Survivors

Claire stumbled on the gravel in the cemetery path. Her black high heels sank in the mud between the stones as she walked past grass-covered mounds and headstones smooth as mirrors.

    A persistent breeze slapped her face. She heard murmuring behind her but couldn’t tell if it was voices or scolding leaves rustling on the oaks along the distant fence.

    “Mom. Mom.” Steven, still gangly at forty, had caught up to her. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.”

    The plots were so short she couldn’t imagine bodies lying under the dirt. She smelled a waft of smoke peculiar to autumn air.

    “I don’t like cemeteries,” she said finally.

    Seven decades in America, and her voice still had a honeyed Yiddish cadence. Every so often someone would ask if she was French, or Russian, maybe? No, she would say, Polish. But that was only a half-truth. A Jew from Poland was a very different thing.

    Claire adored her only son more than life itself. But he was always in a hurry, just like his father, Harry, whom they had just buried here. Steven took her arm and led her out the gate and into the oil-black limousine.   

    A caravan of cars and SUVs followed the limo to the house in West Orange, their headlights a sickly yellow.

    Once inside, no one would let her touch a thing. How ironic, thought Claire, since it was she who had spent the morning directing the caterer and talking to the rabbi about the service.

    “You’re doing too much,” her daughter, Karin, had admonished her. But Claire had to keep moving; who else would take care of things?

    Now Claire sat on the brocade sofa in the living room, a slim figure in black. Flanked by women friends, she held hands with well-wishers who came and went to what seemed like a bell she couldn’t hear. She smiled because smiling had always come easily to her.

    At seventy-four, Claire was still attractive. She dressed well and wore the jewelry her husband had bought her for every occasion he could. Her skin was smooth over her angular cheeks. Her short, brown hair was stylish, if wispy in front, and her large, hazel eyes were sinking under her thinning brows.

    Claire soon realized she didn’t have to say a word; then she noticed she didn’t have to listen either. She saw mouths moving and heard whispers, like the leaves rustling at the cemetery. They were all watching her, the way Karin had been eyeing her for days, ever since Harry’s heart had seized on the way to the hospital.

    My God, she realized, sitting on the sofa, they were waiting for her to cry.

    “It was a nice service, Grandma Claire. Grandpa Harry would have been pleased.” Joann, Steven’s wife, kneeled on the carpet in front of her, her blue eyes turned upward, like a supplicant. Joann had a talent for saying the right thing the wrong way that endeared her to Claire and annoyed Karin no end.

    “Thank you, Joann,” Claire said. Harry wouldn’t have liked the service, she knew, imagining his large, ruddy face. He would have sat back, arms folded, and scoffed at the rabbi. He would have said the spread cost too much, too, but she would have done it anyway.

    “I think I’d like to lie down,” she said suddenly. A path cleared before her. Like a widowed queen, she waved aside helping hands and made her way, unsteady on her high heels, to her bedroom. Leaving the door ajar, she lay on the bedspread, dry-eyed, and listened to the murmur of voices.

    The orange numerals on her bedside alarm clock read “9:40” when Claire started awake. She looked frantically for a light source until she saw the aura of the hall light around the door. Everyone was finally gone, except for Karin, who was staying for the week in her old bedroom.

    Claire was confused to hear mumbling by her ear. The radio had come on. A woman’s scratchy voice was talking about Palestinians. She was interrupted by a male voice so sonorous it thumped with Claire’s heart until she fell back to sleep.

    The next morning, Claire felt so heavy she could barely get out of bed. When Karin saw her figure framed in the kitchen doorway, she said, “That’s it. I’m calling the doctor today.”

    “I am not taking tranquilizers.” Claire sighed softly and sat on the edge of a stool at the counter.

    “They’re not tranquilizers. They’re antidepressants,” Karin said. “And there’s nothing wrong with them. I’ve taken them.” Claire raised an eyebrow.

    “Listen, don’t argue, Mom,” Karin said, pouring her a cup of coffee. Almost as tall as her brother, Karin had her mother’s gaunt cheekbones, but they gave her a stern look, at least to Claire. As usual when they talked, Karin spoke coolly and deliberately, as if she were keeping shut a steaming cauldron.

    “You just want to dope me up,” Claire said.

    Karin’s mouth fell open. Claire, too, couldn’t believe she’d said that, but she wasn’t going to apologize. She held her cup close to her lips and listened as Karin talked about plans for the day. There would be more visitors, she said, but hopefully they would dwindle as the week of shiva went on.

    Then the dreams started.

