MEMENTO MORI When she was sixteen years old she was set up on a date with a nice Jewish boy who admired her greatly. He was already pre-med, he knew what he wanted, he was a smart industrious freshman in a great metropolitan parochial college. He was a good kosher catch in a generic sort of way. She was rather nervous about it but she knew it was time to discover for her own teenage self what dating was, and for all we know, may still be about. She cautiously asked her fathers permission, which he relinquished without much of an obvious struggle. He was always such a fine gentle man, was her sad soulful father. Her father, Rebbe Chaim, stroked his trim gray beard thoughtfully, leaned forward with his hands on his knees, and smiled wistfully. I knew this was going to happen, that you would begin to be dating and find your bashert, your soulmate, he said, pausing briefly to sigh. I just did not think it would happen so soon. She studied the elegant bones of her fathers face and the watery deep hazel calm of his eyes. He looked soft and remote, like he was not even there. It was a look she knew well and she understood fully that he was traveling backwards in time once again. He said, When I was a boy, maybe ten or eleven, before my Bar Mitzvah, before the storm started raging, there was a girl I admired, she was a breathtaking beauty. Perhaps it is silly but I still remember everything about her. Her name it was Manya Krakowski. She was the most beautiful girl from Cracow to Warsaw. It all comes back so clearly, that Manya Krakowski, she was buxom and rosy, she was all natural beauty. She lived nearby on Zlota Street, which is Gold Street in Polish. She was just a young girl but full grown like a woman.” He blushed but continued, Manya Krakowski hardly even knew I existed. I was a young Yeshiva boy barely out of knickers and she was nearly a woman. I always spied on her walking although it was strictly forbidden. I followed her footsteps, I was totally smitten. Ach, that Manya Krakowski! When Manya went walking all the young men took notice! She was a breathtaking beauty like the young Rita Hayworth. I remember every detail of her, the long auburn gloss of her, her hair flowing wild down her back like a fire was raging there. Her petticoats rustled a sound just like laughter. Her lips were red as poziomki, those sweet tiny wild Polish strawberries, which she gathered together in a large swinging basket and sold before Shabbos in the open air market. She took quizzical note of the flush on fathers face. When he started to chuckle she was truly surprised and she smiled alongside him with genuine amusement. She said, Tatte, I did not even suspect you were such a romantic. He said, Your mother used to say I was not very romantic, but back then I could not even think to express it. It was the war that changed everything. I was not merely empty; I was filled up with sorrow. I was only a man, I was living with horror. I just could not believe it, that the world did not end. I just could not believe it that the world did not rend the silence. But Manya Krakowski, I will always remember her. She set a sweet raging fire to me when I was only a boy. Most of all I remember her eyes, smiling so gently. I can still see Manyas deep shining dark Jewish eyes, smiling gently with a spark of humor. A cloud passed over his brow and swept the smile from his face. He took his head between the mottled scoops of his hands and swept a curtain of tears out from under his eye. He said, After the war I returned to my home town. There was nobody left in the old Jewish quarter. A young Pole was poking about the rubble and ashes. He carried a large burlap sack over his muscular shoulder. He was ruddy and callous, he was big boned and sturdy, he was casually harvesting memento mori. I said Przepraszam, --excuse me--do you know if there are any Jewish souls left here? He pointed toward the graveyard at the edge of the woods and he started off again laughing cruelly. I walked through the gate of the old Jewish graveyard. It was rusted and broken, it fell nearly off of its hinges. I saw a figure hunched beside a remnant of shattered headstones. Nearly all of the markers had been torn down long ago and carted off by the Germans and Poles for building foundations. There was a woman, I could tell by the sound of her weeping. I saw the look of her face, it was covered with scars like a tortured topographical road map. Her expression was stiff like it was frozen in screaming. Her eyes were not merely empty, they were brimming with terror. They were foreign and frightening but they were vaguely familiar. I just could not believe it, the way she moved like a phantom. I just could not believe it. It was Manya Krakowski! I held her close in my arms, she was slight as a shadow. The sound of her voice when she spoke was barely even human. Manya Krakowski, she was a breathtaking beauty, she was only sixteen, she was barely a woman, she was picking poziomki when the Germans stormed in. She ran towards her house. It was already burning. She found a tangle of bodies entwined in the hallway. She rushed back to the woods with her hair all on fire. It burned and blistered her beautiful features, melted them, and they never even began to heal fully. For three years she survived on mushrooms and lichen and nuts and poziomki. She hid for three years in the dark partisan forest. They were lush woods for hiding and tall woods for hanging.” He said, Ach! That Manya Krakowski she was a breathtaking beauty. I will always remember, she was the most beautiful girl from Cracow to Warsaw. It was the last time I saw her, there, in the ruins-of-the ruins of the old Jewish graveyard. I remember her eyes, they were not merely empty. They were ash and bright ember still smoking with horror. I thought to cry, to put the fire out. I thought to shed water, but not a drop came out. I just could not believe it, the look of her like Medusa. I just could not believe it, that the world did not end. I just could not believe it, the way a life gets consumed. She sat very still and her own deep shining dark Jewish eyes filled with stinging salt water. She could not lift away her fathers pain so she just lifted his hand and kissed his death camp devil’s tattoo and stroked the hunch of his broken slave labor back. She felt the force of his agony and the force of his love battling together as ever and always, dual forces combating, both witness and prayer. She promised herself that she would always remember and write everything down. They were knit together both into the very same keloid thread of the warp. That Saturday night, after Shabbos, she went out on her very first date and nothing much happened, at least nothing exciting. Nothing much like a miracle anyway, that is to say, nothing incendiary. Nothing near like falling in love. Not even a spark. © Wallis Stern
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 05:09:01 +0000
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