The Nature of Blood Page 2

  Moshe slips out his hand from between mine. Fruit growing freely on trees. Yes. Take it straight from the branch. Yes. He cannot understand. My years in the underground army. Enough killing. Now there will be a homeland. Yes. We can share. And so to finish my medical studies. And for some time now, simply a doctor. I never tried to find my wife and child. She wrote to me, saying that she respected my choice and she asked me to respect hers. She never wished to see me again. And now it is too late. I have let them go. Let them go. And in Cyprus, I have tried for two months to help those from the old world enter the new. The young with revenge in their hearts. Enough killing. Now there will be a homeland. We can share. But for these people on the hill, I imagined a smoother transition. A passage, not a rupture. In Cyprus, I have watched as Europe spits the chewed bones in our direction. (The flesh she has already swallowed.) I have encouraged my young Moshe to think only of the future. Here is some money. Go. And remember, we will kill you if we ever see you again. Tell me, what will be the name of the country? A good question. A fine question. It is difficult for me. My mind is tormented. You will marry a beautiful girl and have wonderful children. Israel. Moshe, think only of the future. My young friend, Moshe.

  I WATCH as the trucks come roaring into the camp, dust and mud flying up behind their wheels. As the men jump down to the ground, they whistle and shout to each other. Then silence descends over them. They shield their eyes and look about themselves in disbelief. Silence. I count fifteen vehicles. The men are standing and staring at us. These men who are bursting with health. Some put their hands to their mouths and noses, while others pull handkerchiefs from their pockets and jam them into their faces. It is hard to know what they are thinking, but, whatever it is, they are struggling. This silent scene of us facing them. Skeletons facing men. Former prisoners facing liberators. We will no longer have to endure this captivity. We are free. These English men have arrived on this warm spring day and now we are free. Some among us begin to stumble and crawl towards the men. Weeping. Bodies twisted in bony gestures of supplication. I marvel at the fact that some of these men actually leapt from their vehicles. Leapt into the air. I sit with my back propped up against a hut, my spindly and scabrous legs stretched out before me, and I watch. Then I tilt my face so that I might soak up what little sun there is. I have no strength to be happy. My thin bones would shake and fall apart were they to be subjected to such an emotion.

  It is some time before the man comes to me. I have been watching him. He is dressed in a heavy khaki uniform. He looks young. In fact, not much older than I am. He offers me some water and a piece of chocolate, both of which I take. And then he stands back and looks down at me as though unsure of what to do next. I want to tell him that it is fine. He can leave me now and attend to the others. I will be fine. There is nothing to worry about. I have survived this long. And then he speaks to me. Do you have any family? I swallow hard, and feel the brick of chocolate begin to slither its way down my throat. He continues to look at me and he waits for my answer. If I say, I don't know, will he think I am rude? I decide not to say this. Instead, I shake my head. His colleagues behind him are working furiously. The doctors wear gas masks, but we are used to the stench. People continue to die in their own excrement. Everybody is covered in lice. I am covered in lice. My body is withered. The light breeze fingers my stubbled head. The few teeth I have left are either broken or misdirected. I can feel them with my tongue. And still this man stands and looks down at me. Does he not understand that he can leave me? Because they have come today, and not some later day, I have survived. That is enough. I am grateful. But he does not move.

  My Mama has left me alone. I do not tell this to the man who stands looking down at me. One morning, she did not wake up. She lay asleep and I spoke to her all day long in the hope that she might answer back I had managed to convince myself that by the time the spring arrived, and the leaves were on the trees, Mama and I would be able to begin the task of forgetting. But, one night, her strength ran out. I spoke to her all day long, but I never received a reply. I wondered how, in the midst of all this misery, she managed to look so serene. And then, after my day of talking, the other women took me away from her and out of the hut. When I returned, there was another woman. My Mama was gone. The new woman understood why I could not find the words to talk to her.

  I watch as he drifts away to join his colleagues. He stops and turns to look at me again. A nervous smile plays around the corners of his mouth. One of his fellow soldiers shouts at him, as though annoyed. He turns and breaks into a short run and joins him. And then I watch the friend point towards a place where men are carrying bodies. Now I understand. This is to be his job. To assist in the movement of dead bodies. Perhaps this will temper his idle curiosity.

  Mama married beneath her. Of this she was sure. Her husband was a well-respected man, a young doctor, who eventually provided her with a beautiful four-storey house and two daughters. But Papa's was first-generation wealth. His parents were merely shopkeepers, and Papa had worked extremely hard to achieve his station in life. On the other hand, Mama's family were bankers, who, on both sides, were born to wealth and privilege as far back as one looked. Mama's sense of herself became the source of much of Papa's unhappiness, but Margot and I did not understand this until it was too late. Mama and Papa hid much from us. Perhaps we were too sheltered. It grew difficult for Papa to talk to Mama, and he spent increasing amounts of time in his surgery. And Mama grew to distrust her daughters, for her husband clearly preferred his children to his wife. She was isolated. She had married beneath her, and suddenly she found herself marooned between her distant husband and her difficult daughters. Mama never really knew how to talk to any of us.