    Claire hadn’t dreamt for years and years—not since the children were little and she would be jolted awake by nightmares. Harry would comfort her with a hug then punch his pillow and fall back to sleep, while she lay wide-eyed in the darkness.

    This night, one night after the funeral, Claire dreamt she was a child again, in their Warsaw apartment above the courtyard. In her dream, everyone she knew was crowded into the front sitting room, neighbors and relatives and her best friend, Brina. Suddenly, someone told them to shush. They heard dogs barking outside then the stomping of soldiers’ boots in the hallway. Claire realized her father wasn’t with them in the room. She leaned out the window just as the soldiers broke down the door. In relief, she waved to her father in the courtyard. He waved back and disappeared into the building, and she realized in horror that she had forgotten to warn him to run away.

    Claire woke up panting. The hall was black. The only light, other than the alarm clock, was a pale line under the window shade. She touched her breastbone under her nightgown and felt her heart pounding. Father’s image lingered in the room, so vivid she felt as if she could wish him into life.

    Claire was fifteen in 1948, when her father killed himself. Josef Brodsky had never adapted to life in America. When he brought Claire and her mother, Rose, to New Jersey in 1938, they had only a cousin to greet them. Josef had been a book publisher in Warsaw; in Newark, he worked in a shoe factory owned by his cousin, who had sponsored Josef for his visa into America.

    Josef had never been a religious man, and he refused to start going to synagogue now, although it was her mother’s social outlet. He read three newspapers a day, holding them like a tent over the dinner table at breakfast and at dinner. He ranted against Communism but never talked about the war. He had escaped the Nazis, and he killed himself three years after the war ended, on the anniversary of the day they left Warsaw. Claire thought she understood why. She just always wondered where he got the gun.

    Her mother had shriveled up after that. Claire would lie in bed, feigning sleep, as her mother, Rose, uttered audible laments in Yiddish in the kitchen. Claire was appalled. She would cover her ears, turn on the radio, and tell herself it wasn’t her fault.

                                                                    *

    One week after Harry’s funeral, several of Claire’s friends called to invite her to lunch.

    “They’re being nice. They care about you,” Karin said when her mother said she wasn’t going.

    “I’m not going to lunch just to make them feel better,” Claire said and was immediately sorry.

    Claire watched TV, read, and listened to the radio. Karin took her to her hairdresser. Claire hadn’t noticed her silver roots were growing out, or that her eyebrows were white without pencil. She eventually realized that she had been wearing the same sweater and slacks for three days and was surprised that she didn’t care.

    Claire was now dreaming every night, and she woke up more tired than at bedtime. She missed Harry’s body next to hers; his heaviness had been a comfort, even when they weren’t touching.  

    Joann brought the boys over to say goodbye. Steven had already flown home to Chicago for work. Joann was staying with her parents in Highland Park and was flying home with the boys the next day.

    “Grandma Claire, Kevin wanted to know if he could ask you a question. I told him not to bother you, but I hoped you wouldn’t mind,” Joann said.

    These were the grandchildren Claire never saw. She should talk to them now, when she had the chance, she thought.  

    “Certainly,” Claire said, with a smile.

    “Why do you talk like that?” Kevin, who was eight, spoke smartly, without the shyness Claire found becoming in a child.

    “I came from Poland. That’s in Europe,” she added to be helpful.

    “Did I come from Poland, too?” He sounded pleased.

    “No, dear, you were born in America, like your father.”

    “When did you come to America?”

    Joann threw her a worried look, but Claire gently waved her off. “That would be after the war.”

    “Which war?” asked his younger brother, Kyle, who had his mother’s blue eyes.

    “World War Two, dummy. The one with the Nazis.” Kevin shoved him, and Kyle started to cry.

    Claire realized with a jolt that her grandsons knew nothing about her. Had Steven told them anything? And what did he know?  She noticed her daughter-in-law’s eyes getting bigger.

    “You should write all this down,” Joann said.

    “What should I write down? I don’t have anything to talk about.” Claire smiled, trying to be kindly. “We got out before it began. My father saved us.” She paused. “I’m the only one left.”  

    “I’m so glad you survived,” Joann said, her eyes moist.

    Claire flinched. Why couldn’t she explain? How, even after a lifetime, she didn’t belong here, and she didn’t belong there. She was like the mermaid who had pleaded for legs to stay on a foreign shore.

    Her mother-in-law, of all people, had seen through her. That awful woman had never let Claire forget that she was a “greener,” a newcomer to America—as if her own parents had landed on Plymouth Rock and not at Ellis Island.

