Tirzah nodded.
“Very well,” Bryce announced crisply, and put on his hat. For a moment Tirzah thought he might actually lift his hand to his forehead and salute, but instead he lowered his voice and gently said, “Shalom, Mrs. Friedman.”
Tirzah watched him from the door, his shoulders back and his head high, as though he were marching in formation. The more she thought about it, the more she agreed with his suspicions. The story of the Iraqis’ capture was sure to be in tomorrow’s newspapers. The Palmach would not permit this deportation and they would have to act fast. Everything was about to change.
Tirzah folded thick brown paper around the halvah. She wondered if Danny would remember Bryce at all: the candy he brought for him, his kind green eyes. She wondered if they would ever touch one another again.
Shayndel left the kitchen confused. She had assumed that the relationship between the officer and the cook was one-sided: the besotted old colonel wrapped around the finger of a younger woman who was making a terrible sacrifice on behalf of her country. But it seemed obvious that the feeling between them was mutual. Did that make Tirzah a collaborator? Had she been passing information to the enemy?
The suspicion ran counter to Shayndel’s instincts. It was possible that Bryce could be a double agent, but not Tirzah. Poor thing, thought Shayndel, not that she would want any part of my sympathy.
As she rounded the corner of Delousing, Shayndel had the strange feeling she had walked out of a prison camp and into a theater. Virtually every inmate in Atlit seemed to be gathered, either watching or taking part in a parody of a calisthenics class.
The strongest men and boys—forty in all—were lined up in the clearing near the fence, while a dark, stocky man she’d never seen before was delivering a nonstop monologue while running in place.
He was wearing the sort of gray undershirt associated with American GI’s, and shouted, “Knees up, children,” as he lifted his combat boots high with every step. “It’s only been five minutes and we’re going to run for another ten. After that, we start the jumping jacks and it really gets hard.
“Don’t look at the man next to you,” he wheedled, switching from Hebrew to Yiddish and back. “Look at me. Watch me. I’m running and yelling at you at the same time and I could do this all day. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be able to walk from Haifa to Tel Aviv without stopping. Hup, hup, hup.
“You are hot? Then take off the shirts, fellows. You, too, ladies.” He grinned at the dozen girls who were taking part, lined up in a back row. Leonie and Tedi were among them and called for Shayndel to join them, but she waved and headed for the shade of the corrugated awning.
“Knees up, feet up, my little Jews. No more Diaspora arms and legs,” he shouted, flexing his biceps like a circus strong-man, then grinning and mocking his pose. “Eretz Yisrael needs you to have muscles like Nathan.” The young boys mimicked him, clenching fists at the end of arms that looked like chicken legs.
“Bravo,” Nathan approved.
Even as he joked, Shayndel could see he was taking the measure of his class, frowning at the men who quit, smiling at those who kept up. He looked at Shayndel and quickly saluted.
Tedi joined her, panting. “I thought I was fit.”
“He’s just showing off,” Shayndel said. “He was certainly giving you the eye.”
“He’s flirting with everyone,” Tedi said.
But Nathan was, in fact, running his eyes up and down Tedi’s impressive legs. She stuck out her tongue, which only made him lick his lips with such slow, erotic effect that everyone turned to see whom he was teasing.
“Back to work, children,” he ordered, and led them through another twenty minutes of jokes and exercise. When he dismissed his sweating students Nathan made a beeline not for Tedi but for Shayndel.
Short and powerful, he was clearly a fighter, with a broken nose, tobacco-stained teeth, and big, meaty hands. “You’re the one who works with Tirzah in the kitchen?”
“Yes. I’m going back there now.”
“I’ll come with you then. I see that you’re friends with the tall blonde and I hear you’re also close to that pretty little French girl. Oh-la-la. Can you put in a good word for me there? Which isn’t to say that I don’t find you totally adorable, as indeed I do. You’re not married, are you?”
