The Woman from Hamburg Read online

  As well-read people they already knew that revolutionary purity does not last long. Politics creeps in after the initial rapture, and the revolution devours its young.

  They had three options:

  Go to a poor country, in South America, for example, and organize people for the struggle.

  Hold up American banks and distribute the money to the poor.

  Slip away with the goal of perfecting mind and character in peace and quiet.

  They chose to perfect themselves.

  When the revolution goes bad, when the rapacious struggle for money and power begins, they will emerge from their seclusion pure, ennobled, resistant to temptations, and will rescue the ideal.

  They had no idea where to go in search of perfection, so Samuel asked Edward Conze for advice.

  “You are a Jew,” said Conze. “Reach for your own tradition.”

  So Sam went to a rabbi.

  “Where should I begin?” he asked.

  “With the Talmud,” the rabbi replied.

  “How long will my studies take?”

  The rabbi grew thoughtful. “Five years, no more than that.”

  “And then what?”

  “Kabbala.”

  “For a long time?”

  “Five years.”

  “And then what?”

  “You’ll come to me. We’ll talk.”

  This was not a serious proposition for a man who was supposed to save the revolution. Especially for an American, who received everything in an abbreviated version, easily dissolvable like instant coffee.

  Samuel Kerner and his friends went to San Francisco. They rented a rundown house in Chinatown. They slept in sleeping bags, washed with cold water, and ate once a day, in the afternoon, always the same thing: cabbage and rice. Under the guidance of Du Lun, a Chinese from Manchuria, they meditated and discussed Buddhism.

  Du Lun did not require that they study for ten years. They could sit down and immerse themselves in meditation without lengthy preparations.

  There were thirty Jews in Samuel’s group. Their parents had been born in the States, but their grandparents’ brothers and sisters, and the children of those brothers and sisters, had stayed in Europe and perished in the gas chambers.

  They asked Du Lun why God had allowed Treblinka.

  Du Lun did not know and asked them to meditate more deeply, with more concentration.

  They meditated for ten, twelve hours at a time. The God who had permitted the Holocaust preoccupied them more than the coming world revolution.

  In the following year Samuel Kerner went to Taiwan, then to South Korea, then to Macao. He became a Buddhist monk. He donned a cloth robe and settled into a small wooden cabin in the Montana mountains. He read, he thought, he listened to the falling snow. Would he hear the answer that Du Lun, the Chinese from Manchuria, did not know? Perhaps, when the heart and mind are at peace, man does not ask questions?

  Samuel Kerner finished his story. He sank into thought. Suddenly he bent down and reached under the bed. He pulled out a laptop computer, placed it on his plaster knees, and started searching for something. He stared at the screen. I thought he was looking for answers, for the most important ones, but it was only a Jewish calendar for the year 5754.

  It’s Hanukkah!” he exclaimed. “I had a feeling that tonight is the first candle!”

  He asked me to take down the Hanukkah menorah from his shelf; he lit a candle, the first one on the right, and recited the blessing.

  4

  American rabbis became anxious when educated, good Jewish children began to abandon their parents’ homes for Chinese slums and Buddhist masters.

  “If we reject these youth, we will lose the most sensitive, most profoundly spiritual people of our age,” wrote Zalman Schachter, a theologian, an American, born in Żółkiewka, Poland. He decided to address the young rebels. He wanted to inform them that everything they were seeking in Buddhism could be found in Jewish tradition. He began his first lecture with the following statement: “Over two hundred years ago, in Podole, the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name, created a movement called Hasidism. Many paths lead to God, the Baal Shem Tov taught, and God’s desire is to be served in all ways. Let us not interfere with people in their service.”

  Rabbi Schachter devoted later meetings to the masters of Hasidism—Nachman of Bratzlav, Zusia of Annopol, Mendel of Kotzk. He published several books. He won thousands of followers. For the generation of the Age of Aquarius he became a contemporary Jewish guru.

