. . . and dwell in tents that ye may live long in the land where ye are strangers.
Jeremiah
He was traveling to see his old father who was a rabbi
in Vienna. His skin was white. He had a small fair moustache and bloodshot
eyes, the eyes of a textual scholar. He held up a grey serge overcoat, not
knowing where to hang it. He was very shy. He was so shy that he could not undress
with anyone else in the compartment.
I went into the corridor. The train was speeding up. The lights of Frankfurt
disappeared into the night.
Five minutes later he was lying on the upper bunk,
relaxed and eager to talk. He had studied at a Talmudic Academy in Brooklyn.
His father had left America fifteen years earlier: the morning would reunite them.
He and his father disapproved of America. They mistrusted the Zionist mood.
Israel was an idea not a country. Besides, Jahweh gave the Land for his
Children to wander through, not to settle or sink roots there.
Before the war his family lived in Sibiu in Romania. When the war came they
hoped they were safe; then, in 1942, Nazis set a mark on the house.
The father shaved his beard and cut his ringlets. His Gentile servant fetched
him a peasant costume, black breaches and a smocked linen shirt. He took his
first-born son and ran into the woods.
The Nazis took the mother, the sisters and the baby boy. They died in Dachau. The
rabbi walked through the Carpathian beech forests with his son. Shepherds
sheltered him and gave him meat. The way the shepherds slaughtered sheep did
not offend his principles. Finally, he crossed the Turkish frontier and made
his way to America.
Now father and son were returning to Romania. Recently they had a sign, pointing
the way back. Late one night, in his apartment in Vienna, the rabbi reluctantly
answered the doorbell. On the landing stood an old woman with a shopping basket.
She said: ‘I have found you.’
She had blue lips and wispy hair. Dimly he recognized his Gentile servant.
‘The house is safe,’ she said. ‘Forgive me, for years
I pretended it was now a Gentile house. Your clothes are there, your books
even. I am dying. Here is the key.’
‘All houses are Gentile houses,’ the rabbi said.
1978
