The Time of the Uprooted: A Novel

  He keeps his word. He brings us bread, sugar, coal, oil, and two fur coats, all repossessed from opulent homes where a month ago the fascist bosses were living. Ilonka hugs and kisses me, then says in front of him, “Thank you, my child. You saved me.” And I—who saved me? My father? My prayers?

  CAPTAIN TOLYA—THAT WAS THE RUSSIAN OFFICER’S name—became a regular visitor. Thanks to him, Ilonka’s and Gamaliel’s circumstances improved, to the point of seeming extravagant to them. Their humble apartment was now livable. It was warm, and they had enough to eat. Most important, they were safe. Armed with official papers, Ilonka no longer feared denunciation. She found work in a sort of cabaret where Russian officers and Hungarian Communists, united in their devotion to the Red Army, danced and sang and drank the night away. If now and then a soldier who had had one drink too many made advances, she had only to mention the officer’s name to cool the man’s ardor.

  Tolya went only rarely to the cabaret. He preferred to spend evenings with Gamaliel. He taught him to play chess, and, more important, he set out to inculcate him with the virtues of the Communist ideal. He told him about Stalin, the greatest genius of the century, if not all time, the supreme guide, the exemplary teacher who understood all things, who knew it all and perhaps more, a man who might telephone a poet in the middle of the night for the sole purpose of discussing his work. “But you talk about him as if he were God,” said Gamaliel, dismayed. “There is no God,” Tolya replied curtly. Gamaliel was baffled. “How about my prayers? The prayers my father taught me, and you know them, since—” “Yes, I know them,” Tolya conceded. “When I was a child, I learned many childish things. Then I grew up. You’ll grow up, too.” Gamaliel spoke no more of God, but at night, before going to sleep, he would think about his parents and their prayers.

  Tolya was the first who spoke to Gamaliel of his parents’ death. Until then, Ilonka and her young protégé still had hope. She ran from one government office to another, checking updated lists of survivors, interrogating members of the Jewish community, and always returned forlorn, empty-handed. But Tolya had access to better sources. He discovered when and how Gamaliel’s father had died. He had been executed in Dachau days before its liberation. As for his mother, she probably died in Auschwitz the day of her arrival with so many others, like so many others. “Be strong, my young comrade,” Tolya told Gamaliel. “I know, it isn’t easy. Try to lean on me.” And from that moment on, Gamaliel, brokenhearted, refrained from mentioning his parents.

  A few months later, Tolya was sent back to Kiev, where he was discharged. “Don’t worry,” Gamaliel said to Ilonka. “He won’t forget us; I’m sure of it.” Ilonka did not show her concern. They could not foresee that their protector, a committed Communist but also a Jew, would be arrested and tortured during the anti-Jewish purges in Stalin’s Soviet Union. In 1948, Ilonka lost her job: Communism disapproved of nightclubs. A cousin who was a seminary student came by regularly to confide his own concerns: The Church was suspect under communism. Sometimes the dinner conversation would turn to Gamaliel and his future. The seminary student feared a revival of the old anti-Semitism, now masquerading as militant Stalinism, and he offered the boy an easy, practical solution: conversion. Ilonka spoke out against it. “He didn’t convert to save his life during the occupation, and you want him to convert now? He might as well sign up for the Communist youth!” Ilonka proved to be right. Tolya’s idealistic account had made a deep impression on Gamaliel. To believe in Stalin was to express gratitude to the Jewish captain from Kiev, to whom they owed so much. If Tolya had invited Gamaliel to come join him, he would have moved heaven and earth to persuade Ilonka to accompany him. So, proud of his red scarf, he became a sort of Party Pioneer. Doing nothing by halves, he turned into a zealous Communist. Moscow was his Jerusalem, the Party his religion, Marx his Bible. Meanwhile, he decided he would no longer hide behind his Hungarian name, Péter. Henceforth, he would be Gamaliel to everyone.

  Came the day of disenchantment. The Jewish heroes of the resistance movement were accused of Zionism and cosmopolitanism, dismissed from the Party, jailed, tried, and sentenced. Gamaliel himself was too young to suffer their fate. But some members of his unit knew about his past, and that was enough to make him undesirable to the leaders and contaminated in the eyes of his comrades.

  Came the 1956 uprising. He was out in the streets, among the young rebels throwing stones at the secret police and their informers. Like everyone else, he was delirious with joy. Budapest was ecstatically celebrating its victory over the oppressors. The civilized world was on the side of the people, backing their struggle; the march to freedom could not be stopped. But Ilonka, wiser and more farsighted than Gamaliel, was pessimistic.

  “You put your trust in the world and its humanity,” she said. “You rebels make me laugh. You forget the Soviet Union’s territorial ambitions. Stalin may be dead, but Moscow will never leave. Any retreat would be a defeat. Just wait a while and you’ll see the Russian tanks again. . . . The day of repression is coming; it’s inevitable. Don’t stay here any longer. Go to Vienna while the borders are still open, then take the first train to France.”

