―I can guarantee that the plaintiff has done everything in her power to resuscitate the dead,‖
he said without intending sarcasm. The rest of the board could not help but laugh.
―Well, if you assure us that the defendant is dead, we can recommend a get, ‖ said the fourth member of the board, unable to withhold his laughter.
Anita, who was fed up with the board and their discussion of her husband's potz, offered a larger contribution to improve the conditions of the Chevra Kiddushe.
―If this woman is so sensitive to the dead to make such a generous offer, it must be that she lives with one of them,‖ the president of the board finally responded, seemingly tired of this lengthy session. The board decided to support Anita's plea and press her husband to file for divorce with the warning that, if he would not agree to do so, he would be ostracized from the community.
Her new husband was also a stranger. However, when she saw him under the chupah,37 she heard herself saying: ―This man is not bad looking, even if he was less tanned he would still be handsome.‖ He indeed had beautiful eyes, and a very sensual mouth, and she dreamed of their first kiss as she walked to the canopy. Anita could not help notice that David had wonderful buttocks, hard as a bagel. ―No one can criticize me for wanting to pinch them,‖
she told herself. The Torah did indeed recommend that a man's wife should be pretty, and there was no reason why a woman should not expect the same of her husband. This man was also educated, a scholar, and the Talmud offered special blessings for those who married brains and beauty.
What Anita had not experienced with her first husband she made up for with the second.
When she realized how a potz could change its personality with a little blood pumped in to provide such an exquisite pleasure, she was happy to have paid the shadchan38. ―Where in the world has this man learned to do what he does?‖ she thought to herself. Anita started to believe that the Talmud did indeed have a secret passage where men like her husband learned the art of lovemaking.
A few weeks later, Anita got pregnant and Elena was born. Four years after that, Anita gave birth to a boy, Samuel, and as a farewell present from her husband before his trip to America, she then had Sarita. This second husband was not a heavy drinker, but was a 37 Bridal canopy
38 Matchmaker
44
studious man. If things had not got sour in economic terms, their marriage would have been a good one. However, there are no relationships that can withstand hunger, and Anita's -
despite her numerous orgasms - was no exception.
An inevitable hostility started to brew between the two lovers as the number of chickens decreased at the Sikora's table. Anita started to resent the fact that she had to support a scholarly husband who did not help her in the store. She became so hostile to the men's prerogatives and their control over the community's decisions that she blamed the Holocaust on men like her husband.
―These schmucks39 were so used to negotiating and to basing their thoughts on Talmudic labyrinths that the Germans knew how to take advantage of them. The Nazis started offering alternatives and awful choices, finally limiting them to whether the Jews should die standing up or sitting down. Genug iz genug!”40
39 Idiots
40 Enough is Enough!
45
IV
My Dear Wife:
As I wrote a few months ago, my health has deteriorated and the doctors have confirmed T.B.
This forces me to rest and to remain isolated for a few months. As I also mentioned, the economic future is very difficult and I have not saved enough to travel to the United States as we had originally planned. Given this predicament, I have borrowed some money to bring you and my children here on the assumption that you will look after me and that you will help with the business so as to afford the medical treatment that I need. This is why I wish you to come here immediately. The tickets for the transatlantic voyage were sent to the agent of the Hamburg-Amerika-Linie Company in Warsaw. You must travel from Hamburg. I hope the tax dues have not increased from what you mentioned the last time. Say hello to Elena, to Samuel and to our new daughter, Sarita.
Your husband, who thinks of you constantly,
David.
"Your father wants us to be with him. But for me, he would still be discussing whether Rabbi Aquiba or Rabbi Potz was right concerning the circumcision of mice," Anita finally said to her daughter. "We will have to embark in Germany. Nowadays this is risky with Hitler in power."
Elena did not know who this man was and why her mother was afraid of him. She was only told that the German politician wanted to get rid of the Jews, but had come to power promising to fight the Jewish "cause."
"But mother, what power is this man talking about if we don't even have enough to eat?‖ Elena asked.
"Our only 'power' is making all these lunatics make scapegoats of us for their problems. The Nazis are blaming us for the world economic crisis and the fact that they lost the previous war.
Cousin Fanny writes that things are getting worse for our people at the time and that the Nazis carry out violent demonstrations against us. Our stay in Germany should be as short as possible."
If their plans to emigrate were known, the authorities would not allow them to go until the taxes they owed had been paid. To prevent this, Anita sold all her merchandise to her mother, who owned one of the stores, asking her to keep silent about their plans to leave. Years before she had managed to get the passports, and no one would foresee they were about to use them.
