Tzili: The Story of a Life

31

NOW THEY STREAMED with the sun toward the sea. And at night they grilled silver fish, fresh from the river, on glowing coals. The nights were warm and clear, bringing to mind a life in which pleasures were real.

There was no lack of quarrels in this mixture. The summer sun worked its magic. As if the years in the camps had vanished without a trace. A forgetfulness which was not without humor. Like, for example, the woman who performed night after night, singing, reciting, and exposing her thighs. No one reminded her of her sins in the labor camp. She was now their carnival queen.

Now too there were those who could not stand the merriment and left. There was no lack of prosecutors, accusers, stirrers up of the past, and spoilsports. At this time too, the first visionaries appeared: short, ardent men who spoke about the salvation of the soul with extraordinary passion. You couldn’t get away from them. But the desire to forget was stronger than all these. They ate and drank until late at night.

“What are you doing here?” A man would accost her from time to time, but on seeing that she was pregnant he would withdraw at once and leave her alone.

Tzili was very weak now. The long march had worn her out. From time to time a pain would pierce her and afterward she would feel giddy. Her legs swelled up too, but she bit her lips and said nothing. She was proud that her legs bore her and her baby. For some reason she believed that if her legs were healthy no harm would befall her.

And her life narrowed down to little worries. She forgot everyone and if she remembered them it was casually and absentmindedly. She was with herself, or rather with her body, which kept her occupied day and night. Sometimes someone offered her a piece of fish or bread. When she was very hungry she would stretch out her hand and beg. She wasn’t ashamed to beg.

Without anyone noticing, the green creeks turned into a green plain dotted with little lakes. The landscape was so lovely that it hurt, but people were so obsessed with their merrymaking that they took no notice of the change. After a night of drinking they would sleep.

The convoy proceeded slowly and at a ragged pace. Sometimes a sudden panic took hold of them and made them run. Tzili limped after them with the last of her strength. They traipsed from place to place as if they were at the mercy of their changing moods. At this time fate presented Tzili with a moment of peace. Everything was full of joy — the light and the water and her body bearing her baby within it — but not for long.

During one of the panic flights she felt she could not go on. She tried to get up but immediately collapsed again. But for the fat woman, the one who sang and recited and bared her thighs — but for her and the fact that she noticed Tzili’s absence and immediately cried: “We’ve left the child behind”—they would have gone on without her. At first no one paid any attention to her cry, but she was determined to be heard. She called out again, with a kind of authority, like a woman used to raising her voice, and the convoy drew to a halt.

No one knew what to do. During the years of the war they had learned to run and to stop for no one. The fat woman made them stop. “Man is not an insect. This time no one will shirk his duty.” A sudden shame covered their faces.

There was no doctor among them, but there was a man who had been a merchant in peacetime and claimed that he had once taken a course in first aid, and he said: “We’ll have to carry her on a stretcher.” Strange: the words did their work at once. One of them went to fetch wood and another rope, and the skinny merchant, who never opened his mouth, knelt down and with movements that were almost prayerful he joined and he knotted. And they produced a sheet too, and a ragged blanket, and even some pins and some hooks. By nightfall the merchant could survey his handiwork and say: “She’ll be quite comfortable on this.”

And the next day when the stretcher bearers lifted the stretcher onto their shoulders and set out at the head of the convoy, a mighty song burst from their throats. A rousing sound, like pent-up water bursting from a dam. “We are the torch bearers,” roared the stretcher bearers, and everyone else joined in.

They carried the stretcher along the creeks and sang. The summer, the glorious summer, turned every corner golden. Tzili herself closed her eyes and tried to make the giddiness go away. The merchant urged the stretcher bearers on: “Run, boys, run. The child needs a doctor.” All his anxieties gathered together in his face. And when they stopped he would sit next to her and feed her. He bought whatever he could lay his hands on, but to Tzili he gave only milk products and fruit. Tzili had lost her appetite.

“Thank you,” said Tzili.

“There’s no reason to thank me.”