    That night, Claire lay in bed, not sure if she was asleep or awake. When she heard the sound of distant morning traffic, relief rushed through her veins. It was morning; she was safe. Her body was awake, yet she couldn’t stop her mind as it took her back to the day they fled Warsaw for the port of Gdansk, ahead of the Nazi occupation, to sail to America.

    It was December 20, 1938. The train station in Warsaw was still under construction, and they had trouble finding the right track. She remembered the trains screaming as they lumbered into the station, the smelly smoke, and the babble of voices. The station was crowded with families catching trains east and west, some even with a destination in mind. They wore winter coats over layers of clothing and dragged children even smaller than she. They carried bags tied with rope—candlesticks and pot handles poking through.

    Her father walked fast. He held her hand so tightly it hurt. In her free hand, she gripped the small, stuffed bear Brina had given her as a going-away gift; it was Brina’s favorite toy. Her mother’s face was pale; to Claire, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. They had left so hurriedly that her mother barely had time to pack. They couldn’t find the cat, who often disappeared for days in the courtyard.

    “What if Kitty comes home?” Claire now whined as she struggled to keep up with her father.  

    “Mach schnell,” her father hissed at her. Without warning, he stopped, dropped her hand, and pinched her cheek.

    “Don’t you know anything?” he said. She started to nod, but before she could breathe, he grabbed her hand and pressed back into the crowd as Brina’s bear disappeared underfoot.

    Brina.

    Claire bolted up in bed. As the name flashed through her mind, the rest of her memory dissolved. Brina. Of course, she thought.

    Claire pushed away the down quilt and touched her bare feet to the carpeted floor. Groping for banisters, she climbed the stairs to Steven’s old room in the attic.

    She felt like a burglar in her own house. Under the slanted roof, the former bedroom’s closet held a stash of Harry’s old suits, board games, and nubbly blankets. In the pale light of the single window, she yanked shoeboxes down from a shelf.

    Dust flecks fell in her eyes. The last box toppled over and showered its contents to the floor. She knelt and swept them into a pile. Her fingers flicked through letters and photographs until she found an airmail envelope addressed in a delicate European scrawl and postmarked 1980.

    Claire unfolded the onionskin letter inside. Of course, she realized with a slight chuckle, Brina had written in Yiddish. Claire ran her finger over the fading ink. She could barely make out the words in the dim light, but she knew what they said. Brina was married and had two children. She had survived the war in Poland and now lived in Jerusalem.

    Claire had written back, in Yiddish, but to this day had never gotten an answer.

    She had wanted to visit back then, but Harry said no. “It’s not the money. I’ll take you to Florida instead.” And he had, many times. Israel wasn’t safe, he had insisted, and they didn’t have family there anyway. But she had Brina, she had thought.

    That morning, Karin called from her real estate office as she did every day. She had nothing new to say, and Claire held her tongue until her daughter was about to hang up.

    “I’ve decided to go to Israel,” Claire announced. She noted, with some satisfaction, that she had stunned Karin.

    “You can’t go to Israel, Mom. It’s too dangerous. Especially now, with Hamas. They could still blow up a bus, you know.”

    “So, I won’t take a bus.”

    “Very funny,” Karin said, almost sadly. “Did you want to take a tour?”

    Before Claire could answer, she said, “Because you can’t go alone, and I can’t go with you. I just took a week off.”

    “Yes, I know. For the funeral.”

    Having shamed Karin into silence, Claire softened. “It’s okay, dear. I’ll find a tour if it makes you feel better.”

    Her daughter softened, too. “If you want to take a trip, Mom, wait till January, and I’ll take some time off. We can go to Paris, or London to see some plays. You shouldn’t be traveling by yourself. And you don’t know anyone there.” Harry’s old argument.

    “But I do,” Claire stated.

    “We have family in Israel? Since when?”

    “No, not family. Friends. A friend.”

    “Who?” Karin said suspiciously.

    “If you must know, she’s a girlfriend, a girl I went to school with.” Claire chose her words carefully.

    “In Poland? Really? You never told me about her.”

    “So? That means she doesn’t exist?”

    “Where does she live?”

    “In Jerusalem.”

    “Oh God,” Karin gasped.

    “It will be all right,” Claire said and hung up.

     Karin didn’t give up, but Claire hadn’t expected her to. Karin insisted Claire write first to see if Brina’s address was still good, or if she was even alive. Claire had to admit it was a good idea. She wrote a brief letter and waited three weeks. There was no answer, but that didn’t matter. Claire was still going.