  The path to God along which he conducted the rebel Jews from Philadelphia and San Francisco led through Leżajsk, Kotzk, and Izbica Lubelska.

  5

  Samuel Kerner returned to the world from his mountain seclusion to help those who suffer. He settled in Boston, in the Back Bay, a district of drug addicts, homosexuals, students, and underappreciated artists.

  He helped sufferers through Chinese methods: by touch, herbs, and acupuncture.

  Healing through touch is based on drawing out memory. Memory is concealed in the human body, in muscle tissue. It is uncovered by touching the head, the back of the neck, the feet. Things that have been shoved deep into non-memory are recalled anew and lose the power to torment.

  Usually, Samuel freed neurotic Americans from the nightmares of childhood. A German who suffered from headaches turned out to have been a submarine commander during the Second World War. The boat had sunk along with its crew; the commander survived. Samuel considered whether he should cure that German. He decided he should, because the German who had lost his crew was a man in pain.

  One day Adam S. came to Samuel Kerner. He said that his brother, who had perished in the ghetto, was inhabiting him. He asked Samuel Kerner if he could help him.

  The monk was confused. Adam S. had been born after the boy’s death; memories of the war did not exist in him. It made no sense to look in his muscle tissue, yet he placed the patient on his couch. He began to massage the back of his neck. Nothing happened. He started repeating that he was only able to set deposited memory into motion, but he didn’t finish his sentence. Adam S. burst out crying and screaming. A moment before, both had been conversing in English, but now Adam S. was shouting something in an unknown language, full of sibilant consonants.

  Samuel listened in astonishment. Adam S. was clearly calling for someone in a pitiful child’s voice. Then he grew furious. Then he began to be frightened. There was no doubt about it: a third person had appeared in the room. He would grow quiet for a few minutes, then turn violent like a struggling, wild little beast.

  Samuel remembered what he had heard in Taiwan about people who die suddenly or from a violent death. They don’t know that they have died. Their souls are unable to break their ties with earth. Chinese Buddhism is a folk religion, and folk beliefs are populated with spirits. The Chinese try to help those who are unable to leave. They show them the way.

  Samuel Kerner showed the way to Adam S.’s brother.

  He said, “Go to the light.”

  He did not understand why he was saying that, but he was certain that those were the right words.

  The one who was with them, who was only wind and fear, began to follow the words.

  And then Adam S. said something in that sibilant language.

  The other one stopped. He turned back and moved hurriedly toward Adam.

  A sudden silence descended in the room.

  “What did you say to him?” Samuel asked.

  “I told him, ‘Don’t go away,’ ” Adam S. replied, in his own voice again and in English.

  “So you want him to remain with you?”

  “After all, he’s my brother,” Adam S. whispered.

  6

  Eight months before I saw him an automobile had crushed both of Samuel’s legs. The doctors said he would learn to walk in two years. He went for intensive therapy sessions every day, and after he got back I would sit on his bed and torment him with questions.

  “Do you understand anythi
ng about this?”

  “No. And I don’t try to. The Chinese say, ‘Respect the spirits, but keep them at a distance.’ I did not summon Adam S.’s brother. I only gave him his voice; I made it possible for him to be heard.”

  “Is this at all connected with God?”

  “I don’t know. Everything is unclear and difficult with the God of Judaism. The Buddhist god seems easier, less imposing, and I don’t worry about him. It’s he who is supposed to worry about me. My task is concern for people who are suffering, not concern for a suffering God.”

  We broke off our conversations whenever Samuel’s voice showed signs of hoarseness. The first time, I thought he was hoarse because of a cold, but he explained that it was a tumor. They had cut out only half of it; it was not cancerous. The other half, which the doctors weren’t certain about, still had to be removed.

