Free The Fighter by Arnold Zable Page B

sounds of disturbance. They are alert to the build-up of pressure. Fraying tempers.
    The rooms are closing in. The house is cramped and the voices are baying. Strangers are taking hold of her mind, and the children are withdrawing. Keeping a distance. When she finally succumbs, it can go either way: wrath or suicide attempts. She has overdosed several times.
    Yet despite their acute attentiveness, she remains a mystery to them. Where does she come from? Who brought her up in those lands across the oceans? The children’s questions are met by silence. History has been expelled. Of the past there is little talk and, it appears, few photos.
    Now, a decade since her death, all that remains are fragments, gleaned through years of intermittent probing—a once-upon-a-time pieced together from the memories of the remaining four children—Leon, Henry, Paul and Sandra. Gathered from their efforts. In spite of her silence.

14
    Once upon a time she lived in a village north of Odessa, in the southwest Ukraine, newly annexed by the Soviet Union. Her passport states she was born on 22 July 1922, but her children say the date is not certain. They have heard variations. There is no birth certificate, no document of registration.
    She was named Sonia. Her family name was Binkowicz. Little is known of her childhood, of her parents, Zalman and Pola, and of her younger brother. There is no record of his name. Sonia’s children never heard it spoken.
    Little is known of her life in the village. It is not known whether her family was well off or impoverished. There are no photos of where she played, of her friends, or where she wentto school. Nothing is known of the house she lived in, whether the street was dirt or cobblestone. Whether there were visits to Odessa, or outings to the Black Sea beaches; whether she climbed the famed staircase that ascends from the harbour or rode the funicular railway that ran beside it.
    There are photos. A handful. Sonia rarely acknowledged them. She did not arrange them in albums. One is a studio-portrait of her father, seated before a backdrop of black curtains. His chin rests on his right hand. His right elbow is propped on the armrest, and his left hand is in his trouser pocket. His hair is short and parted on the left. He wears an army shirt. It is believed he was a soldier.
    There is one photo of Sonia as a child. She is one of four in a family portrait. She looks to be about ten years old. Her black hair is cut in a bob, with a straight fringe low on her forehead. She wears a short-sleeved cotton dress.
    The four are close, touching. They appear to be a tight family unit. Sonia stands between her parents. Her left arm is pressed against her mother, and her right arm rests behind her father’s shoulder. Her brother stands on the right and leans on his father.
    Father and son wear high-necked white shirts, and Mother a dark coloured dress. Her hair too is black. Mother and father, brother and sister gaze at the lens with the solemn expressions then common in posed photos.
    It is said that Sonia once loved reading—Russian novels, the classics. And that she read poetry and recited Yiddish verse on stage, a much-loved art form in the cities and townlets of EasternEurope: but these are minute glimpses that bear no relation to what became of her—though she did read the daily paper, cover to cover, and word by word, years later, in her newly acquired language.
    It is known that her life in the village ended abruptly. Romanian and German troops marched into Odessa and the surrounding villages, and rounded up the Jewish and Romani populations.
    Nothing is known of how Sonia survived the early years of occupation, the mass murder and the deportations. Did she avoid capture? Or was she imprisoned? Did she escape later? Was she caught up in the October ’41 Odessa massacre? Was she detained in the Odessa ghetto? Or in one of the concentration camps set up in nearby villages?
    Nothing is known of the fate of