Grandpa Yosef begins to sing a Polish song:
Bo ja jadę dzisiaj do Palestyny
Po radośniejszego życia los
Tam przy cichem gaju pomarańczowym
Będę snuć życia radosnego nić
Grandpa Lolek’s eyelid flutters a little. How far are the Polish words reaching?
I ask for a translation.
Grandpa Yosef thinks for a while. It will be hard in Hebrew, he thinks; the words embrace one another less. His lips test the words, gain confidence. Then he hums Irenka’s song in Hebrew:
Today I travel to Palestine
To the fate of a more joyful life
There in a tranquil orange grove
I will spin the thread of life’s joy
“It sounds better in Polish,” Grandpa Yosef emphasizes. “And the song was so beautiful when Irenka sang it. She sang many songs, but unfortunately only this one remains in my memory. They took Irenka, with Bronia, and with her father Leon, to Belzec. Nu, four years old, with such angel eyes and golden hair. Nu, that was how Irenka went. For many years Leon waited to be blessed with that daughter. In the First World War he fought in the Austrian army. He was taken hostage and held for a long time. When he came home he worked with his father as a barber, he had to make a living, but he never gave up his dream of studying music, and every spare moment he played his violin in the barbershop. ‘Chasing away the customers,’ his father used to grumble. That was your father’s grandfather, Sigmund Shlomo. At a late age, Leon was able to see his dream come true, and at the Conservatory he met the woman of his dreams, Bronia, whom everyone called Ronia. They fell in love and got married. How beautiful the world seemed when Irenka was born, such an angel. All their dreams were coming true, and then Belzec. But our Irenka was just one little angel, and there in the Sperre, through my window, we saw dozens of angels crowded onto a wagon and taken away. People followed the wagon, screaming. Shots were fired. People lay in their coats on the street, blood spurting, as the wagon went off into the distance. Screaming, wailing.
“Nu, imagine all this, and when the Sperre was over, I found out that word on the street was that it had been my mission. I, the chief agent, had brought about the Sperre. So went the rumor. Nu, me. Nothing could have been further from the truth. But the rumor persisted. People talked. I could not go around to everyone and convince them. Rumors had the strength to walk, while we no longer did. And who would talk with me? To this day, I hate to think of it. I was taken forever from the Lodz ghetto a few months later, and perhaps there are still survivors who remember Reb Yosef Ingberg as an agent of the Germans, their error never corrected. Who knows? Perhaps in the gas chambers at Chelmno, in the minutes during which they convulsed before death, not only the faces of their loved ones passed before their eyes, but also those they hated, and they whispered horrible curses unto death. Was there a Jew who whispered my name? Did I rise up in front of the eyes of so-and-so, in my pink shirt, as his lips entreated?”
Grandpa Yosef stands up and faces the window. In the west, over the ocean, the light from the east is reflected. The day has begun. Grandpa Yosef cracks his knuckles, moves this way and that. Time for prayers, a cup of coffee perhaps. He must go and see when the doctor is coming, we can’t just leave Lolek this way. The door opens. A nurse comes in and announces that a doctor will be coming soon. Grandpa Yosef nods, calmly bobbing his head, as if having measured the time between his wish and its realization, he is pleased with the speed. The nurse leans over Grandpa Lolek’s bed to check on him, straightens his head on the pillow, smoothes his sheets. Grandpa Yosef watches her movements — perhaps he can learn something new. Then he disappears from the room. Praying, no doubt. But he comes back with a cup of “Swiss coffee” (someone fixed the machine) and the physician follows him in with Effi at his side.
We are asked to leave the room. Effi stays — she is a doctor. Grandpa Yosef stays — he is not moving. I go out and call Anat. Yariv picks up the phone. He tries to figure out where I am and when I’ll be back, reducing the complicated topic to his true interest: Will I bring him a present? We agree on a ball. Red. The kind that squeaks when you press it. I think about Irenka. The thread of life’s happiness. I want to hold my son. What, I wonder, do you tell a boy in a train car on the way to Belzec? What do you explain to him when the doors open, orders are barked, and everyone must get off? The kid would be screaming, wouldn’t he? But he mustn’t scream. And if he is quiet, if he asks questions, what do you answer? Anat takes the phone and listens to the night’s events, also wanting to take part in the shifts. She’s giving a benefit evening for foster children, but she can find the time, perhaps not tonight, but tomorrow. She will look after Grandpa Lolek too, it’s her prerogative. Strange, I think. Anat is half Iraqi, on her father’s side, and in her huge family there are at least two celebrations almost every week. How is it that there are hardly any troubles? There should be a proportional relationship, shouldn’t there? Her family is large. But with them we go to weddings, brisses, bar mitzvahs. With us — visiting the sick, funerals. How is that? Once we went to the funeral of Uncle Shmuel, her mother’s brother. That was the Polish side. Strange indeed. I can hear Yariv in the background, wanting to be part of the conversation. He grabs the phone again and clarifies: The ball must squeak. A strict engineer, my child, formulating his desires in precise detail.
The doctor comes out. Not much news. They have to run tests and keep him under observation. His current condition may continue for some time, the bodily systems need to recover. We look at Grandpa Lolek. The change in him cannot be ignored. His face has taken on a tenderness, a strange glow. As if his soul has found an unfamiliar tranquility that he has no intention of giving up so quickly. Perhaps what is so striking is his silence. Finally, the ever-present handicap of his defective, limbless Hebrew has disappeared within the silence of his body, removed from Grandpa Lolek’s face like a mask that has held him back all these years, a barrier between him and us. We look at him as we stand there, and it’s like looking into a small pool of water. We perceive with clarity, finally seeing him as he was seen one day in the fifties by an anonymous photographer who needed to produce a suitable picture — perhaps for a poster, perhaps for a new Israeli stamp — and had found Grandpa Lolek a good model for his needs. He had tried to photograph him as a Zionist leader observing his vision, his gaze turned slightly upwards and forward, somewhat diagonal. But in the wonderful picture in his album, Grandpa Lolek wears an expression reserved for golfers, a second after the swing, his eyes searching for the ball in flight. Now we understand the photographer. On Grandpa Lolek’s tranquil face lies the quiet radiance befitting leaders of nations.