The Teacher Page 9

  She was more or less the last woman to have been shaved. And because the process came to a halt like a sudden epidemic, attacking only part of the camp and leaving the rest unscathed, the capriciousness of the entire event had become palpable. She was not indifferent. She realized that unbearable things were happening. She did not bear them. She moved slightly aside so as not to give into them. It was a form of saying goodbye, an utterly private cleansing ritual she carried out within herself, a wall she had erected between her past and her future. No matter how many strange hands invaded this ceremony, it was her ceremony and she performed it with pride. She did not even feel ashamed. Nor did her exposed body make her feel shame. The shame that had overwhelmed her as a child in the presence of her parents or teachers was more primal, set against the desired ideals she had failed to meet. What she felt now was something akin to awkwardness, as if she had been abducted to a foreign land and was seeking a way back, but there was no one to retrieve her, nothing and no one to return to. Eric’s terror-stricken gaze attested to his understanding that he could no longer protect her. He hugged her and cried. She held back her tears. Her thick hair, which had hung loose down her back from a young age, sometimes coiled on her head like a crown, braided or gracefully tousled, had been ripped from her scalp. She could only wait and see what would grow back in its place. It was so awful, but it helped her not recognize herself. She was someone else. Even if she returned to Kolozsvár that moment, nothing would be the same. A woman in a coif, who stood next to her in the car, handed her a silk headscarf.

  The change of plans gave rise to a swell of speculation and predictions. They received an update on recent developments. The Allied forces had advanced and liberated Strasbourg. British and Canadian troops had reached the city of Cannes. Kastner sent a reassuring telegram to the local leadership: There is no need to panic, there will be a short delay until another way is found to honor the deal and reach Portugal or Spain. On Saturday morning they approached Göttingen, and in the afternoon they turned toward Nuremberg. On their last night on the train, they stayed at Würzburg. At around nine o’clock Sunday morning, July 9th, they entered the Bergen-Belsen camp.

  21

  It was an odd prison, in which children and adults of all ages crammed into three-story bunks, the innocence of its inmates its widest common denominator, a prison that was run and supervised by criminals, an upside-down world that could have been experienced as a crazy game had it not become an absurd and taxing reality. Not because they had to do anything, but precisely because they had to do nothing, had to shrink their existence to nothingness, to diminish their existence into a battle over the perseverance of existence, a battle sustained by the memory of the promise that all this was temporary, that they would be released at some point. Confronted with the merciless possibility that had barreled down on them like a monster since they embarked on their journey that they would never have more time, that time might come to a complete and utter end, this sudden excess of time was a curious surprise. And yet, for those among them who had lost hope, time had lost its meaning. It froze as though deprived of its inherent continuity and rid itself of any expectations. It could not be used. It no longer served as a steady anchor that allows one to deviate from it back and forth in order to understand what is happening by way of comparison or imagination.

  Before the car doors were opened and they disembarked from the train at what was revealed to be their final destination, she had not been able to take an interest in the names of the stations they had passed, not until the rumor of the assumed name sent the passengers into a frenzied panic. But now she wanted to know, as if by knowing the name she could decipher something about their destiny. They walked for a very long time. Some of the heavy equipment was loaded onto the truck that carried the elderly, the sick, and the children, but there seemed to be a shortage of trucks. She heard people bitterly complaining that the leaders were exploiting them, the same leadership that had assembled already at the beginning of the journey, by the Austrian border, according to the relative size of the Zionist parties and representatives of other groups, in an attempt to create a semblance of control amid the chaos. She had lost track of time and couldn’t gauge how many kilometers they had traveled with their exhausted bodies, shriveled from the journey and the crippling hunger. She did her best to endure, lowering her gaze under the silk headscarf. Her baldness made her feel lighter and more exposed to the wind, and she was suddenly gripped by the childish desire for a caressing hand on her head, which she immediately fended off out of fear that she couldn’t bear even her own touch. She struggled to aim her gaze higher, off the ground and away from the legs that marched on it, wearing a frozen expression that maintained the automatic motion and pace, which now seemed like the pace of existence, the temporary existence, she reminded herself, the sequence of actions that must be performed. She allowed herself to trail like a young girl after the others, and every time she saw and did not see the same things, dust, clothes, pieces of barbed wire strewn about; and when she looked up for a moment and stole a glance at the others, she encountered the same terror-stricken expressions of those who did not know where they were heading. She struggled to go with the lost, helpless flow, in the strange landscape, in a numb body. She knew they wouldn’t walk for hours, it had to end eventually, and it wouldn’t be as bad as it had been on the train, they were still outside, moving, what more could happen? A few people were presiding over the march, it seemed as though they knew more, she didn’t doubt that, they had authority, even if it was their first time there and they appeared to be just as surprised as everyone else, they had connections, their status was evident in the way they spoke and the manner in which the others addressed them. She cast her gaze upon several children walking nearby and registered a few mischievous faces spared the tension, expressions that turned grim only when the children asked repeatedly: “Mom, what’s going to happen?,” the question answered with an effort not to betray a shred of despair, dismissed with a simple sentence they could cling to: “There are children your age here you can play with,” “We’re only going to be here a short while.” It is good the children asked, you could think about it rationally instead of falling into the abyss.

