Although her eldest daughter was her confidante, on that day Anita did not want Elena to come with her to the government offices.
―Stay at home,‖ she said, ―because I've got a lot to do and you'll be bored.‖
―I don't want to stay alone, Mommy,‖ Elena had cried. ―Why don't you take me?‖ Elena found it odd when her mother, before leaving on her errands, did her hair and surreptitiously put on some perfume.
Elena was left in an old house in the Warsaw ghetto that belonged to Aunt Fruncha, who used to rent rooms to her out-of-town relatives. That day, no one else was at home, because all the boarders were looking for a job in the Jewish shops. Not that the merchants were hiring; industrialization was wiping out small businesses and Jews had found only a niche in the consumer goods sector, which was the most fragile in economic downturns.
―It's better to at least look for work than to stay at home doing nothing,‖ said a cousin before setting off, down to her last few pennies, on another job hunt.
Fruncha, who charged for room and board, always wished them all luck, since, as she reminded her relatives, they owed her three months in back rent. ―A z och un vay16 No one pays! I have to beg for the rent, as if I were asking them for a favor! You'll be sorry when you find my putrefying corpse, a victim of starvation!‖
The notion of children's rights had not yet come to Poland. Minors were treated like little adults, who had to help with work and with household chores and who could be left to fend for themselves while grownups were busy elsewhere. But Elena had never been alone in another house, much less in a strange city. The premises were full of dark rooms and closed doors, behind which dwelt the ghosts of relatives who had died meshugeh, mad, orehman, in misery and abandonment, or by their own hand.
―Don't go in there. We haven't opened that door since my husband killed himself in there with a gun,‖ Aunt Fruncha had said. It made Elena wonder if the body, or at least the skeleton, was still in the room.
The only décor in the whole house was the menorah for the Sabbath and a mirror into which Elena now looked at her reflection, far steadier and clearer than that she would later see in the waters of the North Sea. Was she pretty? She would never know because, although she could look at mirrors, she was never able to see herself; it was always someone else, even then, who would stare into her eyes. Not that her beauty was a matter of taste. She was lovely. Her skin was clear, with just a tinge of olive. Her eyes, tender and intelligent, disconcerting sometimes, were loving and furious at the same time. Her mouth was sensual, 16 Tough Luck!
24
her nose long and symmetrical. The black hair was wavy and fine like silk. She would attract people's stares until the day of her death, but she was never aware of her own beauty.
―Mirrors don't tell the truth,‖ she would say. ―They fool us, show us things as they are not.
We cannot trust them.‖ Years later, a mirror would show her that she was wrong.
Elena's features were not common among Polish Jews. She had inherited them from her father, David. According to the family legends, the Sikoras came from Itil, capital of the Khazar Empire, a Jewish kingdom that disappeared from the map. According to some historians, due to landslides into the Caspian Sea, the remains of the city lie under the shifting waters. The Khazars descended, among others, from the Oguric Turks, who came from Central Asia. The kingdom enjoyed independence for 800 years, between the 5th and 13th centuries. The Khazar Empire established an important commercial route between Asia and Europe, although this was not recorded in the history books. What made it stand out was that its rulers, in the year 740, converted to Judaism. The Kagan, their king, apparently chose this course as a way of neutralizing the pressures of his neighbors, the Byzantine Empire, which was Christian and the Muslim Caliphate. He was then able to play the role of a neutral mediator between the creeds.
According to a legend her father told, the Khazars became Jews in a fittingly Solomonic way. In letters written to Jasdai Ibn Shaprut, physician and minister to Abderam III, Caliph of Cordoba, the Khazar monarch reported that an angel had come to King Boulan, ruler of the Togarmi, their ancestors and brought word from the One True God that if he abandoned idolatry and worshipped Him, he and his people would triumph and prosper. But which of the three major monotheistic creeds was he to choose? Since the king was wise and was courted by both Christians and Muslims, he decided to hold a learned debate about which religion was the better one. However, the representatives of each faith defended his own at the expense of the others. In the end, the king went to the Muslim delegates and asked,
―Which is a better religion, that of the Israelites or that of the Christians?‖
―That of the Israelites is preferable,‖ said the cadi. He then talked to the Christian faithful and asked, ―Which religion is better, that of the Muslims or that of the Israelites?‖
―That of the Israelites,‖ said the priest.
The king then said, ―You both admit that the religion of the Israelites is better and truer, so I choose the faith of Abraham.‖
Anita was not very sure of the veracity of this legend. According to her version, the Khazar rulers were tired of war and conquest and wanted a faith that would provide them with the greatest ease and tranquility. The wise king went to the Muslims and asked them, ―How do you treat your women?‖ ―We buy them by the dozen and we keep them in a harem,‖ said the Muslim cadi. Then the king went to the Christians with the same question.
