Paul Steinberg - Speak You Also: A Holocaust Memoir

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Contents

Speak, you also,

speak as the last,

have your say.

P AUL C ELAN

Translated by

Michael Hamburger

I was in my junior year at the Lyce Claude-Bernard. I was almost seventeen. Id barely made it through my first baccalaurat examination, scraping by with only one and a half points to spare.

It was September 23 and Id just spent a few months in absolute euphoria, which might, in the year of disgrace 1943, seem hard to believe.

Id been suffering from gambling fever for a full year, ever since one of my classmates, who was later to have a brilliant career as a racing columnist, had dragged me along with him to the Auteuil racetrack, in the Bois de Boulogne. I didnt need much persuasion. From that day on, I was hooked. I cut classes to go to the track, and during the winter, since I couldnt go all the way across Paris to the Vincennes racecourse, I counted the days until the steeplechase and flat-racing season opened again. It wasnt long before I was in hock up to my neck, to the tune of two years spending money.

There wasnt a single school chum, friend of the family, or vague acquaintance I hadnt hit up for money, including even the old Russian guy with the lending library. Id been reduced to slinking around, and rumor had it Id sold the family silver, which was an exaggeration: at most Id swiped a bit of money from my fathers pockets.

Things had reached this sorry pass when my day arrived. The moment of glory every player encounters once or twice in a lifetime. I was latermuch laterto have two more such strokes of luck, but by then I was no longer a serious gambler, so my good fortune didnt thrill me anywhere near as much.

* * *

On the day in question, I arrived at Auteuil for the third race; I had thirty francs on me, and the infield lawn, the cheapest public enclosure, was bathed in sunshine. The race was a steeple with nine starters. I picked Kami, owned by the baron de Bourgoing, and bet ten and ten. Kami romped home at four to one.

The fourth event was the main hurdle race of the spring season. Id made my choice long before: M. Cruz Valers Ludovic the Moor, ridden by Bonaventure, red cap, red and yellow stripes. The horse had run three times that season without showing, and I was convinced hed been held back for this race. He was a horse of supreme elegance. I adored the way he caressed the hedges going over them. He was a great favorite, three to one, if I recall correctly. He won by three lengths and was never even challenged. Id bet thirty francs each way. Out of gratitude Ive bet on Ludovic the Moors offspring down to the third generation.

The fifth race was the big steeplechase for four-year-olds. I was on a roll. I chose Melik II, trained by Buquet, ridden by Dornaletche (who won once in a blue moon), ten-to-one odds. At the eighth pole water hazard, I was a little worried; Melik was in sixth place but running clear. I lost sight of the horses when they tackled the last turn by the porte de Passy and the Open Ditch, I heard shouting from the stands when someone took a spill, then the horses hurtled past me a hundred yards from the finish. Melik II, blue cap, blue and white checked silks, had a six-length lead and danced past the winning post.

I was loaded with money. I felt like I was God and that the future was up to me. In the sixth race I recognized an old acquaintance: C. V. Lombards Kitai, eight big goose eggs his last eight times out, now at forty to one. The hour of his resurrection had come. I bet a hundred francs to place and Kitai promptly came home second, paying twice as much as the winner.

At that point I decided to call it a day. The next morning I paid my debts, cash on the barrel head. I bought all the books I wanted. I still had more than enough left for a few splurges in the near future. Except for one small hitch: the following week, I lost almost everything.

But what relief, what delight, what luck it was to live that day!

* * *

My obsession did not prevent me from keeping up with the news. The war had taken a turn for the better. Italy had switched sides, the Soviet army was running roughshod over Jerry and approaching the Polish frontier, everyone was waiting for the Allied landing, and the collabos were looking grim. The wind had shifted. I had long ago stopped wearing the yellow star; the turf was one reason, plus I figured it was a trap for suckers.

I wasnt a complete idiot. Id noticed my circle gradually thinning out, Id heard about the Vel dhiv roundups, which had barely touched the posh 16th arrondissement, where I lived. I knew that being one of the chosen people was not the fashion of the day or even of yesterday, let alone of the days to come.

My father had never bothered to talk to me about what might lie ahead. My sister was in unoccupied France with false papers, my brother had been in England since 1936. I was the youngest; my father didnt care much for me. After all, Id killed his wife, my mother, when I was born. I loathed my stepmother.

As for my mother, I had to wait until the winter of 1992 to introduce myself to her. In East Berlin, at the old Jewish cemetery. At her tomb, clean and neat in that ravaged junkyard of families, their descendants extinguished because they burned so well. Thanks to my brother, her grave had been maintained. I brought back photos: my daughter Hlne saw her grandmother Hlnes name engraved on the plinth of gray marble.

True, a friend of the family, Mme Lurienne, had stepped in and tried to hide me with some farm people she knew in Troissereux, north of Beauvais. Wed taken the train at the Gare du Nord and then a wheezy country bus. Id brought along my fishing pole, with which Id been contributing to my little familys supply of protein by catching gudgeon, roach, and bleak beneath the pont Exelmans. I was sometimes joined by a classmate, Jacques Deniaud, an experienced angler whod reel in five fish for my every one. It was my first encounter with technical skill.

Waiting for me in Troissereux was a real French family. Father, mother, their little mamselle, and Auntie examined me suspiciously and kept me for three days, which I devoted to fishing for rainbow perch in the local pond. Then they informed Mme Lurienne that they couldnt run the risk of letting me stay, for fear of upsetting the Kommandantur. I packed my stuff and returned to Paris, not forgetting my fishing pole.

My best friend, Pierre Bertaux, who lived in Svres and in whose home Id spent many a Sunday, could not persuade his parents to take me in, either. His father was some sort of administrative secretary in the Senate and was afraid of jeopardizing his sinecure.

And so thats how I came to set out on September 23, 1943, armed with ration coupons, to fetch our daily bread from the bakery on the boulevard Exelmans, just beyond the corner of rue Erlanger.

A few years later, in 1950, while driving north to Le Touquet, I went through Troissereux again. I allowed myself the luxury of stopping there. The farm was a bit more dilapidated. The small grocery store, which the family ran to earn a little something extra, had closed.