  On this first evening, they provide us with hot soup. Not hot water with a single potato thrown in to give it some body. This soup actually tastes of something, though of what I'm not sure. I sit by myself and marvel at the smell, the texture, and finally the taste of real food. Then I look up and gape at the disciplined manner in which my fellow inmates are lining up to receive their food. There is little pushing or shouting. All are hungry and anxious, but nobody usurps anyone else's position. Is this sheer fatigue, or have the good manners of the old world suddenly reimposed themselves? Darkness is beginning to fall, and the gloom casts a shadow across the camp. The sky, however, is streaked with red. Tomorrow will be a good day. I decide to drag myself to the end of the queue for more soup. Maybe tomorrow there won't be any. I don't know how to stop. At the moment, these men seem to possess an endless supply. In the distance, the soldiers continue to drag bodies towards the mass grave, the legs and arms forming convenient handles.

  Papa hated taking us with him to the village near the border where his parents lived. Even as children, we could see that the poverty of his past embarrassed him. After all, what was his hard work for, if not to escape from such places and put this peasant life behind him? Some time in mid-afternoon, an impatient Papa would leave his parents' small cottage and stride across to the large oak tree. He would announce that we were returning to the city, but Margot and I would already know this. Long before he reached the oak tree, we would have pulled ourselves to our feet and dusted off our dresses. In the distance, his parents stood framed in the doorway, an anxious smile painted across their faces. Margot and I knew that Papa would have already prepared for our departure by bestowing a gift of money upon his parents; a gift which, I now realize, they would have gladly exchanged for more time with their son and their two granddaughters.

  Papa's parents were among the first to board the trains to the east. Word reached us after we had moved out of the four-storey house and into the small apartment. I was ashamed, for my first thought was of my grandparents' house, and how nobody would want a place in which there was no running water, and where the toilets were outside and did not flush. I tried to imagine Papa's parents nervously packing their bags with essentials, and then I looked across at Papa. The news of his parents' departure to the eas
t seemed to have struck him a physical blow. Despite the fact that his whole life appeared to have been lived with a furious desire to heal the wound of his 'low' upbringing I could see now that he clearly loved his parents. He knew only too well that his background would always be counted against him, especially by his wife. But now that a huge piece of it had fallen off and disappeared out of sight, Papa was lost and, for a moment, I feared he might cry. Mama was mixing flour and water, so that she might either boil it into a thin soup or fry it into pancakes. As yet, she had not decided which. Then she looked at her husband, and, realizing the full extent of his misery, she sat beside him at the tiny kitchen table and felt his brow with the back of her hand. Some years earlier, Mama's elderly parents had died in the comfort of their own beds, their world fortunately untouched by this present sorrow, convinced that their daughter had married in the manner that she had always lived her life: without patience. Their death had cast a temporary shadow across Mama's life, but it seemed that the news of his parents' deportation to the east had ushered Papa into a dark region from where it appeared unlikely that he would ever fully emerge. I stood up and left the table. Alone in my room, I hugged a childhood doll close to my chest, as though trying to smother the life out of her.

  I lay on my cot, surrounded by sounds of moaning and sickness. Through the window I can see that the red flecks in the sky have disappeared, and the night is now black. It must be the middle of the month, for the slender moon is cut into an unimposing shape. It is our first evening of freedom, but we continue to die. We are too weak to digest tinned meat or chocolate. The food that I pushed into my mouth now punches my stomach. The woman who took Mama's place has long since died, and tonight the new woman will die. She is burning with fever. I recognize the smell of death. I recognize the look of helplessness that marks a person's face as they prepare to pass over to the other side. And now the food rushes down the back of my legs towards my ankles. I roll on to my side and steer my thoughts towards Margot. She is all I have left. If I can find Margot, then perhaps together we might rebuild a life.

  Four months in this place. Before this place, I worked. I struggled to keep death at bay. There were small ways of trying to stay alive. Cunning was a skill worth acquiring. As was endurance. Community formed the basis of our lives, but then came the long march, and yet another train, and then this place, which offered no community, no planning, no hope for survival. No work. Merely death. And waiting. I have spent most of the past four months on my cot trying to sleep. No work. And here, without community, without routine, only the strongest can survive. Every day I have stared death in the face. To become weak is to disappear. And eventually I felt myself becoming indifferent. Nothing bothered me any more. Those of us who have lasted until the arrival of these Englishmen, we have forgotten how to think of tomorrow. On this first night, I try to channel a course in my mind which might lead to the future. But it is not easy. I simply cling to the image of my sister.

