“I wonder if I could borrow your water bucket. Mine has a leak and the water trucks will be coming soon.”
Dov stared and blinked his eyes nervously.
“I said I wonder if I could borrow your water bucket.”
Dov grunted.
“What does that mean? Yes or no? Can you talk?”
They stood and looked at each other like a pair of gamecocks. For that instant Karen was sorry she had come. She
took a deep breath. “My name is Karen,” she said. “I am your neighbor.”
Dov still did not answer. He glared.
“Well… may I use your bucket or not?”
“Did you come here to slobber over me?”
“I came here to borrow your bucket. You are certainly nothing to slobber over,” she snapped. ’
He spun away and sat on the edge of his cot and chewed his fingernails. Her abruptness disarmed him completely. He pointed to his bucket on the floor and she picked it up. He glanced at her quickly out of the corner of his eye.
“What is your name? I’d like to be able to call you something when I bring your bucket back.”
He did not answer.
“Well?”
“Dov!”
“Karen is mine. Perhaps you can call me that and we can say hello. At least till you learn to smile.”
He turned very slowly but she was gone. He walked to the tent door and watched her moving toward the British water tanker which had just passed through the gate. She was beautiful.
It was the first time in many months that an outside event had been able to penetrate Dov Landau’s absorption in himself. This Karen was completely different from the others who had come to see him. She was abrupt and snippy and afraid-yet there was a tenderness that radiated from her too. She did not gush over him or recite words she didn’t feel. She was a prisoner at Caraolos but she did not complain or seem angry like all the others. Her voice was sweet, yet it was very stern.
“Good morning, Dov,” Karen said. “Thank you for the use of your bucket.”
He grumbled.
“Oh yes, you are the one who growls instead of talking. I have a little boy like you in my kindergarten class. But he pretends he is a lion.”
“Good morning!” Dov shouted at the top of his lungs.
Dov knew what time she got up in the morning. He knew when she went to the wash racks and when she came and went from her classes. He slipped into her tent one day and looked around for her bucket and examined it. It had no hole in it at all. He would lie on his cot all day and wait anxiously for the sound of her footsteps coming down the catwalk. He would sneak to the tent door and steal a glance in her direction. Often, Karen would glance at his tent, too, and their eyes would meet for a brief instant. Then Dov would
become angry with himself for being taken in and for showing weakness.
The days passed but they were different now. He was still silent and sullen but often his thoughts veered from death and hate and he could hear the children in the playground nearby and he could hear her voice speaking to them. It seemed strange to Dov. In all the time he was at Caraolos he had never heard the children playing until after he met her.
One night Dov stood by the barbed wire and watched the searchlights sweep through the tents. He often stood and looked, for he still did not want to sleep. On the playground the Palmach had built a campfire and there was singing and dancing. Once he used to sing and dance those songs at Redeemer meetings, but he did not want to hear them now. Mundek and Ruth and Rebecca had always been there.
“Hello, Dov.”
He whirled around and saw the dim outline of Karen standing near him. Her long hair blew in the breeze and she tightened a ragged shawl about her shoulders. “Would you like to come to the campfire with me?” She pressed closer and he turned his back. “You like me, don’t you? You can talk to me. Why don’t you go to school and join our gang?”
He shook his head.
“Dov …” she whispered.
He spun around and faced her, watery-eyed. “Poor Dov!” he screamed. “Poor crazy Dov! You’re just like all the rest of them! You just talk prettier!” Dov grabbed her and put his hands on her neck and tightened his fingers on her throat. “You leave me alone … you leave me alone …”
Karen looked him straight in the eye. “Take your hands off my throat… this instant.”
He dropped his hands. “I was only trying to scare you,” he said. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
“Well, you didn’t scare me,” she said, and walked off.
For a week after that Karen did not look at him or speak to him. He was seized with terrible restlessness. Dov was no longer able to spend the hours in sullen and morbid silence. He paced back and forth all day long. Why did he let the girl break into his thoughts! He had his memories and he had been alone with them! Now he could not think!
One evening Karen was on the playground when one of her children fell in a game and started to cry. She knelt beside him and put her arms about him and soothed away the boy’s tears. For some reason she looked up and saw Dov standing over her. “Hello,” he said very quickly, and walked away.
Despite the continued warnings of many to leave him alone,
Karen knew she had penetrated a great darkness. She knew the boy was desperate and trying to communicate and that his “hello” was his way of saying he was sorry.
A few evenings later she found a drawing on her bed. She held it to the candlelight and saw a picture of a girl kneeling and holding a child, and barbed wire was beyond her. She crossed the path to Dov’s tent and when he’ saw her he turned his back.
“You are a very good artist,” Karen said.
“I ought to be,” he snapped. “I got plenty of practice. George Washington and Lincoln are specialties of mine.”
He sat on his cot uncomfortably and bit his lip. Karen sat beside him. He felt funny, for he had never been so close to a girl other than his sisters before. Her finger touched the blue tattoo on his left arm. “Auschwitz?”
“Why do you bother with me?”
“Did you ever think that I might like you?”
“Like me?”
“Uh-huh. You are very good-looking when you aren’t sneering, which is quite seldom, I must admit, and you have a very nice voice when you aren’t growling.”
His lips trembled. “I … like … you. You’re not like the rest of them. You understand me. My brother Mun-dek used to understand me.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.” Dov sprang to his feet and whirled around. “I hate these goddam British. They’re no better than the Germans.”
“Dov!”
His sudden explosion ended as quickly as it had started.
Yet, it was a beginning. He had blown off steam. It was the first time in well over a year that he had spoken more than one or two words. Karen watched him shrink back into that strange dark world of his.
Dov wanted to see Karen often because she was tender and she could listen to him and understand. He would talk quietly for a while and then burst forth with an impulsive short tirade of hate and then he would withdraw into himself.
Karen began to confide in him and tell him about how she was going to meet her father again in Palestine. Since she had left the Hansens she had always worked so long and hard with the youngsters she had never really formed a close friendship. Dov seemed proud that she would tell him all these things, and it was strange but she rather enjoyed talking to him.
And one day a great thing happened. Dov Landau smiled again.
When they spoke together he wanted to talk about nice things to her. The way she spoke … about the Hansens … the Danes … the children she loved … about her hope of reunion with her father … made him want to be able to talk like that too. But he could remember nothing nice, and before the war, 1939, was so long ago he could remember nothing about it at all.
Karen was careful with subjects that Dov did not mention. She never asked about Auschwitz or the ghetto.