Eleos, p.4
Eleos, page 4
“Ummm … David, this is my sister Yael,” Rachel said in a gentle tone. “Yael, David works in Yad Vashem and he is researching Yosef’s story.”
Yael put down the tray she was carrying and offered me her hand. “Nice to meet you, David.”
Her fingers were long, handshake unexpectedly firm. Almost as tall as I, her body solid and yet supple. A green shirt unbuttoned just enough to outline her breasts. I lingered on them longer than appropriate and Yael cleared her throat.
“Nice to meet you, Yael,” I finally managed to respond.
Of course, I ended up staying for dinner. Yael sat on my side of the table, with Yosef, Rachel and their boy, Aron, across from us. We were about a foot apart and I was careful to not stare at Yael or touch her. But even at a distance I felt the heat of her body.
I stole a few glances at her profile painted by the lonely light bulb: a slightly upturned nose, a delicate small ear, full breasts. A few times our hands collided when reaching for food and an electric shock went through me. I took a few long breaths to calm myself down and avoid a possible embarrassment. It’s her eyes, I thought.
“David, what’s the matter?” inquired Rachel. “You’re not eating. Anything wrong?”
“Everything is wonderful, Rachel. I am just taking a little break.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed and flipped from me to Yael and back.
We finished, and Rachel and Yael cleaned up the table and washed the dishes.
Yosef poured out the remains of the vodka into our glasses. He lit up a cigarette, offered one to me. I declined.
“Yosef, you said that he brought you to Palestine.”
“Yes, he did.”
“But how?”
Before Yosef had a chance to continue, Rachel and Yael came out of the house with coffee and strudel.
Yosef smiled. “I don’t think they’ll let us talk.” And he was right.
“David, you can walk Yael home,” Rachel said after we finished up the apple strudel.
“It’s not necessary,” Yael protested. “I am perfectly safe waking home. David and Yosef are talking!”
“That’s OK. It’s a long story and we won’t finish it tonight. Right, David?” Yosef gave me a pass.
“I’ll be happy to. Yosef is right, we’ll need another meeting,” I got up.
“It’s settled, then.” Rachel waddled back into the house, leaving Yael and me to look at each other uncomfortably.
As we walked to Yael’s place, we traded the basics of our life stories. She was twenty-eight, a nurse in Shaare Zadek Medical Center nearby, recently divorced, no kids. Her parents lived in a kibbutz in Galilee.
We walked through Bostaniya Park. It was not much of a park then, a few shrubs in the desert. In the evening chill of Jerusalem, Yael wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. I slowed down for a second, to see all of her. Her back made me think of violin’s graceful curves. I wanted to put my arm about her shoulders but was afraid of scaring her off. I looked instead at her neck and delicate seashell-shaped earlobe, imagined myself gently circling them. I wondered how she would react if I kissed her. Would she keep her lips tightly closed or open them up and kiss me back and give out that deep-throated moan that women have when they desire you too?
Yael suddenly stopped, pulled on my shirtsleeve, faced me.
“David, Rachel told me you were in Auschwitz. What was it like there? How did you survive?”
I stood there looking at her, smitten by desire. Looking into her almond-shaped, light grey eyes. Could I have told her then? In sixteen years, I hadn’t met a single sabra that understood.
“I was seventeen when they brought me there, but I was tall and strong for my age. During the selection, they sent me to one side; my parents and my sister were sent to the other. I never saw them again. I was lucky to mostly have jobs inside, cleaning, cooking. Then I pretended to be an electrician, I knew a bit from my father. I was lucky. There was no rhyme or reason or any kind of special meaning to it, just a random fate.”
“David, I am sorry.” Yael resumed walking. “I shouldn’t have asked, I know it’s difficult to talk about it. It’s this Eichmann trial that’s starting next week. When we heard that six million had been killed, we kept asking how could that happen? Why did people go to their slaughter? We here in Israel always wondered how the Nazis managed to kill so many.”