25
―Women are temptresses sent by the Devil. We put chastity belts on them, so they do not put horns on us.‖
But the rabbi said: ―We send them down to the shop so they can work while we spend all day discussing grave religious matters.‖ The choice was clear.
―Khazaria converted to Judaism and ever since we poor women have had to work hard while those good-for-nothing Turks loaf to their heart's content,‖ said Anita.
The history teacher confirmed that many Khazars had converted to Judaism, although the kingdom was tolerant of all three religions. With the loss of independence at the hands of the Russians, Khazars had to convert again or migrate. Many fled to the West, particularly to Poland, where they blended with Western Jews and lost their language, identity and customs, but not their faith. Nor did they lose their beauty, which made their women,(and possibly their men), all the rage in the courts of Byzantium and Baghdad.
Not that Elena was thinking about any of this while she wandered timidly through her aunt's house. In room after room, the armchairs and sofas were old and dark, as if they were sponges that could somehow suck in shadows, never to release one. The odd item of furniture might have been in good condition, but the upholstery of most was full of patches, when not rent outright. Some of the rips in the fabric seemed long enough to be able to swallow not only a comb but also a person. In the village, they used to say that armchairs would swallow children if they misbehaved. Elena never put her toches17 on one; like many Jews, she never used the living-room furniture. Years later, she would think that suffering had reached such a point in Poland at that time that the furniture started swallowing families whole and, later, all her people. Maybe the Jews who had disappeared were still trapped in old sofas and chairs that are now decorating Christian living rooms. Rather than sit on an armchair, possibly hurting the children who had fallen in, she stood and looked at the pictures on the wall, mostly photographs of old relatives who frightened Elena with their long beards, dark clothes and sad eyes. Long afterward, a cousin would tell her that the faces of horror shown by the Polish Jews in those pictures were due to the novelty of the invention and its as-yet-unknown effects upon the captured soul. Perhaps, facing a blinding flash for the first time, they had a hunch of what would be their destiny.
The people in the photographs had adopted a solemn pose, if not downright rigid and brittle and the way they stared directly at the lens created in the viewer the impression of engaging in dialogue with them. One of the pictures was of her father and mother; they did not smile, nor did they hold hands nor touch in any other way.
17 Buttocks
26
Elena felt as if Anita were saying to her, ―What are you staring at, you silly girl? Are you shocked by how young I look? It is the fault of this man that my life has been so unhappy. I have done nothing but work and age, while he had idled away, reading the Talmud.‖
Her father defended himself. ―If I'd had a chance to examine this shrew more carefully before consenting to the shidduch, I would have moved to Siberia or starved to death instead.
Living with her has been as pleasant as getting a summons from the Holy Inquisition on a day when they were in a particularly bad mood.‖
Dizzied by this imaginary exchange, Elena chose to look at the other photographs in the hope that they might be less antagonistic. One portrayed Samuel, the uncle who had committed suicide. He was attractive, with fleshy lips that seemed to smack with an unfulfilled and yet irresistible desire. ―He killed himself when he realized that he could not get into the United States,‖ her aunt had told her.
―Why would he kill himself for a country?‖ Elena had asked.
― Meshugener kop,‖18 the aunt had muttered under her breath, before explaining that Samuel had a very dear friend who moved to Chicago. When he realized that he would not be able to rejoin his friend, he had shot himself. ―You should know that there are men who become too fond of other men and fortunately leave us women in peace,‖ she said. ―Those who kill themselves must be buried far away from their loved ones, as punishment, outside the cemetery wall. Their souls will never know rest.‖
The uncle now seemed to sneer at this version of events. ―Yes, I did kill myself. But there's one thing that damn fool of a wife didn't tell you. I did it because I was fed up with her and the whole family. My only hope was to get a visa and the Americans refused to give me one.
Now I wander this filthy house like a dybbuk19, hearing Fruncha complaining all the time.