  When he felt worn out, he would pick up his flutes. I would say something, and he would reply on the flute. The Indians’ cedar instrument didn’t know cheerful sounds, so the little room would grow sadder and sadder, more and more primordial. Finally, Samuel would order a taxi for me (women don’t walk along the dark streets of the Back Bay by themselves) and I would go home.

  Late one evening Adam S. phoned me from the West Coast.

  He told me about his day. He had finished a paper, given an exam to his students, his son was fine, everything was fine, only he had woken up again at three and lain awake till morning.

  The men in his family died young, all of them from heart attacks. That’s not good. It meant he had no more than ten years left. Then what?

  “You shouldn’t have called him back,” I said. I understood who was on his mind when he asked, “Then what?” “He would have gone to the light, wherever it is. He would have forgotten.”

  “I know,” Adam S. agreed. “But when he began to go … When he was walking away like that, I felt … I don’t know how to say this in Polish … I felt such rachmones …”

  “Litość taką, such pity.”

  “Oy, I felt such rachmones, such intense rachmones, when he was leaving this world.”

  7

  He wakes up at three and lies awake until morning.

  “You’re not sleeping?” his wife asks, and sits on the bed.

  “I know,” says Adam S., anticipating her words. “I should go …”

  “He wants to help you,” says his wife, and starts crying.

  “During my last visit he told me to draw the ghetto wall and the Aryan side. He gave me a pen and paper, and said, ‘Draw it for me; I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ ”

  “Why should he understand?” says Adam S.’s wife, who was born in Brooklyn, just like their psychiatrist. “Explain it to him; it’s not something bad. When he understands, he’ll try to help you.”

  “Try to sleep,” Adam S. says, gets dressed, and leaves the house.

  He runs between the dark, slumbering gardens of his fellow professors.

  The YMCA opens at six. He heads to the club and works out on the machines. He focuses on cardiovascular training.

  With his graying hair, he looks more and more like his father. Less and less like that other one imprisoned inside him, untouched by death, a six-year-old forever.

  The Chair

  1

  I told a friend of mine from Jerusalem, who is a soldier and a poet, about the crying dybbuk.

  Every Jewish survivor listens with some impatience to other people’s stories.

  A Jewish survivor himself knows of events that are a hundred times more interesting.

  “Are you finished?” he’ll ask. “Now I’ll tell you a better story.”

  So I told him about the dybbuk.

  “Are you finished?” the soldier-poet asked. “Now I’ll tell you …”

  The “better story” was about Grandpa Maier and Grandma Mina. They lived in Sędziszów. The family was well-to-do and respected; Grandpa Maier held the post of mayor for a while. Later, he went into business, built a sawmill, bought up forests, and produced railroad ties. Then he moved to Podole and was a representative of the Okocim brewery. He returned to his native region shortly before the war.

  Grandma Mina had pain in her legs. No one knew what was causing this even though Grandpa took her to the best doctors in Lwów. At first, Grandma limped; then she had to use a cane and walking became more and more of an effort, until finally she stopped walking entirely. Grandpa drove to Lwów and brought back a chair. It had a high back, a comfortable footrest, and was upholstered in a dark-green velvet with somewhat lighter stripes. Grandma Mina settled into the chair, rested her feet on the footrest, and heaved a great sigh.

  “Now I won’t stand up for the rest of my life.”

  From that moment, Grandma ran the house from the height of her chair. She resided in the dining room, but she knew that the fish could use more pepper and the borscht needed sugar, that her grandsons should be sitting down to their books, and the maid ought to pick up cough medicine at the pharmacy.

  The medicine was gulped down by Grandpa Maier. He was given a thorough examination and problems with his lungs, thyroid, and larynx were ruled out, but he did not stop coughing.

  Life went on in its normal routines: business, children, the maid, the house, except that Grandpa coughed and Grandma sat in her armchair.