Like lambs to the slaughter. That’s how sabras viewed us.
“It was easy. You give people no food or water for days and then you tell them to take a shower and everything will be all right and there will be food and hot tea waiting for them. People want to believe that everything will be all right.”
Only those that were there would get it.
We walked in silence.
“You don’t have to explain,” she said finally. “Here’s my place.”
She lived on the northeast side of Ir Ganim. Her building was not a boring concrete monstrosity like mine but a graceful two-story house with an archway and a small garden with a fountain in the middle.
“It’s pretty,” I said.
“This is one of the first houses they built here.” She nodded. “Before they started doing these larger apartment buildings.”
Yael turned towards me again. “Why are you interested in Yosef’s story?”
“We must remember the ones that saved just as we remember the murderers,” I repeated, quoting Ezra’s words.
That was no longer the real reason, but I had to give her an answer, and that was as good as any.
“I know it’s important for Yosef,” she said. “He’s been talking about that officer a lot. Especially lately. Probably because of Eichmann.”
“Is it important for you?”
She looked at me strangely.
“Yes, of course. I believe we all have a certain personal mission that we must satisfy so that we feel whole. I think that’s what it is for Yosef. He won’t be happy unless he does it. And that means that Rachel won’t be happy either.”
“And what if Yosef never finds out who the man was?”
“Well, at least he would have tried. Isn’t it a shame to really want something and never reach for it? Isn’t that the saddest thing?”
“Yes, it is.”
I wanted to reach for her, embrace her, kiss her, breathe her in. Better yet, rip off her clothes, throw her on the ground, take her. Blood was pounding in my temples. But instead I shook her hand and wished her a good night. Before she disappeared into the darkness of the building’s entrance, she looked back and waved. Like Leah. Just like Leah.
At night, I tossed and turned. At thirty-five, I thought I would be past such feelings, but physical desire for Yael was stronger than any I’d ever experienced for a woman.
Attirance immédiate! André would have exclaimed, my irrepressible rascal friend from the Lager. Being French, he thought of amour even amidst carnage. One of the guards shot André as he was returning from the women’s barracks.
Neither asleep nor awake, I dreamt of kissing Yael as I unbuttoned her shirt and took her breasts in my hands. Removed all her clothing and put her on the bed. I stood up to take off my clothes. Suddenly, her body started turning blue before my eyes. I screamed and shook her “No!”
A loud knock on the wall woke me up completely. “Hey, we are trying to sleep here! Every fucking night it’s the same crap! Go live where people can’t hear you at night!”
The walls in Kiryat Yovel were thin.
I stood up, went into the bathroom, washed my face. I knew it’d be a while before I fell asleep now, so I sat at my desk, turned on the lamp. Years ago, a kind psychologist told me it would help to write about my experiences. I’d kept a rather scattered diary since. When I couldn’t write, I read. That was my only indulgence, buying books. Books in Hebrew, in English, even in German.
3
In some way, I was not happy about The Trial. I was finally forgetting. Not forgetting but beginning to live here and not there. And now I’d have to go back. But I did have this desire to see Eichmann face-to-face. Thinking it would help me understand who he was and why they did it. I wondered—would this trial change something—anything—in the fabric of humankind? Like the other trial that took place here nineteen hundred and thirty years ago. Perhaps it was the fate of Jerusalem to be the center of the world. Here, on Mount Zion, David founded his kingdom. Next to it was the Al-Aqsa Mosque where Muhammad was transported from Mecca. It was built on top of Solomon’s temple, of which only the Western Wall remains. Over there was the Temple Mount where Abraham bound Isaac and Muhammad ascended to heaven. And just to the east, was Golgotha and the Garden of Gethsemane. One could easily get caught up in the history of this place, but it felt like we were about to open a new chapter.
