Jewels and Ashes Read online

  Buklinski is running ahead, dragging me by the arm. ‘No one knows Bialystok as well as I do’, he repeats for at least the fifth time this morning. In motion Buklinski is a tubby dynamo, fuelled by nervous energy and raw suspicion, trotting on his stout little legs. His stomach, the receptacle for a thousand-and-one meals of gefilte fish washed down by vodka, protrudes and bounces as he drives himself along. Head held high, hooded eyes squinting in the sun, nose sniffing the air, Buklinski nears the streets of the Chanaykes.

  ‘This is my territory, Ulitza Krakowska. Here I was born. In 1919.’ His words tumble out, breathless, between gulps of air. His fingers stab at the empty space where his house once stood. The Chanaykes is an amalgam of weed-strewn clearings, cobblestoned streets, and rheumatic timber cottages. We are on home turf, and Buklinski is a weather vane registering every slight shift in the atmosphere. His arms swing in one direction, then in another, a stream of anecdotes flowing from his fingers. ‘That was a bordello’, he exclaims. ‘The boss lived upstairs, there, in the garret. I often saw his face poking out of that window, eyeing the customers who used to sneak in through that wooden gate. Fifty groshen it cost for doing it standing up, and one whole zloty for doing it lying down.’

  Buklinski is unable to keep still. It is as if the streets are pursuing him and that, if he were to stop for long enough, they could lure him into a web of memories that would soon suffocate him. So he keeps running ahead, with short steps, while conducting a feverish commentary: ‘This was once a prayer-house; that building housed a kibbutz where young pioneers prepared for the Promised Land. Over there stood a Hebrew college; here a Yiddish trade school.’ Occasionally I register a deeper response, jolted by a sudden shock of recognition. The trade school features in my mother’s repertoire of recollections; in this school she had learned to make dresses. ‘Ah! You see? I know where to take you’, Buklinski proclaims triumphantly. ‘I know my Bialystok.’

  On Ulitza Slonimska flocks of pigeons swoop down to perch on the window-sills of pre-war buildings. Their grey facades are a patchwork of exposed brick blotches coated with rust. We veer sharply into a narrow alley, to a timber shop-front painted clumsily in a pale blue wash. It leans askew, like a dilapidated shed on an abandoned farm. Inside the workshop Yankel the shoe repairer stands bent over a bench, cutting strips of leather. I am also introduced to Bunim, who is seated by the counter, his shoulders slumped, his head swaying as if in perpetual prayer.

  ‘Bunim! Get us a bottle of schnapps!’, Buklinski orders. ‘Here! Take these zlotys and fetch us something to drink, something to bite.’ Half an hour later the compliant Bunim shuffles back with a bottle of spirits. We tear chunks from a loaf of freshly baked bread, slice pieces of garlic and sausage, drink glass after glass of spirits, and the room blazes.

  ‘Aron! Welcome to Bialystok!’, Yankel exclaims after each toast. The room spins about us, a blur of shelves piled high with shoes, pieces of leather, soles and heels, tacks and nails, and workbenches crowded with an array of primitive tools with which to cut and glue, hammer and sew, brush and polish, while Yankel is drinking, working, and proclaiming: ‘Aron! You cannot imagine what it was like!’. This is the refrain to which he constantly returns, as his story unfolds in a workshop saturated with the smell of garlic and sweat. ‘You cannot imagine! We were hunted like animals, swatted like flies. Wives in front of husbands. Children in front of mothers. Aron! You cannot imagine what it was like!’

  Yankel’s eyes are sunk deep in their sockets, and nestle behind cheekbones that protrude, stretching taut the layer of beaten skin that clings to its skeletal frame. ‘We ran like frightened hares into the countryside and burrowed under the ground. For two years I hid in my warren. At night I emerged to scavenge. Lice made a home in my flesh. We had a contract: I lived in a hole; they lived on me. Aron! You cannot imagine what it was like!’

