Alison Pick - Far to Go (P.S.)

For AylaMilku
And for the one we lost who carried her here.

Contents

Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children, and to your childrens children.

Deuteronomy 4:9

Mondays child is fair of face,

Tuesdays child is full of grace,

Wednesdays child is full of woe,

Thursdays child has far to go.

Mother Goose

Herman Bondy 1876 1942

Ella Kafka 1886 1944

Oskar Bauer 1880 1943

Marianne (Grnfeld) Bauer 1894 1943

Irma Pick 1904 1944

Mary Pick 1908 1942

Jan Lowenbach 1933 1943

Eva Lowenbach 1938 1943

Jan Pick 1909 1986

Albta (Bauer) Pick 1917 2000

Michael Pick 1937 1987

Thomas Pick 1944

T HE TRAIN WILL NEVER ARRIVE.

It winds into forever: shiny red cars, black cars, cattle cars, one after another. A red caboose and a Princess Elizabeth engine. The livestock cars, loosely linked, like the vertebrae of some long reptiles spine. It reaches forward into the unknowable future, destined to move perpetually ahead, but with no destination in mind.

From the sky it looks inconsequential, a worm burrowing into the ground. And all the tiny people aboard look insignificant too: the postal workers and pastry chefs. The mothers and children.

The little ones.

You.

I saw your face for the first time in a dream. It was so clear and true that meeting you in the flesh, decades later, somehow paled against it. You trembled against your own ideal. A child in both eras. Here and there. Then and now.

You loved that train. I dont know how I know, but I do. The short loop of track, how it covered the same ground again and again. The whistle singing out the same old warning: The past is catching up. Get ready.

You could not have been my child, but I loved you as if you were.

Not my child, no.

Someone elses.

Part One
The Sudetenland

07/12/1939

Dear Mrs. Inverness,

Although I could write a whole book, a short note will say what I need to say.

Things are happening hereunimaginable things. And yet, our only child, our Tom, is safe in London with you.

Dear Mrs. Inverness, I cannot tell you my gratitude. And your detailed writing about our boy has moved us to tears.

As you are so extremely good as to be inclined to prepare his favourite dishes, I shall gladly tell you what Tom likes to eat. He is very fond of fruit, especially of bananas. His favourite soups are: vermicelli, mushroom, potato soup, lentil soup, cumin soup with vermicelli. As to the farinaceous food he ate little as well, but he mostly liked a chocolate tart minus cream. (First I should say to please excuse my English! It is a recent language for me.)

We long for Tom, surely. He is only four years old! But if we bring the sacrifice of parting with the child to exempt him perhaps of great suffering, and know that he is so well kept safe by you, we master our pain.

We will see him soon enough.

We thank you still many thousand times & remain,

Faithfully yours,

Lore and Misha Bauer

(FILE UNDER: Bauer, Lore. Died Birkenau, 1943)

Y OU CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD.

It was just like you to pull such a trick. To give this world another run for its money. And to give yours truly another chance. You cant imagine the relief I felt. Id lost so many, but you wouldnt leave me. You would stay.

I knew, finally, that despite all the loss we were blessed. The end of this long and winding story was happy.

Youd been gone thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. Eyes glazing, gaze immobile. The steady beeps from the heart monitor fell into one line of sound. A long quiet highway down which your ghost was walking. It was just like the moviesI opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out. There was no one else to watch you die, your hospital room empty for once of interns, nurses, cleaning staff. I could not scream but I didnt need to. Your eyes opened. Youd been gone, but you were back.

I exhaled. Around me, the room had also popped back to life, latex gloves snapping, a doctor rushing past with her ponytail swaying, bending over the heart monitor as though it was the patient, not you. I kept my eyes on your face. Despite all the chemo, the chemicals that had been flooding your body for months, your skin still had the wonderful papery softness of old age. I reached out and laid a palm against your cheek. You were quiet, taking me in. It wasnt quite a smile, but a look of recognition, after which I knew: you would live. The others were all dead, their bodies piled up at the edge of my awareness like logs by a cabin in the woods. They had gone up in smoke. But youd come through.

There were words. Juice, you said, and I held the small cup with the foil pulled back to your lips. You couldnt manage. I turned the stiff crank on your hospital bed, raising you to sitting.

Straw, you said. I reached behind me, without looking away from you, and some masked assistant obliged.

There was a Viennese waltz playing in the background. It was the exact recording youd wanted, on tape, the old-fashioned way. Id had considerable difficulty locating a cassette player. Id gone to several enormous and abominable technology depots where I was told repeatedly that theyre not made anymore. The sales peoplechildrenspoke with disdain. OneIm not lyingdid not know what a tape was. Like Scotch tape? she asked. Or masking tape?

I finally realized I already had what I needed, in the back of my closet in my office at the University, a small machine I used to use in my interviews. So I brought it to the hospital. I thought of the voices it had recorded, of the futility of those stories. For years, decades, Id had faith in letters, in words. But now I realized that you had it right: a simple waltz was more comforting. Music held more meaning than language ever could. The tape player would finally be of real use after all these years.

The waltz was playing quietly in the background. It made me think of a candle in a window, of softly falling snow. What happened next was equally slow. There was nothing dramatic, no close-up of the beautiful doctors face as she applied the paddles to your chest. Thats not how life is. The happy ending arrived unadorned, and left just as quickly. I took the plastic cup away from your mouth and wiped the spittle from your lips. I turned to throw the cup into the bin, and looked back.

Your eyes had closed. The last person I loved. You were gone.

S EPTEMBER 1938

It was Friday afternoon, the end of a long week. Misha Bauer made one last telephone call; the operator told him there was a line through Berlin.

Our calls dont go through Berlin, he said. She of all people should know that. But he didnt want to be angrynot at the start of the Sabbath. He was looking forward to getting home to his wife and his little boy, Tom.

My mistake.

Could you book me a line for Monday? he asked.

Next Monday?

Four oclock. He paused. No, four thirty.

Sicher. Ja.

Danke. Guten tag. Misha replaced the black horn on the side of the box on the wall. Pushed back his heavy oak chair and took the pince-nez off the bridge of his nose.

His secretary stood up as he passed her desk on his way out. Good Shabbos , Mr. Bauer, she said. Which she need not say, given the times, and which he appreciated all the more because of it.

He had parked the car next to the city-square market where the fresh flowers and root vegetables were sold. Nearby were two blinkered horses and a milkmans cart, the white cans ready for delivery. Misha was planning to buy Lore a bouquet. He passed the post officein the window he saw a clerk in a blue uniform bent over a bookkeepers ledger. Four or five young men were walking towards him on the other side of the avenue. One, a redhead, was carrying a bucket of water. They were, he knew, going to offer to wash his car. Even the least expensive Opel was a novelty, and an American Studebaker like hiswell, people wanted to get close to it. Misha nodded at the redhead, smiling to show that the young man was welcome to take a look. The next thing he felt was a blow to his gut. His back smacked against the cobblestones and his teeth clamped down on his tongue.