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Liberator

by S.L. Wisenberg

               My father was a liberator.  I don't know when I first knew that.  It's

one of those things you know before you know what it means: My father was

a liberator.

               When he was a young man, a son, before he became a husband, father,

owner of a Texas delicatessen, before his hair turned gray and thin, he

was a member of a platoon that opened the gates of Mauthausen, the gates

that his country would not bomb.  Opened life back up, offered it to the

prisoners, the ones who waited at the gates and the ones who did not

wait. 

               He wore a dull uniform pinned with shiny badges, and shoes that

glistened with mud.  He was a liberator.  Like a gladiator.  Like a

knight, his mail glinting in the sunshine, silvery as fish scales. I

imagine him strong, sword upraised, a shield in the other hand. The frail

grateful, kneeling at his feet. Like certain engravings of Lincoln with

the slaves.  Chains broken, rendered harmless, like beheaded snakes.

               He loved Lincoln.  Abraham, patriarch of a divided nation.  Abraham,

dark-bearded like a Jew.

               My father talks about Lincoln.  He talks more about Lincoln than he

talks about the war.  A little bronze bust of Lincoln sits on the piano. 

As if he were a bringer of music.  On the shelf, as far back as I can

remember: Sandburg's biography.  My father refused to read Gore Vidal's. 

He said, "Let an old man keep his illusions, Ceci."  

               But he is not an old man.  He is a gray-haired, clean-shaven man who

admires Lincoln.  Some of the time he can remember who he was. 

               My father never signed up for an army reunion.  He didn't tell war

stories.  He left Europe with the rest of the U.S. troops and went back

to Houston, to work in his father's bubble bath factory downtown.  He

stayed there for a year.  Then he bought a delicatessen nearby.  Named it

Ruben Rubin's Reubens. He thought about making it kosher, decided that

his clientele wouldn't care.  

               He was right.  He patented his special five-course meal: peanuts in the

shell, Lone Star Beer, kosher-style Reuben sandwich, scoop of Borden's

Butter Brickle, a Lovera cigar.  His logo, on napkins, give-away pens,

plastic cups: a map of Texas, a corned beef sandwich instead of a dot for

Houston.

               "A five-course meal," he says now. "I used to charge only a buck fifty. 

Can you believe it?  In 1950s dollars. The things you could buy for a

dollar then.  When a cup of coffee was really only a dime, just like in

the songs."  

               I am here only for a visit, but he speaks as if I have always been here.

 Then other times, other times -- I wait for those times, am relieved

when they finally arrive: the worst, the mind like a naked wall, awaiting

the family movies.  "Who is it?  Ruthie?  Ellen?  Miriam?"

               Every time he looked out the window of the deli he could see the family

bubble bath factory, just down Main Street.  On top of the factory was

the kewpie doll he'd designed as the symbol of Barnston's Bubblers just

before the war.  Dolly, the Barnston bubblegirl.  (My grandfather Chaim

was the one who'd invented the name Barnston.  Thought it sounded

American, New England-y.  Instead, it sounded like an Ellis Island name. 

Suppliers would call the factory, demanding to speak with Bernstein, the

owner.) Every day from the deli window, my father would watch Dolly

twirling in neon and every Friday he would take my mother to his parents'

house for Shabbat dinner.  And every Shabbat my grandfather would wink at

them and say, "You know what they say, Ruben, Ruthie -- the Sabbath is

the time to be fruitful and multiply."

               That part I do not know for certain. I am spinning here.  I know that

for six years my parents were not fruitful; they were fruitless,

non-multipliers.  They did not divide, add or subtract. I imagine my

grandfather, for whom I am named (Chaim becoming Charles, becoming Chaya,

my Hebrew name, turning into Cecilia, Ceci), leaning over my

grandmother's white table cloth, the one she would soak in bleach every

Monday, and hang out to dry; I see my not-yet- dead grandfather leaning

his arm over the crumbs from the challah, and asking, every Friday night,

without fail: "When will you kids give us a grandchild?  You know what

the rabbis say about creating on the Sabbath --" 

               I stop here, with the yellow crumbs making indentations on Chaim's

lower arm, his fingers (long and sure, like my father's?  Like mine?)

clasping my mother's, and my mother, circumspect, looking down, wanting

to get up to help her mother-in-law in the kitchen, where she can hear

water running over the china and silver.  I stop with my mother's

embarrassment, my father's slight dip into anger, wearying of his

father's joke that never varies.  I stop -- it doesn't pay to delve too

deeply into the lives of your parents.  This is what I do know: My mother

and father wanted children so badly that they consulted a specialist. He

advised them to keep track of my mother's temperature every day.  My

older sister Ellen was a wanted child.  This is what they told me once. 

Faces aglow.  They didn't mean to tell, as if they felt a taboo against

discussing someone else's wantedness.  

               In their sixth year of marriage, this is what did or did not happen.  My

father tells me this story on this visit.  As if it is a parting gift. 

His speech is clear, like a polished window.  I see the images perfectly,

the way I see the entrance of the camps, the big iron gates, the dark,

squalid barracks.

