Читать книгу The Brothers of Auschwitz - Malka Adler - Страница 17
ОглавлениеDov
The goys always said: It’s the nature of the Jew to cheat the Christian.
And I tell you: The Jew had no choice. He had no land. He had to be a trader. The goy had land. The goy always had food in his hands. The goy grew pigs in the yard, cows, geese, he had vegetables in the garden, trees full of apples, a field of wheat and cabbage and corn. The Jew had no land, how was he supposed to live? The goy needed sugar, flour, oil, kerosene, clothing, so the Jew opened a grocery, a bakery, and a clothing store. Sometimes, in order to buy at the store, the goy sold a cow to the Jew. They’d negotiate, but not for business. The goy sold the cow to take products home.
The goys needed the Jews to advance in life. Without the Jews’ money they couldn’t have bought a cow or a horse, they couldn’t have bought a plow to plow the field, or wheat seed for bread. The Jews’ money rolled business forward, so what, did it help us? The Germans also needed the Jews for their business, before they decided to throw them into the oven.
Israel, 2001
14:18 at Nahariya Train Station.
I’m on the interurban to Binyamina. On the seaside. The change to the suburban train is in an hour and seven minutes. I look at the window and see a round face in the glass, a silly smile. Maybe because of the Arak in the grapefruit juice. Arak and grapefruit juice goes well with meatballs said Yitzhak and filled my glass for the second time. Dov smiled, saying, very true, drink, drink, let’s make a toast. To the life of the State of Israel. L’chaim. L’chaim. To life. To life.
Beyond the window high risers pass, country homes, a date avenue, a fierce green in tiny plots, diagonal furrows, and sea, sea, sea, sea. The froth on the waves is the color of mud. The Mosque and wall are a soft cream color. And again housing units, again the sea. The air-conditioning on the train is pleasant.
Opposite me sits an old man covered in age spots. One across half his cheek. He’s wearing an Australian cap with the design of a duck. Beside him is a curly-headed little girl with a ponytail tied with a blue band. She’s licking a record-sized candy on a stick with her red tongue. The old man points to a picture in the book and says, kangaroo, that’s an Australian kangaroo, and he swallows a yawn. The little girl puts the book aside. The old man pulls his cap down to the end of his nose, falls asleep.
I need the toilet. Don’t want to get up. I stand. My bladder is bothering me. Taking my bag, I look for the toilet. The cubicle is at the end of the carriage, near the steps. I peep in, it’s like a plane toilet, a large roll of paper under a plastic lid, a tiny sink, a box of hand wipes, it looks clean.
I don’t move.
Well, get a move on, go in. Wait. I check the door. Mentally take the lock to pieces, turn it to the left, turn it to the right, an ordinary lock. I go into the cubicle and am afraid to close the door in case I get stuck going out. And if I shout for help, will they hear me? No one will. If Yitzhak was on the train, he’d say, worst case scenario, you could jump, with a little luck you’d get to a hospital, most important of all, no one dies from that, and in any case, I’ve already said, taxi, taxi. Dov would say, you only die once, best to hold it in.
The nightmare doesn’t end: The toilet door doesn’t open. In a cinema, for instance. The movie ends. The audience leaves the hall, the lights are switched off, I’m inside. A faded, peeling door, behind a gas station. No one around. An office block, top floor, middle floor, the worst is a basement floor, never happened to me? It’s happened, it’s happened. The walls were like a sealed room. Two minutes and your blouse is wet.
If Yitzhak was there, he’d say, at least you’ve got paper to wipe yourself, we had no paper. And there was nothing to wipe. Dov would say, what paper, we had nothing, we’d cut small pieces from the stripes on the trousers and shirt to wipe. In secret. Sometimes we didn’t even have that. We’d walk in a line, with a stinking, sticky drip down our trousers, don’t even want to think about it. Do you have any idea of what it’s like to walk along a road and feel a disgusting drip into your shoes, better you never know. And now, coffee.