Annelies полностью

Anne is sobered by this. The rabbi breathes out smoke.

“Yet you survived,” says Anne.

“I did,” the rabbi admits.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think it was God?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re a rabbi.”

“Many rabbis died. Most did.”

“Maybe God just overlooked you.”

“You think God was making the decisions at Auschwitz?”

“You think he wasn’t? Isn’t he the Master of the Universe?”

“I can’t blame the gas chambers on God,” he says. “It was men who built them. Men who operated them.”

“So you don’t think that there was a reason that you survived? When all those other rabbis didn’t? You don’t think it was because there was something important you had yet to do?”

“Perhaps it was to talk with you.”

Anne shakes her head. “That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant as a joke, Anne. How should I know? I would like to think that God saved me. Me, in particular, Armin Souza, for an unseen purpose. It’s very flattering. But I have no proof that my survival wasn’t utterly random.”

“Do you know why I lived?” she asks.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“No. I’m asking a question. What if it was a mistake? What if God picked the wrong Frank girl?”

“Again, I cannot explain his thinking. I cannot comprehend his purposes. It’s not for us to know. But what I can tell you is this: Now that you have survived, you have a duty.”

“To the dead,” she says.

“No. To the living. To yourself. To you. Your family dies, and you blame them for dying. You blame God, you blame your father, you blame yourself. I know. But you cannot keep it up. You cannot live on rage or grief. As much as you’d like to believe it’s possible, it is not. You cannot live with the joy draining out of every day that passes. You survived the camps? Thank God. Now you must survive the rest of your life. More than survive. You must learn happiness, Anne. You must learn forgiveness.”

Anne smokes, says nothing for a moment, until, “My sister,” she says. “Her name was Margot. She wanted to make aliyah. She wanted to become a maternity nurse and deliver babies in the promised land.”

“And you thought that was . . . what? Admirable? Ridiculous?”

“Both, maybe,” she says. “I don’t know. It’s just another reason that she should have been allowed to live.”

“Instead of you?”

Anne has no reply.

“I would have traded my life for that of my wife,” he says. “If I could have snapped my fingers or clapped my hands. I would have done it. How much simpler would it be to be dead. To be relieved of the responsibility of carrying on. But that’s not the way of the world, Anne. As you must know. Others die. We live. The best we can hope for is to make something of ourselves. To help others. To resist anger and fear and guilt and to move forward with the business of living.”

“But what . . .” Anne swallows. She stares into the smoke of her cigarette. “What if I can’t do that, Rabbi? Get on with the business of living? You make it sound like an easy choice.”

“Have I?” the rabbi asks. “Then I apologize. It is a choice,” he says. “But I never intended to make it sound easy.” He crushes out his cigarette. “When I think of the future, I do my best to compromise. It shall be as God wills and what we make of God’s will.” Rabbi Souza blinks slowly. “Are you familiar, Anne, with the notion of tikkun olam?”

Anne says nothing.

“Tikkun olam,” the rabbi repeats. “It’s something of a mystery. But I have come to define its meaning as ‘repairing the world.’”

Anne shakes her head. “How is such a thing possible?”

“Repairing the world is a Jewish obligation,” the rabbi says. “How? That’s the question we must all ask and answer for ourselves, Anne. This much, though, I can say: We must learn to conquer our anger. We must put our faith in the sheer beauty of God’s creation and practice repentance and forgiveness. Even if we don’t want to. Even if we don’t feel it in our hearts. Especially then. It is our duty to repair the damage we have done and therefore repair the damage done to us.”

Anne eyes her smoldering cigarette, the ember glowing red. Repairing the world? She is unwilling to reveal it, but the rabbi’s words have pierced her in an unexpected way. And some hidden part of her responds with a soupçon of hope.

•   •   •

That night she dreams of Belsen, and there Margot is waiting for her. They are spooned together on the filthy pallet, desiccated by typhus. Her sister coughing away the last moments of her life.

“Forgive me,” Anne whispers. “Please, forgive me,” she begs.

32 TRUTH

The truth is a heavy burden that few care to carry.

—Jewish proverb

1946

Prinsengracht 263

Offices of Opekta and Pectacon

Amsterdam-Centrum

LIBERATED NETHERLANDS