Jewels and Ashes by Arnold Zable Read Free Book Online Page A

after, to a friend or relative who has just disembarked. Scouts carrying knapsacks file by. There is little regimentation; rather, a sense of ease on a casual Sunday of open-necked shirts, unhurried conversation, cotton skirts, and flowers.
    The journey has become one flowing movement that now conveys me across the Vistula and down into underground tubes which curve beneath a sprawling metropolis. Warsaw Centralny Station. I walk from the station with a rucksack on my shoulders. The heart of the city is deserted and silent. I am within that still point which rests between breaths. There is no longer the sense of urgency I have felt so often since I first planned this journey, no longer any need to hurry.
    Everyone seems to have a different estimate. Some claim there are several thousand, scattered throughout the metropolis in isolated pockets. Others say, with annoyance, ‘Don’t listen to such grandmothers’ tales; there are no more than a few hundred, and most of them are old, receding into the shadows you are pursuing. The one place you can be certain, well, almost certain, of finding more than a quorum assembled at any one time, is within the newly restored Warsaw synagogue, on the Sabbath. Postpone your journey until the weekend. Bialystok can wait a few days. And besides, what do you think you will discover there? The Messiah? Here at least there are some Jews; there you will need a miracle to find just one.’
    Warsaw synagogue, mid morning. Of the fifty or so in attendance, about half are immersed in prayer. The others seem restless. They pray on the move, circling the hall from one huddle of friends to the next, grabbing a quick chat here and there. A steady murmur of voices conveys the discordant tones of a Sabbath service in which Hebrew prayers mingle with a babble of conversations in Polish, Russian, Yiddish, English, and a smattering of other tongues. At times the chatter ascends above the prayers and provokes an angry rebuke from an irate member of the congregation: ‘Enough already! Have you forgotten what we are here for?’
    Newcomers are instantly noticed and greeted warmly. ‘Shalomaleichem. Where are you from? Australia? So far away? How goes it for a Jew over there? You can speak a word of Yiddish? Step up to the pulpit and read for us a portion of the Torah. Can you give us a donation? A little something for our shul? It never hurts to give. Come. Meet our friends. Nathan! What do you know? A Jew from Melbourne.’
    Nathan Berman shakes my hand vigorously. He greets me with a booming voice which issues from somewhere deep within his considerable frame, as if driven by a bellows that pumps forth an enveloping warmth. His words resonate through the prayer hall. ‘Sshhh. Be quiet! Have you forgotten what we are here for?’, comes the voice of admonition from the bowels of the chamber.
    Nathan is a large man spread wide and tall. His luxuriant eyebrows arch in perfect symmetry and add a touch of the aristocratic to his weathered face. Tufts of hair spring from an otherwise glistening pate; reddish clumps which, like the eyebrows, are tinged with grey. He is about sixty, but robust, exhaling rapid-fire talk with an urgency that hints at a fear of boredom and lonely nights.
    A man must enjoy life and keep moving’, he exclaims, his body heaving and sweating as we climb the wooden staircase which spirals from an inconspicuous back entrance to the synagogue. I have gathered from him, so far, that he is a professor of mathematics, retired. He was born in Warsaw, stumbled in adolescence through the war years, emigrated to Palestine, and has lived for decades in New York. But his heart gravitates here, he tells me more than once, and he comes every year now, for several months. ‘It’s a madness. Yet somehow, in Poland I feel most at ease. It has the smell of my childhood and a distant remembrance of the womb. I have a flat in Warsaw, and a girlfriend. She’s a