  When the war began, Grandpa quickly understood what was coming. He invited his Polish neighbor, a friend of the family, and the two of them locked themselves up in a room. Soon the friendly Pole began building a bunker. The work, carried out with due respect for caution, lasted a year. The shelter turned out to be spacious; it was outfitted with essential furnishings, a stock of food, even Grandma’s carpet, and, naturally, the green chair.

  When the decree about the ghettos was announced, Grandma and Grandpa moved into the hideout. They invited other Jewish families; a dozen or so people settled in to the bunker.

  Life went on almost normally.

  The friendly Pole did the shopping for them, Grandma sat in her chair, and Grandpa coughed. That cough began to disturb the bunker’s tenants.

  “Maier,” they said. “People will hear you. Can’t you control it? Is this an appropriate time for your coughing?”

  Grandpa knew that it wasn’t an appropriate time; the friendly Pole kept bringing new medicines, Grandma concocted gogol-mogols, but Grandpa did not stop coughing.

  And one day the tenants in the bunker lost their patience.

  And they strangled Grandpa.

  And a strange thing happened.

  Grandma got back the strength in her legs.

  She got up from the chair.

  She closed Grandpa’s eyes.

  She walked out of the bunker.

  She knocked on the door of the friendly Pole.

  “Run away,” she said. “The Germans will be here in a moment.”

  She stopped a wagon on the road and told the driver to take her to the police station.

  The Germans shot all the Jews.

  They shot Grandma, too, but at the end. As a reward, they explained. Thanks to them she saw her husband’s murderers die.

  My acquaintance, the soldier and poet, survived the war in Kraków. The story of his Grandpa Maier and Grandma Mina was told to him after the war by the Pole who befriended his grandparents.

  2

  “Sędziszów,” sighed the New York rabbi Haskiel Besser. “I was thinking about Sędziszów not long ago. We were driving in a sleigh through Chamonix; the driver covered our legs with a sheepskin. I caught the odor of the sheepskin and told my wife, ‘I know that smell from somewhere.’ In our hotel room we sat down near the open window and looked at the mountains, at the Alps. It began snowing. I told my wife, ‘Now I know …’

  “I was traveling by sleigh to Krynica, it was snowing, the driver gave us a sheepskin for our legs. A fat grande dame was seated beside me and she didn’t stop talking. She talked about her family and her neighbors, about funerals, about someone’s wedding, and all o
f them were from Sędziszów. Her surname was Zylberman. I don’t remember her first name. Snowflakes were settling on my eyelashes, the wind was blowing, I pulled up the sheepskin and smelled the sharp odor of raw wool backed with coarse, threadbare cloth. Zylberman expressed surprise that I was cold and asked me my name.

  “ ‘Chaskiel? Just like my brother.’ ” And she began telling me about his successes in school. I had always spent the winter in Piwniczna, but my sister had gotten married that year and I wanted to be with her. In Chamonix I kept thinking about Piwniczna, Krynica and Sędziszów, where I have never been.

  3

  Had this happened in one of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s stories, the fat grande dame in the sleigh would have known thrilling stories about people from Sędziszów. She would certainly have heard about Grandpa Maier and Grandma Mina, whose fate had become a local legend carefully repeated from mouth to mouth. But it was snowing and the sleigh was moving, and Zylberman was talking about long ago, before everything. The green chair was still in the dining room, Grandpa was coughing peacefully, and there was no story.

  Had this happened in Singer, an Aunt Yentl, the one in the little hat decorated with beads and ribbons (yellow, red, green, and white), might have told the story about Grandma Mina and Grandpa Maier. She adored strange and marvelous adventures: about a priest who lit black candles and lived with a demon-woman, red-haired Dasha, who was in love with a brute who whipped her … They were the most horrible experiences Aunt Yentl had ever heard of. Singer never wrote about Grandma Mina, who was the last to die, as a reward. He was afraid of the Holocaust. Even his unclean spirits, demons, dybbuks, vampires, and devils were afraid. They never ventured into a carpeted hell with a green velvet chair in a place of honor.