CHAPTER 2
July 1983. Lodz, Poland
Katrina watched from within the protective walls of her tenement, watched as they marched by, holding their signs, chanting their chants. The government had been growing less tolerant of Solidarity and the protests, and it seemed their rationing of food was a direct punishment for the people’s failure to obey and accept the conditions imposed upon them. She remembered watching on their little black and white television as the new prime minister declared martial law. Things began devolving more quickly afterwards. That was almost two years ago.
The women were the majority of the march, and their children walked with them. On the fringes of the rally stood the men, the husbands, keeping watch over their women. The soldiers that should be protecting the people had become the enemy, and military rule was slowly taking over all private business, all government entities, everything. Many whispered that civil war was coming.
Katrina wanted to participate, wanted to support Solidarity, but her mother was too afraid to let her out of their tiny apartment. The soldiers had already shot 14 people in the streets of Lodz, and her dear Katrina would not be number 15. Her mother approached her from behind, wringing her hands nervously before coaxing her away from the window, lest nearby soldiers mistake her gaze for abstract support of the protest. Like the Nazis before them, there was always someone taking notes.
Katrina’s last vision as her eyes left the marching, starving women in the street was the hulking gray stone of the Jewish temple, the temple she walked toward every Friday and Saturday with her mother.
“Come, my dear, away from that window. They are watching.”
Katrina glanced over at the two black and white photographs of her father propped up on the kitchen counter.
“If Tata were here, we would all be in the street supporting them.”
Her mother removed her fingers from her daughter’s shoulders as if they were too hot to touch, and took a step back.
“But he isn’t here, and you are all I have left. You may talk strong, but those people will be target practice soon.”
Katrina lost her father when she was very young, and had no real memory of him. Her entire relationship with her father has been based on those two photographs and the occasional story her mother told her. Her mother could feel Katrina growing older, more independent, closer to the day she would leave the house. All children must go, she thought to herself, but she could not bear the thought of her actually leaving.
After dinner, Katrina and her mother walked across the street to the temple. Katrina paused outside the ancient walls to examine the old, weathered stones, the pock marks from the weapons of past wars. She ran her finger along the battered surface, wondering whether the dark patches were moss or ancient blood stains. The temple was a veteran of many battles. It sat upon land claimed by Prussia, Russia, Germany, and of course Poland. Centuries of hate have been heaped upon it, she thought to herself, and these walls have absorbed them all. Katrina’s mother poked her head back out of the door to usher her inside.
The Rabbi’s wife was there already, and they busied themselves with their chores. Katrina spent her Thursday evenings with her mother preparing the hall for Friday’s services, and her mother went into the temple’s small kitchen to bake challah, counting on their fellow Jews to bring the ingredients necessary to make it. Katrina set about sweeping the floors and straightening.
The Rabbi supported Solidarity, as did most of the Jews who attended the temple. However, unlike them, he did not discuss it and did not weave it into his sermons; the Jews already bore enough scrutiny from the government. They did not need more.
After the cleaning was complete, Katrina wandered the temple, exploring like a child in a castle. It was not a very large building, yet housed many dark corners and rooms within rooms, the by-product of a cycle of destruction and rebuilding. As she grew older, her wandering became more focused, rummaging through the storage rooms out of curiosity, and to pass the time. She often crept down the musty, chilly stone stairway into the basement, using a candle from the temple; they were far too poor to have flashlights. She found old newspapers, old books, and random cast-aways lost to time, and imagined their owners and who they might have been.
The basement held yet another doorway beyond which Katrina would not pass out of fear. The door was smaller than an ordinary door, and of a rough hewn wood of unknown origin. Finally, at 15, she had grown bold enough to overcome her fear. That first time she approached the door, her stomach swimming with nervousness, she reached out and pulled the steel catch, and the door creaked out a few inches. Beyond laid darkness. She pulled the door toward her several feet, and it remained open when she let go. She held her candle high and out, at the entrance.
The doorway led into a fairly large room, at least six or seven meters square, a rough hewn space with dirt floors, a mixture of stone and mortar walls and a faint musty smell only somewhat unpleasant. Katrina was reminded of photographs she had seen in books of the great tombs of Egypt; they all seemed to have similar little cells, only theirs contained sarcophagi housing the rulers of Egypt, asleep in the silence of the ages. She was immediately fascinated by this little room, so far from everything she knew, as if time had stopped upon entering within. The room contained an accumulation of the fragments of centuries.
Her mother told her the temple had been built in the 16th century, destroyed twice and rebuilt. This back room, she believed, must be part of that original structure. The thought of being in such an ancient place excited her.
However, there was nothing exciting about the contents of the room. She wandered between the layered debris of slowly rotting furniture and musty prayer books, topped with a more recent layer of cast offs; a tablecloth here, a box of clean silverware there. She felt like the first to enter the room in ages, but of course the Rabbi and his wife have surely visited the room. Wasn’t that tablecloth spread upon the table just last week? she thought to herself.