  “And you, Ilonka, will you come also?”

  “Of course I will. I can’t be separated from you. Tell me when you get to Paris. I’ll join you there. I promise you we’ll soon be together again, and, like you, I keep my promises. So, young man, do you agree?”

  No, Gamaliel did not agree. The illusion of victory had gone to the rebels’ heads. Even when the Soviet tanks appeared, he, like the other insurgents, refused to believe they intended to drown their uprising in blood. Gamaliel was arrested with a group of young rebels, but he succeeded in escaping on his way to jail. He did not go home, for fear of endangering Ilonka, but he was able to telephone.

  “I can only talk a moment, Ilonka,” he said. “There are still mobs of people on the roads, in the trains, at the borders. They say they’re not checking too carefully, so it’s easy to slip across. Leave right away; don’t take anything. We’ll meet in Vienna. Rendezvous at the French consulate.”

  Once he was in the Austrian capital, Gamaliel waited for her day after day outside the consulate. He had obtained his visa for France, and the consul’s secretary, moved by his story, had promised to get one for Ilonka as soon as she arrived.

  But Ilonka did not come. He tried to telephone Budapest, but the line was out. He was able to reach a friend, whom he asked to check on her. His friend called back the next day to say he had gone to Ilonka’s and rung the doorbell; no one had answered. Still, Gamaliel did not give up hope. He waited another week; then the consul’s secretary, taking pity on him, advised him to go on to Paris. Once there, he would send the secretary his address and she would give it to Ilonka as soon as she arrived. Heavyhearted, he took the night train with a group of other refugees. Along with leaving Austria, he was also leaving his childhood.

  Ilonka did not keep her promise.

  Gamaliel never saw her again.

  12

  ONE EVENING IN NEW YORK, GAMALIEL AND HIS friends were having dinner in Eve’s apartment. The conversation turned to despair. Each man evoked it in his own manner.

  For Diego, it was the day when, as a sergeant in the Foreign Legion, he came face-to-face with a former SS officer guilty of massacres in Poland, the Ukraine, and France. Tall, broad-shouldered, built like a bull, with a boxer’s nose and ears, he didn’t care about the rumors concerning him and would take on any man who challenged him. Diego had sworn during the war in Spain that if he ever set eyes on a fascist he would make him regret the day he was born, but now he realized he would not be able to live up to his oath. His superior, when informed, coldly reminded him that the law of the Legion was that any man who joined it left his past behind.

  “If I ever felt despair,” Diego said, “it was because of that man. Each time I saw him, I thought, If a bastard like that can walk the earth freely, with complete impunity, then our world was poorly made and our victory in ?
??forty-five was but a pathetic charade.”

  Bolek reacted heatedly, as usual. “Injustice may inspire anger or rebellion, but must not create despair. Injustice has been part of our world since its beginning. The wolf is stronger than the lamb, and there’s nothing we can do about it, except to pity the lamb and shoot the wolf. Despair is something else. That’s when you no longer believe in anything.

  “In the ghetto,” he said, “I sometimes doubted not our eventual victory but our capacity to take part in it. One night, we were informed of the death of Asher Baumgarten, a poet and chronicler. We in the resistance movement used to tell him what was going on behind the walls, and he was to bear witness to our suffering and our struggle, for History’s sake, for we were sure we were soon to die. What Emmanuel Ringelblum was doing in Warsaw, we wanted to do in our town, Davarowsk. We counted on Asher. We counted on his objectivity, his talent as a writer, his mission as the carrier of memory. On the day the Germans rounded up the last of the children, the ghetto was in mourning, feeling shame as well as pain. The next night, Asher killed himself. He asked us in his farewell letter to forgive him for giving up, but, he wrote, ‘I saw the children; I witnessed their cries and their tears. And I no longer have the words to tell it....’ There it is. That was the most despairing moment of my life.”

  Gad told of a more recent time, the postwar period. “I had a rich and happy life as a child and as an adolescent. I lacked for nothing. I had my own car, a studio in Manhattan, a group of friends. My father was admired for his generosity, my mother for her hospitality. People may have envied us our happiness, but they said we deserved it. My parents loved each other. My brothers attended the yeshiva; my sisters were college students. Then misfortune befell us. My father lost his entire fortune overnight. Worse: He lost all his friends. He was alone and miserable. He couldn’t understand. ‘All those people who flattered me, who swore eternal gratitude, where are they? Why did they vanish?’ he asked. He was alone one evening in his den, and, for the first time in his adult life, he began to weep. The door was half-open, and I saw him. Those tears filled me with despair. Not long after that, he called our family together and told us he had decided to take us all to Israel.”

  “I understand,” Bolek said. “But I think sometimes it would be better not to understand.”

  “How about you, Gamaliel?” Diego asked.

  Gamaliel hesitated. Should he summon up his memories, still so painful, of those last months of the war in Budapest? Or the days of waiting in Vienna?

