SPRING 2019 A PETITE LITERARY JOURNAL VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1

Homage to Two hours’ time limit was began at the station She was operated on in the hospital, but died. of Tzvetkovo (12 versts (verst=0.66 mile from Later it was said these bandits who entered the an Immigrant Shpola), and the gang got frightened and left. On town were disarmed by their own commanders.” the next morning (Tuesday, May 27), a reconnoi- Mother tering party came, and, finding that there was And this is just one story of the pogrom in no one in the town, informed the gang of the Shpola. The numerous pogroms carried out By Mark Axelrod fact. They immediately appeared and began to in Kiev and their associated atrocities are too loot. The population, in a panic, scattered and numerous to mention here. Stories such as these ecause I am a first generation Jewish Ukrani- hid. All the Jewish dwellings and some shops are commonplace when discussing the pogroms, Ban-American, I have wanted to do an edition were plundered (at the beginning of the year but often get little attention because of the of Mantissa not only devoted to the Holocaust, there had been a great fire in Shpola and almost Holocaust. However, these horrible events sur- but to the Ukrainian pogroms as well. My all the stores were burned). They stole goods, vive in memory—if nowhere else. mother was born in Kyiv (Kiev), which is only clothing, and underclothes, and spoiled and a few hours from Velyki Sorochyntsi, and she destroyed what was left. My mother died when I was fourteen—too soon was raised in Shpola, which is a shtetl several to know her well, and too soon to understand hours from Kyviv. Kyiv is almost equidistant On the same day, fourteen Jews were killed, the horrors of her past. She never told me about between Shpola and Velyki Sorochyntsi – the mostly by firearms, some, accidentally, by stray her childhood either because the memories birthplace of Nikolai Gogol. bullets. The local peasants at first hid the Jews, were too difficult to bring up again, or because but then began to say that they were afraid she wanted to spare me the horrors of what she My grandparents escaped the pogroms in the themselves. They took no part in the pillaging. endured. At this point in my life, however, it early part of the 20th century and traveled Crosses were placed on the doors of non-Jewish seems relevant that I write about the past that through Romania, where my uncle was born. dwellings. In the evening Soviet forces arrived leads me to the novel, A UKRAINIAN ODYS- Eventually, they reaching Philadelphia. The and forced out the bandits. SEY. The novel is somewhat of a departure from journey was tortuous, but less tortuous than what I generally write, primarily because of its living in daily fear and violence. One of the Three weeks after the first pogrom a detach- historical and biographical components. It is worst of the pogroms occurred in Shpola on ment of Grigoriev soldiers visits with yellow not only based on my family’s sufferings in and May 27, 1919 when my mother was seven-years flags passed by Shpola, and about twelve men escape from Ukraine, but also a kind of homage old. My mother never spoke of this nor did my entered the town, looted to my literary “mentor” Gogol whose rather grandfather. The following comes from the (valuables, watches, and money; fantastic surreal fictions (e.g. “The Nose”, “Viy”, testimony of a man named Krasiansky who they didn’t stay long enough to “The Overcoat”, “Nevsky Prospekt”) have often survived the attacks: “The pogrom was perpe- get much) for several hours, and been the inspiration for my own fantastic sur- trated by bands of neighboring peasants (from barbarously killed three. One four- real fictions. The objective is to integrate both Lebedyn (city in Sumy, Oblast), going under the teen-year-old the history of my family, and the influence of flag of Captain Grigoriev. A band of about 150 girl was Gogol, who uncoincidentally plays a role in the to 200 men appeared on Monday evening, May beaten novel, as does his mentor, Alexander Pushkin. I 26, went around to the synagogues, and com- and am including an excerpt from the novel, some manded all the men to go to the station. Close raped. short stories by Lamed Shapiro devoted to the to 1,000 Jews obeyed without question and pogroms, and finally, excerpts from the invited collected at the station. There they separated authors to the Fowles Center series. out the old men and declared they were going to shoot them. When cries and entreaties arose, the bandits stated that they would let them live if they would get them a certain quantity of provisions and money (sugar, tea, flour, etc.).

1 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University Contents

Introduction FICTION Memoir BIOGRAPHIES Mark Axelrod...... 1 Giogio and Nicola Boris Pahor...... 10 About the Writers...... 22 Pressburger...... 03 Necropolis Homage to the Eight District Mark Axelrod...... 12 Martin Nakell...... 06 The True and Absolutely Unbelievable The Kike from Jew Street Story of Kiy Claudio Magris...... 08 Blameless Tadeusz Borowski...... 15 This Way for Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen Christophe Bolanski...... 18 Safe House Dacia Maraini...... 20 Train to Budapest

Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge those who have helped make the publication of MANTISSA possible: President Daniele Struppa, Dean Patrick Fuery, Dr. Joanna Levin, and Dr. Eric Chimenti.

This Issue was created by Chapman University’s Ideation Lab. Special thanks to Aimee Bowen, Mark Schneider, Caitlyn Mumaw and Cassandra Taylor.

Look for Volume 5, Issue 1 in the Spring of 2020

2 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I FICTION

Homage to the of the Temple of Heaven and of at the top of their voices, “Lecho a new life, but risen with a more Solomon’s Temple, eternal treasure daidi, licras calla”, “Come, friend, severe aspect, without love, as if Eight District of the Jewish people. How such a to meet the bride”, the greeting they had been endowed—so I felt— shining light could fall upon this for the coming feast-day and the with the power of life and death by Giorgio and Nicola spot, the belly and cesspool of closing song for Friday evening. over all children and all human- Pressburger Budapest, as are all the markets of ity. Once I looked down through all Babylons · that is the mystery Occasionally, however, this fas- the grille into the temple. Those The walls were bought by the Jews of Divine Mercy. However, so it cinating and joyful world would below suddenly took on the look of of the Teleky Market at the begin- was. Every Friday I would see my assume an awesome face. The day poor ignorant insects over whom, ning of the century for the greater father and my uncles, rapt and of Kippur, for example, when the from up there where I was at that glory of God · and so as not to have transfigured, bowed over their Torah was carried in procession moment, it would be easy to cast to cross the boulevard, beyond prayer books, rocking their torsos through the temple, and at its pass- spells or curses. which stood the nearest temple. rhythmically to and fro in search ing the Jews covered their heads The big premises of the block, half- of an ecstasy that never arrived. with their prayer shawls, my heart Once I was back among the bench- way down Grand Transport Ave- Covered in their tales, or prayer would be filled with terror; and es, among the children and the nue, had until recently formed an shawls, they would have seemed also at New Year, when the shojar, prayer shawls, this fear passed emporium. Appropriate works of all alike if it had not been possible or ram’s horn, was blown, at that quickly, giving way to the pecu- transformation and consecration to gather, even there and in that raucous sound, precursor of the liar, solemn joy of one who is had to be carried out. The win- moment, their essential charac- eternal awakening in the Valley of exploring the mysteries. Because dows being walled in, the offices of ters: the mildness of one and the Jehoshaphat, I would peer under there, in the temple, apart from the Community could be located hurried seriousness of another; my eyelids at the crowd hidden these moments of anxiety, the on the upper floor. And the ground the stern severity of those who under their tales and feel myself notion of evil, even if I had known floor became the temple for the thought themselves better than far from there, among many beings its full significance, could have merchants of the Eighth District. their fellows and the overbearing already dead, who awaited a joyful had no proper place. Neither the sonority of those in haste to better resurrection. Sometimes I hadn’t irreverences of the children, nor This place was grand and full of themselves; the gloom of those even the courage to look: I too tried the reprimands whispered by the mystery. When I went there for the without aims or desires; the fears to hide my head, burying it in my cantor between one verse and the first time, an astounding universe of the old who had reached the end father’s shawl, sure that within a next to these disorderly brats, had was opened to me, wherein the of their lives. moment something tremendous the slightest flavour of malevo- men that I saw every day haggling, would occur, something beyond all lence. As if my soul were armoured arguing, toiling, appeared to me These mysteries did not awaken my fears, the end of the world. so as not to feel any contrary forces, in their prayer shawls like rows alarm but, rather, an unappeasable of larvae streaked with black. I thirst for knowledge. Whilst the myself felt different there, and temple ‘up there’ was filled with the space, the air, the light took the faithful at prayer, the one on special forms and functions. I ‘down below’, lower by a couple couldn’t take it all in at one glance, of feet, formed the domain of the so vast was this chamber, ranged children, who celebrated Friday with columns, pictures, lamps and evening by chasing about and galleries, and all crammed with shouting, as they embarked on worshippers. Many times I later adventurous explo­rations: every explored this mysterious world, brown-painted backboard was a but always a bit at a time; now Pillar of Hercules, and the space the pulpit, now the part ‘down between two benches a continent, Then these moments would pass prohibitions or impositions, any there·, now that ·to the left of the different from the others in its and the expectation of the terrible restraints upon my person. I had entrance’; without ever being able inhabitants, in the presence or event, the arrival of the Eternal a sensation even of contentment, to construct a proper map of it in absence of children, and in the One amongst us, or of an archangel austere and deeply felt, which my head. length of the tales of those at or some other representative of His, I hoped would last me prayer. The language spoken in the would be put off till next year. through eternity. The light was quite dim, and from temple was quite strange to me, as that magical atmosphere strange it was for nearly all the children Another fear of mine, even less Instead, this mysterious world apparitions would emerge, as and most of the adults (knowledge explicable, was aroused by the was to be overturned at a stroke, if from nowhere. I was greatly of Hebrew had been lost for at least aspect of the women’s gallery, that day in 1944 when we were impressed by the silvered hands a generation), but you could dis- those few times we were sent there obliged for the first time to enter which shone over the Torah, just as tinguish various dialects. On one with a message for my mother or the temple without the reassur- I was always startled and fright- bench the verses would be recited one of the aunts. This happened ing . presence of our parents. One ened by rolls of parchment pulled with monotonous rapidity; on most frequently on the day of Kip- morning in late autumn my moth- out from the scintillating vest- another, in an inarticulate mur- pur, when all the family was in the er dressed me up, entrusted to me ments. I conceived of those white- mur from which only the name of temple and there was sometimes a and my brothers a paper bag, with clad bodies as another form of the Lord emerged distinctly; on detail still to be decided about the a few bits of bread and roast goose life, different from our usual one another, with loud but punctilious supper. The women’s gallery was inside, and accompanied us as far (it was already ·usual’, and I was clarity. I would observe each per- very narrow, set on the upper floor as the door of the Community Hall. only five!), with its own pulsations son, drawing conclusions about his and separated from the rest of the The complex discussions of the and customs, and a light tinkling character and his importance. If I temple by a fine grille. There the grown-ups the preceding evening sound, without rhythm, which met a child, I would greet him and women were seated, all in rows, had been aimed at explaining to us couldn’t be heard anywhere else. we would explore together, up and with their faces half-covered by that we would be quite safe there, down the temple, around the pul- handkerchiefs or veils. A little because the King of Sweden in per- Yes, that temple of the market Jews pit, right to the uppermost limits. pale with fasting, they seemed in son had bought that building and had something of the substance Until they began to sing in unison, that half-light as if already risen to bestowed on it a special