               This is what he, Ruben, ex-liberator, ex-owner of a Texas delicatessen,

tells his daughter in English, his mother tongue: that one afternoon,

after the press of the lunch crowd had ended in the deli, a man walked

in. Quietly.  "He had a scrunched-in face -- like a crumpled piece of

paper," says my father, scrunching up his face.  The man was carrying a

rolled up Yiddish newspaper in his coat pocket.  He must be visiting from

New York, my father thought, must be in for Passover; nobody in Houston

read Yiddish newspapers.  My father was intrigued by this man.  He wanted

to ask him how he came to be carrying a Yiddish paper, how he had

happened upon Ruben Rubin's Reubens non-kosher deli in the heart of

downtown Houston.  It was the afternoon of the first night of Passover. 

Without thinking it through, my father asked him to the seder.  It was

going to be a small one --just my father, my mother, an engineering

student from Rice and his wife and three-year-old daughter.  My

grandparents had gone to Corpus Christi to be with elderly cousins.  The

real reason they left: My father felt the need to make his own table,

away from pointed comments about where was a young child who could ask

the Four Questions.

               He called my mother to set another place.  She was worried about having

enough food.  My father told her, "He's just a little old man.  Very

little."  My mother laughed into the telephone.  "I'll put more water in

the soup," she said.  I have heard her say this.  She would say it when I

brought friends home for dinner in junior high, and I would say, "What

soup?  Are we having soup?"  My father said, "I'll bring him home with

me."  The man seemed content with the invitation, but not so grateful

once he arrived at the house.  He seemed to be a scholar.  He knew much

Hebrew and extemporized from the little haggadahs that each person had,

the Passover booklets that came free from Maxwell House Coffee.  He

complained about the thinness of the service.  Everyone grew tired,

impatient, but he was from Europe, it was clear, and was therefore

somewhat exalted.

               Toward the end of the meal, my father asked the daughter of the

engineering student if she would walk to the front door to open it for

Elijah the prophet.  "A cute kid," says my father now.  "All red hair and

freckles.  They called her Howdy Doody for a nickname."  The mother and

daughter opened the door.  The mother came right back to the table.  The

little girl dawdled.  "I figured it's because her legs were shorter,"

says my father.  As soon as she returned to the table, she started to

cry.

               Blood streamed from her eyes.  My father repeats this.  Blood.  He

raises his eyebrows, impressed with the simplicity of this extraordinary

sentence.  "Real blood, Ceci," he says, looking me in the eye.  "I was

thinking at the time, `as if from a gunshot wound.'"  Everyone saw this,

her cheeks as if washed with dark red watercolor.  But when they went to

wipe it, the tears became transparent again, plain salt water, no stain

on the napkin.  He shakes his head: "The darnedest thing," he says.  "It

seems impossible.  All we could do was stare."

               And then the man, the strange little man, like a Yiddishe

Rumpelstiltskin, carefully removed his shoes and climbed up onto his

chair.  Then he pointed his finger at my father and began to speak.  His

words were clumsy, dense, the words of a foreigner struggling for

elevation:  "You, Ruben of the double name, you Ruben, born of American

soil, you looked at death in the eyeballs, you, you --" and then the rest

of his words were in Yiddish, but a Yiddish no one could understand. 

Says my father, "A meshuggenah kind of Yiddish, garbled, half-words,

pieces of words stuck on other words that didn't make any kind of sense. 

And I know my Yiddish, Ceci.  I used to speak it like a native."  He

laughs, his old joke, because Yiddish is from no country, every country. 

Your mother thought we should call the cops.  I said, `For what? 

Speaking a foreign language in America?  Relax,' I told her.  `Have a

good time.  Bring on the dessert.'  It was that coconut cake that she

made every Passover, a recipe she got from Mother.  I told her I'd make

sure the old man didn't break anything."  My father's eyes look to the

side, as if seeing the same younger self that the old man saw.  I have

disappeared.  I am not yet born.  

               My father continues: "And then the man kissed the little red-haired

girl, who was now sleeping, and walked out the door that they had opened

for Elijah.  His kiss made a red mark right on her cheek.  And that

mark," says my father, pausing for drama, "this red mark, has confounded

dermatologists to this day."

               Where did the girl go?  What is her name?

               How, I wonder, do her parents explain the mark to her?

               She would be six years older than I am.  I imagine myself searching the

city for women with this mark, women with the Howdy Doody grin and

freckles.  I will not be distracted by marks on arms, legs, fingers.  I

will not imagine that her father left town as soon as he was awarded his

engineering degree, that she has moved, had cosmetic surgery, or died.

               That Passover night was the night they conceived my sister Ellen.  (I

feel their tiredness, after the guests have gone.  I see them washing and

wiping the dishes, sweeping the floor.  Or did my father say, "Ruthie,

let the dishes go hang, we'll make a child and if we like her, we'll make

another."  I see them clutching, clinging, into the night.)  He puts it

delicately: "That night we created your sister Ellen."  He looks down

shyly.  I count the months: April, May, June, July, August, September,

October, November, November 20.