Isn't that punishment enough for a thousand sins?‖
―What you're not saying is that you killed yourself for love,‖ said the photograph of a fat woman whose terrified face reminded Elena of her favorite painting, The Bulgars Fleeing from the Vaccine, of unknown author. ―You don't have to blame my sister Fruncha for your tragedy. It was your fault, for being a degenerate.‖
A shout came from the photograph of Samuel's parents. ― Oy Gevalt!‖20 How can a relative throw filth at a mother's finest blossom? Samuel was the most saintly and good son that I had. How dare you tell family indiscretions to a stranger?‖
18 Crazy
19 Wondering Spirit
20 What a calamity!
27
The father had to intervene. ―Shmulke,‖ he said, addressing Samuel in Yiddish, ―Why don't you stop fighting with your sister-in-law. You know I never approved of your relationship, or your way of being. But now we are all dead, so why mortify each other?‖
―But Father,‖ said Samuel, ―you never gave a damn about my life. You always preferred my sisters. And now you come and tell me off? If I loved Lazarus, it was because he was everything to me that you were not.‖
― Oy! Now it turns out that it was your father's fault that you were the way you were,‖ said the sister-in-law. ―You should be ashamed of yourself. You should beg for forgiveness.‖
Samuel, in desperation, turned to Elena. ―Do you think I should repent of my love for Lazarus, when it was the most beautiful thing I ever had in my life?‖
―No, Samuel. If you loved him, I think you did the right thing,‖ the child said.
Elena fled the quarreling photographs and sought refuge in the kitchen, the least interesting room in the house for any wandering ghosts, since they no longer needed to eat. However, a scratching sound revealed that she was not alone and with chattering teeth she wondered if the dybbuk would try to steal her body. Wasn't she going to America, the place Samuel had dreamed of, the place where his lover lived? What would happen to her, if evicted from her body by a dead uncle? Would she be forced to remain in this gloomy house forever, wandering the halls, arguing with old photographs?
An enormous rat jumped from the cupboard and fell on her. Elena collapsed on the floor, unable to rise because her legs would not respond, feeling the rat crawling over her a few times in search of breadcrumbs.
Although the economy was in bad shape, as shown by the many occupants of the house who were out of work, people had not stopped multiplying and, with them, waste and rodents. In every home there were as many rats as humans, if not more. In Elena's town, some said that every Hebrew soul in this land of misery has a rat as companion; surely this was Samuel's, she thought.
Elena was able to see the impact of reproduction, something she had learned from her moreh21. The teacher had explained to her that since the end of the 19th century, European cities had experienced unparalleled demographic growth. Jews, who had become urbanized around that time, benefited from this development. The high birthrate could be seen from the fact that the Jewish population had grown fivefold in a single century.
21 Teacher
28
The rats had also proliferated and she had become her latest victim. Their powers of adaptation were phenomenal. They did not care about the heat or the cold. When there was no bread in the pantry, they ate timber, books and paintings. Sometimes, like Herod, they devoured small children. In other times, they attacked in packs, in what came to be known as pogroms. When they were hungry, their ferocity exceeded Goliath's. However, the Jews had lost their Davids and had no way of defending themselves.
Although several doctors examined her over the next two years, no one was able to find out the cause of the paralysis.
―She must have had a great fright that prompted an attack of hysteria,‖ said one.
―If you have the money, take her to Warsaw to see Dr. Wallenstein; he cures using hypnosis,‖ another recommended.
Some tried to make her regain her sensations with massage, others with needles. She was finally cured when a physician experimented on her with a new method, developed in New York, involving electrical discharges. The girl did not know if what healed her was the new invention or the stories she heard from the doctor about life in America.
―The rats are under control in New York,‖ the physician said. ―Unlike in Europe, they live in the sewers and the subway tunnels. When they come out, the public is more aware of the need to exterminate them, for hygienic reasons.‖
Later, Elena would write in her diary:
My paralysis had to do with the coming trip. I knew that my mother was downtown, arranging the paperwork for us to leave. Perhaps my reaction was to show my apprehension by becoming immobilized. What I never imagined was that soon all our people would be similarly paralyzed.
Nacht falt tsu.22
22 Night fell
29
II
The paralysis was corrected just in time. Elena, like the rest of her generation, was caught between two worlds, unable to live fully in either one. Her Hebrew community was immersed in a series of millenary traditions, some of them opposed to the modern world.
Rabbinical thinking had not stopped going in circles since the Middle Ages, while Christian thinking had been updated since the Enlightenment. Science, industry and technology were of increasing importance, but most Jews did not practice any of them. Marriages were still being arranged, while romantic love conquered the souls of the Christians. Food was ruled by ancient dietary laws, some of them out of touch with the new awareness of hygiene and the role of microbes and bacteria. Social life was divided by gender, at a time when integration was growing in Europe. Jewish girls and boys, for instance, were treated as if they belonged to different races: the benefits went to the latter, domestic obligations to the former. In a country engaged in modernization, this arrangement became increasingly intolerable.
