Sunrise West (16 page)

My life in the Rome socialist collective grew more complicated every day. I was constantly at loggerheads with management, and perhaps this wasn't entirely their fault. Maybe it had to do with my ‘wrong' upbringing, with the Fabianism my father and my teachers had inculcated into my psyche, and of course with my ignorance about the running of a socialist economy. In hindsight I can see how naive were my demands for more transparency, more accountability. Is there, anywhere in the world, a self-appointed hierarchy that can realistically agree to such silly, starry-eyed requirements?

As in most communities, the mishandling of finances as well as other open and clandestine abuses by the ruling clique spawned an organized opposition faction among the disgruntled citizens. In the event, I was accused of being its prime mover. Fearing a rebellion, management decided to bring me to trial, Moscow-style.

Behind a huge mahogany desk sat a stern-looking quartet. In their midst was a smallish, dark-complexioned man in his early thirties. This was the collective's treasurer and economist, and today the presiding judge. His square face beamed with standover confidence; between his pinprick eyes hung a defiant nose. His sleeves, rolled up in the proletarian manner, bespoke determination.

Next to him sat a character whose presence would seem foreign in any working-class context: an odd man with a cool supercilious demeanour, dressed in an elegant grey mélange suit, with blue stripes to match the colour of his razorblade eyes. At the collar of his crisp white shirt bobbed
a black bowtie, and a gold ring glinting from the third finger of his left hand completed the effect. Folding his manicured hands, he gave an arty sigh.

‘Now, let's hear what this is all about,' he said. ‘Why can't comrades of our glorious socialist party live harmoniously with one another?'

Squareface jumped up and pointed at me with his thick short fleshy finger. ‘Our party has had enough of his subversion,' he declared in a kind of raspy shout. ‘He hasn't stopped demanding “accountability”, though he knows very well that in our present circumstances such demands amount almost to treason. By demanding “openness”, he is cunningly undermining trust in our leadership and in our well-earned good name.'

‘Malignant nonsense and self-deception!' I shouted back.

The Cool One raised his palm. ‘Just a moment, just a moment,' he stated firmly, politely, but with a superior smile curling his lips. ‘We cannot have a slanging match here. We are all comrades, imbued with the same ideals and aims. We all share a common past — and a common future.'

The other ignored this attempt at conciliation. ‘I want him exiled from our commune,' he roared.

‘Is it possible to exile an exile?' I put in.

‘There, you see with whom we are dealing!' stormed Squareface. ‘He mocks all that is holy in our collective. Last month we could not afford to buy more than one bag of sugar. Since this was not enough for the whole commune, I suggested that we should divide it up among our hard-
working leadership, which indirectly includes him too.' (This was presumably because I held regular Yiddish literary evenings in the collective.) ‘You should read the editorial this ingrate wrote in response to my proposal.' He snatched a sheet of paper off the desk. It was from our monthly bulletin-board, of which I was editor. ‘Listen to this:

‘
After the Great War, the city of Lodz received from the Central Government a gift of ten bags of sugar. The city's antisemitic councillors immediately suggested an internal sweet deal, but a Bund representative within our local parliament, Israel Lichtensztajn, protested. “It is our human duty,” he argued, “to distribute the sugar only amongst pregnant women and the sick.” Naturally, for his audacity he was pelted with rotten tomatoes and called a fool.'

Here the Cool One sighed again and turned to our comrade economist and judge. ‘What he wrote is undeniably a matter of public record,' he stated silkily.

‘Yes, yes, I know that — but he virtually implies that I'm an antisemite! By hook or by crook I'll have him expelled from our commune. For the good of the
many
, surely we must weed out the occasional
one
.'

‘We can't really do that,' his colleague replied. He knew very well that I was in contact with prewar friends in America who, along with Joint, had a decisive influence over the channelling of funds for running institutions such as ours.

Suddenly one of the other functionaries spoke up. ‘Then at least let him admit his guilt, and promise to change his ways and moderate his claims.'

The Cool One beckoned at me to approach the desk and, his superior smile still frozen to his face, whispered: ‘What about it, comrade? Why don't you just agree, and leave the rest to me.'

‘Never!' I answered. ‘I'll never do that!'

And I walked out of the room.

A couple of weeks later, perhaps through the strategic intervention of the cool inquisitor, Esther and I received our long-awaited landing permit to enter Australia.