3 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

protection, so that the Germans the two rooms and some horsehair revolting meal which set the decision arrived. “We must send were forbidden to cross the thresh- covers thrown over them. We fuse. Our cabbage soup was full them away from here,” he said, not old in any circumstances, and the passed the night stretched out side of worms. Not one of us children to us but to the secretary. “It’s both same applied to the local Nazis and by side, silently. In the morning, managed to swallow it. With just and advisable.” Soon after this anyone else who wanted to harm the community secretary took empty stomach and trembling exchange, we children were thrust us, the children of the Jewish com- everything away and from the body, I burst out crying. But it was into the overcoats abandoned on munity. What nobody explained depths of the corridor appeared not really crying. From my throat our arrival and conducted down- to us was that we would be alone, the rabbi with his assistant, to give burst bellows of protest like the stairs. We were taken outside in desperately alone, and for a time us lessons ih Scripture. Nothing of roars of a bull, violent enough to groups. As for me, I was one of the that no one could estimate. At the that religious instruction remains shake the door and the shuttered last. I stopped dead at the door of door of the hall, Mother let go in my memory. We were in the windows. Soon my voice was the temple. It was the first time our hands. hardest captivity that a bunch joined by those of my brothers for ages that I saw the light of day. of children can expect to suffer, and all the other children. ‘Tm I lifted my eyes. Two planes were A skinny woman with thick glass- deprived of affection, well-being, hungry!” cried one of them. Many fighting in the grey sky overhead. es took us in charge, and when I proper food, and in our souls there others copied my complaints and I saw red tracers speeding from turned about Mother had vanished, was no trace of guilt or any other began beating their fists on the one plane towards the other: two as if some magical force had made explanation of the ills we suffered. wooden floor of the rooms. Ludwig battling angels soared in a sky her invisible. “Where did she go?” The menaces and severity of the Grosz, now a doctor in America, immersed in the thunder of bom- I asked the community secretary, Good Book seemed to us injustices, tore the clothes off his back; the bardment. Then, in an instant, the anxiously. “Don’t worry, just come tremendous injustices. Our food bespectacled Maurer pissed on the two angels disappeared behind the with me,” she replied. We passed in was distributed at midday in milk floor; some children began vom- roof of the temple, still exchanging front of the temple door, but I had bowls: a brownish soup made with iting gobs of stinking gall. Then, their red arrows of gunfire. And time for only a glimpse of the inte- stock cubes, beans or cabbage, like the exterminating angel, the a moment later an unspeakable rior; instead of going in, we contin- according to the day. rabbi appeared in the depths of thunder shook us and all the ued towards the upper floor, where the corridor. He smothered our buildings around. The bomb had lay the offices of the community. Gradually orders ceased to affect hysterical cries with one stento- fallen quite nearby. The specta- us. We gave up every habit, every rian shout. Swinging one arm, he cled Maurer and many more of my We were received in a big room rule. We no longer slept on the knocked a bunch of children to companions of those months were whose window shutter was care- mattresses. Whoever felt tired just the floor; eyes flaming and body carried off by the Angel of Death fully closed. It had two doors, threw himself on the ground and crouched, he burst among us, ready in that terrible explosion. I still apart from the front one: one of fell asleep; whoever was hungry to knock us down or break us in ask myself why. them, a double door, simply led turned to the wall and ground his two. “If he’s so strong, it means he to another room like the first and teeth. We didn’t even respect any hasn’t been eating worm-infected the second, a single door, led into longer the regulations about our cabbage, but something better,” I a long corridor. The double door bodily needs. The latrine, acces- thought. And perhaps I even said stood open and in these two rooms, sible from the second room by a it, because a moment later I felt destined to be our abode for sever- small corridor, never cleaned by myself swept away as if by a gust al months, we found most of the anyone, was brimming with excre- of wind, an explosion of energy hit children known from the temple ment. One day, tired of waiting in me in the cheek and I fell uncon- or from families befriended during line, I fouled myself, standing up scious to the ground. I spent many the little parties organized by the in my pants. I carried around this days like that, stretched out and mothers in times of peace. We had load of dung for a whole month, void of strength. When I came to passed many hours together, but until the Liberation. myself, I learned of the end of the now all of us felt strange towards revolt from the faces of the other one another. We scarcely looked in Not even the authority of the children, all pale, disconsolate and But I didn’t even expect answers to each others’ faces; there we were, secretary or the rabtli counted any deprived of any flicker of vitali- anything when I again visited the thoroughly inhibited, not knowing longer. In February 1945, while ty. The only concession we won temple and the community, many what to expect. the fighting grew fiercer around was the abolition of cabbage. As I years later. I told myself that the us, we rebelled. We had been shut remember it, from then on we universe is growing old and we Days, weeks and cruel months lay up for at least three months in the were given nothing but beans. will need other worlds, not this ahead of us. That evening, mat- community’s premises, hungry, one, to find again the joy we knew tresses were spread on the floor of filthy, full of fleas. It was a It was still winter when we finally when we were children. left our prison and place of refuge. We had endured day after day of It was absent-minded wandering a real witches’ sabbath. The time which carried my steps into that came when the rooms of the com- street. Lifting my eyes to the munity were lacking even electric peeling facade, I saw written in light. The hanging lamps which Hebrew: Bet Keneset, the meeting had lit our rooms now dangled house or synagogue. I crossed useless from the ceiling; just two over. The low doorway was not as strips of daylight filtered through I remembered it. I pushed open the blinds to give us a small field of the swinging doors easily but had vision. Even the water was now cut great difficulty in finding the right off, and for three days and nights passage. When I was finally in the we heard the cannonade drawing temple, I felt my throat contract. ever closer, shaking the walls of The inscrutable architecture of our rooms. This was the first time many years before had disappeared, that I saw fear in the eyes of the as if the shrinking of the Jewish rabbi, until the moment of population of the district had

4 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I FICTION

even decimated the brickwork ble beneath them. “Come and pray stood there perplexed. For Samuel and the tiles. The place of sacred with us,” I heard someone whisper. Stern the living no longer existed, gatherings was now cramped, I shuddered, because that voice only the dead. Perhaps it was my faded and wretched. Where were could not be disobeyed, the call of voice: for a large piece of old stucco the columns? I could see only two the dead being sacred and fatal. fell from the ceiling, breaking supports thrown up in the middle into dust at our feet. I was star- of the chamber. And the benches? A tremor passed over me and tled, but the old man didn’t bat an Many were broken, and almost all darkened my sight once more. The eyelid. “The limewash ... “ he said. had large areas of paint missing, praying flock vanished, but an old I stroked his cheek with a caress which exposed their real construc- man was coming up behind me. I before departing. I wanted to go up tion in a greyish and riddled wood. gave another start and jumped to the community’s rooms, to see Only the railings of the pulpit backwards. “Are you looking for again the place of my childhood had been polished, along with something?” he asked me, taking sufferings. But the staircase was the ante-room to the tabernacle. at the same time imperceptible no longer there. I could see only a The floor consisted of broken or steps towards me. I scrutinized walled-up niche. Once in the street, cracked bricks, and on the walls him and felt my eyes fill with tears. the enigma was solved. The upper dust had darkened the whitewash. I soon recognized Samuel Stern, floor now had a separate entrance This looks more like a witches’ the cantor of long ago. His face was and housed a state company. For coven than the temple of the Lord, shrunken and the eyes seemed me, all things considered, it was a I thought. Here was no lodging for veiled. “Are you looking for some- relief not being able to enter that joy; here only misery presided, thing?” he repeated. room of long ago. I should have and it had sunk its teeth deep met myself as a child, and that into the place. “Uncle Stern, how are you? I’m one child would have demanded what of your old pupils,” I murmured. It I had done with the rest of my life. I went up to a bench and put my was he who had taught me to read “I saved myself,” he would have hands on it. For a moment, it was Hebrew. But Stern continued to asserted, “and you, what have you as though a sudden light had gaze at me interrogatively. “I done with the stolen years?” driven the darkness from my came just to visit the temple!” eyes. I saw a flock of Jews rocking I shouted, to overcome his themselves and murmuring their deafness and suspicion. prayers; the space stretched out into the far distance, and the bells “Ah, there’s nobody here,” was his of the Torah could be heard softly sole reply, “few people come now. tinkling. The Jews were covered in Most of them died, during the war.” their tales up to the tops of their I shouted again that as a child I too heads and white clothing was visi- had frequented that temple; he just

5 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

The Kike From course I laugh with them. Then I When Raghead opens his eyes I can’t cry. The Füerher told you stopped and we all were quiet for this time, he’s a different man. I to cry, one of his aides, pistol in Jew Street a second, for more than a second, don’t know. I can’t explain it. Still my face, says to me. You better looking each other over. Then the a Jew. But a difference. He goes, I cry. But Adolf Hitler, he says, By Martin Nakell Jewboy breaks the silence and he arrived in Auschwitz on June 14th No. Leave him alone. Bring me a says, I knew Adolf Hitler. Damned 1942. June 14th, he repeats it. Like boy. No! I beg Hitler. Don’t do this So this Black dude walks in with quiet after that. Nobody knew what? Like I can’t hear? I hear fine. monstrous thing. And the tears his buddy the Kike from Jew Street what the fuck to say then. It was a chaos of the demi-gods, howl from my eyes! And like God and I look up cause I’m washing he goes on, the stench of bodies begging man, the tears and the glasses and I says who the hell are Then the Black squeeze she says burning. Smoke rising from the wailing arise double and triple you two even though I knew for if my friend Amotz here says chimney. They put me to work. and more from my eyes and my sure I knew em both what I’m not something, he doesn’t fool around. All day everyday daylong there is mouth. It’s too much for me. I blind deaf and dumb you know I Now what kinda Kikey fuckin screaming. The guards, some of weaken. I fall on my knees to the seen em both on the street a hun- Raghead name is Amotz? Amotz, them, they like to pick on kids, dred times but they never come I’m askin ya. And I got my hand 12 - 13 year olds – the little ones. into my place before I figure they wrapped round the bat. Where? The first time I saw them beat a know better and I think well either I challenges the wise-ass little kid with billy clubs I threw up. they don’t know better or they’re bastard. Where’d you know Adolf Then I stood there crying, sob- tryin ta pull my chain and then I Hitler? In Auschwitz, Amotz says. bing. Those two guards saw me, think you’re not just off the ship Don’t ask, the squeeze says again. heard me, looked over and came yesterday so I go over to the other I coulda wrapped those long black toward me. The kid runs away. end of the bar to move the baseball legs around my back I tell ya. So No matter what happened to me bat closer to me and to give the what can I do with that kinda I don’t care the kid runs away. little snipes a peek at it and they sass but I says what you doing in It happens again. Then again. see it I know they see it, especially whereverAusch with Adolf fuckin Then again. Now, I’m known the Black dude who’s not a small Hitler. Don’t ask, Black Beauty as The Weeper of Auschwitz, guy not at all and I know he’s been says. Then Amotz himself he says the Savior of Children. Here, around the block you can tell that real casual but real serious to me he stops. He’s exhausted. I’m on a Black dude and I don’t care he says, if you truly want to know spinning...is this guy for real? what the price of his shoes or the I’ll tell you. Kinda shut me up he Who cares? What’s real? In my cut of his cloth which the Jewboy did, and not many people ever shut bar at 3:30 in the afternoon, probably bought for him anyway me up, I’ll tell you that. And I see whatever you say, if you say it and you watch he’s the one who’ll that guy Amotz, he’s sitting there right, it’s real. I thought he pay for the bill the Kikes what with his eyes closed now. He looks would start crying. He gotta always look like they got the goddamn peaceful, you know, like didn’t. He was saying dough whether they do or they he’s got something I ain’t got. Some it just right. don’t whoa what’s this coming in kinda peace or some kinda power the door the Black dude’s squeeze I ain’t ever seen. I relax. My grip One day, he says, is who and she’s the real ghetto too on the bat loosens. It even falls, they haul me out tight ass and just as tight a snatch leaning up against the bar. OK, I into the yard, don’t you know so up the trio says to him, so OK so yeah I truly two big soldiers. sashays up to the bar like a ménage want to know. One on the left a trio I’m tellin ya and the Black one on my right. dude he orders up three Glenlivet - Opening his eyes, kinda slow, And there’s Adolf 25! - two on the rocks and one neat adjusting to the light of a bar in Hitler, Adolf for himself. the afternoon, empty but for the Hitler. They three of them and me. He’s sizing walk me over So I looks em over, the three of me up. Then he starts in: Aus- to him, and he them there, waiting for their chwitz, he says, in Poland, was an says to me: Cry. fancy-ass drinks, and I says OK, extermination camp. Hitler sent I says, it’s on the house and I’ll people there, most times toast to you three myself. And crowded into cattle when I got the glasses up, a neat for cars. From the day myself, and I make a toast like this it opened to the I knew a Jewish guy once nice real day it finished over nice guy you know got himself in a million maybe a trouble with the mob.. Fed the poor million and a half of bastard the Jew to the fishes. After us died there in those which they come in here to cele- gas chambers. Amotz brate. I’d seen em in here before. stopped. He closed Tell me they like to come in here his eyes. I’d heard every time they have a celebration. about all that shit, but And then one of em says to me, a lot of people said it you know what he says, he says never happened, said today we’re celebrating a birthday the goddamn Jews and I says whose and the mpbster made it all up. How’d he says Adolf’s birthday, Adolf I know? I didn’t really Hitler’s. And they all laugh and of care, tell you the truth.