46
"Mother, why won't you pay the taxes?‖ asked Elena. "First of all, because we are bankrupt,"
her mother answered. "Why should I pay taxes,‖ she said, ―if the Poles keep all the zlotys and give none back to us?" Anita thought that when a Jewish-owned industry became prosperous, the State nationalized it, as in the case of tobacco. On the other hand, commerce, an activity mostly in the hands of Israelites, provided the State with most of its tax revenues. ―The new Polish state was built upon our backs,‖ Elena's mother concluded.
The young girl shared her teacher's distrust. Each pair of trousers or shmate or shirt sold had to be changed into German currency so as to escape police confiscation and to take some money for the road. She had been warned that, in case fiscal agents were to confront them, she must withdraw all the funds in the cashbox. They were not to find traces that any sale had taken place.
Anita never knew what to expect from the Polish government: "Sir, could you be so kind as to tell me what I should do to get an exit visa?‖- Anita once beggarly asked. "Just promise never to come back here, you piece of Jewish shit!‖ answered the civil servant, smiling broadly. On another occasion, she had gone to the Post Office with a letter for America.
"Please tell me the cost of a stamp to Central America?" She asked.
"Twice what a Pole pays," answered the female clerk.
"But why should I have to pay double?"
"Because your letter contains twice the trash," came the reply.
One day Elena went through a dreadful fear. Wearing long and hateful faces, two government officials suddenly "fell upon us like the Egyptian plague." "We are here to collect overdue taxes,‖ one of the officials said angrily. "Sales have been really bad, Sir. Give me one more month to pay them," begged her mother with a face like a death row inmate. The tax collectors laughed: "Oh, what a bunch of crooks you Jews are! If you don't have money then I will take this shirt," said one of them, helping himself to the garment. Shaking, Anita thought, "These drunkard Poles come here to rob us and then exchange the goods for vodka. Luckily they only want that old rag from the Great War.‖
Despite all this, Elena could not understand her fears since she didn't want to leave. For her, it was the same to stay or to move to an unknown country. Her father had not convinced them about the advantages of living in America. He had simply left seven years earlier. She couldn't even remember what he looked like, and now he wanted them to come to him. Her heard her mother's complaints: "Why did that good for nothing wretch leave, if seven years later he still can't afford a few cheap boat tickets? He himself laments the harshness of life in Costa Rica.
Surely, that miserable man is living with a kurveh and is making fools of us all!"
47
In 1934, the family received from Costa Rica one pre-paid ticket with the Hamburg-Amerika-Linie. The two small clothing stores they owned in the heart of downtown were bankrupt and people had less and less zlotys to eat and practically nothing with which to buy clothes and house wares.
The Sikora stores would be the first to go down the drain and the family had no choice but to leave Poland. It was not easy saying good-bye to Długosiodło. The journey was an entirely new experience for the family, as they were not used to long distances by train. The entire journey normally took eighteen hours, with stops at several stations: Warsaw, Frankfurt Oder, Berlin Ost Banhnhoft, Berlin Zoo and Hamburg Altona. Now with the Nazis in power, border controls were reinforced and the trip took longer.
Back in April 1934, traveling to Germany was dangerous. After being scared witless at the border checkpoint, not knowing if her family would be let across to Germany, Anita felt relief once she had abandoned her fatherland. Soon they were passing clusters of towns, and according to Elenaś mother, most of them were Jewish. She mentioned one relative after the other in each of these villages, as if the entire family had spread like spilled wheat. "My sister, Rebecca, has been living in Sieldce for the last ten years. She married a very religious man, a good for nothing, and just like your father, useless at trading. The poor wretch has to sustain herself as a seamstress." "In Krakow, I have an aunt working in a jewelry shop. She thinks she is a Fiddlefortz41 because she lives in a sophisticated town. She has forgotten us ever since then." While her mother continued this rosary of complaints, Elena could not know that these relatives would soon disappear like smoke in air. Many years later, when she asked about her aunt Bruma who lived in Krakow, she was shocked by the answer: "Only smoke remains of her."
Cousin Motl, who immigrated to Argentina, had forewarned Anita that the German custom was to harass passengers using rival travel companies such as the British Cunard Line. These travelers were often robbed at the last minute, confronted by guards with impossible demands.
The slightest variation in a letter on the ticket was reason enough to force a passenger to return to Warsaw, or even to Moscow, or else to pay higher fares. "Here on the ticket it says that your name is Povlovich and not Povlowitz; we can't let you in," Elena heard as a German official rejected an entire family of Russian Jews. "You must return to Moscow to have it fixed."