Hebrew women participated in all aspects of economic and social life and did not want to be left out when it came to education. Moreover, religion told the Israelites that they were the Chosen People, while reality showed them to be impoverished, marginalized and old-fashioned. They had been left behind, content with pre-Capitalist occupations on their way to extinction. Rabbis defended community union above everything, while capitalism placed the rich and the poor, regardless of race or religion, in opposite classes. Civilized Poland was also ferociously antidemocratic and anti-Semitic. The few crumbs of ―advanced‖ thinking flung at the Jews were contaminated with the deepest hate. The host country, like the evil stepmother in the Cinderella fairy tale, did not want them. No matter how European they tried to appear, even more nationalistic than natives, to the Poles they would always be enemies. The ―Enlightenment‖ in Poland came in wolf's clothing; it was not meant to benefit them. Elena's people did not know what step to take. Some were immobilized by fear, while others fled in time.
The girl attended two schools, and at each she learned a different reality. In the morning she attended cheder 23, run by the town's rabbi and a moreh of Jewish history. Girls were not welcome and they had not been for several millennia: Rabbis kept them ignorant. But Anita had decided to fight for Elena's admission.
At first, the rabbi rejected the notion outright.
―The Talmud says that a woman is exempt from education,‖ he said.
But Elena's mother was not one to give up easily. ―If you don't let her in, I'll tell everyone that you and my brother Samuel used to sleep together,‖ she said.
―I'll let her participate as an invited guest, not a full participant, but let's not make too much noise about it. Otherwise, other girls will want to participate and we'd have a revolution on our hands.‖
23 Jewish Elementary School
30
Her mother later told Elena, ―You have as much right to learn as anyone else. If any boy says something nasty to you, kick him in the baitsim. ‖
The school was only a dark room in the rabbi's house, with long benches and a soul that was harder than the soul of Pharaoh. Her moreh had a white beard and wore an invariably black Caftan. ―He was a very religious man, wise like no one and a scholar of the labyrinths of the Talmud,‖ she would write later in her journal. But she never liked him. ―He has a prohibition for everything and he never gives me a good reason.‖ She would often ask him where in the Torah it said that women should not be educated.
―Nowhere in particular,‖ the rabbi replied, ―but where have you read that Sarah or Rebecca went to school?‖
In the afternoons, Elena attended public school. Over more than 300 students attended the facilities. The building was wide and had twenty classrooms. Its chairs and chalkboards were much better than the ones in the cheder. Teaching was carried out in Polish. They studied everything, from history to grammar, not to mention mathematics, which she enjoyed.
Teachers were more modern, to the extent that they sought causes for any given effect, instead of going back to laws written several thousand years ago. But that did not preserve them from fanaticism. The history teacher accused the Jews of having assisted Germany in annexing Poland. ―When they invaded us, they came from Germany,‖ he said. ―They speak similar languages and their goal is to turn us into slaves.‖
At the cheder, the history teacher said it was not so. Most of the Hebrews, he claimed, had been invited into Poland. In the 16th century, the spiritual and demographic center of Judaism had shifted from Western to Eastern Europe, he said. In the 1930s, three million Jews turned Poland into the world's center for Jews. The teacher explained that the invitation came about in the 9th century when Prince Popiel, the sovereign of Poland, died. His subjects gathered in Krushvica, the old capital, to elect his successor. But the disputes were acrimonious and no consensus could be found. As a way of finishing the debate, the participants agreed to proclaim as king the first man to walk into the village. It turned out to be Abraham Projovnik, a Jew. Soon captured by the security forces, he was forcibly crowned as king of the Christians. He rejected the honor and told them that if they were going to choose a ruler, they should consider a wise Pole named Piast.‖ Nevertheless, he was let to stay and bring his fellow Jews.
The child's mother, as always, had a different version. Projovnik did not want to become king of the Christian Poles because the kingdom was in serious debt and its trade balance did not look good at the moment. ―I have enough tzores,‖24 he thought. Accordingly, he looked for the biggest fool of all to take over the job. ―Since all wise men, including your father, are more concerned with the afterlife than with the here and now, it turned out that he was the greatest fool of all, so he had to accept the position,‖ her mother told her.
24 Miseries
31
Elena knew that not all Polish Jews had come from Germany, as attested by her own olive skin and dark hair, like those of the other Sikoras who claimed to be Khazars. However, it was equally plain that the ancestors of most of the Hebrews in Poland had migrated from Germanic territory. Her teacher of Jewish history attributed the resettlement to the growing anti-Semitism promoted from the Crusades onward, well into the 15th century. Another explanation was the need in Poland and other Eastern European nations for tradesmen and artisans to contribute to economic development. The incorporation of Poland into the Catholic Church,‖ explained the teacher, ―had increased trade with the West, attracting a great number of merchants, many of them Jewish.
