Just above the roof of the pines.
Yet some small splinter of shade
Was nothing but another shadow.
We carried the streams of streams through seasons.
What sorrow and terrible wailing were heard
In all your lonely downcast corners,
Auschwitz, Majdanek, Thieresenstadt, Lod(.
Who gave them such places, O Lord,
Right on the edge of black forests?
We were taken in through their gates,
They let us up through their chimneys.
Gentle mother, make no friend
With the snake that even the snakes hate.
You ask why this song doesn't speak
To you of dreams and of opened gates?
Come and see the fallen wheels
On the ground and deep in the darkest mud.
Look at our fallen homes
And all the Jews and Gypsies broken!
But don't leave behind the dead, broken!
With whom we shared our hunger.
Don't let the snakes go free
Of what they wanted us to be.
Icicles eaten from the wire in winter
Will not freeze our tongues with weight.
We are watching still, brother,
The bend in the distant corner.
The bell that has been pealing
Is not the bell you heard before.
We will tear it to the ground
And use the old forged brass.
It will take us back around
The long five-cornered road.
I speak from the mossy earth to you-
Sound out your mouth ‘s violin!
The song of the wandering is in all the trees
And is heard in the last stars of daybreak.
It ripples in the bend of the river
Turning backwards towards us again.
Soon you shall see nothing in the chimney
Except silence and dim twilight.
The sky is red and the morning is too-
All is red on the horizon, Comrade!
Old Romani mother, don't hide your earrings,
Your coins, your sons, your dreams,
Not even inside your golden teeth,
And tell this to hell's dark brother:
When he goes collecting
He won't take any more of us along.
Who has said that your voice will be strange
To those who have risen from you?
Sun and moon and torn starlight,
Wagon and chicken and badger and knife,
All the sorrows have been heard
By those who suffered alongside us.
You who were sad at evening
Will be happy now at dawn.
Since by the bones they broke
We can tell new weather.
When we die and turn to rain
We shall stay nearby a little while
Before we go on falling.
We shall stay in the shade of the mossy oak
Where we have walked
And cried and walked and wandered.
Zoli Novotna
BRATISLAVA, SEPTEMBER 1957
Paris
2003
SHE DESCENDS THE TRAIN in the amber light of afternoon, shading her eyes with her hands. Her daughter steps from the shadows, looking tall, short-haired, lean. They kiss four times and Francesca says: “You look beautiful, Mamma.” She dips to the ground to pick up the small bag at Zoli's feet. “This is all you brought?” They link arms and walk out under the wide ceiling of Gare de Lyon, past a newspaper stall, through a throng of girls, out into the sunlight. At the corner they hear the shrill beeping of a car horn. Across the road, a young man in an open leather jacket clambers from a car. His hair is cut close, his shirt ambitiously undone. He rushes across to Zoli and his stubble bristles against her cheek when he greets her.
“Henri,” he says, and she rests for a second against a lamppost, winded, the name so close to that of her husband.
Francesca half-skips around the front of the car and helps Zoli into the front seat. “Does he speak Italian?” Zoli whispers, and before her daughter can respond, Henri has launched into a speech about what a pleasure it is to meet her, how young she looks, how marvelous it feels to have two such beautiful women in his car, two, imagine, two!
“He speaks Italian,” says Zoli with a soft chuckle, and she closes the car door.
Francesca laughs and hops in the backseat, leans forward with her arms around the headrest to massage the back of Zoli's neck. She has not, she thinks, been so carefully touched in a long time.
The car jolts forward and merges into traffic, swerves around a pothole. Zoli puts her hands against the dashboard to brace herself. The streets begin to branch and widen and clear. Out the window she watches the quick blip of traffic lights and the flash of billboards. I have arrived in Paris so many times, she thinks, and none of them ever like this. They speed through the yellow of a traffic light and down a long avenue shaded by half-grown trees. “We'll show you around later, Mamma,” says Francesca, “but let's go home first. We've a nice lunch ready, wait until you see how many cheeses!” It is a thing her daughter seems to have invented for her, that she is a lover of cheese, and she wants to say, That's your father, not me. Zoli puts her hand on Henri's forearm, asks him if he likes cheese, and he finds it funny, for whatever reason, she is not entirely sure, and he slaps the steering wheel as he turns a sharp corner.
They slow down, past kiosks and storefronts strange with foreign script. A number of Arab women in dark headscarves emerge from a shop, only their eyes apparent. Further up the street, a black man wheels a trolley of jackets across the road. Zoli turns to watch. “So many people,” she says. “I never expected it to be like this.” Her daughter unbuckles her backseat seat belt so she can whisper: “I'm so glad you're here, Mamma, I can hardly believe it.”
Henri taps the brakes and the car jolts. “Put your belt on, Francesca,” he says. A silence descends until Zoli hears the soft fall of her daughter's body against the rear seat and a long exaggerated sigh.
“Sorry, Franca,” he says, “but I'm the one driving here.”
How odd it is to hear the nickname of her daughter from this young man. How extraordinary, in fact, to be here at all, in this small car, in these thrumming streets, on a sunny Thursday afternoon when back in the valley they will be cutting grass on the lower slopes.
They negotiate a few more winding side streets and pull in next to the curb under a row of low trees by a pale stone building studded with blocks of ancient red marble. They climb out of the car and walk through the front courtyard. Henri puts his shoulder to the giant ironwork door. It creaks and swings, revealing a black and white tiled floor. They walk towards an old elevator, but Zoli veers off to the stairs, explaining that tunnels and elevators are not for her, that they make her claustrophobic. Henri takes her elbow and guides her towards the elevator's intricate grillwork. “The stairs are so steep,” he says. Zoli reaches back for her daughter's hand. She is afraid now that she will dislike Henri, that he is one of those who is almost too happy, the sort who forces his opinions of happiness on others. A sharp look appears on his face, and he goes ahead, alone, in the elevator.