According to cousin Motl, the Germans had built special barracks to fumigate the passengers.
―But only passengers of German travel companies were allowed to use them.‖ The border guards could quarantine anyone suspected of having a contagious disease. If a person was quarantined, he or she could only use the barracks of German rail companies, effectively losing the right to travel on tickets issued by non-German companies. Using such arguments,
―the Germans fleeced many passengers, selling them new tickets at extraordinarily high prices,‖ cousin Motl had reported. "They also clean our pockets, charging us for the soap and disinfectants," he wrote. In the disinfecting baths, where passenger's clothes were treated as 41 Fancy Fart
48
well, a simple procedure was used to take advantage of them. They were told to keep their money in their hands as they placed their garments into the fumigating chambers, on the pretext of preventing the heat from burning their bills, of course. ―In this way, the money that each passenger carried could be seen, and later confiscated using all the deception of practiced crooks.‖
When Anita and her children made it to the dressing rooms and were asked to take their clothes off, her youngest daughter refused to comply. ―No, mother, I do not want to strip in front of that ugly German official!‖ ―But sweetheart, listen, if you don't cooperate these people will punish us and things will get much worse,‖ she said removing her daughter's blouse. As she struggled with the child, Sarita felt dizzy, and could not help throwing up all the meatballs she had eaten earlier all over the official's neat white apron. ―You dammed full of lice little twerp,‖ shouted the woman as she ran for the bathroom. ―You will pay for this,‖ she screamed and slammed the door.
At the port of embarkation, a number of agencies approached the new emigrants with self-interested offers of help. The Evangelical mission promised to pay their ticket in exchange for undergoing Christian baptism. Anita would always remember this, as well as the resolution to
"save" their souls made by these judenmissionen, as they were known in Hamburg. Even little Elena advised her mother to accept the offer to convert in order to have more funds for their trip. "In any case," she said, "who is going to know what we did?"
Arriving in Germany had been akin to entering a fairy tale. The towns, cities, and above all, the houses were much prettier than those they had left behind in Poland. These had well kept gardens and spring flowers that livened up the landscape. Young Elena's interest was caught by the fact that she could see no outhouses. "Most toilets are inside," her mother pointed out,
"a luxury previously only seen in Warsaw." People were much better dressed here and seemed happier and kind. "During the Great War," her mother continued, "the Germans had been good to the Jews because they could understand each other; you know, Yiddish and German are much alike."
She recalled that one of her cousins lived near the German border and did business with Germans and never had problems collecting payments, something more common among her Polish customers. Perhaps Hitler had changed all that, but still she accepted that, even with him in power, the Germans treated them better. "It's a civilized country," Anita told her daughter, amazed at the passing towns. "The Germans have progressed a great deal, unlike Poland, which is poorer than a cockroach."
Located on the banks of the Elbe, Hamburg was, said Anita to her children, the most important port of Germany and the best way to travel to Costa Rica. In 1926, there were several thousand Jews of a total population of over one million people. Some were foreigners, like cousin Fanny, who worked as a shikseh at the home of a wealthy family of German Jewish bankers.
49
Anita and her children were taken care of and well treated. It was 1934, and Germans still considered Jews to be human beings. The border police and immigration officials had complimented her daughter: "What a beauty!‖ said the officer inspecting their passports. Anita was flattered at first by this attention, but was less happy with the rest of the compliment.
"This girl," he went on, pointing at Elena, "is not like you at all. She is beautiful!" For a woman who so greatly admired the Germans, Anita was unsure just what to do next. Should she smile and say, "thank you", or start to cry?
Once in the city, they went to the Jewish neighborhood and rented a place for the night. The dark hotel room close to the sea allowed them to look at the water, cold and indifferent--the same sea that would take them to the New World. This time, however, young Elena could not see her face reflected in the water. She did not know whether to be happy, or what to expect from the long journey ahead.
Later, the whole family got ready to eat at the restaurant of their small and dismal hotel for emigrant Jews, close to the ghetto, just two blocks away from the famous synagogue on the Born Platz. That night, they visited Fanny to say their goodbyes, going first to the famous synagogue to pray and ask for God's good luck on their Odyssey. "Don't let the mosquitoes devour us, help Sarita fight her asthma, help us keep our faith," Anita prayed.