The history teacher at the Christian school had another interpretation. Poland's poor economic development had forced the nobles to promote the immigration of a class ―that could help them exploit the serfs. This position of intermediaries had been one of the chief causes of anti-Semitism. The Jews allied themselves with the nobles to collect their taxes. So closely did they collaborate that in some Christian villages, the nobles handed over the keys to the church to the Jews, with the warning that the temple should not be reopened until all fiscal debts had been settled.‖
Elena was one of the first in her village to attend public school. It was kind of an achievement, considering that the educational system was so anti-Semitic that in 1841, out of half a million Jews, only 2,500 went to non-Jewish schools. After World War I, opportunities increased when Poland acknowledged the equal rights of minorities. However, not all Poles agreed. Years later, she wrote in her journal: It was a shock to me, a surprise, to learn that I was not equal to the other children, that I had absolutely no rights in that country, that I was “a stranger and a sojourner.” They often made us [Jewish students] feel that way. We were always afraid. When we were leaving school, for instance, someone might throw a rock at us. We did not know exactly who had thrown it, but we knew it was a Christian. They were always shouting at us to leave Poland, to move back to Palestine, where we belonged. It was very difficult to accept it. We felt hostile, even rebellious, but we could not show it. We were too small and too weak; we could not defend ourselves, only resist.
The girl, however, was aware that not all teachers were anti-Semites. The mathematics teacher was impressed both by her beauty and her skill with numbers. ―How many is 130
divided by 7?‖ he would ask and Elena would reply a few seconds later, ―18.57.‖ ―I don't know how you do it, Elena. If I were Jewish I would marry you, for your beauty and your intelligence.‖
―There's nothing special about it,‖ she would say. ―When you're poor, you need to know your arithmetic.‖
―What would you like to study when you're older?‖
32
―I'd like to be a historian, but I don't think I'll have the money to go beyond this classroom.‖
Nor did she hope to marry well, since the poor do not attract suitors.
In spite of her age, Elena was aware that hostility towards them had an economic basis. For Polish peasants, the administrator, the innkeeper, or the tax collector was the personification of exploitation and Jews played many of these roles. Anita, however, thought that Poland was more hospitable than other countries. She told Elena, for instance, that it was even worse in Ukraine. There, in 1569, the Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic peasants had become the serfs of the Polish nobility, who were Roman Catholics. The peasants hated the Poles as much as the Jews who sometimes acted as their intermediaries and in 1648 they rose up and carried out the worst massacre until World War II.
Her mother was convinced that both Poles and Jews suffered at the hands of the Ukrainians, sometimes fighting jointly against the common enemy. On other occasions, however, the Polish nobles saved their own skin by sacrificing their weaker allies. But Anita said it was common among all nations: when it came to choosing between the welfare of your own people and that of others, you would choose the former. In spite of the prevailing anti-Semitism, she thought that for many centuries Poland was a haven of tolerance for their people. The kingdom accepted immigrants during the Christian persecution in Western Europe and granted them rights no other country had been willing to contemplate. In spite of the efforts by the Catholic Church to impose ghettos, distinct ways of dressing and segregated working conditions, the Polish nobility had never agreed to those terms. Hence Jews were able to enjoy such spiritual and political autonomy that they even had their own parliament, the Council of the Four Nations.
Anita explained that when the economic situation was good, the various ethnic and religious groups coexisted without any problems. ―But when the economy deteriorated and the country was divided and conquered in the 18th century, the old allies ran into new difficulties. In some cases, the new masters treated the Hebrews better and thus obtained their support, which the Poles resented. In other cases, the Jews yearned for the return to Polish rule,‖ she sighed.
Elena was aware that the worst anti-Semites were those who obtained some economic benefit. She had gone with her mother one afternoon to visit a Polish woman.
―Mrs. Ursula,‖ said Anita, ―I need you to pay me the money you owe me from last year.
Things are very bad and I barely have enough to eat.‖
The peasant woman was not a bad person. She and Anita had helped each other in the past.
Like many in her social class, she did not know how to read or write and she believed in myths and superstitions. One of them, common among the Polish peasantry, was that Jews were a diabolical race, born blind that needed Christian blood in order to open their eyes.
33
Ursula did not believe such things anymore, but she was going through hard times and it was easier to turn on her Jewish friend than on her Polish creditors.
―You Jews from Hell,‖ said the woman. ―Wasn't it bad enough that you killed Christ? Now you want to crucify me too? Can't you see I have no