    She called the travel agent whom she and Harry had used for the Caribbean cruise on their fortieth anniversary. “Four days in Jerusalem with accommodations in a nice hotel in the modern sector,” said the pleasant but efficient voice on the phone. Did she want to stop over in Paris or Rome, make a trip of it?  How about an Elderhostel tour? No, said Claire. Just Israel.

    Her flight was scheduled for a Thursday. Karin drove her to the Newark airport. She carried only one suitcase; it was too warm for a coat.

    “Indian summer. You think this is hot, wait till you get there,” Karin said.

    Claire let Karin lead her down endless corridors into the gaping waiting area. Families huddled behind towers of luggage. Claire felt an anxiety so raw she was ashamed to look at anyone. She nodded her head like an obedient child as Karin gave her instructions, and she kissed her daughter gently before walking into the steel tube that led to the airplane.

    Claire had trouble picturing Brina, she realized as she waited for the plane to strain away from the runway. She closed her eyes as it rumbled forward. Deafened by the noise, she gave in to the inevitability of upward motion.

                                                                    *

     They call it Jerusalem of Gold. Beyond the Temple Mount run ancient stone walls and buildings bleached by the sun. Claire was overwhelmed by the smell of car exhaust and the maze of tunnel-like streets. Soldiers were everywhere: virile young men with skin darker than their beige uniforms and machine guns strapped over their shoulders.

    Claire felt like she had been dropped on the moon. For the first time since she had conceived of this trip, she worried that all she had was a piece of paper with an address.

    She settled into her hotel room and spent one surprisingly restful night. The next morning, she bought a street map in English at her hotel. The only Hebrew she knew was from the prayer book, but she had been assured that most people here spoke English.

    She ended up relying on the taxi driver, a large man with a fin-shaped mustache and exaggerated politeness, who seemed to know enough English to do his job.

    The cab followed narrow streets with hovel-like shops. Claire gazed at Hasidic men in shtreimels walking briskly in step. Arab men stood by displays of rugs, the only splash of color on the gray sidewalks.

    Eventually, the streets widened. There were fewer shops as they passed rows of apartment buildings, some of them new construction. Children were everywhere, and rugs were hung over patio railings high above the street.

    The cab pulled in front of a three-story concrete building. A young girl swinging a net shopping bag stopped to stare as Claire stepped out of the cab. Claire’s eyes clung to the driver, and he nodded to the door. She pulled bills and change from her purse and trusted him to count out the fare.

    Claire walked up to the narrow doorway and made out a name in English letters: Bashinsky. It was Brina’s married name. Her heart pounded as she rang the bell. Almost instantly, a girl leaned over the banister and shouted in Hebrew from the top floor.

    Claire stepped back and looked up, her hand shielding her eyes. Before she could think what to say, the girl’s head disappeared. A minute later, the door was opened by a young man with black curls, wearing a soldier’s uniform.

    Were these the children? The grandchildren? Claire wondered. The young man smiled, not unkindly.

    Encouraged, Claire spoke slowly in English. “Shalom. I am looking for Brina Bashinsky. I’ve come from America.” She nodded with each word and hoped she didn’t sound like a mad woman.

    The soldier’s eyebrows shot up at the word “America.” He shrugged apologetically and said, not without charm, in English, “I don’t speak a little.” He stepped aside and Claire hesitated out of politeness before walking ahead of him.

    The apartment was simple. Washed by the light from the balcony, the living room was dominated by a brown sofa and a television set. In the corner, a table was covered with a white linen tablecloth and candlesticks. Of course, she thought. It was Friday, almost Shabbat.

    Children were sprawled on the floor. A woman who looked to be Karin’s age came out of the kitchen. She was dressed in a yellow shirt and black slacks; her wild, black hair was tied back. The woman listened to the soldier explain something as Claire held her breath and controlled the trembling in her knees. She was conscious of the letter in her purse.

    “America?” the woman asked, looking Claire up and down. Claire nodded, then words in Yiddish started to flow out of the recesses of her brain. Her tongue twisted over the syllables, and her throat closed over the guttural letters. 

    The woman’s eyes lit up. Her Yiddish was even more halting than Claire’s. They spoke hesitantly, like children, until the woman thumped her chest with her fist. “Nifterah,” she said in Hebrew, then “Maita. Toit.”

    Dead. Claire lost her balance and stepped backward. The young man caught her with both hands and helped her to the sofa, then left the room. From nowhere, a child brought her a tepid, orange-flavored drink.