  This is what it is always like, I am beginning to see, when the last few Yidn of Bialystok gather, as they often do, since they crave each other’s company; together they wax and wane like candles that flicker for a moment into glorious light, and then almost die out, as the flames shrink back into themselves, into indelible memories that will accompany them to the grave. ‘When I came out of my warren for the final time, on a July day in 1944, I saw four Russian soldiers on horseback. The lice were crawling around me, going on family visits. I addressed the captain in Yiddish. He looked at me in astonishment and replied in the same mother tongue: “A living corpse! A survivor! A miracle!” He escorted me to the nearest village where he organised a banquet. 1 ate until 1 was sick.’

  Several hours later I walk with Bunim, Bialystok’s most dishevelled son. He shuffles, chin sunk into his chest. Occasionally he glances warily over his shoulders. ‘Someone is always watching, always taking note’, he warns. The Sabbath is approaching, creeping in along deserted streets that have retired for the weekend. The sky is streaked with wafer-thin clouds of mauve and crimson; Bunim is, as usual, close to tears. This is what Buklinski had warned me about: ‘Watch out for him. Just give him a chance and he’ll cry. Ah! Can he cry!’. He was the butt of many jokes that winked between Yankel and Buklinski. ‘Look! It’s coming! The storm is gathering. Bunim is about to cry. Ah! Can he cry!’

  ‘Don’t make such a noise’, a perpetually anxious Bunim had said when our revelry had begun to shake the floorboards of Yankel’s workshop. ‘It’s not wise for us to attract attention. You must always remember who we are and who they are’, he had added, while motioning towards the window. ‘Bunim is going to cry. It’s coming! Ah! Can he cry!’, replied the merciless duo, dancing arm-in-arm around the work benches.

  Bunim’s apartment is lean and bare, and mother Mary peers down at us, a babe with golden locks in her arms. The last shafts of light from a dying day poke into the kitchen, illuminating layers of peeling paint and cracks that thread through the walls like erratic blood vessels.

  Bunim slumps into a chair and leans back against the wall. ‘Bialystok is a stranger to me now, the streets are my enemies. I have wanted to leave for many years. One by one my friends have gone. But I must stay because she saved my life. For three years she hid me, fed me, and gave me warmth. So after the war I married her. She prays to an alien God. Christ is her saviour. And I’m not even worth her piss. You see my friend, she saved my life and I must stay with her.’

  When Bunim speaks, the words are barely audible. He is almost a non presence, mumbling in the background, as if afraid to register his imprint upon the earth. The permanent red blotches on his cheeks deepen to beetroot in the evening shadows. The silence within the apartment seems to offer solace and relief, and for the first time there is a hint of ease on Bunim’s unshaven face. ‘I knew your grandfather’, he says unexpectedly. ‘Everyone knew your grandfather. A small man. With red hair, a red beard, he ran here and there under the clock-tower, always excited, always darting about like a rabbit. Heint! Moment! Express! Always shouting, selling, waving his arms, earning a few groshen from his newspapers. Heint! Moment! Express!’

  Bunim rises from the chair, a sudden flicker of animation in his leaden body, his bloodshot eyes aflame, the words tumbling out rapid fire, his voice reaching above whispers: ‘Heint! Moment! Express! He stood on the corner of Geldowa and Kupietzka, just a block from here. Everyone knew your grandfather. Heint! Moment! Express!’

  And, just as abruptly as it has risen, Bunim’s voice trails off into a confused monologue, and his body slumps back into a chair: ‘My father wanted me to be a talmudic scholar. I studied in yeshivas with great interpreters of the scriptures. But she saved my life, and I’m not even worth her piss. Children we could not have. That would have been a terrible transgression, an insult to my ancestors. And Bialystok I could not leave. That would have been a betrayal. After all, she saved my life …’

  Everyone has his story; everyone his refrain. Aron! You cannot imagine what it was like! Aron! Do you know what a treasure it was to live in Bialystok? Aron! She saved my life and I’m n
ot worth her piss. Aron! Eat. Drink. What are you waiting for? The Messiah? Aron! Do you know how wonderful it was to live in Bialystok? Aron! Please stay with us a little longer. Aron! Help us leave this God-forsaken hole. Take us with you to the land of milk and honey. Aron! I cannot leave. She saved my life. Aron! Spare us a dollar. What would it hurt to give? Aron! Eat! Drink! What are you waiting for? The Messiah? Aron! You can never imagine what it was like.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HER EARLY CHILDHOOD was of palaces and weddings, mother has told me. The central palace was inaccessible. It loomed behind guarded gates and a high fence that could be seen from the street in which she lived. Sometimes she was taken on strolls around the perimeter of the palace grounds. She would peer through gaps in the fence at the imposing edifice set far back within lush gardens. Nowadays the gates are always open, the buildings used as an academy of medicine. A path stretches several hundred metres to the palace doors. A framework of scaffolding grips the walls, and workmen stand on platforms from which they restore the crippled facades.