  The sun rises, gloriously ignorant of the fact that a new day is not necessarily a good day. But perhaps today it will be warm. I now try to imagine ways in which I might prolong my life. In future, I must not gorge myself. I must drink only clean water. I must get in line to wash. I am acting as though I have already discovered a routine. As though I want to survive. I remind myself that this sunrise has already happened in some other place. And later, our sunset will be somebody else's sunrise. I look to the sky, where fully rigged clouds are already steering themselves towards some other destination.

  He is approaching me from the side. I cannot see him, for I am sitting outside the hut and resting my back up against the wall. I can, however, hear him. My head is tilted slightly into the sun and my eyes are closed against the glare. I do not wish to see anything or anybody. I hear bulldozers. Too many bodies for bare hands. These Englishmen are learning to recognize the moment of death. When the lice crawl out of the hair and walk boldly about the forehead. That is death.

  'Feeling any better today?'

  I recognize the voice, but I do not open my eyes.

  'Thank you,' I say.

  There is a long silence, which I imagine will be resolved only if I turn to look at this man. But I decide to linger a while and choose not to turn. I do not hear him move off, so I assume that he is still here. And now, again, he speaks.

  'More chocolate? I can get you some. Or something else?'

  I open my eyes and turn to look at him. I cannot speak without exposing my ugly teeth.

  'No chocolate.'

  'Yes, I know,' he says. 'Some of the lads feel bad, but they gave it to you only because you asked. They didn't mean any harm.'

  I wonder why he hasn't yet commented on my English. It's not too bad. Not everybody speaks English.

  'Mind if I sit for a minute? I've got a break.'

  He squats awkwardly next to me, then he lowers himself more purposefully to the earth.

  'Where are you from?'

  I lower my head, for now I'm anxious. I want this conversation to be over.

  'Do you not want to talk? I can leave you by yourself, you know.'

  'No,' I say. I have spoken too quickly, so I try to make up for my haste. 'My English is not very good.'

  He laughs now.

  'Your English is fine. I'm Gerry. From London.'

  'Hello, Gerry.'

  Already I have progressed too far.

  'Hello,' he laughs. 'What's your name?'

  This is enough. Gerry does not understand. I cannot possibly travel at the speed of this Gerry.

  I stand under an open-air shower, naked in front of these men's eyes. But I do not feel like a woman, and I am sure that they do not regard me as one. The water is ice-cold, but no matter. It occurs to me that it will be years before I once more know what it means to feel clean. This first shower could last a week and still it would not suffice. I step clear of the water and a nurse empties powder all over my body. I am handed a fresh blanket which I drape around my shoulders. A doctor inspects my tufts of hair. A nurse cuts them off. Again, a factory line. Again, we are being processed. But this time for life. (Apparently, I weigh sixty pounds.) They give me women's clothing. I look around, but I cannot see Gerry. For some reason, I am sure that he can see me. I am sure that, somewhere in this vast camp, Gerry is looking on with thoughts circling in his mind. He should show himself. Surely, I am no more hideous to look at than any of the others.

  If Mama had been a more patient woman, it is possible that we might have gone to America. She could have talked quietly to Papa, instead of forever raising her voice and driving Papa into himself. Papa was the brightest of her father's medical students and, upon his graduation, he became a junior partner in her father's practice. It was then that Papa noticed Mama, for Papa was a frequent guest at their dinner table, and her father clearly enjoyed the knowledge and wit of this young man. But having secretly wooed the daughter, Papa was informed that not only would there be stern opposition to a marriage, but his services as a junior partner were no longer required. Papa was devastated, but Mama stood by him and they were married in a quiet ceremony to which neither set of parents were invited. Shortly before Mama's parents died, Mama and Papa were able to move from the small house they were renting into their own four-storey house, with their two daughters and the few pieces of furniture they had managed to buy.

  Mama refused to employ a nanny, and raising her two children became her job. And then, as life deteriorated, she began to insist that they should leave for America, reminding Papa that if they left now they would impose no financial burden on the host country. But Papa was stubborn and Mama, instead of being patient, accused Papa of being typical of his class in his fierce attachment to his possessions. She raised her voice and accused him of cowardice, of not daring to begin again elsewhere, and of being happy to risk the future of his two daughters. This merely infuriated Papa, who could clearly see how impoverished and desperate the situation was becoming, but who refused to be ruled by a spoilt wife. And s
o he buried his head in his medicine and ignored his wife, and tried to pretend that nothing untoward was happening. But Mama talked incessantly about America, and about how important it was that she put our names on the list at the embassy, and when Papa refused to listen she would shout, and then sometimes scream, but Papa would simply close the door to his study. And then, of course, it was too late.

  I watch Gerry. I stand hidden at the far end of the hut and peer at him through an open window. He is loitering about the place where I usually sit. To begin with, he paced about a little while smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Now he sits and watches the world go by, occasionally relighting his cigarette and then coughing noisily. Today, the sun is too hot. I am taking shelter, although the smell inside this hut is loathsome. I am not sure what this Gerry seeks. His attention, while flattering, also causes me to worry. I decide that, in future, I will avoid this man as much as possible.