We were concerned for his health. Grandpa-Yosef-against-time seemed like an unfair battle. We observed his desperation and endurance, and we fell in love anew. Matters were helped by the documentation of “Grandpa Yosef’s Voyage.” The pages, slowly accumulated, described a simple voyage that explained everything. I showed it to Effi and Dad. We fought off our aversion.
Grandpa Yosef’s story was written down, as was Dad’s. And then, in the spirit of the era, attention was turned to a more momentous task. I began to think about the other people in the family and in the neighborhood. Their stories. The Big Bang. I wanted to document it, to write everything down. Everything-that-had-happened-to-everyone-who-came-from-there. Everyone-I-knew. Everything-I-once-did-not-know. Everything-that-must-be-revealed-so-that-I-could-now-understand. Everything-that-must-be-written-so-it-was-not-lost.
Anat could not understand. “What do you need to deal with all this stuff for? It won’t do them any good either.”
During Grandpa Lolek’s illness, she had joined forces with Grandpa Yosef. She could not contain herself for long while such an impressive nursing operation was taking place right in front of her eyes. She took over the domain of laundry and ironing, and contributed to the baking. We often met at the hospital, I with pages of documentation, she with piles of clothes on the Fiat seats.
“I don’t want you to spend too much time with all that,” she said.
“You’re not letting it go, eh?” Effi said.
“It should be documented,” Attorney Perl assured me.
I brought Yariv to see him in the store for the first time. He sat in the back room, in the corner at first, slightly frightened beneath the angular wall above him. He nervously kneaded the soles of his rain boots, a new acquisition, and examined the screws he had been given. He plucked up the courage to ask for a nut for each bolt, “So they won’t be lonely.”
Attorney Perl laughed and called out to his assistant in the front of the store, “Yakov, bring in a box with nuts for quarter-inches!”
He showed Yariv the photograph of his wife, Laura, and explained, “That was my wife.”
“Whose mommy was she?” Yariv asked.
Attorney Perl rolled his eyes and sipped a cup of tea. Then he yelled, “Yakov?!”
Yakov came in with a box. It was a new Yakov, one we did not know. He scattered some nuts in front of Yariv and silently retreated to the front of the store.
The nuts bored Yariv. He started inspecting the little drawers along the back wall. He carefully pulled out one drawer, wondering if he would be rebuked, and revealed that the drawers did not contain the store inventory, as I had believed all those years, but rather notes of paper. The little drawers that filled the back room contained index cards bearing crowded notations.
“Nu, I’ve been collecting all these years.” Attorney Perl took out a few cards and showed me his treasure trove of endless notations.
Franz Six. Head of the “ideological” branch at the Reich Security Main Office, responsible for disseminating material on the “Jewish question.” Sentenced in 1948 to twenty years in prison, released four years later, in 1952.
Eduard Houdremont. A partner in the slave labor crimes at Krupp industries. Sentenced to ten years in prison in 1948, released in 1951.
Hermann Reinecke. Sentenced in the High Command trial to life imprisonment in 1948. Released in September 1954.
Walter Warlimont. Sentenced at the same trial to life imprisonment. His sentence was later commuted to eighteen years and he was released in 1957.
Endless lists. Crowded index cards with names and details, the stories of their lives after release from prison — the quiet lives, the little houses, the grandchildren, the longing for the good old days. Here, I realized, was where the treasure trove had always resided. Not in the memory of Attorney Perl, but in the little drawers.
“Could I read these?” I asked.
Attorney Perl gestured with his hand, putting all the drawers along the wall at my disposal. “Yes, yes. It would be interesting if someone finally did something with all this. You could write out all these notes nicely, with all the details. So if anyone in the world thinks the Nazi criminals were punished enough, they’ll know.”
Between my eyes and his there emerged a world in which I sat down immediately and began to toil. But Yariv pulled my hand, whispering, “I have a secret.” He put his hand to my ear and explained gravely, “I have to go pee-pee.” Then he announced, “Not here.”
“Why not here?”
“Not here.”
We went out to the street. Rain, as usual. A good time to try out his new boots. We found an old yard full of puddles glimmering under the street lamps.
“Here,” Yariv chose.
And very quietly, like two bank robbers, we slipped into the yard “for a quick pee-pee.” Later, at Yariv’s demand, we went to “our” falafel stand, the one on Nevi’im Street. There, of course, came the memories. Dad used to take me to this stand, and I too had to be lifted up high so I could see over the counter laden with bowls of condiments. “Half a portion and juice,” I used to say. The same place, so many years ago. Only the falafel guy is different — probably the son. “A ton of rain,” he comments. “Yeah,” I reply. I have no idea what his name is. So many years. This place has never been closed except for one week, when death notices covered the iron shutters, citing a name I have now forgotten. Then it opened up again. Same falafel, same flavor, only a different guy, but with the same features. He asks Yariv what he wants. Yariv does not speak, only points, cautious around strangers. But he stomps his feet in a puddle so everyone will see his new boots.
Lightning bolts through the sky, followed by thunder. Yariv is not scared, he likes it. He says, “rain,” and his fingers mimic drops falling. “Lightning,” he says, and one finger cuts through the air. He says, “thunder,” and makes a tight fist, then opens it up as befitting thunder. Little Red Riding Hood scares him. Not thunder. At nights he gets out of bed and sings songs with the rain. They spent the whole fall at kindergarten looking forward to the rain, and when it was delayed, they sang the songs anyway and applauded. Now they’re onto Chanukah songs, but Yariv happily wakes up at night, puts his nose against the window and sings for the rain. He thinks this is how it will be all year round. Rain and rain and rain and rain. He has no idea that something has happened this year, because of Grandpa Yosef and his war against time, and that the rain has already taken on the qualities of a deluge.
After the falafel, it’s too late to go back to Attorney Perl’s store. But over the next few days I go every day and stand in front of the great wall of drawers. (When Anat has to go out, I leave Yariv with the upstairs neighbor, the one who’s always-happy-to-look-after-him-for-a-few-hours.) Attorney Perl lets me poke around and read, while on the other side of the wall he slowly climbs the ladder to take down bolts and nails for his customers.
Attorney Perl starts to bring me books from his home, endless volumes and pamphlets on the Holocaust. The Nazi trials are documented in thick brown volumes, testimonies bound in thin notebooks, anthologies of articles, the literature of Nazi laws, the speeches and verdicts of German leaders. “Nu, I’ve been collecting and buying for many years.” Little notes and pencil markings indicate sections he finds particularly noteworthy. I read everything he has marked, and everything in-between.
He also starts sending me to Jerusalem, to the Yad Vashem library and archives. He gives me precise lists, citations in books, reports I have to read. He names documents, testimonies, protocols. The order and clarity in his ninety-two year old memory conflicts starkly with the labyrinthine archives. Energetic librarians do their best to search for my requests. Am I sure that’s the name of the report? Being a well-briefed emissary, I insist. Sometimes Attorney Perl is vindicated, the report located. Other times — nothing, the report is missing. I go back to his store to peruse the documents with him, to hear explanations, opinions, further instructions.