  Count Jan Klemens Branitski had the palace built in 1763. At that time Polish nobility tended to look west for models to emulate. They aspired to the grandeur of its monarchies; the palace was designed in the style of Versailles, complete with gardens laid out in perfect symmetry. But whereas the West may have inspired dreams of imperial splendour, the East emanated the threat of imperial might and the brute strength of the descendants of Peter the Great. The eastern empire triumphed in 1815. The Bialystok coat of arms — a knight on a rearing horse, shield grasped in one hand, sword brandished high above the head in the other — was removed, and Branitski’s Versailles became known as the Czar’s palace. A succession of Romanovs stayed there with their entourages en route to hunting expeditions in the Bielowieza forests.

  The weddings were somewhat more accessible. The Probutski family moved to Bialystok from the shtetl of Grodek in 1910. Mother was three years old at the time. Her new home was a timber cottage that stood in the grounds of the landlord’s solid brick mansion. Directly opposite was a reception hall where weddings were held day and night, a perpetual simche, a seemingly endless celebration. Bands of klesmorim played for hours at a time, and the melodies of their violins and flutes hovered over neighbouring streets and lanes. While the guests danced within, the Probutski children stood on tiptoe outside, to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom through the windows. We are talking of events that took place over eighty years ago. At such a distance memories streak like fireflies that flash brightly for a moment in the mind of my mother, before receding back into the darkness. The son is hungry for information, for any spark that might illuminate the beginning of things.

  In a wooden shack next to the Probutski home, within the grounds of the landlord’s house on Ulitza Palacovej, there lives an elderly couple, Layser and Polina. When a buzzing sound is heard in the heavens on a midsummer’s day in 1914, Layser and Polina rush out into the yard to join the crowd that has rapidly assembled, not so much out of alarm as out of curiosity. Layser, a devout Hasid who sees the hand of God at work in everything, jumps with joy as he points up at the sky: ‘Look! A messenger from heaven! Could it be that the Messiah has come at long last?’ He embraces Polina while the Probutski children run wild, circling the crowd, squealing and laughing as they point to the iron eagles winging above. This is a grand spectacle, a commotion, a miracle, a riddle. And as the crowd gazes the eagles release their droppings, and the first bombs rain down on Bialystok.

  Layser is lost in the smoke and confusion. ‘God is angry’, he cries. ‘We are not yet worthy of the Messiah.’ Polina takes hold of him by the ears and drags him from the yard. ‘Run, you old madman! This is no time for useless sermons!’

  Everyone is running. The landlord has flung open the doors of his mansion; the crowd tumbles inside and descends to the cellar. Little Hershel, two years old, the last born of the nine Probutski children, sits on the cellar floor. With each explosion he claps his hands and exclaims: ‘Another bomb! Another bomb!’ This is a circus! A carnival! Bialystok has become a wild fairground, alight with fires and collapsing buildings.

  A bomb grazes the Great Synagogue. A fragment streaks towards the roof where Zachariah, my father’s eldest brother, is leaping with excitement. Such a fireworks display demands the best of vantage points. Sheine Liberman has rounded up the younger children and shields them from the smoke and debris as they huddle against a wall. The buildings of Bialystok are swaying precariously. My father recalls to this day how the walls trembled while he hid behind his mother’s skirts, and he retains the clear image of a clock rattling and shaking above Sheine Liberman’s head, yet somehow remaining intact and secure.

  The noise subsides; the iron eagles become a distant murmur. Sheine Liberman surveys her brood, and realises that her youngest daughter, Feigele, is missing. Bishke Zabludowski, who has been out on the streets by his news-stand under the town clock, is running homewards. As he nears the three-storey block of apartments he sees smoke billowing from the upper floor. The area has been cordoned off; the wounded and dead are being ferried away. A policeman stops the anxious Bishke. ‘My wife! My children!’, he remonstrates. ‘They are gone. All dead’, the policeman replies matter-of-factly. ‘There is nothing you can do.’