“Why not?”

“What else have I got to do?” His eyes opened and in the white of the left eye a yellow stain glittered. His despair was naked.

“You’re helping me.”

“What of it?”

And Tzili stopped thanking him.

At night he would fold his legs and sleep at her side. And Tzili was suddenly freed of the burden of her survival. The stretcher bearers took turns carrying her from place to place. There was not a village or a town to be seen, only here and there a house, here and there a farmer.

“Where are you from?” asked Tzili.

The merchant told her, unwillingly and without going into detail, but he did tell her about Palestine. In his youth he had wanted to go to Palestine. He had spent some time on a Zionist training farm, and he even had a certificate, but his late father had fallen ill and his illness had lasted for years. After that he had married and had children.

There was nothing captivating in the way he spoke. It was evident that he wanted to cut things short in everything concerning himself, like a merchant who put his trust in practical affairs and knew that they took precedence over emotions. Tzili asked no further. He himself left the stretcher only to fetch milk for her. Tzili drank the milk in spite of herself, so that he would not worry.

He never asked: “Where are you from?” or “What happened to you?” He would sit by her side as dumb as an animal. His face was ageless. Sometimes he looked old and clumsy and sometimes as agile as a man of thirty.

Once Tzili tried to get off the stretcher. He scolded her roundly. On no account was she to get off the stretcher until she saw a doctor. He knew that this was so from the first aid course.

And the fat woman who had saved Tzili started entertaining them again at night. She would sing and recite and expose her fat thighs. The merchant raised Tzili’s head and she saw everything. She felt no affection for any of them, but they were carrying her, taking turns to carry her, from place to place. Between one pain and the next she wanted to say a kind word to the merchant, but she was afraid of offending him. He for his part walked by her side like a man doing his duty, without any exaggeration. Tzili grew accustomed to him, as if he were an irritating brother.

And thus they reached Zagreb. Zagreb was in turmoil. In the yard of the Joint Distribution Committee people were distributing biscuits, canned goods, and colored socks from America. In the courtyard they all mingled freely: visionaries, merchants, moneychangers, and sick people. No one knew what to do in the strange, half-ruined city. Someone shouted loudly: “If you want to get to Palestine, you’d better go to Naples. Here they’re nothing but a bunch of money-grubbing profiteers and crooks.”

The stretcher bearers put the stretcher down in a shady corner and said: “From now on somebody else can take over.” The merchant was alarmed by this announcement and he implored them: “You’ve done great things, why not carry on?” But they no longer took any notice of him. The sight of the city had apparently confused them. Suddenly they looked tall and ungainly. In vain the merchant pleaded with them. They stood their ground: “From now on it’s not our job.” The merchant stood helplessly in the middle of the courtyard. There was no doctor present, and the officials of the Joint Committee were busy defending themselves from the survivors, who assailed their caged counters with great force.

If only the merchant had said, “I can’t go on anymore,” it would have been easier for Tzili. His desperate scurrying about hurt her. But he did not abandon her. He kept on charging into the crowd and asking: “Is there a doctor here? Is there a doctor here?”

People came and went and in the big courtyard, enclosed in a wall of medium height, men and women slept by day and by night. Every now and then an official would emerge and threaten the sleepers or the people besieging the doors. The official’s neat appearance recalled other days, but not his voice.

And there was a visionary there too, thin and vacant-faced, who wandered through the crowds muttering: “Repent, repent.” People would throw him a coin on condition that he shut up. And he would accept the condition, but not for long.

Pain assailed Tzili from every quarter. Her feet were frozen. The merchant ran from place to place, drugged with the little mission he had taken upon himself. No one came to his aid. When night fell, he put his head between his knees and wept.

In the end a military ambulance came and took her away. The merchant begged them: “Take me, take me too. The child has no one in the whole world.” The driver ignored his despairing cries and drove away.

Tzili’s pains were very bad, and the sight of the imploring merchant running after the ambulance made them worse. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t have the strength.