We wanted him to take us to the depths of the earth, to the core, but the power of the Formacil had gone too far and had mistakenly melted away an ancient emotional strength, a cloak of silence forged over many years. All of a sudden Gershon Klima agreed to tell his story, to explain why he was “his own brother.” We had subdued him by way of error, or perhaps (so we contemplated), Gershon Klima had captured us in his lair and we were finally caught, so he could tell his story.
Effi struck a hard bargain. “Do you have any juice?” she enquired.
I was anxious that we were about to lose Gershon Klima. Here he was, willing to tell us his story and make us the first to land on that moon, when suddenly — juice. But still Effi guided the ritual, in control of all aspects.
“I have no juice. I have no refrigerator at home,” said Gershon Klima, and the simple politeness of his response became, in the air of the room, something greater. Gates were opened, the room filled with the sense of his clear declaration: This is Gershon Klima and this is his empty home, and his life, and we would hear his story here in the heart of the being that created it. “His own brother” was about to be deciphered. His own brother. So simple.
When Gershon Klima was born, he had an identical twin brother. Only their mother could tell her two drops of bliss apart. In a bunker during the Görlitz Aktion, sixteen adults and two children spent two days underground. Gershon and Hezkel Klima, aged one-and-a-half, were given sleeping pills so they wouldn’t cry and give everyone away. But the Germans didn’t need cries. Someone informed. In return for his life or the lives of his family members, or in return for one of the things that functioned as currency during the Aktionen, someone gave up the bunker. One by one, the people came out. The first were shot even before the last emerged. A moment before the mother went out into the light to be shot, she threw her twins into an empty water barrel.
They lay there, still, for an unknown length of time. First drugged, then dazed by the darkness and the shock. When one of them began to cry, someone heard him and crawled into the hiding place. He found one living twin, crying, and one dead twin. No one knew which of the two had survived — Gershon or Hezkel? But not only the external name had been lost. The sleeping pills had also taken the inner name. A warm child had woken up beside his cold brother, everything was dark, no one around. For several long hours a one-year-old soul had stirred, lost in the dark, crying, in a slumber that came and went, lowering blinds and partitions. Years would pass and only prescription pills could raise those blinds even a crack.
He spent the entire war hiding in the woods and in the homes of kind goyim. When the war was over, relatives came to collect him and they raised him devotedly, giving him generously from what little they had. Their looks enquired — Gershon or Hezkel? Not once did they call him by name, so as not to make the decision. He silently bore the appellations, “good boy,” “our beloved,” aliases that evaded the need to use an explicit name. Years went by and no decision was made. When they arrived at the port of Haifa in Israel, the immigration officer leaned down to the boy and pinched his chin affectionately. For some reason, after hundreds of children, all wide-eyed and imploring, the officer was moved by this boy grasping his uncle’s hand.
“What should we call you, boy?” he asked in crude rustic Polish.
Gershon Klima, frightened and suddenly obligated, found himself committing. “I’m Gershon.”
End of story.
We listened to Gershon, who now was quite possibly Hezkel, and understood everything.
“Is it because of Hezkel that you go to the nuthouse?”
Gershon Klima smiled. Yes, all was understood. Hezkel wanted a life too. Sometimes he demanded everything, sometimes only a little — just a walk outside.
We were not happy. “His own brother” had been deciphered but we felt empty and worn out. Something we should have left with its owner had been given to us. We should not have taken it. We left Gershon Klima’s home in the usual way, through the front door, remembering to observe how the world looked from inside the house, through its windows, from its doorway, from its porch. We walked very slowly, already thinking about our meeting with Levertov later that evening, and even before that, our task of stealing more Formacil from Feiga.
We were not prepared for the next surprise. Trapped in broad daylight in the middle of Katznelson, we ran into Hirsch. His feet were planted solidly in the middle of a row of hibiscus flowers, his coat raised in his right hand above his knees. He was peeing on the flowers. In his left hand he held a book of Psalms, lifting it as high as he could, far away from the urgent downward stream. We stood frozen opposite this statue of liberty — we were immigrants in America, standing dazed at the port with a suitcase at our feet and our brother’s address in our pocket. We thought about Mr. Bergman, who had a brother in America. About Finkelstein the son, of whom we knew nothing except what had been addressed to him. We recalled Adella Greuner’s brother, who once came to visit from America, rolling into the neighborhood in a taxi. After less than half an hour at Adella’s, the whole neighborhood watched through their blinds as he slapped her on the cheek, got back into the waiting taxi and left. Astonishing. Everyone stood limply behind their blinds — imagine coming all the way from America to slap Adella Greuner and go back home! That evening, the sky had seemed higher over the neighborhood, although the swallows had come down at twilight as usual, following the insects that stuck to the lamps. By morning, the neighborhood had not yet wiped off its look of astonishment. People pondered the broadness of life, sensed a Mississippi River that had burst onto Katznelson for one single day and submerged it. All the way from America for one slap and back home!
Hirsch concluded his business and walked onto the paved portion of Katznelson. His right hand still lifted his coat, his left shook the Psalms up and down. Up and down, as if he were clutching a JNF donation box, listening to the letters jingle inside. We saw him turn to us and approach. We thought he would choose us, stand facing us and open his terrible mouth:
“Only saints were gassed?”
We stood. Eyes closed. We felt Hirsch’s breath on our face. Then he was gone, leaving his leaden dramas at an insignificant point near the plumbago shrubs far behind us.
We went home and we were almost unsurprised to see Levertov coming out of Grandpa Yosef’s apartment. He looked at us for a moment like a captured jackal, exposing his teeth in an evasive sort of smile. We didn’t have to ask. We hurried to Feiga’s room. The Formacil had already been swapped. Grandpa Yosef scurried after us, explaining, “Mr. Levertov came to see how Feiga was. It’s so nice that there is someone willing to sit with her a little when I’m busy. And Levertov, he has enough problems of his own.”
We left. Our hearts yearned for the woods but our feet took us only as far as the upper border demarcated by long yellow skeletons of leaves and little pieces of junk tossed, over the years, into the point that connected the place of human residence with the beginning of savagery. At the point where the neighborhood disconnects from the rest of the woods, we returned to Katznelson. That was the precise moment when childhood ended.
We walked quietly back and forth along Katznelson. We wanted to vandalize something at Levertov’s, to go to Grandpa Yosef and blurt out a confession: Feiga has been poisoned, someone faked the Formacil! Or perhaps do a good deed and carry Linow Community’s shopping for her or rake some leaves from the path next to Moshe.
We had wasted our power and we sensed it ebbing away, beaten down, weakening. So many things had been missed. We had not gone to Hirsch’s hut to knock on his door and see what he did when he wasn’t shouting on Katznelson. We had not gone down into the sewer to walk all the way to Caesarea. So much truth we could have acquired, enough to fill our pockets with. But we had wasted it, wasted it all. Childhood was over. We were thrown out and barred from taking anything with.