  In later years, Bishke would often claim that, as a result of this incident, he knew what it would feel like to face a firing squad and live through a mock execution. It was several hours before he was able to determine that his family had survived. After a frantic search, Sheine Liberman had found Feigele on a lower floor, cowering in a corner, injured. Father recalls the name of the doctor, Rosenthal; when Feigele was taken to him for treatment, he greeted her with a warm smile and the remark, ‘Congratulations! You are the youngest among the wounded!’

  For almost a year troops loyal to Czar Nicholas fought rearguard actions against the armies of Kaiser Wilhelm; between them, caught in the crossfire, were the 60 000 Jews and 20 000 Poles of Bialystok. Those who favoured the Russkis argued it was better to live with the devil one knew. Others preferred a German régime. After all, they had gotten on well enough with the German manufacturers who ran many of the larger textile plants. At least their language was similar to Yiddish, said the jokers: we would still know that a table is a table, and a chair a chair.

  A growing number viewed the fierce battles as the death throes of the old order. Taking up the cry of 1905, they looked forward to an uprising of the proletariat and an end to all empires. The resurgent Polish nationalists put their faith in the legendary Pilsudski. The Orthodox gazed at the fiery heavens exploding with shrapnel, and proclaimed that the end of days was at hand and the prophesies of the ancient scriptures were about to be realised. But most of the populace scavenged for something to eat, and cast quick glances at the skies before ducking down into their primitive shelters. And with every explosion, little Hershel clapped his hands and exclaimed: Another bomb! Another bomb!’

  Entire factories were packed away: machines, tools, materials, were crated and sent by rail towards the east. Those who could afford it piled their belongings into droshkes that conveyed them to the Bialystok station where they joined their travelling factories. As the Germans advanced, White Russian and Ukrainian peasants abandoned their fields and they too fled east, to seek refuge deep within the belly of their Czar’s ailing empire.

  Field Marshal Hindenberg’s armies laid siege to Bialystok. The city was abandoned by the Russians and left in the hands of a Cossack army led by General Orlov. Leaders of the Jewish community hastily collected 4 000 roubles and delivered them to the General, for fear that otherwise he would allow his men to run wild on a pogrom and last-minute looting. Orlov took his troops out of the city on a Wednesday evening, in July 1915. Artillery continued to pound the outskirts of Bialystok. The station caught fire and burned, while the populace hid behind locked doors.

  For a night Bialystok remained suspended between regimes, in a vacuum within which the echoes of inc
essant bombardment gradually subsided until, just before dawn, the shelling petered out into an uneasy silence. A restless populace waited and watched. ‘So, what’s new?’, the town jesters murmured. And, as was their custom, they composed a couplet for the occasion, the same one they had chanted throughout the ages, changing only the names of the leading actors:

  One season leaves with the fire, another begins.

  The Czar marches out, and the Kaiser moves in.

  The first to arrive are the advance scouts, on motorcycles. They move cautiously along deserted streets to the clock-tower. Soon after, the infantry appear, bayonets fixed as they stride out in regiment upon regiment, led by commanders in armoured cars, cavalry on horseback, and artillery divisions wheeling cannons and tanks: a parade of thousands. Above them floats a massive Zeppelin, preceding a formation of aeroplanes. In the Zeppelin are Kaiser Wilhelm and Field Marshall Hindenberg — or so the rumour spreads, racing through the streets, filtering into cellars, garrets, and obscure courtyards, as slowly the besieged inhabitants emerge, blinking in the midmorning sun. They stare in awe at the great ship hovering above the clock-tower. Could it be? The Kaiser, no less? Looking down upon us?

  The victorious troops hold aloft flags and regimental banners as they march to the rhythm of military bands. They seem benevolent in the first flush of triumph. Doors and gates are swung open with increasing confidence; the inhabitants of Bialystok swarm onto the streets, unleashed from their self-imposed exile. ‘Who knows? Perhaps this lot will be better than the last one that ruled us’, some of the more optimistic are saying. ‘A plague on all their houses’, mutter those whose memories are more ancient, and they spit on the ground.