    The woman’s name, Claire learned, was Nechama. She was Brina’s daughter; the young soldier was Brina’s grandson. Through a haze, Claire searched the woman’s face but saw no resemblance to Brina. This was an Israeli woman, a sabra, with black eyes and olive skin painted by the sun.

    Nechama was freely mixing her Yiddish with Hebrew, and Claire could no longer understand her. She heard a police siren outside. A plate of fruit with tiny spears appeared on the coffee table. The children stood in a row, staring at her.

    Suddenly, the apartment door opened. The young soldier was back. Behind him was an older man who brushed him aside and strode into the room.

    Tufts of silver hair jutted out from under the yarmulke on his reddened scalp. His blue eyes honed in on Claire’s, and with a jolt she recognized him.

    “Shmuel,” she said, getting up from the sofa. Brina’s brother, the oldest one. She wanted to smile at how the beady blue eyes had outlived the child to abide in this old man’s face.

    The man moved much faster than his stooped shoulders would suggest. He came close to Claire, his jowly, clean-shaven face within a foot of her, and spat.

    Claire was too shocked to touch her face.

    “So, it’s you. I never thought I’d see the Brodskys again. And where is your father?”

    He talked Yiddish far more quickly than Nechama. The young man touched his shoulder, but Shmuel twisted away.

    “My father?” Claire asked, baffled. “He’s dead,” she said then added, because they had known each other long ago, “He killed himself.”

    “Good.”

    Claire could think of only one thing to say. “What happened to Brina?”

    “Farshtayst gornisht? Don’t you know anything?” And he spat again, not at her this time, but to the side, like the old man he was.

    The children had scattered. Claire couldn’t move. Keeping his eyes on her, Shmuel unbuttoned his left shirtsleeve at the wrist and rolled it to the elbow. On his veined forearm were tattooed numbers.

    She felt a grip on her heart. “But Brina.”

    “She, too. She was in Bergen-Belsen. I was in Auschwitz. Our parents died in the ghetto, before they could take them.” He rolled his sleeve down, still watching her.

    “Brina? Bergen-Belsen?”

    “You know why?” Shmuel’s mouth contorted. “Because your father stole our tickets.”

    “What,” Claire said inaudibly.

    “They were our tickets,” he said.

    “What do you mean?” She didn’t know if they were speaking English, Yiddish, or even Hebrew.

    “What do I mean? I’ll tell you what I mean,” Shmuel answered. He took a step toward her. Claire fell back onto the sofa.

    “They were in business together, our father and yours. For some reason, I don’t know why, our tateh owed money to Josef, your father,” he said.

    “Our tateh sold everything to pay him back. But Josef, he wouldn’t take money. No.” Shmuel pointed a finger skyward. “He wanted our tickets to America. He would only take our tickets. Tateh was an honest man. He gave him the tickets. Your father, on the other hand, is a thief. A murderer.”

    Claire struggled to grasp the torrent of words. Why did your father give away the tickets? she wanted to ask. Didn’t he know what awaited you? She wanted to defend her own father, but she didn’t have words.

    Shmuel had apparently spent his anger. He sat down heavily into a chair. Nechama came over and stroked his shoulder. When he looked up, his face was calmer, almost kind.

    “Brina died three years ago, may she rest in peace,” he said. “So you, you’ve come from America?”

    Claire could only shake her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We didn’t know.”

    “No one knew.” Shmuel shrugged wearily. “Who could have known?”

    Claire left soon after that. She declined Nechama’s polite invitation to stay for Shabbat dinner and muttered goodbye. She had no more words, only images. Brina, too, was gone. 

    On the street outside, the heat swallowed her. This wasn’t the sweltering heat of New York or Newark; it was an encasement of dry dust that these people had in their bones.

    Claire had walked for only a few minutes when she heard a loud hissing and looked up. An Egged bus had stopped at a sign. The door opened, and a young, bearded soldier balanced himself on the steps and motioned her on.

    She found an empty seat in the back. The bus rumbled beneath her. She remembered how the train had rumbled when it carried them to the boat in Gdansk. She imagined how the trains had rumbled when they took Brina and Shmuel to the camps.

    She could see nothing through her blurred eyes. No matter how much she wiped them with her hand, they filled again.

    She saw people staring and heard them murmuring. A young woman in jeans opposite her nodded her head. A dark-skinned woman enveloped in a black scarf offered her a handkerchief, as a child stared from behind her knee.

    They were used to crying in the streets here. They expected it. If you survived, you mourned. Claire was a survivor, too.

    With a shudder of release, she covered her face with the stranger’s handkerchief and wept.