MICHAL GOVRIN
569
to get off for Auschwitz. They certainly have their own ways of getting
there. And indeed, it turns out that tomorrow, a "delegation of rabbis from
America" is about to come, and they will go
in
a special bus. When will they
arrive? When will they go? Where are they now? Impossible to know. Got
to wait.
I want to sneak away from them now, back to the big square. To go
into an anonymous cafe with drunkards. To be swallowed up there. But
they hang onto me, wrapped up in their coats, accompany me to the hotel.
Argue with outbursts of rancor, finally declare that the "secretary" will
come to "guide me" tomorrow morning. They all press around, shake my
hand. Downtrodden faces. So small. In threadbare coats.
In the room the suitcase is waiting, with a few things. Makeup, pass–
port. Will have to go on and move it. Impossible to hide in the suffocation
under the blanket.
The next morning, before I have time to ponder the other world in
my dreams, the "secretary" is already here, dragging me with a soft-limbed
domination. Turning me around in dark streets, getting on and off trams,
talking incessantly in the incomprehensible language, as if to herself. And I
plod behind her, bending down to her, making an effort.
In Kazimierz, on the bench across from the synagogue, the doorman of
the "Mordechai Gvirtig Culture Club" and two
old
men are already wait–
ing for me. It's not clear if they're beggars or rabbis. They came to welcome
the "An1erican delegation." The doorman waving as he approaches, "Yes,
yes!" One of the old men hurries me, opens the gates of the ancient syna–
gogue of Rabbi Moshe Isserlish. For a minute, a separate hush. The figures
that follow in my wake remain beyond the fence. A small building whose
heavy walls are leaning, and a white courtyard. Inside the synagogue, there
is still a warmth among the wooden benches, around the Ark of the
Covenant. On the tables are old prayer books. Black letters. And in the
small enclosure crows land on the ancient tombstones sunk in mist. For a
moment the past seems to continue with all its softness, without any obsta–
cle, in that distant murmur, up to the morning covered with mist, to me.
And the doorman is already rushing me hysterically; he arranged with
the gatekeeper of the Miodowa cemetery to be there, to open the gate.
Hurry, hurry, got to get back in time for the "delegation of rabbis!" And
thus, in single file, the doorman limping, the muscular Christian gatekeep–
er on his heels, and [ behind them, we march between long rows of
sunken, shattered gravestones, covered with mold. Names, names. I recite
to them the names I've managed to dredge up from my memory, "Poser,
Mendel, Groner." Tombstones in long rows whose edges vanish in mist
and piles of fallen leaves. Many strange names. Don't find. A Christian
woman with legs swathed in bandages rinses the graves with boiling water,
