Katerina

32

I FOUND SOME PAPER and a pencil, and I’m sitting and writing words to brighten my darkness. I write shabbis and again I write shabbis, and, marvelously, that single word has the power to evoke not only silence but also a melody. Since there are no longer any Jews left in the world, I make the Sabbath for myself every week. I drive away all evil thoughts within me and proclaim a Sabbath for the Lord, and for a whole day I wrap myself in it as in a cloak.

At the close of the Sabbath, to my surprise, I feel a thin sadness rise within me, and I know that the Sabbath queen, under whose wings I have hidden for a moment, is about to leave. The parting is hard for me, and I go out and watch the skies as they change, and the tender light is gradually swallowed up by the darkness.

Now I write down shvues, and immediately the scent of green plants and dairy products rises in my nose. On Shavuot, the house doors are open and warm air flows in. On Shavuot, the Torah was given from heaven, and Rosa wears a flowered dress, which she wears only on Shavuot.

Now I write tishebov. That was the gloomiest day of all. People fled from each other as though the angel of death were pursuing them. Benjamin wouldn’t speak with anyone, his face was sealed, and Rosa curled up on the floor and read the dirges out loud. This is a destruction without end, a fault that cannot be mended; only the Messiah will come and repair it. And now I write down: rosheshone and yonkiper and sukes and khanike and purim and tubishvas and peysekh and on and on. I write and I compress the many lights together into words, so that the words will slow in my memory. I am afraid of the darkness. Now there are no more Jews left in the world, but a little of them is buried in my memory, and I am afraid that that little bit will be lost. My memory is weakening, and so I continue to write: treyf tume, orel, Sabbath candles, Yom Kippur candles, nile, kharoyses, tkinkhatsos, slikhes, shabesnakhmu, sudehamafsekes. I’m writing the words down in big letters, compressing a great deal of life into this envelope of words, because I am afraid of my memory. Here in this green desert a person can easily lose his memory. All the years I fought against oblivion, and now I feel I can no longer overcome it, and so I keep on writing.

At night the boys would come back from the school they called hayder. They carried little lanterns in their hands, and on the white snow they looked like two angels. Presently, I would take off their coats, and away they flew. Their father used to ask them a question about the Bible, and I couldn’t understand a word. “What does Rashi say?” asked the father, and Abraham would give a long and apparently clear answer, and the father was pleased, but he didn’t reveal his contentment easily.

Later I would hear the boys reciting the Shema before bedtime. That prayer brought a kind of new light to the house. In those years, may God forgive me, I didn’t see the light around me. My body was in a turmoil, and I was immersed within myself with no way out. Now everything is far away and forgotten. The green lushness here is hard and thick, and so as not to slide into the abyss of emptiness, I write down: simhistoyre, hakafis little flags, with red apples on the end of the poles. Around me tall dogs bark, but the children wave their flags and proclaim: “There are no dogs, no wolves.”

“Come, children, the time has come to return home.” I hear Rosa’s voice. It’s hard to take the children away from the celebration, but Rosa draws them away, scolding them, and cuffing Abraham in the face. Now I’m not sure whether it really happened that way and if the dogs really barked or whether that was Simhat Torah or the day before Rosa was murdered. Rosa had strong hands, and she would hit the children hard. I am very sorry that she hit the children on the night before she was killed. One doesn’t forget blows; they are sealed in our flesh.

After Benjamin’s murder, I felt the trembling in my fingers for the first time. There had always been a kind of tremor in my fingers, but then I understood for the first time it was a tremor that had strength. After Benjamin was murdered, I told Rosa, “We ought to kill the murderer.” Rosa heard my words but didn’t respond, and I too was afraid to speak. When Rosa was murdered, I considered going out to the villages and looking for the killer. Now there are no more victims in the world, only murderers. Now I close my eyes and rest my head against the wall.

I envision the candles for Yom Kippur. Rosa used to make the candles for Yom Kippur with her own hands. She used to buy the beeswax from the mountain Jews. She would prepare everything with great care and quictly. What a simple life, what a full life. Only innocent people are not afraid of killers. Anyone born in a village knows that killers lurk in every den. More than once I wanted to shout, flee this evil place. But in my heart I knew that the people wouldn’t listen to me. I had the senses of a peasant, and I knew that a killer would spare neither women nor children. I should have said it, I should have shouted, I should have taken them to a village and shown them how the killers act. I, may God forgive me, didn’t know what to say or how to say it. Indeed my hands trembled, but I didn’t know what they were telling me.