6 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I FICTION

ground. Adolf Hitler puts a hand here I was like crying for every on my right shoulder. Here. Right little goddamn child on earth. The here. And Hitler says, to all assem- woman, she stands up and she puts bled: don’t touch this man. He is her hand on my shoulder, just like beautiful. A Jew is showing you Aldolf Hitler done to Amotz. A pathetic excuses for Aryans how to hundred more tears get released. be a man and what are the depths of mankind. I love this man. He Now what the fuck you doin sitting is one of my treasures. Tomorrow, there reading my story and you not you will shoot him. He can live crying. I gave out my angry heart tonight in a greatest beauty, the here, revealed it to you as a gift. tears of his own death. And that, And I ain’t won’t never get it back. Amotz says to me, is how I So what you doing? You too busy? knew Hitler. Too shut up? This ain’t no little TV show or nothin. Cry, you. Cry for In Auschwitz. I didn’t ask Amotz your life. I ain’t crazy! If you can’t how he got away. It didn’t matter. cry with me now, you crazy you He was telling me the truth. So I frozen you the one let them kids walked around the bar and I faced get beat up and killed. And who am him and he stood up and I think I? Now I’m a kid what gets beat up he thought I was going to throw and killed that’s what. him out of the place, my place. And the truth is I didn’t know what I might do. The baseball bat still behind the bar. My pistol in its niche by the sink. and I stood there and in front of a Mr. Black man and his high-horse Black lady, I cried. I was a frightened little boy, myself. Mr Weeper of Auschwitz was saving me and my white ass. I couldn’t stop. My guts were cry- ing. My mind was crying. Christ my fuckin imagination and my momma were crying in me claw- ing to get out through my eyes. Me, who never cried in my whole life for nobody or nothing. And

7 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

Blameless judges, like the magistrate who’d had written, for example, that and is annihilated; this is what had to conclude the investigation “there is perhaps no need to war craves, the ancient yearning to by Claudio Magris of the Risiera’s crimes with what announce these journals before rape stone and lichens. The pri- amounted to no conclusion; illeg- they, or what may ultimately mordial slime has slowly solidified Perhaps a mere conjecture, of ible maybe even to higher judges, remain of them, have been cat- and built up in the brain as well, course, those scribblings that they too robbed of any material aloged and classified and before whereas it takes very little to turn so agitated his heirs—though evidence, and cer­tainly illegible having considered the possible the glioblastoma back to sludge, they weren’t the only ones—and to the children of those perverse timeliness of declassifying several though German Command hasn’t which strangely enough had been murderers, unaware that at one passages of a delicate nature, that yet realized it, it doesn’t know that the only notebooks of his to have time those names had been corrod- it might still be too early ...” at its headquarters everything is disappeared, had ended up being ed by lime or crumpled by flames; now consumed. burned in the funeral pyre in his on the contrary, proud to bear the Too early for whom? If anything ware­house, well hidden some- respectable names of their fathers it was too late; at least for him, At German Command reality is where though to no avail; those who had borne them when the vic- having now passed on to a better viewed with the fixed, dilated pages in which it was said that he tims—whom they had propelled life—which wasn’t difficult, given eye of the agate even more mille- had recorded the writings jotted or maybe only observed going to how he had lived, though maybe nary than the millenarian Reich on the walls and in the toilets of a horrific death and whose fate in for him, however ... —too late in and everything rages around their prison by inmates about to any case had not perturbed their any case for those others, who in it at supersonic speed, the eye die, also by fire, in the Nazi cre- indifference—had written them all those years had had time to whose rearguard is surrendering mation oven at the Risiera, the on the walls. Names erased and wash their hands of the blood or is unable to follow things that only crematorium in Italy, right therefore honored forever. filth of those other hands, even are changing so chaotically and there in Trieste. Later, in tranquil more bloodstained than theirs, frenziedly. But it is also difficult times of peace, a coat of lime had However, Luisa thought, it was which they had so cordially shak- for others to follow and catego- been applied to those walls and to actually a good thing that some en countless times during the rize things, to keep up with their the names presumed to have been people—judging by the letter to Nazi occupation. Too late, more- acceleration. Liberation lasts one written on those walls. After war the newspaper as well as state- over, because after so many years second and it’s already occupation, comes peace, which even has the ments by the vice president of the they too, along with their names the victory is already defeat. Not white color of a sepulcher and of Foundation, Dr. Pezzl—believed or whitewashed on the walls of the only does the agate’s eye find it the whited sepulchers in the heart. feared that some of those danger- Risiera or burned that night in the hard to pass from the fifty-one warehouse, had gone to the other hostages hung by the Nazis on Via world, at least many of them had; Ghega to the Titoists’ blasts against they must not have been children defenseless people on Via Imbriani. even then, in the final months of The eye hardens even more, it sur- the war, so by now they’d proba- vives in the fossilized geode—the bly already been given the death eye of anyone, of no one—like the penalty, whether they were guilty totem survives, though to those or innocent. Justice, at least who built it, not for very long. God capital punishment, is the creates man, man creates the gods same for everyone. and the gods decree that man’s fate be death. Every living thing wants That other fine portrait? Worthy to live, the body mutilated by the of Picasso, the splotch a kind of bomb crawls agonizingly toward brownish eye, staring and teary, shelter to es­cape another bomb, its pupil the point where the little the mouse flees from the cat or the ducts containing hydrothermal hawk swoop­ing down on him and fluids mix with the mineral solu- the gazelle runs from the lion, but tions. An agate 130 million years all mice and all gazelles want to old, not very different from the die even though they don’t know it, MRI image of a cerebral infarction the lemming flees but legend has It seems, however, that he had ous papers might still be around. area. The cerebral infarction of it that lemmings commit suicide seen and copied those writings Just as well, timor Domini initium a fifty-seven­ year-old man, lava en masse. Life wants to die and be­fore that, at least some of them; sapientiae. To the discomfiture of that has congealed in 130 million war comes to its aid; compassion- even the names, it was whispered, many, people were finally begin- years, there’s not much difference. ate war mother of all things, the the vile names of collaborators in ning to speak about that infamy, I imagine that when I am no longer mother rabbit that eats her young high places or good friends of the the old rice factory in Trieste able to read and understand what returning them to the content- executioner­ at any rate, scratched where the Nazis had slaughtered, I have written, which is happen- ment of darkness and nothingness. on the walls of filthy latrines by or sent to slaughter, several thou- ing to me more and more often, victims on the brink of death, later sands of individuals in a general my eyes will become squinty and Cells are ready, at any time, to erased by lime—quicklime, white, silence that went on even after fierce like that splotch on the self-destruct. Some are destroyed inno­cent and caustic to the flesh— the end of the war. And it was agate. Captain Giessen, when he by the enemy, others destroy them- and later still perhaps erased again partly thanks to the persistence of parleys with the bishop, also has a selves so as not to succumb to the by the fire in his warehouse, a that singular man and his mani- look like that, severe and vicious, enemy, just as men kill themselves destructive fire that cleansed all acal searching, which in his case the gaze of an owl. Is it possible in prison so they won’t talk when filth and restored a false innocence was illuminated by the fury of a to remember when it was still an being tortured, and therefore to to the most sordid, abominable prophet angry with his infamous amorphous mass, not living, fiery save other cells. Partisans who are infamy, to wretches protected people t and zealous in his desire lava that slowly crystallizes, a captured do not talk. Ercole Miani, forever by the disappearance of to expose the infamy. Dr. Pezzl, spent volcano that will become who led the units of the Justice their names dis­solved in lime and replying to one of the many letters brain? A longing for fire and and Freedom Brigade and was reduced to ash, illegible to human in the Corriere Adriatico, eruption, for life that annihilates tortured by the Fascist

8 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I FICTION

torturer Collotti—providentially shot on the spot shortly after- ward—did not say a word. When the Italian Ministry later had the bright idea of con­ferring a post-mortem honor on Commis- sioner Collotti—an honor accord- ed to someone who attaches an electrical cord to the genitals of a chained man fighting for free- dom, one end on the glans and the other in his mouth, then turns on the current, and for this years later gets a medal, maybe to hang between his legs like a lovely pen- dant if he were alive, fortunately he’s been stone dead for years, God sees and provides—the tortured Miani returned his own gold medal, given that they awarded one, though maybe not gold, to his torturer. The government would restore it to him posthumously when he too was dead, a post-mor- tem medal, like the murderer’s. With decorations melius abundare quam deficere.

Yes, in a torture cell men kill themselves. Die rather than talk. Suicide to defend humanity, life; to oppose the death drive that pulsates in every cell. The Resis- tance is resistant; better to die than obey death.

