“Ahasuerus got back into the car. Silence prevailed. The cold began to seep in. Night was falling. Not a soul was on the road. Forests on both sides. Trees. A few birds fluttered through the treetops, screeching, groaning, demanding to know why the Creator had brought them to this remote land. And suddenly I sensed sleep fossilizing on the general’s face. But then something moved in the stoniness of his strong chin and he left me in the car again, going out to explore the wilderness. His boots creaked in the freezing cold. Birds screeched and an echo passed from one end of the world to the other. We were alone. Around us an endless forest. No salvation.
“I looked through the window of the car. Ahasuerus’s fingers rested on his eyes. His figure was hunched over for a moment. Tired and irritated and helpless. Lightening struck in my heart: He will kill me here with his gun. I tried to diminish my presence, shrinking into my pink shirt like a miserable reptile — perhaps he would take pity. Indeed. An evil Gestapo man, a general, and from him I expected mercy. Still fresh in my mind were pictures of shattered babies, Rabbi Halberstam shot with his wife. And there I was, expecting compassion. Still, my body was taut, hoping for mercy, mercy.
“Ahasuerus returned and sat down beside me in his place. I dared to steal a quick look. His face was still hard and his sorrow evident. What was going on in his soul? Had he heard bad news of his escaped lover? Had he seen her? Was she not impressed by his efforts, had she simply told him that everything they had told each other previously was revoked?
“Silence.
“Suddenly a small, sharp sound. Forgetting my vigilance, I looked straight at him. Ahasuerus was cracking a nut. With the fingers of one hand, with Herculean strength, he broke the shell and removed the debris. Carefully, unrushed, he took out the fragments. The nuts cracked like skulls between his hands. I looked away from him, frightened. I remembered that he had forgotten to give me part of his dinner. He had been lost in thought when we left the last camp and forgot about me. But it was not hunger that rose in me — rather, it was fear. The smell of the nuts terrified me. Ahasuerus pressed on. Breathing slowly. Cracking nuts. Every nut got its turn.
“Thoughts rushed through my mind. Metzger the baker came back again, as if his body wanted to tell me something. Lying, shot dead, in front of the bakery where every Friday we used to feast our eyes on the window display, the soft challahs and the raisin bread. In our home, Mother baked the bread, the challahs too, but to this day I can smell the aromas from Metzger’s. Feiga used to go there to buy bread for her family and Metzger would give her a little crown of challah for good luck. I thought about Mother. The last time I had seen her she had fainted in the military lot. Who knew where she was. My heart filled with self-pity. My loneliness enveloped me. I took consolation in the distant memory of a walk I had taken with Feiga before the war. Against that backdrop I saw a scene from the last camp Ahasuerus had taken me to: a prisoner stands looking at me with wild eyes. His whole face is black. A skeleton of a man. He stands and stares as if it’s worth looking at the car despite the risks. He tilts his head for a moment, hearing a sound. Then he leaves. I, for some reason, wonder what his name is. As if there is any importance to the name of this suffering man behind the fences, who looked at me for two minutes and in a few days will be among the dead. And still I ask myself, Yanek? Hetzkel? Shmuel? Perhaps Yosef, like myself? Suffering and tortured and about to die, and his name is my name?
“Ahasuerus moved briefly beside me. He had collected his nuts and hid them somewhere. He sat erect but his weariness was now obvious. He had not shut his eyes for two days, maybe more. For his lover’s sake he overcame tiredness, hardened himself, but the car’s breakdown had collapsed everything. Now his eyes demanded sleep. Ahasuerus struggled, there was no salvation. I was tired too, but fear would not allow me to close my eyes. First the villain had to sleep, then we’d see.
“Ahasuerus gave in first. He prepared himself for sleep, wrapping his body in his officer’s coat and digging his hands in his pockets. He turned to look at me for a moment, as if remembering that this human package sitting beside him still existed. He seemed to be considering something. Suddenly he turned to me. Truly turned his head to me and spoke:
“‘I’ve always hated Jews, but not like this.’
“When he said ‘but not like this,’ his hand made a gesture in the air as if to envelop the entire world, the Aktionen and the torture and the blood of Rabbi Halberstam on the street in the ghetto. He turned his side to me, mumbled something and fell asleep.
“Those were his first words to me and, in my innocence, I thought that from then on we would talk. But I was mistaken. He never addressed me again as long as we were together, except one more time to say one sentence. But that day is still far off. Perhaps you’d like some more of the Swiss coffee? Tasty, isn’t it?”
I decline. Grandpa Yosef patters down to the end of the hallway. It’s night time here in the hospital ward. Absolute night. Ahasuerus is asleep with his hands folded beneath his black coat, and Grandpa Yosef has positioned himself as a guard. The night is dark and there are sounds of menacing creatures. Trees sway in the wind. Grandpa Yosef’s eyes will not shut. He sits and stretches, and thoughts pass through him unfettered.
Grandpa Yosef comes back from the vending machine, looking bitter. The machine is broken. Someone poked their fingers into the mechanism and stuck something in there and now nobody can get any coffee.
Grandpa Lolek sighs as something inside him stirs — perhaps the stroke, trying to heal — and his body emits a kind of whimper. Grandpa Yosef sits silently, his flow of talk ceased, wondering if there might be an awakening, a feeble word uttered. We watch Grandpa Lolek, lurking for a disturbance in his deep rest. Only the strange wink moves slowly. The eye opens to a narrow slit, then closes, as if satisfied by one open instant. His still body convinces us that there will be no more motion. Grandpa Yosef hurries on, reminded by the soft sigh that his time to tell the tale is not unlimited. If Grandpa Lolek wakes up, if he recovers, it will put an end to the time allotted for listening, for telling, for continuing his journey.
“The general slept the whole night through. His sleep was not peaceful. His head moved, sighs and whimpers erupted from his chest. I wondered if he was plagued by scenes of babies smashed, children with heads cracked open on the walls of houses. Or perhaps his Little Lover, the SS woman, who had fled him. And myself — if I closed my eyes, would I be in the arms of Feiga? Or would I too reach the walls of the ghetto, our elderly neighbors, like Bergman, shot in the back of their heads? My eyes would not shut. Forbidden. My eyelids kept drooping, but then I would see Kowalska Street, covered with people lying dead as I walk among them. And the eyes would shoot open. No sleep. By my side Ahasuerus moved his head restlessly. Two people suffering; around them, wilderness.
“Just before dawn, the birds began to chirp and a car approached. I looked at Ahasuerus. He did not wake up. He lay restfully, curled up in a dream, perhaps having found peace in the arms of his Little Lover. He had no idea that a car was about to pass us, that he would sleep away an opportunity. I asked myself if I should let the car pass and leave us there, the two of us, hungry and cold, perhaps unto death. That would be my revenge for Metzger the baker, for Yehezkel, for Rabbi Halberstam.