Nathan was older and much rougher than most of the volunteers who appeared and disappeared in Atlit. As they walked, she saw him sizing up buildings and distances like a commando, even as he talked nonstop nonsense until they reached the kitchen. Once inside, he dropped his cheery manner like a jacket and turned his back on her. “It is good to meet you,” he said to Tirzah, and led her to the far corner of the room.
Shayndel tried to eavesdrop on their conversation as she ran back and forth between the dining hall and the kitchen preparing for lunch. She was sure they were plotting something. At one point, she heard them mention her name.
“What about me?” Shayndel demanded. “What is going on?”
“You’ll know when you need to know,” Tirzah snapped.
“Ach,” said Shayndel, and banged the door hard as she went to join her friends.
“What’s going on?” Leonie asked.
“Don’t ask me.” Shayndel sulked as she tore a piece of bread into little pieces.
Just then Francek, a dour Hungarian, sat down across from them. He put his hands down flat on the table and announced, “They’re moving everyone out of G barrack. They put some of the men in D, the rest in F.”
He looked at Shayndel and demanded, “What does this mean?
“They must be bringing in a new group,” she said.
“Hello, children,” Nathan interrupted noisily, as he forced his way between Leonie and Shayndel.
“You, pretty girl of all,” he said to Leonie in mangled French, as he reached his arm around her.
“You are a stupid monkey,” Leonie replied. “You have fur all the way down to your knuckles, and I think that monkeys smell worse than even pigs.” She picked up her plate and walked away.
“What did she say?” he asked Shayndel eagerly. “Does she like me?”
Francek interjected, “What can you tell us about the new group of prisoners?”
“Don’t get too excited,” said Nathan. “Better to think about pretty girls and let the Yishuv take care of things. Your job is to get ready for life in Palestine, to grow strong and to learn Hebrew. And lucky for you, I am not only the best physical education teacher in all of Palestine, but also the best Hebrew teacher. I’ll bet you haven’t learned the most important words in your official classes, have you? Do you know how to say ‘cock’? ‘Titties’? One lesson with me, and you won’t need any review.”
A crowd of men and boys gathered around Nathan as Shayndel picked up the dishes and headed back to the kitchen, where she found Leonie at the sink.
“They are all monkeys,” she said, as Shayndel reached for her apron.
“If only he knew what you said to him.”
“He would have found it charming,” Leonie scoffed. “Believe me, that sort of man hears nothing but the sound of his own voice. I think the men here are all as arrogant as baboons, and proud of it.”
Shayndel nodded. “I think it has something to do with proving that they are different from—”
“From Jews?” said Leonie, ferociously scrubbing ancient dirt from the bottom of a pot. The French considered Jewish men effeminate and impotent, but also sexually insatiable. The Germans thought they were financial wizards with hidden stores of gold, yet too stingy to buy themselves decent clothes. Effete and barbaric; brilliant and small-minded. And dirty. Always dirty.
Francek burst into the kitchen. “They’re putting up bars over the barrack windows.”
Shayndel and Leonie followed him outside, where Nathan took each girl by the arm. “Let’s take a little walk together and see what’s happening, shall we? But you, my good man,” he said to Francek, “relax a little. Sometimes, what lo
oks like a problem is actually a gift.”
“I don’t like riddles,” said Francek.
“You must be Hungarian,” said Nathan. “My grandfather is Hungarian. He doesn’t know how to take it easy, either.”
By the time they got to G barrack, near the northern perimeter of the camp, workers were hammering the last nails into a double layer of chicken wire over the windows. A padlock had been screwed into the door. The British soldiers stood a little apart from the scene as inmates shouted curses at them, including a dozen especially filthy Hebrew epithets newly acquired from Nathan.
“This isn’t going to end well,” Shayndel warned.
Nathan shrugged. “Let them blow off a little steam.”
The younger boys started screaming, “Nazi, Nazi, Nazi,” aiming pebbles at the Englishmen. When one of them was hit in the eye, they all wheeled around quickly and pointed their rifles at the crowd.