9 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University MEMOIR

Necropolis to pay homage to the ashes of fellow implements have wounded the of something unusual in the air- creatures who by their mute pres- earth’s green flanks and dug into and they shudder like a boat in an by Boris Pahor ence have raised, in our hearts, its accumulated, hidden wealth. unexpected wave. I may well be an immovable landmark of showing something of my former It’s a Sunday afternoon, and the human history.• To the left, a long, wide stretch of self. At this thought I try to focus smooth and sinuous asphaltstrip open ground appears, and it leads on my stride. It bothers me that my that leads ever higher into the On the sharp turns I probably do to the entrance. Some day this sandals are so light and my step so mountains is not as desolate as I not think of the rocking of the stretch will be lined with trees. elastic, more than if I were wear- would have wished it to be. Cars truck as it brought back a box Now it’s jammed with buses and ing canvas shoes with thick wood- pass me or return down into the from Marki.rcb con­taining our cars I can’t help thinking of the en soles. As I did then. valley, toward Schirmeck, and the first corpse. At the time I didn’t huge parking lot outside the caves volume of tourist traffic disrupts, even know I was sitting on such at Postojna. As best as I can, I resist The door, strung with barbed wire, defiles, even, the calm I had antici- sad cargo. But the frigid air would the image of aging Swiss and Aus- is closed, just as it used to be. Noth- pated. Admittedly, my car and I are have paralyzed any thought before trian tourists. Gray-haired wives ing has changed. Only the guards now a part of the motorized proces- it could form. No, ‘I most cer­ possessively clutch the straps of are missing in the towers. You still sion. I had hoped that if there was tainly do not think of any of the their old-fashioned purses and have to wait at the door. The only no other traffic but me, my former images that persist in me, tangled rotate their heads in the direction difference is that now a watch- intimacy with this place would and crowded like a withered and of the tour guide’s voice, like chick- man emerges from a wooden hut, keep my intrusion from distorting moldy bunch of grapes. Through ens startled from their little tasks. unlocks the door, and at carefully the dreamlike images that have my windshield I watch the strip of The most honest thing I could do measured intervals allows groups lived untouched in the shadows smooth asphalt before me and now would be to drive away and into his pitiless mountain corral. of my mind ever since the war. I would rather it be some return tomorrow morning, when Thanks to this procedure calm realize that some vague resistance old, buckling, pothole-rid- the more humdrum atmosphere reigns on the camp’s descending is forming in me-resistance to den road leading of the work week can be expected terraces. The July sun steadfastly the fact that this mountainous into the more to have a less jarring effect on keeps watch over the silence, and region, such an integral part of our authentic these isolated, step-like terraces. only occasionally, somewhere far inner world, should be laid bare, world But tomorrow other landscapes below, the words of a tour guide made accessible. My resistance is of have been mapped out for me, echo like the halting voice of some tinged with jealousy, because­ these and I walk toward the entrance, evangelist risen from the dead. outsiders are coming to sightsee con­scious that I am depending in the place that witnessed our mechanically on my quick and The watchman recognizes me, anonymous captivity. But-and I hectic schedule instead of taking which is surprising; I didn’t think sense this unmistakably-their eyes the past. in the surroundings first. I feel he would remember my visit last will never see the abyss of deso­ But I can’t a gentle nostalgia for that undis- year. “C’est va?” he asks. It is just lation that was our punishment deny being turbed, timeless com­posure in enough to strike a note of intimacy, for believing in man’s dignity and spoiled and which a person can relate himself separating me from the swarm freedom. At the same time I feel selfish like any honestly to the earth and sea, to of tourists. He’s dark-haired and an unbidden and gently persistent other modem streets and houses, to the faces and plain, short and sinewy and satisfaction that this mountain driver accustomed to the comfort lives that fate brings him in con- animated. If he had a helmet and in the Vosges is no longer the site of a smooth ride at high speed. I try tact with. But impatience drives us lantern, he’d make a perfect miner. of a distant, self-consuming fury to visualize a mountain highway feverishly on, and we receive only But he’s intelligent, too. It’s obvi- of destruction; that it has become, in Slovenia comparable to this superficial impressions, which ous that he is embarrassed, feels instead, the destination of endless serpentine road from Schirmeck disperse like water spraying from uncomfortable with me, a former crowds which, na”ive and guileless to Struthof. I picture the switch- the prow of Slovenes to discover their own below, which never seems that far It’s impossible, anyway, to talk inner enlightenment and not spend away. And there are no cliffs, just It’s absurd, but I almost feel that about death-or love-with anyone themselves in su­perficial, pompous a constant alternation of dense the tourists walking back to their but yourself. Death and love allow ritual. People all over Europe are forest and rolling grassy field. I cars can see the striped jacket no witnesses. coming together on high mountain can’t remember whether the pines wrapped around my shoulders terraces where human evil wrung on the slopes of Vrsno are the same and hear my wooden clogs crunch When he speaks to the silent crowd victory after victory out of human as here. Probably not. on the gravel of the path. This as their tour guide, he is in fact pain and nearly set the seal of is a sudden flash, the kind that speaking to his memories, a mono- permanence on destruction. It isn’t The road still leads uphill, confuses past and present. There logue of selfrevelation. It isn’t clear the search for miracle that brings although here and there accom­ are moments when an invisible whether this release satisfies or these modem pilgrims. They come panied by the whiteness of hewn but powerful force stirs within us; calms him to any degree. I imagine here to tread on truly holy ground, rock; as in any place where human others can sense it-as the presence he feels even more ill at ease after

10 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I MEMOIR

such testimony-certainly lessened. some day we must find a contem- But I am grateful to him for letting porary Collodi to tell children the me walk through this inaudible story of our past. The question is, world alone. I feel superior, satis- will he be able to impress a child’s fied with the special privilege that heart without injuring it with comes from my former status as an the evil, and guard it also from outcast. No as then, separate­ness the temptations of the future? On and silence. For despite the crowds these steps, which bend at each and our herd like existence, each terrace like great stone knees, we of us lived in isolation, in his own reverted to a pre-rational state. mute darkness. This happened as the cytoplasm in our cells and the marrow in our bones dried up, like a jellyfish on gravel. Then the steps loomed before us like a flight of stairs in a belltow- er. There seemed to be no end to the succession of terraces. Another reason it took us an eternity to reach the top was that our feet, though our legs were like sticks, had swollen into white, fleshy lumps.

I am incapable of measuring the distance between myself and the steps, familiar and close as they are in the sunlight; I sense only the pall of nothingness that hangs over them. They are simple, as the emaciated arms were simple that carried and set the stones they are made of. They once seemed steeper to me. The adult returns to the land of his childhood, only to discover how small the buildings of his memory really are, forget- ting that he measured the world from Tom Thumb’s perspective. But it wasn’t in our childhood that we went up and down these stairs; our helplessness was greater than a child’s, for we lacked the advantage of innocence. Each of us, in his nakedness, in his withered skin of a hungry animal burning itself out in captivity, each day calculated the distance between the ovens and his emaciated rib cage, his sticklike arms and legs. I could use Carlo Collodi’s wooden boy as a metaphor, since Pinocchio, too, was fated to be seared by flame. But his• gentle creator replaced the damaged parts, which no one ever thought of doing for us. No, Pin- occhio is inappropriate here, yet

11 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University MEMOIR

The True and From the banks of the Dnieper, one As my grandfather retold it, the had blinded the old man. For some saw the Andreyevskaya Church, church was haunted with what unknown reason, Shlomo was Absolutely its graceful towers rising high Kievan Jews called “the evil eye compelled to revisit the old church above Kiev with columns adorned of Kiy.” It was said that Kiy was for it was there that Kiy was laid Unbelievable with decorative summits, conde- accidentally blinded in one eye to rest. scendingly peering down upon the by a stone thrown by a Jewish story of Kiy lush green forests and the fertile child. Allegedly, the elderly Prince As he entered the massive cathe- plains of the humble Kreshchtaya had just finished his afternoon dral, he noticed two parishioners by Mark Axelrod valley. All the churches seemed to prayers and was leaving the Baly- crossing themselves, before exiting be like the Andreyevskaya Church: eznsky Church when a number of through a side door. He walked to Kiev, my grandfather told me, was fortresses of vision fortified with children were having a snowball the front of the church gazing up called the “mother of Russian cit- gleaming gold and white marble fight outside the massive church at the center of the main cupola, ies,” and from where it sat, perched ornaments; however, in some doors. One child, Shlomo Tsuriss, over a hundred feet high, and the atop Mikhailovskaya Hill, over- curious way their gaze did more to realized that he could throw the inlaid blue and gold mosaics lining looking the winding blue-green disquiet the residents rather than snow farther if he took a stone and each of thirteen domes. At the foot Dnieper, he added, “it could see console them. At least for the Jews. imbedded it in the snow. As the of the altar, Shlomo noticed the all the sights swept before it.” The But of all the churches in Kiev, Prince exited the church, Shlomo concrete sarcophagus which held metaphor was an appropriate one. the one that held the most terror flung the snowball which, slipping the remains of Prince Kiy. There According to my grandfather, the for the Jews was the Balyeznsky from his tiny hands, accidentally was an eerie silence in the church, city received its name from the leg- Church, for it was in Balyeznsky struck the Prince in his right eye. a silence that was compounded endary Kiy, first Prince of the Poly- Church that the curse began. Kiy grabbed his eye and howled by the fact that he was the only ani, who, with his brothers Molot with pain as the blood spurted one there. Shlomo bent over and and Gvost, founded the walled city from the socket onto his stiff, gray began to read the inscription on and began to reign over it some- beard. Shlomo, terrified by what the tomb when he suddenly felt time in the early tenth century. As he had done, ran away, never to the floor begin to tremble. The legend has it, Kiy and his brothers return to the church site until an vibrations started gently, but were giants of men whose physical adult. Years later, after Kiy had soon became more violent. The and carnal appetites were never long since died, Shlomo returned sarcophagus too began to vibrate; quite sated and whose predisposi- to the church where, as a child, he slowly at first, then much quicker. tion to violence was the seed from Shlomo stepped back. Then, as if which the city flourished. At least suddenly hit with a huge hammer, my grandfather believed that was the concrete tomb began to crack. the reason. Shlomo jumped to one side as the coffin burst open with a horrible crash and the corpse of Kiy sprang up. It was the most hideous sight Shlomo had ever seen. The gums of Kiy’s mouth were black and oozed a viscous yellow pus that covered what few teeth remained; his lips, stiff and parched by the decades of death that dried them, were contorted in such a way that the upper lip reached one nostril and the lower one his chin; and the hollowed, decayed socket was stretched with shriveled vestiges of parched skin. Screeching wildly, Kiy’s imprecations spilled from his blackened mouth and filled the domes of the church as he gesticu- lated madly, waving his long bony fingers the nails on which were over four inches long.

Suddenly, the windows began to rattle in their casings, then they shattered, plunging to the church floor in massive chunks; the icons and mosaics swirled in a mael- strom that hurled the candles, ornate vases and wooden pews against the marble walls; the doors broke from their hinges and the belching stench of death filled the church with a great green smoke. Shlomo was pinned to the floor by an unseen force. He struggled to free himself, but could not

12 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I MEMOIR move. Kiy leaped from the coffin And so it was said that from that to one of the officers and said in a made of Camelote marble, was and opened the abyss that was his day on, the “Eye of Kiy” espied voice bereft of sadness, “Strangle decorated with gilt-bronzes by mouth until it stretched the width upon all the Jews of Kiev and that him.” The crowd went silent as the Lucien Bafreur and above it hung of the church. the vengeance of the eye would not Cossack nodded to his leader then a portrait of Alexander II painted be sated until all the Jews had been grabbed Kohshkoh by the throat by the famous French portraitist “It was you who stole my eye’” he consumed. It was also said that on and choked him with such force Marcel Flagorneur. From the ceil- bellowed. “Now you shall pay certain nights, even as far away that witnesses recalled hearing ing, five chandeliers, adorned with my vision!” as Smyertevo, one could see the bones crack before the blood spurt- sparkling crystal links imported blinking eye of Kiy from behind ed from Kohshkoh’s mouth and from the city of Verrieres, hovered And from out of his mouth, like a the domed cathedral windows, onto the black sleeves of the lieu- over the long, rectangular mahog- newborn infant squeezing from looking left then right for any tenant. Only when Rodion Roma- any table around which sat fifteen the womb, oozed an eye. An eye Jews who might be near. novich Kohshkoh’s head fell limp men in chaises of carved and gilt that continued pouring from Kiy’s to one side, the blood oozing out wood. When drawn, the heavy mouth in one continuous flow “That is why there’s always the corners of his mouth, soiling floor-to-ceiling burgundy drapes, and as it did it became larger and been tsuriss for the Russian his black waistcoat, did the masses which graced each of ten windows, larger until the eye filled almost Jews,” my grandfather said. begin to cheer. Alexander returned allowed no light. the entire church. Shlomo kept Tsuriss: suffering. to his carriage and rode off. screaming for help, but the swirl- The men rose as Alexander walked ing of the wind and the crashing And such was the tale my grandfa- After his father’s assassination, into the hall and were only seated of the windows only drowned out ther told me. A tale so horrible not Alexander left St. Petersburg for after Alexander nodded for them his pleas. Blood spurted from the even Gogol could have told it. his country palace at Dyetsky to be seated as well. The discus- immense eye, filling the aisles Manesh, a quiet village on the sions began without hesitation, with thick crimson pools. Shlomo The moments that followed the Dneiper River. The palace, mod- and the lines were quickly drawn splashed about as he kept scream- assassination were anxious ones. eled after Versailles, was Alexan- between the liberal and conserva- ing; the blood stained his clothes, Alexander III, who upon hearing der’s favorite retreat, and as a child tive elements. On one hand, Pavel his hands, his face; at times, he’d the fact that one of the assassins he used to come and sit beneath Petrovich Kirsanov, the liberal par- swallow it, and it would instantly was a Jew and was still alive, hast- a sculpture of The Bronze Horse- ty leader, was proposing a program of moderate reforms and a plan of popular representation which had gained the approval of Alexander II shortly before his death. Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov was a much-es- teemed leader. A man of medium height, who always dressed in dark English suits, fashionable cravats, and patent leather shoes, Kirsanov was approaching fifty. His neatly combed, graying hair shone with a light luster, like polished silver; his face was generally free from wrinkles and his eyes, soft and almond shaped, cast a feeling of warmth on all those who chose to meet them.

