Free Sunrise West by Jacob G.Rosenberg Page A

any more dental expenses.’

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    Â  Departures  
    Topography shapes a river’s character. Chance is a man’s topography.
    My friend Mendel Goldman was a restless individual, possibly because of the demons that pursued him. He was a stocky youth, with a ruddy face, eagle eyes and a flat nose, a legacy of his junior boxing days. He seemed unable to bridge the horrible recent past with his vacant present. He was haunted by a simmering rage, yet terrified to recall the things that nourished it — scenes that dwelt outside of any human logic.
    â€˜I am leaving,’ he told me with a wry smile one day, a few weeks after our arrival in Naples. ‘I’ll be crossing the border below Innsbruck.’ His plan was to bring items of clothing from Austria to Italy and sell them at a profit.
    â€˜I’ll come too,’ I said at once. We had been doing nothing in Naples, just walking the streets aimlessly.
    â€˜No you won’t. The road is hard, and dangerous. You haven’t got the stamina. Stay where you are, I’ll be back soon — perhaps a week, ten days at most.’
    â€˜Don’t go,’ I pleaded. ‘Surely it’s safer, especially now, to stick to a familiar place instead of wandering off to some uncertain nowhere.’
    But he had made up his mind.
    Ten, twenty days went by and there was no sign of Mendel, not a word. The director of the displaced persons’ house, whose name was Herman — a smallish condescending man who always wore a white shirt with a black tattered bowtie — called me into his compact office. The room reeked of nicotine. On one of the walls, which were green and painted with red flowers, hung an imposing portrait of the legendary Theodor Herzl.
    Herman addressed me from behind the enormous desk that occupied almost the whole room. It was a mess of papers and documents, pencils, rubber stamps, dirty ash-trays and unwashed coffee cups. ‘Young man, this place is not a permanent abode but a transit house for wayfarers.’ His words were measured, grave, aimed straight at my conscience. ‘You must take other people into consideration, people who have been on the waiting-list for months. You’re to vacate your room not later than noon tomorrow.’
    It was well known that, during those ‘months’, Herman’s lover, nephews, cousins and other distant relatives had occupied the premises.

    So I returned to Santa Maria di Bagno. Soon afterwards Mendel turned up as well. He looked as if the ground had been wrenched from under his feet. He had lost everything, all the money and possessions he had carried — but not that blue resolute fire in his eyes, or the daring alertness of his flattened nose.
    â€˜I was apprehended at the border,’ he began, almost apologetically. ‘They couldn’t find anything on me — I managed to throw away anything incriminating — but they still arrested me. I was sent to a prison for former camp guards. And you won’t believe whom I met there! One of our custodians from Wolfsburg, Unterscharführer Henk — the one who used to practise target-shooting on dying inmates. Remember how he made us walk barefoot on broken glass?
    â€˜Well, after roll-call I beckoned him over into a corner and asked politely if he knew who I was. No, he said, definitely not. So I said, “Do you have any recollection of Häftling 141139?” He replied that he didn’t know what I was talking about. “Then let me refresh your memory,” I told him. And before Henk had time to as much as burp (which, as you’ll recall, was one of his great pleasures), I let fly with a left and then a right — creating a deep dent in his ribcage and redeco-rating his mouth. “Henk, this is just a deposit,” I told him. “I haven’t finished with you yet.” But I wasn’t given another chance — I got a week in solitary for engaging in a brawl.