 

 
Journey with my Mother
 

I found myself walking beside my mother as she pushed a cart through the night. The cart swayed like a drunkard on our cobbled street.

‘Son,' she said, ‘the last moments in the gas chamber were beyond the most horrible imaginings. I don't know if I have the right to tell you how it was, but on the other hand you ought to know. You're entitled to know about your family's end, even though your father always said,
Leave the dead alone and they'll leave you alone
.

‘Suddenly we were there together, totally naked — can you picture this, my son? Your father, mother, your sister Ida and your two little nieces, Frumetl and Chayale, and all our friends, neighbours, and so many people we'd never even seen before — all in one tight knot of naked flesh, all struggling for a morsel of breath. And above us two men, gazing eagerly through a skylight, diligently taking notes.

‘Poor little Frumetl, just six years old — she cried
Mummy, Mummy!
But how could she understand that her mother, your sister Pola, had been sent to the right when we arrived — though she would die soon enough by throwing herself on the electric fence. I lifted her child up, high as I could, but to my shame Frumetl fell from my grasp and was trampled. Then God in His great mercy, though not quickly enough, filled the chamber with gas, and your father, the old blasphemer, tilted his head back as if to swallow all the gas in one gulp, and shouted with his last choking breath,
Hear O Israel, our God never was, our God is Death... Death!

‘Of course, I couldn't agree with him. In fact, the Almighty in His mercy made sure that four-year-old Chayale expired like a quiet bird, in the arms of your dying sister Ida. If I wasn't the daughter of a melamed I would dare to say that they died in a Christian pose.

‘You know, there is a strong rumour among the ashes that it wasn't so bad. At the end, I mean — that it lasted no more than fifteen minutes at most. Don't you believe them. It lasted fifteen years, a hundred years! They must have already forgotten the screams, the crazed struggles, the way we tore at each other, sank our nails into the faces of our loved ones. Oh my son, that torment of losing one's mind was the sweetest horror of our dying... I have to tell you all this in a whisper. That old shtetl foreboding — don't say anything to anger the
goyim
— is still very much alive among us dead Jews.

‘Last night I dug deep into the ashes and, to my joy, found one of Frumetl's blond locks; they must have neglected to shave it from her sweet little head. I buried it in
secret, avoiding the eyes of the guards — every single hair must be delivered to Germany's bedding factories, to ensure sweet dreams for her beloved daughters. Remember how your father once praised that country's cultured past, and how he blamed language for our disaster, how (as he put it) that limping skunk Goebbels had contaminated Goethe's tongue and created an obscenely different Germany from the one he had known? Oh, how wise and how naive your dear father was. Now he fears for his ashen existence, because the local villagers come here often and shovel heaps of our extinguished lives into tin buckets. They prize us highly. We make excellent fertilizer, and first-class feed for their swine...

‘Shh, be still now — I can hear the wheelbarrows, the clatter of buckets, they've come to collect again. And before you leave me, my son, tell me how it is over there.'

‘After the carnage, all Europe stood with bowed heads over your open graves. But in the end...'

‘Hush, watch your lips. We are surrounded by an army of owls, sentries in disguise. Pass by them softly, on tiptoe. The road out of night is paved with pain. Good luck, I will pray that you make it.'

 

 
Out of the Blue
 

From the day we received our landing permit until the day of departure our time was fraught with tension. Letters from an uncle of Esther's kept arriving almost daily: he wanted us to come to America and he tried every trick in
the book over there, without success. But life didn't stand still and before long it was time to say goodbye. Many photos were taken in which the now smiling Squareface took centre-stage.

Finally, on a February morning in 1948, we boarded the steam train that would carry us from Rome, out along the green Italian coast, and up through the forever snowcapped Alps. And I realized with a shudder that I would shortly be back in the vicinity of Ebensee, amid the beautiful mountainous surroundings which had shielded that heinous concentration camp from God's eye. Yes, I thought, beauty can be cruel; or, in the best of times, indifferent.

As our train puffed, in a cloud of white smoke, into the city of Siena, a gloved hand slid open the door of our compartment and there stood Squareface himself — the very one who had desired to throw Esther and me to the dogs of Rome.

‘Where did
you
come from?' I asked, my displeasure obvious.

‘Next door, comrade,' he replied politely. ‘Are you not glad to see me?'