“It would be,” Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov began, “a continuation of the advances our beloved Alex- ander II had made. Such a contin- congeal on his lips and tongue. ily returned to Ekaternina Canal man, reading Pushkin and imagin- uation of his reforms would be a Finally, when the eye had grown to accompanied by a whole regiment ing whether he too would someday tribute to his memory.” capacity, it blinked ever so slowly of lance-carrying Cossacks. By the become the hero Peter must have and as it locked onto Shlomo’s eyes time he had arrived, thousands of been. During his two-week stay “Nonsense’” barked Constantin it began to consume him. Shlomo citizens had come to the site of the Alexander engaged in a number of Pobyedonostzev from the opposite could feel his whole body being assassination where the stains of secret conferences with members side of the huge, oval, mahogany swallowed by the massive eye to the previous hour were still fresh of the government; however, it was table. “This idea of popular rule the laughing delight of Kiy, who upon the street. When Alexan- at one such meeting in the opulent is preposterous. It encroaches was standing above Shlomo, defe- der stepped from the carriage, setting of the Tsar’s conference upon the sacred prerogatives of cating. Only when the eye had con- he looked at the remains of the room that the most important the autocracy. Those programs sumed Shlomo’s entire body, the carnage, knelt down, swiped some issue of the day had come up. cannot be implemented. Besides, soul and spirit, only then did the blood on his finger and stared at it such a reformation would ben- winds begin to cease. Only then as if he recognized the royal color It was two o’clock in the afternoon efit the Jews, who we all know did the pews, the icons, the glass, of his father’s life; then he looked when Alexander arrived in the were behind the slaughter of our the fractured coffin all return to up at Kohshkoh, who, still impaled huge Hercules drawing room, the beloved Alexander II.” what they were before. Only then on the birch tree, was barely walls of which were covered in did the doors rehinge themselves breathing. Alexander walked over marble of blue and brown hues, Alexander bit his lower lip at the in time for evening vespers, leav- to the remaining assassin and staggered with twenty pilasters mention of his father’s name. Con- ing no trace of what transpired wiped the vestige of regal blood made of gilt-bronze pedestals and stantin Pobyedonostzev knew how that afternoon. on Kohshkoh’s face, then turned Corinthian capitals. The fireplace, to manipulate his leader, since he

13 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University MEMOIR was not only the procurator-gener- of social positions.” And Pobyedonostzev flung the ute Concerning Enforced Public al of the Moly Synod, but was also book across the polished table. It Safety,” a statute that conferred Alexander’s tutor when, as a pro- “You cannot be serious, Constantin slid in front of him as he glanced at upon the capital governors of St. fessor at the University of Moscow, Pobydeonostzev,” Pavel Petrovich the title. Petersburg and Moscow (and upon he taught the then crown prince Kirsanov asked with a puzzled many provincial governors) the the rudiments of political and expression on his wrinkled fore- “I am familiar with the book power to legislate special laws, social. Constantin Pobyedonostzev head and a tone of partial disbelief. Constantin Pobyedonostzev, but which superseded the established was almost eighty; tall, frightfully everyone knows that Father Zossi- laws, as well as to arrest and thin and slightly hunchback, his “I am deadly serious!” the old man ma has totally refuted...” deport to Siberia, without due pro- shriveled face was cut with deep exclaimed, his fist clenched tight- cess, any and all citizens suspected creases in his hollowed cheeks and ly around the golden knob of the “Don’t confuse me with your facts of “political unsafety.” The phrase forehead; his sunken eyes, glazed cane. “There can be no room in Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov!” Pobye- was purposely left ambiguous. with darkened circles and sacks of Russia for those mendacious and donostzev interrupted. “The truth limp flesh, gave one the impression insidious diseases that will is that the Jews planned the regi- Slowly, the change in attitude that his life was one continual undermine the integrity of cide of Alexander II the way they towards the Jews became more struggle against the triumph of the motherland.”’ planned the regicide of our beloved apparent. The assassination and serenity. Whenever he was in Father Jesus Christ! And that my the imperial manifesto had tended public Pobyedonostzev generally “You cannot mean the Jews,” said dear Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov is a to move the masses of the Russian wore a cardinal red robe and was Kirsanov, who, among other fact beyond dissension,” Pobyedon- people into a reactionary direction. escorted by an entourage of som- things, had worked quite diligently ostzev said, pointing his gold tip The press adopted a more hostile ber assistants, flanked by what he at convincing the law and cane at the liberal leader and smil- attitude towards the Jews. Govern- called his “sacred guard.” And at medical schools to accept ing a crooked smile that disclosed mental emissaries from St. Peters- all times he carried with him an more Jewish students. a set of stained yellow teeth. burg began to make visits to cities ebony cane with a golden knob within the Pale Yelisavetgrad, at one end and a golden nib at the “That’s exactly who I mean!” The room went silent. Except for Odessa, Kiev and entered into other. His aides could always tell screamed Pobyedonostzev. “Who an occasional cough or a cleared secret negotiations with the police the Holy One’s mood by the way he do you think is at the root of our throat, no words were spoken. For officials concerning a possible held his cane: the higher his hands problem? The Jews’ Who has the entire dialogue, Alexander “outbreak of popular indignation were on the cane, the more strong- infiltrated our religion and deteri- sat with his hand over his mouth, against the Zyhds” intimating the ly he felt about the subject at hand. orated our moral fiber? The Jews! first looking at Kirsanov then at undesirability of obstructing the Constantin Pobyedonostzev was Who has taken from us one of the Pobyedonostzev, his mentor. At will of the Russian people by police the major proponent of an eccle- greatest leaders our country has the conclusion of the deliberations, intervention. Rumors were rife siastical police state of his own ever known? The Jews!” the majority of those in attendance about an impending punishment design and was adamant about his agreed that “no concessions would against the Jews, more anti-Semit- position arguing that “enlighten- “But Constantin Pobyedonostzev, be made to any revolutionary ic newspaper articles appeared ment and political autonomy are we all know that the Narodnaya movement by initiating reforms,” on the front pages, an imperial harmful to the motherland.” Volya was made up almost exclu- that “under no circumstances decree was imminent. Such were sively of non-Jewish intellectuals would the government abolish the the events leading up to the days “The people,” Constantin Pobye- and university students. Zhel- police state” which was a counter- before Easter. donostzev continued, “must be yabov is not Jewish,” Kirsanov balance to the idea of a free state enjoined to a state of patriarchal emphasized with a slight grin, prevalent, as Pobydedonostzev One April afternoon, while having submission to the authority of attempting to defuse the concluded, in “the rotten West,” an afternoon tea with Pobyedon- the Church and of the temporal angry monk. and that “the Jewish problem ostzev, Alexander said, “Shall we powers. Furthermore, the Greek would be handled in the most expe- never be rid of the problem?” “But who killed the Tsar! Kohshkoh. dient of manners.” The conference A Jew! And where did they plan it adjourned. Pobyedonostzev smiled. in, in...” Pobyedonostzev hesitated as if trying to remember the place. In early April, Alexander, after “Certainly, your Highness, but let In frustration he started banging lengthy deliberations with Pobye- us not concern ourselves with his cane on the floor. donostzev, presented in his imperi- such distasteful matters before the al manifesto that “the voice of God Winter Palace Ball. Such things “Helfmann. Hessia Helfmann,” an hath commanded us to take up will take care of themselves...in aide whispered to him. vigorously the reins of government, due course.” inspiring us with the belief in the “In Hessia Helfmann’s apartment!” strength and truth of autocratic Pobyedonostzev raised his cup the old man repeated, beginning power, which we are called upon and once again smiled the same again as if he hadn’t stopped. to establish and safeguard. There- incorrigible smile that both “Another Jew! And what was their fore, I call upon all my faithful repulsed and fascinated Alexan- motive? This was their motive.” subjects to eradicate the hideous der: repulsed him as a student and And Pobyedonostzev removed sedition prevalent in our great fascinated him as a Tsar. It was a from beneath his robes a copy of motherland and to establish a new smile that could only have ingrati- Hippolyte Lutostanski’s book and age of faith and morality.” ated itself with no one other than raised it in the air. “They mur- the Devil. dered the Tsar so they could drink Pobyedonostzev could not have Orthodox people must be protected his blood, that’s why! So they been happier since the methods against the heretical influences could use the emperor’s body flu- whereby faith and morality were of alien religions and races which ids in one of their disgusting pagan to be established and guaranteed must occupy in the Russian rituals. Look, look it’s all here.” were soon made known in what monarchy the most inferior was erroneously called “The Stat-