  They were put in the Ungarnlager, right beside the horror, in a separate compound designated for the Jews of “the Hungarian deal.” They were supposed to be released soon, and weren’t meant to see the bottom of the hierarchy of Bergen-Belsen’s elaborate system, those who were subjected to the rules of a “normal” concentration camp; but when passing by the electric barbed-wire fences on the way to the open pits that served as latrines, a perforated strip located a great distance from the barracks, the watchtower’s projector accompanying them in the dark like a pillar of cloud, they stumbled here and there upon the death-stricken ghosts dragging corpses crushed by forced labor, abhorrent sanitary conditions, and malnutrition. They saw, they had no way of not seeing, they found themselves witnessing a fate they had apparently evaded, a hell they would most likely be spared, and they could not do a thing, not help, not rally, not ask questions, not console, they were utterly paralyzed by what was taking place right in front them, and forced to be grateful that it was not their own lot.

  However, those who had yet to enter the inferno but knew-and-didn’t-know of its existence, might have fallen into the clutches of despair, even if they were still clad in civilian clothing, without the yellow badge, and carried a piece of paper and pencil and a book or phylacteries, even if they weren’t subjected to forced labor but rather to the discipline of shifts, hauling jugs of water and food, cleaning, and performing roll calls that spanned half a day. Even if at least some of them were fortunate enough to remain with their families. Nothing had prepared them for this. They had been cut off from the world and resided in wet barracks under leaking roofs, their living area confined to the space between one bunk and the next, attempting in vain to control the movement inside it, to maneuver between clumps of earth and stones lest the
entire barrack fill with mud whenever someone accidentally or maliciously started a violent commotion. They eyed each other with suspicion, with their heads hanging low, as if in denial of the extreme proximity that forced them to be exposed and to see and to listen to each other, to act as though it was an ordinary and self-evident routine, adamantly insisting on forgetting what they saw, on covering themselves with a veil of indifference, so that if they ever met in the future, they could start from the beginning as if none of this had ever happened.

  The labor of life had become complicated precisely because of its fundamental simplicity—how to fill one’s stomach, how best to divide, how to slice accurately, how to save crumbs. Those whose spendthrift or jovial nature was unaccustomed to restraint became irritable and bitter. The loaves of bread they were allotted resembled bricks in both shape and weight, 330 grams per person, better than what the rest of the camp was given; they were to be kept alive and provided just enough so they wouldn’t die of starvation. Elsa was able to tear the loaf—without devouring it—into equal pieces that would last her a week. The restrained adult who had taken the gluttonous little girl’s place mastered the practice of autosuggestion. She felt hunger without appetite, a hunger that could be satiated by a piece of bread. Since she tasted it in her imagination, she could command herself to pause, to hold back, to not even crave it, to repeat the cycle again and again, to dwell on it in order to rid herself of it. And yet, she was becoming hungrier by the day, the slices of sawdust turning into a coveted delicacy. She drank coffee in the mornings and at dinner, flavorless gray-black water that at times was tepid enough to warm her hands. The soup was brought daily in containers from the camp kitchen, accompanied by bland root vegetables, some of which she had never seen before and were probably used for feeding animals, cats or pigs, but there was no choice but to eat what she was given, to hold her nose to get over the sour smell of the beets and the urine and the rot and not notice what she was shoveling into her mouth, to swallow in moderation, just to get something into her stomach, just to make herself stronger. Sometimes, when someone must have been in an especially good mood, they were treated to potatoes, beef stew, blood sausages, crumbs of meat, even bean cholent. At first her throat refused the unpalatable mush and expelled it; then it gradually gave in. She would place a tiny morsel in her mouth and chew at length; afterward, if she did not vomit, she had to lie in bed, draw her knees to her stomach and curl into a fetal position until she calmed down; still, she stood in the food line the following day like everyone else, observing that just like the others she too would stare at the person doling food onto her mess tin, and secretly keep score with him—why did he give some people more than he gave her, taking offense at the solid substance burrowing at the bottom of the soup pot and preventing her from receiving the ration she deserved? (The surname Eric had bequeathed her had driven her to the bottom of the alphabet, which seemingly worked in her favor, but sometimes the name list was reversed, and she wished she could go back to being Bloom). Sometimes, when all she wanted was to be elsewhere, she sent Clara to take her place in the line, and remembered how she used to stand around in the kitchen, serving as her mother’s apprentice, in order to lick the pots and the bottom of the cake bowl after the batter was poured into the baking pan and placed in the oven, how she used to dive deep into the dish and let her finger climb from the base and bring the thick liquid into her mouth, over and over, until the bowl shone in its cleanliness. “It can’t be any cleaner than that,” her mother would say facetiously, astonished by her daughter’s ravenous appetite. Over time, the indulging element of their relationship disappeared, and she herself began listlessly cooking the recipes passed onto her by Grandma Rosa; for some reason, the only image of her she savored was her head bent over and sweating into the pot of matzo ball soup on Passover eve, imbuing the broth with a revolting yet curiously human saltiness. Now, when she aimed her finger at the indented bottom of her mess tin, it lacked any whimsy. It was the gesture of a homeless person.