Café Europa was different from Mal Zahl, quiet, almost literary. Even though most patrons grew up in Europe, it didn’t have the scent of Lager about it. People there hid the lost parts of their lives the best they could. They were nostalgic for their old countries, the countries that rejected them twenty years ago. Sometimes I would sit at a table in the back and just watch people, trying to guess which road they took to come to Jerusalem.
But this night the place was busy, no empty table in sight. The Eichmann trial was slated to begin tomorrow, April 11th. The holy city of Jerusalem was on edge.
“David!” Jacob Broder waved me over. He was an older German Jew, originally from the same Länder as us, even met my father a few times. Jacob was still in love with the German culture, and spoke wistfully of Berlin of thirty years ago, before the Nazis. This at times irritated other conversationalists into suggesting that Jacob should move back there. Jacob would turn pale, pull back into his shell and become quiet. Tonight, he was sitting with his friend Maurice, a chessboard with an unfinished game and, uncharacteristically, a bottle of Gold vodka and two glasses between them.
“Did they ask you to testify at the trial?” Maurice asked me.
“Sort of.”
“I’ve been asked to testify,” Maurice said with a touch of pride. “I think they wanted someone from France, because Eichmann was involved in rounding up French Jews.”
“What did you say?”
“I told them no. Why would I testify? So Halevi can crucify me on the stand and then some asshole will kill me like Kasztner, thinking he is taking revenge for his family?”
Kasztner was one of the leaders of Hungarian Jewry, who survived the Holocaust. In 1955, the judge called him a collaborator with the Nazis. Two years later, Kasztner was shot to death.
A sullen waiter slammed another glass on the table and walked away.
“Well, Kasztner did negotiate with Eichmann,” Jacob pointed out. “You never even met Eichmann.”
“Don’t be stupid, Jacob!” Maurice became agitated. “Like Kasztner had any good choices! You know how in Russia they sent most of their people that survived Nazi camps to Siberia? Well, that’s almost how it is for us. If you survived, you must have collaborated. They think we are all damaged, lousy human material. That’s what they literally say about us.”
His eyes lingered on me for a second and he looked away. Maurice was suspicious of anyone who made it out of Lager. He knew that one’s soul was the price of survival.
Jacob poured what remained in the Gold vodka bottle in three glasses.
“Let it go, Maurice. We are damaged. We all died twenty years ago. It’s our shadows that are here.”
In the morning, I came to the Beit Ha’am, the House of the People. Soldiers and police surrounded the place. I wondered why, and then realized they were here to protect Eichmann. We had to keep him alive, so we could execute him properly. Almost a carnival atmosphere reigned outside. People waited in line for hours for entrance passes. Those who couldn’t get in would listen to the trial carried live on the radio. My pass got me through the roadblock. A policeman searched me and let me inside the building. The courtroom looked like an auditorium in a university. Or a theater. Hundreds of journalists from fifty countries, official observers and invited guests, all crammed inside. How would one write about such a trial? What the prosecutor said, what the defense responded with, what the judges asked, how witnesses testified— that all would get captured. But this was not your usual trial.
I looked at the judges: Moshe Landau, Yitzhak Raveh, Benjamin Halevi. Yes, I remembered Halevi from the Kasztner trial. Sometimes I thought of him as just, sometimes as cruel. Perhaps he was both. But this was all about Eichmann. I was here to study him: perhaps a smile or a frown or a changed expression would betray what was on the inside. There was a hush as he came in, flanked by police officers, and took his place in a bulletproof glass booth. My seat was only about twenty meters away. People wrote about his “snake eyes,” the look of a monster. Not so: by appearance, he could have been an accountant or a ticket collector or anyone. A balding, bespectacled man. I would have loved to pile on derogatory adjectives, but he didn’t come across evil or cruel, just ordinary. A man that one would pass on the street without a second thought or look. I’d seen that before with the guards and kapos after the liberation: they looked completely different, pitiful and confused when they no longer had the power. For a moment, I thought that I recognized him from Lager: tall SS hat, shiny boots, square riding pants; haughty stare of a bloody barbarian god looking to sacrifice sub-humans. But I realized that I didn’t know if I ever saw him.