14 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I FICTION

This Way for the er held this white loaf in her hands do you think you’d be eating those off the bunk. He swallows the rest ... dear Lord, dear Lord ... packages of yours in peace? We of his tomato, snatches his coat, Gas, ladies and wouldn’t let you!’ screams ‘Raus’ at the men below, We unwrap the bacon, the onion, and in a flash is at the door. We can Gentlemen we open a can of evap­orated milk. ‘You would, you’d starve to death hear a scramble in the other bunks. Henri, the fat Frenchman, dreams like the Greeks. Around here, who- Canada is leaving for the ramp. by Tadeusz Borowski aloud of the French wine brought ever has grub, has power.’ by the transports from Stras­bourg, ‘Henri, the shoes!’ I call after him. All of us walk around naked. The Paris, Marseille ... Sweat streams ‘Anyway, you have enough, we have delousing is finally over, and our down his body. enough, so why argue?’ ‘Keine Angst!’ he shouts back, striped suits are back from the already outside. tanks of Cyclone B solution, an Right, why argue? They have efficient killer of lice in clothing enough, I have enough, we eat I proceed to put away the food. I tie and of men in gas chambers. Only together and we sleep on the same a piece of rope around the suitcase the inmates in the blocks cut off bunks. Henri slices the bread, he where the onions and the tomatoes from ours by the ‘Spanish goats’ makes a tomato salad. It tastes from my father’s garden in Warsaw still have nothing to wear. But all good with the commissary mus- mingle with Portu­guese sardines, the same, all of us walk around tard. bacon from Lublin (that’s from naked: the heat is unbearable. The my brother); and authentic sweet- camp has been sealed off tight. Below us, naked, sweat-drenched meats from Salonica. I tie it all up, Not a single prisoner, not one men crowd the narrow barracks pull on my trousers, and slide off solitary louse, can sneak through ‘Listen, mon ami, next time we go aisles or lie packed in eights and the bunk. the gate. The labour Kommandos up on the loading ramp, I’ll bring tens in the lower bunks. Their have stopped working. All day, you real champagne. You haven’t nude, withered bodies stink of ‘Platz!’ I yell, pushing my way thousands of naked men shuffle tried it before, eh?’ sweat and excrement; their cheeks through the Greeks. They step up and down the roads, cluster are hollow. Directly beneath me, in aside. At the door I bump into around the squares, or lie against ‘No. But you’ll never be able to the bottom bunk, lies a rabbi. He Henri. the walls and on top of the roofs. smuggle it through the gate, so has covered his head with a piece We have been sleeping on plain stop teasing. Why not try and of rag tom off a blanket and reads ‘Was ist Los?’ boards, since our mattresses and “organize” some shoes for me from a Hebrew prayer book (there blankets are still being disinfect- instead-you know, the perforated is no shortage of this type of liter- ‘Want to come with us on the ed. From the rear blockhouses we kind, with a double sole, and what ature at the camp), wailing loudly, ramp?’ have a view of the F.K.L.-Frauen about that shirt you promised me monotonously. Konzentration Lager; there too the long ago?’ ‘Sure, why not?’ delousing is in full swing. Twen- ‘Can’t somebody shut him up? He’s ty-eight thousand women have ‘Patience, patience. When the new been raving as if he’d caught God ‘Come along then, grab your coat! been stripped naked and driven transports come, I’ll bring all you himself by the feet.’ We’re short of a few men. I’ve out of the barracks. want. We’ll be going on the ramp already told the Kapo,’ and he again!’ ‘I don’t feel like moving. Let him shoves me out of the barracks door. Now they swarm around the large rave. They’ll take him to the oven yard between the blockhouses. ‘And what if there aren’t any more that much sooner.’ We line up. Someone has marked “cremo” transports?’ I say spiteful- down our numbers, someone up The heat rises, the hours are ly. ‘Can’t you see how much easier ‘Religion is the opium of the peo- ahead yells, ‘March, march,’ and endless. We are without even our life is becoming­ around here: no ple,’ Henri, who is a Communist now we are running towards the usual diversion: the wide roads limit on packages, no more beat- and a rentier, says sententiously. gate, accompanied by the shouts leading to the crematoria are ings? You even write letters home ‘If they didn’t believe in God and of a multilingual throng that is empty. For several days now, no ... One hears all kind of talk, and, eternal life, they’d have smashed already being pushed back to the new trans­ports have come in. Part dammit, they’ll run out of people!’ the crematoria long ago.’ barracks. Not everybody is lucky of ‘Canada’ has been liquidated enough to be going on the ramp ... and detailed to a labour Komman- ‘Stop talking nonsense.’ Henri’s ‘Why haven’t you done it then?’ We have almost reached the gate. do-one of the very toughest-at serious fat face moves rhythmi- Links, zwei, drei, vier! Mutzen ab! Harmenz. For there exists in the cally, his mouth is full of sardines. The question is rhetorical; the Erect, arms stretched stiffly along camp a special brand of justice We have been friends for a long Frenchman ignores it. our hips, we march past the gate based on envy: when the rich and time, but I do not even know his briskly, smartly, almost gracefully. mighty fall, their friends see to it last name. ‘Stop talking nonsense,’ ‘Idiot,’ he says simply, and stuffs a A sleepy S.S. man with a large pad that they fall to the very bottom. he repeats, swallowing with effort. tomato in his mouth. in his hand checks us off, waving And Canada, our Canada, which ‘They can’t run out of people, or us ahead in groups of five. smells not of maple forests but of we’ll starve to death in this blasted Just as we finish our snack, there French perfume, has amassed great camp. All of us live on what they is a sudden commotion at the door. ‘Hundert!’ he calls after we have all fortunes in diamonds and curren- bring.’ The Muslims scurry in fright to passed. cy from all over Europe. the safety of their bunks, a mes- ‘All? We have our packages...’ senger runs into the Block Elder’s ‘Stimmt!’ comes a hoarse answer Several of us sit on the top bunk, shack. The Elder, his face solemn, from out front. our legs dangling over the edge. ‘Sure, you and your friend, and ten steps out at once. We slice the neat loaves of crisp, other friends of yours. Some of you We march fast, almost at a run. crunchy bread. It is a bit coarse to Poles get packages. But what about ‘Canada! Antreten! But fast! There’s There are guards all around, young the taste, the kind that stays fresh us, and the Jews, and the Russkis? a transport coming!’ men with automatics. We pass for days. Sent all the way from And what if we had no food, no camp II B, then some deserted Warsaw-only a week ago my moth- “organization” from the transports, ‘Great God!’ yells Henri, jumping barracks and a clump of unfamil-

15 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

iar green-apple and pear trees. We We sit down in the narrow streaks We drink the water, lukewarm and ‘Niks. Transport kommen, alles cross the circle of watch­towers of shade along the stacked rails. tasteless. It will be paid for by the Krematorium, compris?’ and, running, burst on to the high- The hungry Greeks (several of people who have not yet arrived. way. We have arrived. Just a few them managed to come along, God ‘Alles verstehen,’ they answer in more yards. There, surrounded by only knows how) rummage under- ‘Now you be careful,’ says Henri, crematorium Esperanto. trees, is the ramp. neath the rails. One of them finds turning to me. He tosses away the some pieces of mildewed bread, empty bottle. It strikes the rails All is well-they will not have to A cheerful little station, very much another a few half-rotten sardines. and bursts into tiny fragments. move the heavy rails or carry the like any other pro­vincial railway They eat. ‘Don’t take any money, they might beams. stop: a small square framed by tall be checking. Anyway, who the hell chest­nuts and paved with yellow ‘Schweinedreck,’ spits a young, tall needs money? You’ve got enough In the meantime, the ramp has gravel. Not far off, beside the road, guard with com­coloured hair to eat. Don’t take suits, either, or become increasingly alive with squats a tiny wooden shed, uglier and dreamy blue eyes. ‘For God’s they’ll think you’re planning to activity, increasingly noisy. The and more flimsy then the ugli- sake, any minute you’ll have so escape. Just get a shirt, silk only, crews are being divided into those est and flimsiest railway shack; much food to stuff down your guts, with a collar. And a vest. And if who will open and unload the farther along lie stacks of old rails, you’ll bust!’ He adjusts his gun, you find something to drink, don’t arriving cattle cars and those who heaps of wooden beams, barracks wipes his face with a hand­kerchief. bother calling me. I know how to will be posted by the wooden steps. parts, bricks, paving stones. This shift for myself, but you watch They receive instructions on how is where they load freight for Birke- ‘Hey you, fatso!’ His boot lightly your step or they’ll let you have it.’ to proceed most efficiently. Motor nau: supplies for the construction touches Henri’s shoulder. ‘Pass mal cycles drive up, delivering S.S. offi- of the camp, and people for the gas auf, want a drink?’ ‘Do they beat you up here?’ cers, bemedalled, glittering with chambers. Trucks drive around, brass, beefy men with highly pol- load up lumber, cement, people—a ‘Sure, but I haven’t got any marks,’ ‘Naturally. You’ve got to have eyes ished boots and shiny, brutal faces. regular daily routine. replies the French­man with a pro- in your ass. Arschaugen.­ ’ Some have brought their briefcases, fessional air. others hold thin, flexible whips. And now the guards are being Around us sit the Greeks, their This gives them an air of military posted along the rails, across the ‘Schade, too bad.’ jaws working greedily, like huge readiness and agility. They walk beams, in the green shade of the human insects. They munch on in and out of the commissary-for Silesian chest­nuts, to form a tight ‘Come, come, Herr Posten, isn’t stale lumps of bread. They are rest- the miserable little shack by the circle around the ramp. They wipe my word good enough any more? less, wondering what will happen road serves as their commissary, the sweat from their faces and sip Haven’t we done business before? next. The sight of the large beams where in the summer­time they out of their canteens. It is unbear- How much?’ and the stacks of rails has them drink mineral water, Studenten- ably hot; the sun stands motionless worried. They dislike carrying quelle, and where in winter they at its zenith. ‘One hundred. Gemacht?’ heavy loads. can warm up with a glass of hot wine. They greet each other in the ‘Fall out!’ ‘Gemacht.’ ‘Was wir arbeiten?’ they ask. state-approved way, raising an arm Roman fashion, then shake hands cordially, ex­change warm smiles, discuss mail from home, their child­ren, their families. Some stroll majestically on the ramp.

The silver squares on their collars glitter, the gravel crunches under their boots, their bamboo whips snap impatiently.

We lie against the rails in the narrow streaks of shade, breathe unevenly, occasionally exchange a few words in our various tongues, and gaze listlessly at the majestic men in green uniforms, at the green trees, and at the church stee- ple of a distant village.

‘The transport is coming,’ somebody says. We spring to our feet, all eyes turn in one direction. Around the bend, one after another, the cattle cars begin rolling in. The train backs into the station, a conductor leans out, waves his hand, blows a whistle. The locomotive whistles back with a shrieking noise, puffs, the train rolls slowly along­side the ramp. In the tiny barred windows appear pale, wilted, exhausted human

16 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I FICTION

faces, terror-stricken women with ‘Where are you people from?’ backs, their purses and umbrellas coins, gold, watches; mountains of tangled hair, unshaven men. They taken away. bread pile up at the exits, heaps of gaze at the station in silence. And ‘Sosnowiec-Bedzin. Sir, what’s marmalade, jams, masses of meat, then, suddenly, there is a stir going to happen to us?’ They repeat ‘But please, sir, it’s for the sun, I sausages; sugar spills on the gravel. inside the cars and a pounding the question stubbornly, gazing cannot ... ‘ Trucks, loaded with people, start against the wooden boards. into our tired eyes. up with a deafening roar and drive ‘Verboten!’ one of us barks through off amidst the wailing and scream- ‘Water! Air!’—weary, desperate ‘I don’t know, I don’t understand clenched teeth. There is an S.S. ing of the women separated from cries. Polish.’ man standing behind your back, their children, and the stupefied calm, efficient, watchful. silence of the men left behind. Heads push through the windows, It is the camp law: people going They are the ones who had been mouths gasp frantically for air. to their death must be deceived ‘Meine Herrschaften, this way, ordered to step to the right-the They draw a few breaths, then dis- to the very end. This is the only ladies and gentlemen, try not to healthy and the young who will go appear; others come in their place, permissible form of charity. The throw your things around, please. to the camp. In the end, they too then also disappear. The cries and heat is tremendous. The sun hangs Show some goodwill,’ he says will not escape death, but first they moans grow louder. directly over our heads, the white, courteously, his restless hands must work. hot sky quivers, the air vibrates, playing with the slender whip. A man in a green uniform covered an occasional breeze feels like a with more glitter than any of the sizzling blast from a furnace. Our ‘Of course, of course,’ they answer others jerks his head impatiently, lips are parched, the mouth fills as they pass, and now they walk his lips twist in annoyance. He with the salty taste of blood, the alongside the train somewhat inhales deeply, then with a rapid body is weak and heavy from lying more cheerfully. A woman reaches gesture throws his cigarette away in the sun. Water! down quickly to pick up her hand- and signals to the guard. The bag. The whip flies, the woman guard removes the automatic from A huge, multicoloured wave of screams, stumbles, and falls under his shoulder, aims, sends a series people loaded down with luggage the feet of the surging crowd. of shots along the train. All is pours from the train like a blind, Behind her, a child cries in a thin quiet now. Meanwhile, the trucks mad river trying to find a new bed. little voice ‘Mamele!’­—a very have arrived, steps are being But before they have a chance to small girl with tangled black curls. drawn up, and the Canada men recover, before they can draw a stand ready at their posts by the breath of fresh air and look at the The heaps grow. Suitcases, bun- train doors. The S.S. officer with sky, bundles are snatched from dles, blankets, coats, handbags the briefcase raises his hand. their hands, coats ripped off their that open as they fall, spilling

‘Whoever takes gold, or anything at all besides food, will be shot for stealing Reich property. Under- stand? Verstanden?’

