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By Root 2130 0

bastards, those hate-filled anti-Semites? Only a few had been arrested, tried, and imprisoned. What else could we expect? The Red Army had given control of the police to some young Jewish Communists returning from Bucharest, the labor battalions, and the camps. Whom else could they have any confidence in? (One of them, Aczi Mendelowics, later became Amos Manor, chief of the formidable Shin Beth security service in Israel.) As a result, there was some settling of scores with the fascists. That’s all? No public executions? No hangings? Not that she knew of. Acts of vengeance? None. And the house? The less said about that the better. The jewels? Gone. Other objects of value? Stolen. Everything was stolen. After we left, our good neighbors had swarmed over the vacated Jewish homes, looting them all. She stayed with the Davidowics family, distant cousins. In any case, survivors tried to stay together. Out of fear of ghosts? Out of fear, period. Drunken Russian soldiers sowed terror. A friend of my father’s, a clockmaker by trade, had his throat cut by a Russian soldier who fancied his watch. His daughter, who had arrived from Germany a few days earlier, found his decapitated body in the street. Surely we could not go “home.” What would become of the two of us? How long would Bea have to stay in this camp? How long could I stay in France? The future seemed far from promising.

LAST NIGHT—July 10, 1991—I saw my mother in a dream again. She seemed upset, and I realized that something serious had happened. She motioned me to follow her. Then suddenly I saw my father. He was wearing my gray suit. It looked good on him. We were all there, everyone from before and from now, standing at a river that all at once began to swell, its level rising from moment to moment. “It’s the flood,” someone said, quite calmly. It’s the flood, but I’m not afraid. So, I said to myself it’s possible to watch the rising tide and not feel fear. Just then my father waded into the murky, blood-colored water, and I said to myself, So rivers of blood exist after all. I waited for my father to come back so I could point this out to him, but he stayed beneath the water. I began to shout for help, but everyone was suddenly gone. I don’t know how to swim, so I panicked, screaming louder and louder. But I was all alone. I began to search for my father in the waters that now reached my shoulders, and I found him. I don’t know what power aided me. All I know is that I managed to save him all by myself. I helped him stretch out on the grass, listened to his breathing. In my dream he was alive. My mother too. She was alive in my dream.

Back in Versailles I found that my friend Kalman and two or three other “children” were about to set out for Palestine illegally aboard the Exodus. It meant I would be separated from my inseparable friend. “Why now, Kalman?” I asked. He shrugged. “I don’t see any point in staying here. I don’t like this transient life, so I might as well go. Do something useful, something true. As soon as possible.” Though mischievous by nature, he had become serious and romantic. I went with him to the station, and we talked while waiting for the train, though in muted voices so as not to be overheard by any British spies who might be roaming the platforms. I understood him, but I didn’t understand myself. I tried to. Why this desire to stay behind? I, too, loved the land of our ancestors, loved it passionately. Jerusalem had always figured in my most ardent and luminous dreams—Jerusalem my lullaby, my prayer. The mere evocation of its song made me feel elevated, transformed. What held me back? Hilda? Bea? François? Shushani? The latter answered my discreet request for advice with this comment: “If you’re going so as to know yourself better, fine. If it’s to learn, you’d do better to stay here with me.” “But if Eretz Israel needs me,” I replied, “what right have I not to heed its call?” He shrugged. “The people of Israel need intelligent, erudite Jews capable of learning and teaching. What would you take with you to Palestine? Your ignorance? Your