She still hadn’t even seen what colour they were.
He stood quite still for an endless minute. Then he began to rock his torso back and forth, at first quite undiscernibly, then faster and faster, he rocked, he shockelled, began to hum, a prayer without words that was part of no service and no feast day, assembled from scraps of melodies, from all nigunim and none, moved his head back and forth as if someone had gripped it and was forcing it to move, pressed the balls of his hands into his eye sockets, never wanted to see anything again after he had seen Chanele, and then, after a minute, after an hour, he became calmer, he stopped humming, stopped shockelling, slowly lowered his hands and splayed his fingers in front of his eyes as little children do when playing their favourite game of making the world disappear and reappear, and asked very quietly, in an almost inaudible voice full of disbelieving hope, ‘Sarah?’
‘I’m not Sarah.’ Chanele didn’t know if she’d said it or only thought it.
Either way, he had heard. He reached his arm out towards her, a thin branch in a white sleeve, moved his hand back and forth, as if to wave away steam or perhaps a ghost, approached her forehead very slowly, the contact, when it came at last, as tender as when one bumps into a cobweb on a dark staircase, stroked her forehead, her temples, ran his hands along her eyebrows, that straight line along the edges of her nose, moved back and forth, Chanele had never stroked herself more tenderly there, and a smile crossed his face, a loving, enchanted, young smile that sat on his wrinkled face like a colourful painted mask. ‘You’re Sarah,’ he said. ‘No one has such beautiful eyebrows as you.’
Chanele was forty-one years old and only now did she know what her mother’s name had been.
His hand was on her cheek now, it had found its place there like a butterfly on its final flight. She moved her head very slowly up and down. It could have been a nod, it could have been assent to what was happening to her, but perhaps too it was just the desire to be stroked by this hand.
‘Are you well?’ he asked, and answered his own question. ‘You are well, my darling. The sun is shining, even though it’s January.’
She was born in January.
The smell he gave off was not pleasant. It was a smell of illness, of decay. A smell of destruction.
Behind her back the man with the broom handle marched back and forth. Back and forth.
‘Your time will soon come,’ said the old man. His eyes were directed at her, but she had the feeling that he was talking to someone very different. ‘Everything will be as it must be,’ he said. ‘Everything will be fine. If it’s a boy we’ll call him Nathan. After your father.’
Nathan. Another name that belonged to her. Once upon a time she had also had a grandfather.
‘And if it’s a girl… You say, Sarah, my darling. What shall we call it if it’s a girl?’
‘Chanele,’ she said.
And he repeated: ‘Chanele.’
The soldier marched back and forth. Every time he stepped on the wooden floor on which Chanele stood she was lifted slightly into the air, because the boards had only been loosely laid and had shifted over the years, and underneath there was a very different floor, probably a much finer one, which no one had seen for a long time.
‘It will be a big simcha,’ said the old man. ‘A simcha that people will talk about. Eating and drinking and singing. We will invite everyone, and they will all come. Even Dr Hellstiedl. He is a goy, but a good man. We will invite him. Won’t we, Sarah?’
‘Yes,’ said Chanele. ‘We will invite him.’
‘You will still be weak.’ His hand lay on her cheek as if it had gone to sleep. ‘For the first few days one is weak, and that mustn’t alarm you. I will carry the child for you. I will hold it. I will never drop it. Nothing will happen to it. Nothing will happen. I know.’
‘No,’ Chanele said. ‘Nothing will happen to anyone.’
She will die, your Sarah that you loved so much, and you will lose your mind. A strange man will come, a beheimes trader called Salomon, and he will take your daughter away and bring her up in his own home. After many years he will write letters and look for you, and you will meet your daughter again and you won’t know.
Nothing will happen to anyone.
Suddenly and for no external reason the old man shouted out loud. His voice was suddenly much louder than it had been. He drew his hand away from Chanele’s cheek and stared wide-eyed at his fingers. Then he hid his hand behind his back. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ he said, and repeated twice more: ‘Means nothing. Means nothing.’
Chanele had never seen anything sadder than the reassuring smile he tried to put on.
With his eyes still on Chanele — but who could have said whom he really saw in front of him — he walked backwards, walked away from her on tripping little steps to the window and stuck his hand in the folds of the heavy curtain.
‘You mustn’t be afraid,’ he said, speaking faster and faster, someone using the last of his strength to run for help, and yet knowing that he won’t find it. ‘The blood means nothing. Nothing at all. It is quite natural. The doctor will come and make everything good again.’
His voice was fragmenting more and more. The wrinkles in his face waited for water like dried up river beds.
‘The doctor will come. He has already been sent for. He will come and say, “There is no need to be afraid.” He is a good doctor. He is called Dr Hellstiedl. He is the chief doctor. He can determine everything. Everything. Everyone has to obey him. He will determine that you are not dead. That you are not dead. That you are not dead.’
His body had disappeared into the curtain. Only his face was still visible, becoming older and older and stranger and stranger.
‘He will determine it,’ he repeated. ‘If I ask him to, he will determine it. You don’t need to be afraid. He is a good doctor. A good person. He gave me this shroud. He is a goy, but he gave me a sargenes. I have more need of it than he does, he said. Because I have already died.’
He cried, letting the tears flow down over him like rain. She would have given anything to know how to comfort him.
‘You will not die, Sarah. Dr Hellstiedl will heal you. You will not be dead. Only me. Only me. I gave my life for yours. Because it was meant to be.’
He had now crept all the way into the curtain. The endless, disembodied echo of his voice could only be made out in scraps.
‘Not die… means nothing… determine everything.’
A strange hand tapped Chanele on the shoulder. The two curious men were standing there, hand in hand now, two children egging one another on. With them was the man in the tailcoat.
‘He is dead,’ he explained kindly. ‘When they are dead they have to wear white shirts. That’s how it is with Jews.’
Chanele wanted to push him away, but her body wasn’t strong enough to move.
‘He will sing in a minute,’ said the man in the tailcoat. ‘They have to sing, even when they are dead.’
And true enough: behind the curtain Chanele’s father started singing in a high, thin voice.
‘I thought he would,’ said the man in the tailcoat and winked at Chanele. ‘I know all about them, but they don’t know me. I’m incognito here.’
‘Yisgadal,’ sang the old man. ‘Yisgadal veyiskadash shmey raba.’ It was the kaddish, the prayer for the dead that one speaks in memory of one who has died, sons for their fathers and fathers for their sons.
He sang it for himself.
He sang the whole long prayer, and in the places where the congregation has to join in, Chanele silently said the Amen.