‘Jawohl!’ we answer eagerly.

‘Also los! Begin!’

The bolts crack, the doors fall open. A wave of fresh air rushes inside the train. People ... inhu- manly crammed, buried under incredible heaps of luggage, suit- cases, trunks, packages, crates, bundles of every description (everything that had been their past and was to start their future). Monstrously squeezed together, they have fainted from heat, suf- focated, crushed one another. Now they push to­wards the opened doors, breathing like fish cast out on the sand.

‘Attention! Out, and take your luggage with you! Take out everything. Pile all your stuff near the exits. Yes, your coats too. It is summer. March to the left. Understand?’

‘Sir, what’s going to happen to us?’ They jump from the train on to the gravel, anxious, worn-out.

17 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

Safe House never entered a confessional. More military hospital he was attached For each census, he goes to the often than not, he stayed on the to would be pulled back to Royan. police station on the rue Perronet by Christophe Bolanski cathedral plaza, sealed in the Fiat History doesn’t say how he man- or to the prefecture. He fills out with his crippled spouse. Did he aged to drive through a country forms that will soon be in the It would be wrong to see his prefer study to sermons? Or did in complete disarray with a sick hands of arresting officers. He tries act as merely a reflection of the he feel unworthy of entering the child, a newborn, and a handi- to fit his degrees and his ranks of self-hatred common in part of the Lord’s dwelling? Had this godless capped wife. How did he cross military service into the tiny space Jewish intelligentsia back then. In Jew become a churchless Catholic? the Loire in advance of the enemy provided on the official papers and his life, it wasn’t a disavowal but troops, weaving between masses understands, from their placement, instead another way to reconcile Despite all his efforts, he never of refugees, and es­caping bombs that this information carries no being Jewish and French. A way to managed to leave this in­between. from the German Junkers? Of this weight against other responses: impose a little bit of order on his He wanted to enter an eternal, frantic flight, Jean-Elie remembers name, religion, racial background interior chaos and even get back Christian France. He was knock- only a night spent in a deserted of parents and grandparents. He to his roots. Through scripture, he ing at the door of a house that chateau, abandoned by its owners, conscientiously fills out the list of discovered Abraham’s sacrifice, the didn’t want him. left at their disposal by a assets, not forgetting the land in ex­odus from Egypt, the judgment friendly housekeeper. Mayenne inherited by his spouse. of Solomon, a whole universe he’d In the eyes of the occupiers and of With the same care he gives his been deprived of. the Vichy government, his certif- Captain Doctor Boltanski even- patients, he receives the interim icate of baptism had no value. “In tually finds his regiment at administrator ap­pointed by Vichy He was also a pious man. As soon terms of race, it doesn’t change Ronce-les-Bains, a seaside town to take care of his fortune, clearly as his work was finished, he read anything, just as a hundred bap- in Charente-Maritime. His supe- wears his label on the left sleeve of the Bible or the most famous spir- tisms can’t make a Ne­gro into an rior, seeing him reappear out of his coat, respects the curfew, obeys itual authors. Like Saint Francis Aryan;’ wrote a doctor who was nowhere, asks him where he’s been the ticket checker in the metro de Sales, an early member of the a member of the Institute for the and what he’s doing there. He’s who tells him to get in the last car. Counter-Reformation. His Intro- Study of Jewish Questions, an suspicious, basically accusing him duction to the Devout Life, with agency created by the Gestapo for of spying: “how did you know we He does what everyone else is its echoes of common sense and propaganda purposes. Little by were here?” he says. The suspect doing-he follows orders. Out of its debonair tone, was what my little, the av alanche of decrees defends himself, “but an officer habit, out of loyalty. He continues grandfather used as a guide for his stripped him of everything he told me ... He isn’t welcome. All to rely on the state. The law is the every moment. Like his medical had become, leaving him nothing around him, people are talking law. A good student to the end. journals, he examined it with a but a single three-letter word about the “fifth column” of trai- His life conforming to a perpetual ballpoint pen and a sheet of paper stuck to his chest. A frantic tors from within. They already examination. To pass, it’s enough for notes. He was just as serious, succession of German ordinances hold “Jews and foreigners” respon- to apply oneself, to respect orders, just as attentive, just as willing to and French laws competed to more sible for the defeat. He is put on to eke out a maximum number learn. He spent whole days bent rigorously orchestrate his social leave without pay on June 18, of points on the written part over his old spell books, weighing death in preparation for his 1940, four days before the armi- and brilliantly ace the oral. He each word, looking for ancient future disappearance. stice. What does he do then? He repeats that he has a good record. secrets like a God-fearing man He believes that his medals, his studying the Torah. In the bottom titles, his career will protect him. of his heart, he carried the same The torrents of hate? The rising distrust of the world. He, too, lived hor­ror? Those are the fault of the a beggar’s life. He had nothing, was Germans. His France, which he’d attached to nothing. He lived in never stopped serving, wouldn’t terror of doing the wrong thing, of hand him over to the enemy. committing a professional mistake, of hurt­ing someone. Every answer What exactly did he know? He’s he discovered led to new ques- aware, of course, of the names tions. His faith was wracked by Draney, Compiegne, Pithiviers, doubt and full of fervor. His joyful Beaune-la-Rolande. Ev­eryone is ex­clamations were never without talking about the camps. At least a serious foundation. He would everyone who thinks they might have made an excellent Hasid-just one day end up there. Even if he among the just. doesn’t know the specifics, he realizes that hundreds of people, But this man was not very Catho- wearing stars like his, leave each lic. I suspect he even in­vented his week on armored trains going east. own personal cosmogony. Because Why did he go back to Paris? At could have hurried to reach the He must have heard the English he realized the uniqueness of his the end of May 1940, with the future “free zone” in the south radio report the massacre of seven beliefs? His religious practices German invasion underway, he or tried to move abroad. He must hun­dred thousand Jews in Germa- remained furtive. He practically was on leave in Desertines. At the sense that the atmosphere will ny and in the conquered territo­ries hid them. I have no memory of bedside of Jean-Elie, who had just soon become suffocating. In­stead, of Poland and Russia. He under- him kneeling, his hands together, come down with early symptoms he puts on his civilian clothes and stands that a machine has been set his head bowed. The prayers he of tuberculosis, and near Luc, who goes back home. He calmly returns in motion, and though he feels its said before dawn were confined to had just been born. When the with his family to a city that has unstoppable nature, he minimiz- quiet hummings. He never spoke defeat was announced, he decided become the heart of the Nazi es the risk. He tries to persuade to a divinity directly. He preferred to take the wheel of Hotchkiss regime in France. himself that other camps, work to contemplate it from within, like and get back to his unit as quickly camps, this time, awaited those a mystic. It was a solitary pleasure. as possible. He knew that if there From then on, he submits to the who have been de­ported: “It’s not He rarely went to mass and almost were an evacuation, the Percy demands of the new author­ities. serious. They leave on the train

18 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I FICTION

and they come back;’ he says one while still following the rules, one day. Is he simply trying to comfort more time. One time too many. his family? This Judenrat, based on the model that already ex­isted in the ghettos Slowly, his world crumbles. The of Eastern Europe, is an ambush. space around him becomes smaller. Its direc­tors and staff, despite As if he’d been caught in a black the ‘1egitimization” cards that hole. Cafes, restau­rants, tea rooms, theoreti­cally exempt them from the bois de Boulogne, bois de Vin- the roundups and internments, cennes, pub­lic gardens, theaters, are all eventually deported. His cinemas, stadiums, pools, sports spouse finally persuades him. clubs, markets, concerts, business- “Don’t do that;’ she begs, “That’s es ( except between three and four madness!” She convinces him in the afternoon, exactly when not to write his name on another most of them are closed), mu­seums, list. Especially not that one. Her libraries, exhibits ... the places he’s instinct is right. This organiza- forbidden to enter multiply. He’s tion, stamped with respectability, not allowed to leave greater Paris, formed for the most reputable and he has to give notice of any ends, and advertising its abso­lute change of address within for- legality, is nothing but ty-eight hours. First his car, then a mousetrap. his quadricycle are confiscated. His group of friends, his so-called social fabric, also shrinks. Acquaintances, colleagues, former students, when they don’t share his fate, they flee as if he were diseased. Some French people, seeing his cloth patch, offer their sympathy. Most of them seem largely indifferent.

In the heart of the war, he under- stands his Jewishness. It all comes back to him. How could he not side with the victims? He discovers his unknown brothers. He helps them as much as he can, treating them free of charge, offering medical care, responding to their calls for help, agreeing to write them fake referrals if it can save them, unlikely certificates that attribute what has become a mark of infamy to a medical procedure rather than a ritual act. He comforts them with words that rise up from child- hood, words that come from far away. He is finally one of them.

When, on November 29, 1941, at the express demand of the Ger- mans, the Vichy regime creates the General Union of French Israelites to organize the Jewish commu- nity, he decides to sign up. He wants to be part of it. Out of solidarity, and out of discipline too. All Jews were required to be members. One of his doctor friends encourages him: “You have to join. It will protect us!” He could perform a social service, make himself useful,

