisure homes were veritable brothers of their God?

The moment we re-entered Santa Maria di Bagno, where camp survivors had so swiftly established their republic of hope, I persuaded the man with whom I had travelled (whose name I just cannot recall) to see our gentle doctor, Nacht, a devoted medic formerly with the Yugoslav partisans. Dr Nacht immediately dispatched my infectious new friend to a sanatorium in the north of the country — the very one to which, I later discovered, Moshe Zakhor had been sent during my absence.

As I walked back to my lodgings, I was overtaken by an autumnal sense of loss.

 

 
Theatre and Politics