Nathan stopped smiling and rushed forward, standing between the guns and the prisoners.
“That’s enough,” he shouted to the inmates. “Listen to me now. It’s time for my afternoon class. I’m going to hold some races and the winners get a new package of American chewing gum.”
The men and boys were not so easily bought off, and it took Nathan a lot of shouting and swearing to get them to back down. Eventually, they did follow, but his class turned into an angry debate about politics and ended in a fistfight.
In the kitchen that evening, Tirzah kept her back to Shayndel. The silence between them seemed to grow thicker and more tangled with every minute, and by the time Shayndel hung up her apron for the night, she was worn out by anger and resentment. Had she done something wrong? Did Tirzah distrust her after that odd scene with Bryce? Did Nathan say something about her?
Just as she was about to walk out the door, Tirzah stopped her. “A moment, please.”
Shayndel could not recall ever hearing her use the word “please.” Tirzah gestured for her to sit down beside her on the step. She lit a cigarette and offered it to Shayndel, who shook her head.
“Suit yourself,” she said and smoked in silence. Shayndel waited, annoyed but aching with curiosity. She looked out through the fence at a harvested field, dull gold in the slanting light of sunset. The sky was purple streaked with low orange clouds, like a tinted photograph with a caption like, “The beauty of autumn in Palestine.”
At last, Tirzah got to her feet, stepped on the cigarette butt, and said, “Follow me.”
She walked briskly, leading Shayndel toward a storage building that had been turned into bedrooms for some of the staff. Unlocking the door, she pulled the chain on an overhead bulb, revealing what amounted to a large closet furnished with a cot, a stool, and a small table. The walls and floor in the narrow room had been painted battleship gray.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Tirzah said.
“That’s a pretty coverlet,” Shayndel said, pointing at the red comforter, the only bright spot in the room. The walls were bare, except for a framed studio portrait of a towheaded toddler wearing short pants and holding a stuffed lamb.
“He was a lovely baby,” Shayndel said, waiting to be told what she was doing there.
Tirzah closed the door and perched on the stool. “When you go back to your bunk tonight, you’ll find that we moved in that new German girl from A barrack.”
“Not the one who doesn’t bathe,” Shayndel groaned. “Not Lotte?”
Tirzah shrugged.
“But she’s crazy as a cuckoo. Anyone can see that. Why you haven’t already shipped her off to a mental hospital I don’t know.”
“We have reason to suspect her.”
“I know she’s German. We all know that. That other German girl you had me spy on turned out to be a regular Jew like everyone else.”
“We’ve had collaborators and kapos from concentration camps here,” Tirzah said. “Men who beat their fellow Jews to death to save their own skins, informers, sadists, spies, common criminals. Even some gentiles who thought they could get away with murder by coming here.”
“Don’t tell me what people are capable of,” Shayndel said. “Everyone in this place has seen worse than you can ever imagine.”
Tirzah opened her mouth to answer, but thought better of it and bit her lip.
As much as Shayndel hated when survivors used their suffering to make a point or get their way, she was glad to see Tirzah flustered for once.
“We have disturbing information about this woman,” she continued, with a measure of deference. “She was identified as Elizabeth Boese, one of the female overseers at Ravensbrück.”
“If you already know who she is, what do you need from me?”
“Our informant saw her only from a distance on the docks in Haifa. We wish to confirm it.”
“But why on earth would she come to Palestine?”
“People take the chances they find,” Tirzah said. “And people do stupid things. Besides, this one is insane, you said it yourself.”
“All right,” Shayndel said. “All right.”
“Also that Polish woman,” said Tirzah. “The one who calls herself Esther.”
“The one with the little boy? What about her?”
“Don’t play dumb. All you have to do is look at her. Not Jewish.”
“And the boy?”
“I am only asking you to find out what the story is there. And quickly. I need answers about these people immediately.”
“Why the hurry?” Shayndel demanded. “And why won’t you tell me what’s going on? The empty barrack with the padlock on the door? That Nathan character, whispering in your ear? And this morning, in the kitchen with …” She stopped before mentioning Bryce’s name.