Her cousin Fanny was a woman of about thirty years old, tall, and white with Ashkenazi42
features. Among the Jewish community of Hamburg, divided as they were between the Ashkenazi's and the Sephardim43, Fanny's traits placed her in a social order higher than the Sephardim but far below her patrons, the Stern family, who belonged to the upper crust of German Jewish society. These families owned large companies, whereas their social inferiors were mere peddlers and small merchants, like David Sikora and his other cousins in America, who were the poor descendants of religious but unskilled workers. The Stern family, for example, would have employed a German girl, but given the increasing Nazi opposition to let Germans do domestic duties for Jews, they took on Fanny instead. Although the laws prohibiting Germans working for Jews would not be in forced until some years later, this family preferred to see itself as being provident.
The two cousins were happy to see one another. They had been childhood friends and had thought that they would never see each other again. Fanny had to cook, clean, and act as Governess to the three small children of the Stern family so she had little time on her hands.
They treated her well, but no different to any other maid. "The German Jews," she said, "think they are better than us Polish ones. They believe us to be uncultivated and primitive, while they spend their time listening to Wagner and discussing their problems with psychiatrists."
Soon they would need to visit these doctors with alarming frequency, since the Nazis came to power, their rights and freedoms had been running from them like water slipping through the open fingers.
42 Western Jewish
43 Middle East or Spanish Jews
50
Fanny was allowed to receive the visitors in her small bedroom facing the canal. "Generally they don't let me have Polish folks in the house so as not to irritate the German neighbors."
She was convinced that things would get worse in Germany and that Anita was lucky to be leaving. "The patroness says that Germans ―project‖ their fears on the Jews and blame us for all their woes. This is what her Psychiatrist explained to her. Still, she was not convinced: I think these explanations from her Psychiatrist are designed to get more her money. My patrons believe nothing wrong can come to them because the man fought in World War I and he received all sorts of medals for bravery."
Anita did not believe it: "I have a foreboding of impending evil,‖ she said. Both women knew that the rich would be the first to be saved, at least those that were not numbed by unfounded optimism. "The truth is that they have money and they will be able to get away from this mess at any time," Fanny assured her cousin. "But we, the poor, where are we to go?"
"But cousin, even us, penniless as we are, we are leaving." "But you have a husband,‖ cried Fanny. ―The man might be a good for nothing Sikora from Ostrołęka, whose own grandfather, Aviezer, and his father, Jacob, were bums who only studied the Torah - but at least he has sent for you. Who cares about a poor maid like me?" "I do!‖ replied Anita. ―I do," and as the two women hugged, "I promise that I will send the tickets as soon as possible, so that you too can get away from here. You won't ever see another German for miles around."
Fanny was not at all convinced. "These people carry with them the seeds of doom, cousin, don't be so sure they won't conquer the world and that you won't have them even in the last corner of the Earth."
The departure was emotional. "Take good care, Anita! May God give you all the happiness of the world," sobbed the other. "Let life treat you well and may you find a good husband."
The following day, mother and all three children boarded the ocean liner for America. "Those traveling in third class go through the other door," shouted a German officer, unable to disguise the loathing dwelling in his soul.
51
V
Three months at sea allowed Elena to think as she had never thought before. She imagined what other passengers just like herself might be feeling and thinking as they floated on the ocean towards the unknown. She had read about Christopher Columbus, while investigating the place her family was about to move to. Contrary to what was happening to her, Columbus got lost and all his calculations about the date of arrival in India were wrong. This must have sent the poor Admiral dizzy, she thought, searching for an elusive land that was not showing up across the horizon. Again, and contrary to their own experience, at least Columbus was used to the swaying of ships.
For her family, the first three days aboard the dirty third class cabin had been hell. There were no windows and they had to endure the stifling heat of a cabin next to the rattle of immense steam boilers. Used to the vast Polish landscape, the tightness of the liner was torture. Two people could barely walk side by side along their section's corridor, and the constant comings and goings of numerous voyagers made walking through the tight space an Odyssey in itself.
Things were no better in the cabins. The small rooms had but one tiny round skylight from which you could barely see a piece of sky. Bunk beds were placed at both ends of the cabin, making it more like a cell in a prison than the temporary home of paying passengers.
Elena missed the sun. Down in the depths of the third class section, she could barely catch a glimpse of it. Two electrical lamps that made all things appear faded lighted the rest of the place. In the midst of such heat and over-crowding, Anita and her three children threw up everything they ate. Since they had to share the toilet with the passengers of six more cabins, they spent all their time in the queues waiting to get in. Once they had relieved themselves from what little food they still kept in their bodies, they started again at the end of the queuing lines to prevent any sudden mishaps. This they did so often that throughout their floor they were nicknamed "the emetics."