  22

  People around her needed her help. You never let us help you, she was scolded with gratitude. She smiled awkwardly, learned to accept their assistance, took simple comforts in the children, thanked her good fortune for Clara and Mrs. Adler’s presence in the Kolozsvár barrack, which was a kind of room they shared, she on the top wooden bunk and they on the two below her. This sleeping arrangement made sense, and despite the crude presence of the hay mattress and the gray military blanket, the familiar faces made it somehow friendly. To her surprise, she found in her suitcase handwritten notes her mother had hidden between the folds of her socks like tiny treasures, greetings wishing her safe travels. When had she had the time?

  At first, they failed to notice Mrs. Adler’s decline. But gradually it manifested in her voice, her eyes, in her lack of interest in their conversations; then one day she stopped doing her hair and makeup. That day she woke up for the morning roll call and sat slouched in the bunk in her robe, declaring a strike, a strike against herself. She paid no attention to the makeup purse placed beside her, the small mirror with which she communed each morning remaining in her bag like an abandoned object. Clara pleaded with her to powder her face and make herself presentable, to look around her. “We’re better off than most, it could be worse.” But Mrs. Adler wouldn’t listen. “This is absurd,” she said angrily, “I don’t know what I was thinking.” And Elsa saw an entirely different woman before her, no longer the Mrs. Adler she had known since childhood; she never imagined how foreign a familiar face could become, and wondered whether it had indeed happened all of a sudden, or whether she did not want to see what had been happening to Mrs. Adler because it might have taught her something about herself, about what was taking place inside her. She felt a twinge in her heart thinking about Mother, that perhaps she could have treated her differently, not judged her so harshly, now telling herself the obvious, that her mother did the best she could, and at any rate, she had good intentions, and perhaps the task of raising children was more than she could handle; and after all, when Elsa herself failed to conceive, even though she agonized over it for a while, it was convenient for her to believe that nature was refusing to bequeath her with gifts of which she was unworthy, gifts she could not adamantly attest to truly wanting or needing. But those last few years could also have been lived better, she could have laughed more, had she not been in such a hurry to pull away, or had she stayed another year in Paris; had she not rushed to marry so young. When she couldn’t fall asleep she would look at the women around her, at the odd intimacy that had developed among them.

  They wouldn’t let Mrs. Adler stay in bed: “At least get up, Mom,” Clara implored; they let her stand beside her bunk during roll call on the condition that she put herself together. Clara combed her hair. “You mustn’t let them win.” “What do they care if I sleep or stand, what does it matter,” her mother replied. “That’s exactly it, everything matters, there has to be order.” But it was beyond her grasp, the absolute order required within the absolute disorder, the order that was apparently the only way their executioners could survive what they were doing, to enforce the law in hell. Mrs. Adler felt that chaos was chaos, she was unwilling to pretend there was some kind of order here that she could respect. Elsa actually liked this, the little war Mrs. Adler was waging, which brought out the best in her, the ridicule of the aristocratic matron whose world—a world of wheeling and dealing, misdemeanors and sidesteps—had been taken from her and yet she remained doggedly loyal to it in her complaints about boredom and the women around her, as if believing that soon the fog would lift and she would grab the banister and link her free arm in her husband’s, who had suffered a heart attack and passed away sometime during the first year of the war, and together they would stroll back to their apartment at the end of yet another evening in which she had drunk herself into a stupor. He would slip off her shoes, lay her heavy body on the bed, and she would sink into a deep and disturbed sleep from which, as after every eveni
ng of inebriation, she would wake the next morning unable to remember a thing. “Are you sure I said that? Impossible. It’s strange how a person can be simultaneously able to be and not to be.” “In your case, that is not the question,” Mr. Adler would say, thus concluding the initiation ceremony into the sobriety of daylight. “But Mom, you can’t, you’re absolutely right but you can’t,” Clara insisted, because the young, burly woman with the steel eyes would soon approach in her high boots and white-fur gloves, and reprimand her with the same fervor she would use to strike three-year-olds across their faces if they failed to stand when she entered the barrack, or tear the prayer book of the old woman who didn’t stretch the blanket across her bunk in military fashion. “You really don’t want to get on her bad side,” Clara said. “What do I care, I’ll give her a piece of my mind.” Quite often such an exchange, merely by arguing her point, was enough to appease her. And yet, she gradually weakened. She could not bear the animal feed in the form of beets, and they had to talk to her like a child: Look how your neighbor is eating and how that aunt is relishing this delicacy; and they would spoon feed her, or tell her it was actually a different dish, one that went by several names, and then name one of her favorite dishes. They wouldn’t relent, and even applied pressure to make her brush her teeth. “We’re taking you for a shower,” once every two weeks, which she especially hated, the slippery wooden floorboards, the miserable, bruised bodies she had to witness—gaunt and blue, the sight of the concave stomachs of formerly full-figured women who had once carried their voluptuous curves with pride.