Katrina meandered through the piles, softly crunching on the earthen floor. She was so lost in her thoughts, distracted by her imagination, that she failed to pay attention to her feet. She stepped into a large depression in the earth and, not being prepared for it, lost her purchase upon the ground, and fell forward. She lost her grip on her little candle and it hit the ground and extinguished, smothered in its own melted wax. When she landed, she was engulfed in darkness. Panic gripped her for a moment until she could rationalize her situation. She was in the sub-basement of the temple, the temple that had protected its people for centuries, and her mother was upstairs. What could happen? She took a deep breath and felt around for her candle, walking her fingers across the earth like giant spiders. It only took a few moments. She was close to the wall, and her wandering fingers scraped the far wall where it met the earth, rubbing against several loose stones that jiggled beneath her ministrations. Eventually she located her candle, the hot wax sealing to her index finger, and she fished around in the apron of her dress to find the matchbook she had kept with her. Within seconds, she was again bathed in the warm, yellow glow of candle light.
She had lifted herself up to her knees, and now, with her vision returned, focused her attention on the loose stones of the wall, her throbbing elbow and rising panic forgotten. She cocked her head to one side as she inspected the loose stones. They were indistinguishable from the rest of the wall, and being so low to the ground, she had never noticed their looseness.
She came closer, holding the flickering candle in her outstretched arm, casting long shadows behind her into the darkness. She felt very alone in that sub-basement, and the silence was deafening; the only noise was her quiet respiration and the low fizzle of the candle. She reached out and scratched around with her fingers along the loose stones. She counted six stones in a row along the ground that, although surrounded by mortar, were totally loose in the wall. She reached her fingers around one, jiggled it, and pulled it away from the wall, ancient mortar still clinging t
o its edge. She slowly placed the stone on the ground before her and turned her gaze to where it had been resting. Beyond laid darkness. She grabbed another, then another. After all six stones were in a line again on the ground beside her, she crept closer to the dark hole, holding the candle before her. She willed the candle light to push itself into the hole, but eventually realized the dim light would do nothing to illuminate what lay beyond.
Spiders, roaches, ants, beetles, stinging creepy creatures, even monsters, zombies, they filled her mind as she reached her hand toward the darkness of the hole. Her heart seemed to stop as she watched her fingers slowly disappear into the blackness. It seemed colder within. She felt her hands around, running her fingers against the dirt, feeling nothing. She withdrew her hand and felt a degree of disappointment. There was nothing. Her imagination wandered as she knelt, still on one elbow, her candle balanced against the back wall. Instead of insects, her mind dreamed up golden coins, jewels, perhaps a secret entrance to a magical kingdom. She tried one more time.
She crept closer, entered into the blackness once more, past her wrist, the darkness swallowing her arm halfway to her elbow, then she stopped. There was something there. Her fingers traced the outline of a package, something covered in what felt like suede or leather. It was loose around the package, and she tugged on it slightly. She continued to explore it with her fingers as the cloth undraped from the contents. It felt like a large book, leather bound and thick. She slowly dragged the book out and took it in her hands. The leather cover was devoid of any tooling or writing. She knew she was alone, but turned to look over her shoulder nevertheless. She was still alone. Her heart racing, she slowly brought the book as close to her candle as she dared, placing it on the cool earth just inches away from the flame. It was enough light to see.
She opened the cover and was presented with a yellowing title page. It appeared to have been written in ink; this was no printed book, but a handwritten text. It was written in Hebrew, and that first page contained a simple statement:
The Father is the Giver of Life; but the Mother is the Giver of Death, because her womb is the gate of ingress to matter, and through her life is ensouled to form, and no form can be either infinite or eternal.
A chill flew up her spine. She re-read the words to make sure. She was too young to study the Kabbalah, but she had heard whispering among the older women in Lodz. She remembered one of their very old neighbors having tea with her mother, and the old woman leaned toward her mother conspiratorially and Katrina heard her mutter ah, but the mother is the giver of death! then cackle into her tea cup. Katrina did not understand those words, but they had stuck with her over the years. She knelt a moment longer, transfixed to the page. She was absently stroking the binding of the book with her fingers, stroking along the pages, and ran across a page that was sticking out from the rest. She pulled it from the book and inspected it. It was a letter, also written in Hebrew, unsigned and undated. She began reading, her spine tingling with excitement.
My Nehkahmah, my friend, my protector, I look through my window into the cold darkness and know you are there, sleeping, waiting, always prepared to lurch from the earth to deliver the wrath of God.
My Nehkahmah, wait for me there, under the ancient oaks, and if I am gone, wait for the next time evil threatens this temple and its occupants.
My People, if you are pure of heart, if the Nazis return, you must call to him. Call to my Nehkahmah, call him in the name of my dear husband, Yisrael. Call him, and woe to your enemies.
Katrina slowly folded the letter back into the book, her heart beating out of her chest. She heard the door opening to the stairs leading down, and heard her mother calling to her. She looked left and right, and quickly took the letter from the book, stuck it into her apron, pushed the book back into the crevice, then replaced the stones just as her mother made it to the bottom of the stairs. Katrina grabbed her candle and stood, earth adorning her hand made dress. She made a half hearted attempt to dust off her knees with her free hand, feeling the crinkle of the old letter beneath her dress.