Otherwise You're Dead

Jean-Jacques Greif Otherwise you’re dead 22 rue du petit musc 75004 Paris 01 48 87 57 36 [email protected] www.jjgreif.com 2 Sinon vous êtes morte 1 The sheep By the Vistula Aaron Kassar grabs his mother’s hand. The round milky face of the child resembles a reflection of the moon in the black water of the night. Who mutters under the trees? The tombstones lean over to listen. “Do you hear, Arik? People are afraid the souls of the dead might roam in the graveyard. They imagine creatures, specters, dibbuks. In the twentieth century! Do you know why I brought you here? So that you won’t be tempted to believe such nonsense. Look, the wind is shaking the leaves, that’s all there is to it. Dead people leave nothing behind. A few memories, maybe.” “The old rabbi, he’s in the ground?” “The old rabbi doesn’t exist anymore. Suppose we dig right here. We won’t find anybody. A few bones and some dust, almost nothing.” “Listen, mama, someone is calling us.” “An owl is hooting in the wood. She’s calling her boyfriend1. She’s in love.” “It is not the wolf?” “Wolves don’t come so close to a city. Even in the forest, wolves have vanished long ago. Do you smell the nice perfume? There must be a linden tree nearby.” Płock—pronounced “Pwotsk” because of the bar across the l—is the first city on the Vistula after Warsaw. The 11th-century basilica and the Princes of Mazowia’s fortress, two stone sentinels standing on the hill, are watching over a bend of the river and protecting a crowd of timid houses. Behind their thick walls, under their sloping roofs, Płockians winter like bears when the Vistula freezes and a white quilt covers the city. How many Płockians? Thirty thousand or so. One out of four is Jewish. When Aaron is six, his mother thinks takes him to the military hospital. A maelstrom of smells and noises whirls in the main ward. It stinks of blood, soiled straw, sweat, bleach, ether. Screams, moans, swear words, peals of laughter fly around, rebound on the gray walls, cover the buzzing drone of the flies. Aaron doesn’t see who cries and who laughs. Another? The same one? His myopia blurs the spectacle of human misery. 1 Sowa, the owl, is a feminine word in Polish. 3 Sinon vous êtes morte Men lying down, felled by the war. Women standing up, gray dresses and white cornets. “Mama, he cries like Favek.” “Your brother is a baby. He cries when he’s hungry. This poor man cries because the surgeon cut his leg. He sawed his thighbone. I hope he put him to sleep first. Some of these wounded men will die.” “Nothing left. Bones in the ground.” “They have barely lived. What a waste! Life is too long, so they want to shorten it. They used to fight with swords, now they have canons and machine guns. This one is suffocating to death. They spread gasses that asphyxiate the soldiers. I wonder how this war will end.” “Me, I won’t go to war.” “You won’t. The czar doesn’t take Jews in his army, you know.” “It smells bad. They should plant linden trees.” To forget the color and smell of blood, they go to court. “Do you understand what happened, Arik? The man with the blue shirt drinks so much vodka that he often loses his mind. The other one took advantage of it to steal his cart and horse. Oh, wait… It is his own brother!” “The blue man wants his brother to go to jail?” “Sometimes, brothers don’t like each other. In court, the defects of people appear more clearly than in daily life.” Aaron thinks about Favek. He bothers me, but I don’t want him to go to jail. They don’t put babies in jail, I’m sure.” There’s something wrong with Aaron’s hip. It hurts. He limps. A doctor, having diagnosed a bone tuberculosis, grips Aaron’s ankle, leg and thorax in a plaster mold. Aaron bears the torture without complaining. After two months, the doctor replaces the plaster shell by a scaffolding of iron and straps. This doctor is a fool, Aaron’s mother thinks. “So maybe the thing supports your leg, Arik, but it prevents it from growing like the other one. If this goes on, you’ll limp for good. I’ve heard of a doctor in the military hospital, Dr. Rau. He cured the meningitis of Marek, the tailor’s son.” “What tailor?” “On Sobieski street. I’ll take you to the hospital.” “He’ll cut my leg with a saw? I’ll have a wooden leg?” 4 Sinon vous