19 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University FICTION

Train to Budapest wanted to impose communism, heard. Large geese with flat yellow them necessary to safeguard the meaning the immediate and total beaks who produced gigantic eggs fatherland. They must be shame- By Dacia Maraini confiscation of all private property, that she mixed with flour to make ful secrets, or they would have with the possible shooting of any- excellent pies, both sweet and been discussed openly. Instead, in Magdalena Ruthmann Orenstein one who kept back anything at all savoury. The vegetables always their identical little houses with escaped the gas chambers. He had for themselves, even a ramshackle came in boxes; sometimes aspar- their embroidered curtains, little discovered this too, but not from old bicycle. On top of this they agus, sometimes white cabbage, drinks cabinets and cuckoo clocks, the survivor he had heard on the were usually physically ugly, with sometimes red cabbage. Sometimes the men never spoke of what was radio and later tracked down and hooked noses, prominent negroid she longed for a change, but she happening in the camp. It was interviewed. But rather from the lips and greasy black hair. This never complained. as if, when they came home and diary of the widow of an SS officer was how they were depicted in pulled off their boots and laid who, seven years after her hus- caricatures; stooping, bony, hunch- aside their stiff peaked caps, they band’s death just before the camp backed and hostile, ready to grab were leaving behind disagreeable was liberated, and after starving in any poor unsuspecting Austrian and sometimes filthy duties that a hovel among the ruins of Berlin, and suck his blood by sinking two could not be avoided. In those little had found a pub­lisher for her diary canine teeth as sharp as cork- houses with their gardens and of the years 1944-1945. Its title screws into his neck. flower beds, they ate, played with was Auschwitz, and its subtitle their children and made love to I Was There Too. It was not the She herself, Frau Margarethe von their young wives, as if living on memoir of a sur­viving inmate, but Bjeck, had been as convinced as islands of happiness suspended in of a woman who had lived with her anyone that these Bolshevik Jews space and time. SS officer husband in a little house were a threat to the people of her all flowers and pretty curtains at country and that it was right that One day when there wasn’t a single the edge of the camp. they should be interned in work cloud in the sky, Frau Mar­garethe camps in occupied Poland and that decided to go and pick some of This woman had described how her husband Otto, as an SS officer, Her husband, loyal to his country, the chicory she had seen growing as a young bride she had lived in should have been sent to help run never talked about his work at the luxuriantly in the fields round Bremen with her young husband one of these camps. It was a great camp. In any case, she had no curi- the camp, for the savoury pies she who had started as an ordinary honour for her young SS-Ober- osity and would not have wanted made with the goose eggs. She took soldier in the Wehrmacht. Then sturmführer, who ranked only to go and look for herself. She a small knife and a basket lined with the growth of Nazism she had below the camp commandant who stayed at home making her sweet with waxed paper. She put on a found herself first the wife of an was an SS-Sturmbannführer(Storm and savoury cakes with apple or flowered dress that made the most SS-Hauptscharführer (Chief Squad Unit Leader or Major). To have been cabbage, and when she ran short of her slim waist—the bee, they Leader) and then of an SS-Unter- entrusted with such a position was of butter she sent to the camp had called her in the little town sturmführer (Junior Storm Leader evidence of force of character, a kitchens for lard. A fat, yellow lard of Bremen—and a pair of shoes or Second Lieutenant) and finally, power­ful sense of duty and total enclosed in tall narrow tins with made with the orthopaedic cork transferred overnight to Berlin, loyalty to the Fuhrer. Her husband red labels stuck on the top. She heels that had taken the place of the wife of an SS-Obersturmführer had explained this to her as he must never confuse them, a Polish leather during the war. She felt (Senior Storm Leader or First opened the doors of their charm- cook once whispered in her ear cheerful and happy. She had made Lieutenant), which had made her ing little house with its handmade as he brought her daily supply of love with her husband the night very proud indeed. During these wooden furniture, with little food, with other tall narrow tins before, after months when he had years three children had been born, hearts carved into the backs of the with purple labels that contained claimed to be too tired to touch her of whom the youngest, Adolf, was chairs, armchairs upholstered in a gas in solid lumps called Zyklon naked body. But last night he had a most beautiful blond child with sea­blue velvet, wrought-iron beds B. She had gone to the trouble of kissed her again and again, and for blue eyes, just as recommended and embroidered curtains. He had remembering this but had been once there had been no sign of the by the great Hitler. When her told her she must never speak to too lazy to think about it. Now she smell of permanganate she now so husband the SS-Obersturmführer anyone except her neighbours, the realised it had been an obedient often associated with young Otto. received relocation orders he did wives of other SS officers, must sort of laziness, this not wanting The children had not woken her not tell her where they were to live. look after the children and nev- to know, typical of SS wives. Better in the night and she had got up in It was only when they got there er ask him anything about his for wives to keep well away from the morning happy and well-rested, that his wife understood that they extremely important and highly secrets that might be dirty, even ready for the little domestic duties had been transferred to a work confidential work. She had obeyed, if in their hearts they believed of the day. camp for Jewish prisoners. It was passing her days indoors with almost impossible for Aryan wom- her family or, with her husband’s en even to pronounce the word permission, being driven in an ‘Jewish’ at that time. When they SS car to a nearby farm village, to could not avoid it, they felt bound buy something for herself and the to add a grimace of disgust. Accord­ children. Their daily provisions ing to the newspapers they all read, were brought every morning by the Jews had been responsi­ble for a member of her husband’s staff: every kind of wickedness: as born milk, bread, meat and vegeta­bles loan-sharks they had stolen mon- for the whole family. ey from poor Austrians forced to struggle all day for a living, and From the windows of her little had made secret pacts with the house on the edge of the camp, enemies of the father­land, plotting Margarethe could see birch trees to kill the Aryans and create a silhouetted against the sky, and a country in their own image. They pen full of geese whose angry and were violent and domineering and noisy squabbling could often be

20 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I FICTION

While picking the chicory she had Looking towards the camp she had become aware of a strange smell noticed the chimney for the first of smoke. A smell she had never time. It was not visible from her noticed in her own house ‘ even house, or even from her little gar- when she opened the windows. den. But from here, from this field A sweetish, feral smell, a smell where she was picking chicory, she which as it began to fill her nos- had suddenly seen the tower in its trils seemed increasingly distaste- full grandeur. It was belching out ful and disagreeable to her. She had turgid grey smoke streaked with raised her eyes, trying to make out white, a bloated, greasy smoke that where it was coming from, breath- settled in an adhesive film. ing the air deeply. But all round her was nothing but fields, wet Why did they insist on calling it a grass, birches with streaky trunks tower if it was a really a chimney? and, some distance off, the walls Something entered her mind like a of the camp. When the light wind secret, hidden memory. Suddenly that had carried the smell to her she remembered words she had not nose seemed to change direction, understood at the time when she she had gone back to gathering heard them. Words her husband chicory. Otto had spoken one evening to another officer on the telephone. But after ten minutes or so the Something about an oven ‘that wind began blowing in her direc­ is not working as it should, two tion again and she had been of the furnaces are out of order assailed not only by the nauseous and what are we going to do with smell but by a puff of dark grey so many bodies waiting?’ What smoke that had seemed to adhere had he been talking about, her SS to her skin. She touched her naked officer husband Otto von Bjeck? In arm with her hand and felt some- that moment a suspicion crossed thing she did not understand on her mind: what was the chimney her fingers. When she looked more for? Why did it pour out all that closely, she realized it was ash. An stinking smoke? almost imperceptible greasy ash giving off a disgusting smell.

21 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University AUTHORS

About the Writers

Mark Axelrod Claudio Magris Mark Axelrod is a graduate of both Indiana University and the Universi- Claudio Magris is an Italian writer, scholar, and critic who was one of the ty of Minnesota. He has been the Director of the John Fowles Center for leading writers and cultural philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st Creative Writing for which he has received five National Endowment for centuries. Magris completed his studies at the University of Turin, where the Arts Grants. He has received numerous writing awards including two he also taught from 1970 to 1978. Thereafter he taught German litera- United Kingdom Leverhulme Fellowships for Creative Writing as well as ture at the University of Trieste. His numerous studies have promoted screenwriting awards from the Sundance Institute, the WGA East, and central European culture and the literature of the “Habsburg myth.” He the Nicholl Fellowship. He recently received awards from the Irvine Inter- translated works by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen as well as works national Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival and the by Heinrich von Kleist, Arthur Schnitzler, and many other German-lan- Illinois International Film Festival for his screenplays. guage writers. In Blameless, Magris affirms his mastery of the novel form, interweaving multiple themes and traveling deftly through history. With a multitude of stories, the author investigates individual sorrow, the Christophe Boltanski societal burden of justice aborted, and the ways in which memory and French journalist and writer Christophe Boltanski worked for the Libéra- historical evidence are sabotaged or sometimes salvaged. tion newspaper from 1989-2007. Since 2007, Boltanski has worked for a weekly French news magazine called Le Nouvel Observateur. He has written several essays, and a novel titled The Safe House, which uncovers Dacia Maraini the story of one family during the Nazi invasion of their neighborhood. A native of Italy and award-winning author, Dacia Maraini, left her coun- Boltanski’s novel has been deemed “a literary sensation” (University of try for Japan in 1938 to escape the growing Fascist regime under Mus- Chicago), and has won the Prix de Prix. solini. Although Maraini and her family successfully fled Italy, they were sent to a concentration camp from 1943-1946 while in Japan. Maraini’s family eventually returned to Italy, which is where her career began. Mar- Tadeusz Borowski iani published her first novel, La vacanza, in 1962. In 1963, she published Borowski is a Polish poet and short-story writer noted for his vigorous, L’età del malessere, which won the International Formentor Prize and was desperate search for moral values that might withstand such realities as translated into twelve languages. Also active in the realm of theater, Mari- the horrors of the Nazi occupation. ani co-founded a theater run only by women, called Teatro della Maddalena during the 1970s. Over the course of the next several decades, Maraini Born into a Polish family in the Ukraine, Borowski went to Poland and went on to write over 60 works, including 20 plays and 16 novels. Mara- in 1932 settled in Warsaw. During World War II he started to write ini’s ability to combine historical elements with the personal has been poetry, publishing in 1942 his clandestine collection Gdziekolwiek praised by critics-- especially in her text, A Train to Budapest, which tells ziemia (“Wherever the Earth”). He was arrested and sent to the Auschwitz the story of an Italian journalist who embarks on a trip to Auschwitz and concentration camp in 1943 and then deported to the Dachau camp in Budapest in 1956. Germany. Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes. Pub- lished in Poland after the Second World War, these stories constitute a masterwork of world literature.

22 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I AUTHORS

Martin Nakell Giogio and Nicola Pressburger Martin Nakell’s writing cuts across genres, from fiction and poetry to prose poetry. His books include The Myth of Creation (1993), The Library Giorgio Pressburger and his twin brother Nicola were born in Budapest, of Thomas Rivka (1997), Two Fields that Face and Mirror Each Other (2001), Hungary, in 1937. At the age of nineteen, they immigrated to Italy, where Form (2005), and Settlement (2007). Awards include an NEA Interarts Giorgio began working as a theater and television director and wrote in Grant and the Gertrude Stein Award in Poetry for 1996-1997; he was his free time. The brothers wrote two books together before Nicola passed also a finalist in the New American Poetry Series for 1999. He teaches away and Giorgio continued to write on his own. Much of their writing creative writing courses at Chapman, but is known as well for his courses addresses questions of identity and destiny. Homage to the Eighth District on James Joyce and twentieth-century poetry. He leads an annual summer introduced the brothers into English, and their unusual composition for course to Italy. Nakell received a BA from Cal State Northridge, an MA two pens has impressed readers across Europe and America for its high from San Francisco State University, and a DA (Doctor of Arts) from SUNY dignity and perfect artistic control. Albany. Boris Pahor Boris Pahor is considered one of the best known Slovenian writers. His fame in Europe stems from publications about the atrocities in Nazi con- centration camps, but in Slovenia and among the Slovenian minority in Italy he is well known for his social and political engagement, in addition to his writing. Pahor spent the last fourteen months of World War II as a prisoner and medic in the Nazi camps at Belsen, Harzungen, Dachau, and Natzweiler. His fellow prisoners comprised a veritable microcosm of Europe Italians, French, Russians, Dutch, Poles, Germans. Twenty years later, when he visits a camp in the Vosges Mountains that has been pre- served as a historical monument, images of his experiences come back to him: corpses being carried to the ovens; emaciated prisoners in wooden clogs and ragged, zebra-striped uniforms, struggling up the steps of a quarry or standing at roll call in the cold rain; the infirmary, reeking of dysentery and death. Necropolis is Pahor’s stirring account of his attempts to provide medical aid to prisoners in the face of the utter brutality of the camps and of his coming to terms with the ineradicable guilt he feels, having survived when millions did not.

23 John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, Chapman University Submit your writing to the Spring 2020 Issue of Mantissa! The next Issue is devoted to Ukrainian and Russian Literature

24 Mantissa Journal Volume IV Issue I