On the third day aboard the dank and noisy vessel, young Elena decided to get a breath of fresh air. The sea breeze she felt would do her well, helping to stop the chaloshes.44 She went via the second-class section, one floor above, and saw two men who looked like rabbis discussing the Talmud. "Where are they going? What will their lives be like?" she wondered.
Once on deck she felt a little better. She was looking at the sky, the few seagulls, the imposing blue ocean, and the well-to-do passengers of first class. She distrusted these hundreds of dressed up women, happily decked out and enjoying themselves, far distant from her kind of worries. If they felt dizzy, the waiting boys would immediately bring smelling salts. If the heat bothered them, they were offered natural fruit juices, a cup of cold wine, or mint tea. "Waiter, bring me a lemonade, I'm hot,‖ a woman from New York was shouting. Beyond her, a lady from the height of Parisian high society was wearing light cotton dress, diaphanous like the ocean breeze. "How thrilling it is traveling to the New World!" she was saying while searching 44 Nausea
52
for Central America on a map. "See how far away it is, darling," she pointed out to her husband.
Hearing about 'that place' reminded Elena of the day when, together with her sister, she visited the town library looking for information about Costa Rica. "Costa what?" demanded the librarian, believing the two young girls were trying to trick her. "Is that a place or a cake?" she added sarcastically. It was obvious that this woman hated serving Jews, who to her misfortune, had taken to using the small library at Długosiodło more frequently than any others. "Surely because theirs is a wandering race, they are always looking for places to go," she commented to her colleague. "I will help them as long as they only request geography books."
"Look, young lady, here we only have books about the history of Poland and other important countries. Where is Costa Rica anyway?" she asked. "My dad moved over there. It's in Central America," Elena answered. "Well then, tell him to stay there and never come back here."
Nonetheless, she eventually found an old copy of A History of America, which included some maps and a few chapters on the voyages of Christopher Columbus. "Here you are girl, don't be taking it away with you now," she told Elena, slapping the book on the table. Elena took it enthusiastically and sat down to read. Her younger sister, Sarita, only wished to know if in that new land where they were bound, she could get all the free chocolate she could ever want. "Don't be such an idiot, Sarita, the only place where they give you all you need is the United States!"
Reading, the young girl learned that Christopher Columbus, on his fourth voyage to America, arrived at a place called Cariari, nearby to what today is the Port of Limon on the Atlantic coast of Central America. His goals had been similar those of their mother; he too was looking for a fortune, "although the explorer had other designs in mind as well. Accordingly, while in Cariari, Columbus received reports from "two Indians" about the fabulous gold mines to be found and he turned greedy. The natives took him to Carambaru "where the people go about naked, wearing gold mirrors around their necks." They swore that there were large mines near the coast, where they dug the metal for the golden mirrors they wore. The "discoverer" of America did not find any mines.
He was wrongly convinced of having found large amounts of wealth and that this place must be near the Ganges River in India. "The man must have been totally misguided," she explained to her younger sister. He believed in the theories of Florentine Toscallini, that traveling westward was the shortest way to get to India. "Columbus took the same route and had the same purpose as our father", who knows, she told Sarita, eventually luck would completely change for both of them. "I hope that in trying to reach America, we don't end up in India, and sold as slaves to a harem in Bombay."
"The Admiral, you know, he arrived in Central America", she told her little sister, "and not in India as he first suspected. Just like our father, he didn't know any geography when he ended up in a different place, far away from the borders of United States. Columbus should have marched straight away to North America. Instead he discovered America much later than he expected, and the end of it all, he was left as poor as the mice in a synagogue. He should not 53
have let himself be taken by the first things he saw. The Indians indeed wore trinkets made with golden metal, but that was about as much as they had. The natives did not realize their mistake in talking about the riches to be found in these fabulous gold mines. So the Spaniards got hungry, and, like the Poles and Jews we know today, the explorers became greedy and searched everywhere for these mines of pure gold. Oblivious to the exuberant flora and the rare fauna that covered the newfound land, these conquerors, and others that would follow, were bewitched by the stories of vast mines "rich" with gold, and would call this new land Costa Rica. It is there that we will go in a few more weeks," she told her sister.
Elena returned to her reality. After all, Columbus died without ever learning where he had really arrived at and maybe he had not suffered as much as it was believed. "He used to be around kings," she told herself, "and surely a few good parties he must have had." When they were discussing how to reach India to bring back lots of clove, they drank bottles of wine and ate dozens of partridges and boars. Surely, these parties were paid for with the spoils the Spaniards got when they ejected half a million Jews that same year. Elena imagined the two greedy Catholic M