The next day, Eichmann’s headlines in the papers were replaced with the smiling face of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human to orbit the Earth. “We have no luck,” my neighbor commented. “We threw a trial and one day in, it gets replaced by a Russian party.”
Eichmann entered his pleas with a strong Austrian accent: “not guilty in the sense of the indictment.” In what sense was he guilty then? Did he consider himself guilty of anything? His attorney was Robert Servatius, the man who called the Nuremberg trials “a regression to barbarism.” I wondered if he ever referred to Auschwitz and Treblinka as “barbaric”?
Chief Prosecutor Hausner spoke of Pharaoh and Haman and Attila, expounded on Hitler, organization of the SS, cold-blooded extermination of millions. A horrible litany hour after hour. Words became sounds, vibrations of the air. Terrible numbers became statistics. We’d heard them before and nothing happened. The journalist next to me fell asleep.
Chaia, our research assistant, was waiting by my office.
“There is a new movie, Spartacus. Do you want to go this weekend? I’ll make dinner.”
“I am busy.”
“Did I not please you the last time? Show me what to do.” She began to sob.
Ordinarily I may have relented, but the urge for Yael was still too vivid, too real. Isn’t it strange how a desire for one particular woman can make others unwanted? The sight of that fat cow, crying, only irritated me.
“Why did you do that?” she asked through tears. “I thought you liked me.”
Yes, why did I? Because I wanted to. What’s the big fucking deal? I just shrugged.
“I never told you that I love you or anything like that.”
Which was true. I’m not a nice guy, but I don’t lie to women in order to get them in bed. And I never tell them that I love them. That particular cruelty I don’t possess.
“You should not have done this to me,” she wept.
“What did I do to you? We went out, we had a good time, we had sex. You were not a virgin as far as I could tell.” I was getting angry.
“There was only one before you. I was curious. This was different.”
“That’s enough, Chaia.”
“Why are you so mean?”
“I am not a good person. Go find someone else.”
Yosef called me during the week to see if I wanted to come on Sunday. I had plans already, so we arranged to meet in two weeks.
“Will Yael…?” I asked carefully.
“Yael what?”
“Be there.”
“Oh. She usually comes on Sundays. But I can tell her not to.”
“No, that’s OK. Don’t change anything because of me.”
I couldn’t very well tell him that his story interested me much less than Yael’s body.
When I got back to my flat in a dusty squat two-story apartment building in Kiryat Yovel, I found Hannah sitting on the steps in front.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.” She always had a way of making me feel like an idiot at times.
“I was on a date. With the guy from the ministry that asked me out four times and I finally said yes.”
“What happened? Was he mean to you?”
“No, not at all. He was a gentleman … took me to a nice restaurant …”
“Then why …”
“Because I couldn’t go through with it! He is a sabra, he was born here. This damn trial, it brought everything back … He started asking me about the lager and I saw it in his eyes, that fucking ‘how could you let them do this to you’ condescension…”
I sat down, put my arm around her shoulders. Hannah was about the only person in the world that I was still nice to.
“They don’t know … they can’t possibly know. This country only respects dead heroes.”
Hannah stood up, letting my arm drop.
“David, take me upstairs. Please.”
To her, I couldn’t possibly refuse.
In a cosmic joke, that year’s Yom HaAtzmaut, the Independence Day, had fallen on April 20th — Hitler’s birthday. A trick of the Hebrew calendar. Some bored journalists made a joke of it. There was a big parade with fireworks: the president’s car, Prime Minister Ben Gurion, the marching army.
“It was a message to the world,” I overheard Hausner’s assistant saying in a café, his clenched fist raised. “We are armed now, our blood won’t come cheaply.”