“It’s not up to me.” Tirzah looked Shayndel in the eye for the first time all day and said calmly, “As soon as I can tell you, I will.”
“All right,” Shayndel said. “I will find out what I can about those two women.” As she opened the door, she added, “And again, thank you.”
“For what?”
“For the delicious halvah.”
Tirzah smiled.
As she walked through the fading light, Shayndel thought about what she had been asked to do. She kicked at the dust and wondered if someday, someone would arrive in Palestine and accuse her of sabotage. She had been a terrible shot, and such a slow runner that she had often been a liability to her comrades-in-arms. It would not be incorrect to say that I caused the deaths of my dearest friends, she thought. I would never deny it.
An anxious drone of conversation stilled as Shayndel made her way through the barrack and past the blanketed shape on the bed beside Tedi. She could feel the eyes on her, and when she got to her cot she looked around and announced, “I don’t know anything. I swear.”
Even Leonie looked doubtful.
Tedi hurried over, wringing her hands. “Please, Shayndel, I beg you, let me change places with you. I simply can’t breathe with that woman next to me. You have to get her moved out of here.”
After nearly ten weeks in Atlit, Tedi had become familiar with the smells of death and decay, despair and self-loathing, arrogance and shame. Some of those odors sickened or choked her, but she recognized them and noticed how they faded after a few days of healthy food and uninterrupted sleep. But the stench rising from Lotte was entirely unlike anything else, and it made her heart pound.
“I will never be able to sleep,” she said.
Shayndel smiled. “You could sleep through an earthquake.”
“No, really, I cannot breathe. I am afraid of this … smell,” Tedi said, knowing she was sounding a little crazy. “Please,” she begged, “change beds with me.”
“I’m sorry. But I need you to stay where you are,” Shayndel said. “You know a little German, don’t you?”
“Hardly. I had a year in school.”
“That’s more than me. I want you to find out where she comes from and how she got here.”
“I don’t know enough of the language for tha
t,” Tedi pleaded.
“I’m sorry, but this is important,” Shayndel said firmly. “They think she might have been in one of the camps—Ravens-brück. It is also possible that Lotte isn’t her real name.”
When Tedi started to object, Shayndel touched her hand and turned the order into a request that no one in Atlit could deny. “But there is also a family here, in Jerusalem, who thinks she may be a … cousin.”
Leonie, on the cot beside them, had been listening and knew Shayndel was lying. No one was looking for Lotte except possibly Tirzah, which meant that the German girl was suspected of spying or collaborating, even if she was as crazy as everyone seemed to think.
Leonie was not convinced that what other people called insanity was a disease, like tuberculosis. But unlike Aliza, who thought “crazy” was a moral failure if not a dodge, Leonie believed that “madness” was a symptom of an overwhelming, untamed secret.
Everyone in Atlit had secrets. Sometimes, Leonie caught glimpses of darkness in the faces of the otherwise cheerful Zionists, revealed by a strange pause or a stuttered answer. There were hints of untold details in terse stories of escape, heroics, and of course, in the whispered confessions of concentration camp suffering; but then a groaned sigh would ward off questions of how or why. Most people managed to keep their secrets under control, concealed behind a mask of optimism or piety or anger.
But there were an unfortunate few without a strategy or system for managing the past: somnambulists and mutes, overwhelmed by disgrace over the random accidents that chose them for life; hysterics and screamers, unable to forgive or forget a moment of cowardice or betrayal—no matter how small—that had kept them from dying.
Leonie was certain that the people everyone else called insane really needed nothing but time, rest, and patience so that their private poisons could settle and dilute. The result might not be happiness or contentment, she knew. But after a while, rage might mellow to surliness, and catatonia settle into mere stiffness, no more threatening than a limp. Eventually, eccentricity would be forgiven as a sad souvenir from a terrible time, perfectly understandable, even normal, given the circumstances.