êtes morte The 1815 Vienna congress gave Płock to Russia, but the Germans have captured the city at the beginning of the war. Herr Dr. Rau, a stiff German military doctor with a stiff moustache, asks Aaron to undress and lays him on a white table. It looks like a table, it feels like a block of ice. Dr. Rau palpates the joints and ganglions at length. “The child has nothing at all. Growing pains at most. Dear madam, you can remove his orthopedic brace and let him walk at once.” Aaron’s mother understands the German language. It is as close to Yiddish as a winter landscape to a spring one. It lacks the flowers, the charm, the tenderness, the fragrance. One hundred pages by heart Every evening, Aaron’s father brings home a small bag of flour. Aaron’s mother and elder sister make kichel, knaydl, knishe, kreplach1. The father operates a mill for its owner. He wears a long beard, as thou shallst not bring a razor near thy face. He covers his head. He avoids cloth woven with several kinds of thread. He tries to obey all the other commandments. He would like his elder son to become a rabbi. Aaron studies the Thora and the Gemara in the Cheder, the Jewish school. His brand new brain absorbs the holy humbug like a sponge, so that he can recite a hundred pages of the Gemara without understanding a single word. You hum and rock the better to remember the Aramaic text. One evening, Aaron hears his mother shout Oy Weh! as if she had cut her thumb while peeling carrots. “After fifteen years of faithful service? Just like that?” “Well, the old man is dead. The young owner says he wants to try new methods. What can I do about it?” “You could at least protest. This is the twentieth century. You are entitled to a month’s notice. They can’t kick you out overnight without giving you some kind of compensation.” “He says he’ll buy machinery and sell flour to the German army. He bought a warehouse in Radziwie, now that you can cross the river on the new bridge.” “The head of a family. Did you tell him you have four children? The baby girl is still sucking my breast.” “What’s the use? We must take things as they come.” 1 Cookies, matzo balls, two kinds of dumplings. 5 Sinon vous êtes morte “You’d better find a new job quickly. With this war, vegetables cost more and more, and I don’t even want to think about meat.” What can a poor Jew do, except become a peddler? Pekl on his shoulder, Aaron’s father sells undergarments door to door. “The latest Paris fashions, dear madam.” The pekl? It is the pouch that contains the merchandise. Aaron’s father is such a poor peddler that a generous aunt has to buy bread for the children. People who rent a large field by the Łódz1 road hire the father as a farmer. “I’ll plant vegetables. They’ll let me keep some. At least, we’ll be able to eat.” He raises geese, thousands of them. He inspects them every morning with Aaron—a general and his orderly reviewing the troops before a parade. When a goose doesn’t look good, the father sticks its neck under his heel, grabs its legs and pulls hard. “I’ll sell it to trayf.” “Who is trayf, papa?” “Whatever is not kosher is trayf. Jews can’t eat the goose unless a Chohet cuts its neck cleanly. He slits both carotid arteries so that the animal doesn’t suffer.” “It suffered?” “It doesn’t suffer anymore.” So this is death. Nothing left. Dust to dust. Trayf is lucky, he’ll eat the goose tonight. Oy, the geese look sickly. The father soon sells them all to trayf. He replaces them with cows and a bull. This lord spits a burning breath like a dragon. Fascinated by the black pit of his nostrils, Aaron seizes a twig. I’ll tickle you to see of you sneeze. What is this mystery? Aaron wakes up in his bed and sees his mother at his side. “My belly hurts, mama. I don’t remember going to bed.” “You passed out. The bull threw you away thirty feet, at least.” “The bull? He was tied to the tree.” “The rope wasn’t tight, I guess. I must take you to the eye doctor’s. He’ll say whether you need to wear glasses. Your belly is red, black and blue. You were lucky.” Flashes of lightning illuminate the night. Aaron wakes up. The little brother, who shares his room, wonders whether to hide under his blanket or get up to see what’s happening.

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