  “As for me, I despair only when I’m in love,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

  No one laughed. So he spoke of his mother, of Ilonka, of Esther. He thought of them with joy, but then, at once, sadness came over him.

  “You’re really unlucky,” Diego said. “All you have to do is love a woman for her to vanish from your life.”

  Yes, Gamaliel thought, I haven’t had any luck. My good luck died with my mother, probably somewhere in Poland. But I was lucky with Ilonka, wasn’t I? I wouldn’t have survived without her. I wouldn’t have known the day of liberation. I wouldn’t have met Esther, or Eve, or Tolya, or any of my friends. Hadn’t Ilonka been a second mother to me, doing for me what any mother would do for her son?

  13

  Thursday, late in the evening

  Dear Father,

  I’m sixteen years old and I’m fed up, understand? Fed up with being your daughter, fed up with not being able to have you as my father. I’m an orphan, deserted by both my parents. Both of you rejected me. That’s the truth, and it’s very sad. I wasn’t pretty enough, or intelligent enough—that’s my tragedy. I could never hold either of you.

  I’m leaving, and I want you to know this: I’m going away forever. You will never see me again. No one will ever see me. I’ve had enough of living with the hatred I inherited from you. I cannot, I will not go on living in this evil world where childhood is defiled every morning and scorned every evening. I mean my own childhood, you realize. You will also realize that I hold you responsible for it. Why did you abandon me when I was still a little girl? I needed a father. I needed you. You left me, left us. Worse still, you deserted us. Was it for another woman?

  Mother was ill. Did you ever try to help her? She was su fering all the woes of this life. Did you ever try to relieve her pain? She was calling out for you, and you, you were living it up in nightclubs. So she gave way to depression. Does that come as a surprise to you? And her depression turned into despair. How could you not have realized it? At last she decided to die. And you, where were you? Who were you with when she lay dying?

  You were a bad husband, but were you a good father? I thought so at first. So did Sophie. We were naïve; we were blind. You spoiled us; you gave us toys and candies. You would come to us at bedtime and kiss us good night. In the morning, while Mother was still sleeping, you would fix us bread and butter and a bowl of chocolate. You would ask about school and o fer to help with our homework.

  It was all an act. You were faking. It was vile. You deceived us. It took us a while to catch on. Then Mother explained it to us. You’re a monster of evil. You hurt those who love you. Mother wanted to help you forget the horrors of your past and to enjoy peace and happiness. She loved you to distraction. She would have made any sacrifice for you. It was because of you that she distanced herself from her own parents. She hardly ever saw them. But you, you married her for her money, and to do her harm, to torment her. You never loved her. You were incapable of love then, and no doubt you still are. The women you love in your heart of hearts all belong to your past. They’re all dead.

  Sophie and I are alive. You resent us for being young and living, and devoted to the memory of our mother. And for wanting to enjoy the future that awaits us. I’ve had enough, I tell you.

  That is why I am going to join Mother.

  Your daughter, Katya

  Gamaliel then read the second letter, which he had received three years later.

  Dear Father,

  I’m nineteen and I’m writing you from my ashram. I owe you that much. After all, for better and especially for worse, I am your daughter. This letter will be my last sign of life. Do not answer it.

  They must have informed you on the day it happened, or a little later. I don’t know just when. No doubt it was your pal Bolek who, thanks to his connections, could give you the news. You telephoned our grandparents; they refused to accept the call. Grandmother forbade any communication with you. In short, three years ago, Katya tried to commit suicide. Like Mother. But poor Katya was luckier; the gods were kind to her. They were able to save her at the last minute. She was taken first to a hospital, then to a special private clinic. The family provides for her. She is well cared for, still in therapy, and always angry. Angry at me because I love her. Angry at the doctors, at the other patients, at the sun for being too bright, at the night for being too dark. Just angry at life. And angry most of all at you, who gave her this life. She continues to hate you. She’s consumed with it. Why isn’t there a cure for hatred? A pill, an injection? I wonder if our neighbors did right to call the ambulance.

  You did us a lot of harm. You drove Mother to suicide, Katya to madness, and me to resignation.

  Do you know what frightens me the most, even now? It’s the knowledge that I am your daughter. I carry your seed. I have in me your destructive evil.

  I do not say that you were never good to us, because you were. You never punished or struck us; we never lacked for presents. Were you being sincere when you kissed us, when you took us to play in the Luxembourg Gardens? If so, your sincerity was only superficial, artificial; you used it to conceal the dark forces inside you. Like Katya, I could sense those forces stirring, sometimes without reason or excuse, in the middle of a sentence or even a kiss. Thus I am at a loss to tell you the immediate, tangible reasons Katya and I parted from you. Ask me what we hold against you—what you did or said—and I could find nothing to tell you. It’s a feeling we had. We weren’t aware of
it ourselves. It was Mother who opened our eyes. For her, it was something else. She gave you so much, and you, you made her life a hell she could escape only into death.