               "Every day in life is a miracle, Ceci," he says, as if this is the

logical end of the story, the story of The Mysterious Little Old Man Who

Came to the Seder and Removed the Curse of Sterility.  The story blossoms

out of what is known as a lucid moment.  Or more precisely, lucid passage

of time.  Lucid -- a word no one uses except in cases like this.  

               When he is not lucid, I learn formulas for bubble bath, old marketing

approaches abandoned, names of scented flowers, suppliers of corned beef.

 Shelf-lives of fragrances.  I hear what I think are Zionist Labor songs

in Yiddish, which he must have learned from his father. 

               Sometimes he falls asleep in the middle.  Drops off, head drooping on a

pillow.  In sleep he appears scholarly.

               I ask my mother about the old man and she says, "Yes, there was a man

--"

               My father walks into the room, drowsily, "Like one of those Saint

Patrick's Day, Saint Pat's -- leprechauns." 

               He retrieves the word himself. 

               "-- a funny little man," says my mother.  (It hurts her to look at my

father, to remember, actually hurts the most when he is silent, because

then she forgets, forgets he has changed.) "I think he stole something,"

she says, "some little knickknack.  Where did he come from?  We never saw

him again, did we?  I think that couple brought him.  What was their

name?  They both taught French, didn't they, at a high school in Clear

Lake?"

               "No, no," says my father, angry, and his face crumples up like paper. 

               I look for tears in the edges of his eyes.  

               "They had a daughter," I say.  "With red hair.  Maybe freckles."

               My mother shakes her head.  "No.  There wasn't a child at either of the

Seders that year.  Those were the smallest Seders we've ever had.  That

was the year that Chaim and Rose went to Corpus.  There was only that

couple and the old man.  I remember that I had to ask the Four Questions.

 I sang it with that French woman.  She was French or Belgian.  I think

she was Belgian, yes, she was Belgian, I remember thinking I'd never met

anybody from Belgium before.  I kept thinking about lace.  She'd met her

husband in Europe, during the war.  He was American, and he spoke French,

and she spoke beautiful English.  I remember the tunes were the same.  I

couldn't get over that, that she'd learned the same tunes for all the

prayers in Belgium.  It gave me the shivers."  Goose bumps rise on her

arms, now. "The next year, that was the year Ellen was a baby, and Chaim

took pictures all during dinner." 

               What about the little man?

               "He just up and left in the middle of everything," she says.  "Why --?" 

She is going to say -- why bring it up now?   Then she remembers again

that she is grateful for any link he can give her, any bridge to the past

life they had, because it makes him closer, but then she remembers the

closer he is, the more painful it all seems.  She sighs, turns away. 

               Then, in a minute, two, the scrim drops and he asks, "What man?  What

man?  What little man?"

               He does not look different. He does not, for example, drool. He has his

teeth. He does not gum.  He looks the same.

               They still sleep in the same bed, together; he's on the left, she's on

the right.  Which gates, once opened, remain open?

               My father was a liberator.  This is undeniable.  There are records that

declare it.  They are in books, microfilm, microfiche, in government

depositories, archives. You can look up ranks, platoons, serial numbers. 

Combat Command B of the 11th Armored Division of the Third Army.  You can

watch documentaries, read diaries and memoirs of survivors and soldiers

and workers from the Red Cross.  You can examine maps, store up details,

memorize the lexicon.  Kapos.  Badeanstalten.  Mussulmen. Mussulmen were

the slaves who lost all hope, who moved like zombies.  Became as foreign

and unknowable as Moslems.  Named for the hollow-eyed people seen in

newsreels, before the war, starving in foreign lands. 

               My father and his buddies in Combat Command B opened the doors of

Mauthausen, 80 miles from Vienna, and liberated the people who might have

been us, the people we used to be.  They were emaciated, diseased.  Some

were too frightened to come out of their shacks. Some gathered a minyan

and prayed. Some stooped down to kiss American hands and feet. 

               My father was a liberator. He roams the neighborhood. He talks about

Lincoln.  He takes bubble baths. He eats corned beef sandwiches.  There

are times he remembers how much he has forgotten.  And times that he

remembers only that he's forgotten.  And times that he says, "What little

old man?  What delicatessen?  I was never a soldier boy, soldier boy.  I

was killed in the war.  A bullet pierced my skull.  All men are created

equal.  God sails the open seas."

               The books about liberators say that most of them are silent about the

experience.  Even the ones who are Jewish.  An alloy of pride, impotence,

fragility. I get this idea and I fight it: that a shrapnel of the past is

lodged in his brain, damming up the currents of now, of this life, and if

he could remove it -- if I could remove it -- his life would come

flooding back to him.

               Or this: If he could somehow retrieve the crazy, garbled Yiddish words

of the old man, unravel the riddle of the Rumpelstiltskin, and get them

translated -- find some combination scholar-psychiatrist, a healer, who

could tell us what the message was that the old man was trying to impart

-- 

               When my father arrived at Mauthausen on May 5, 1945, I imagine he felt

mingled pity, grief, shame: They did this to his people.  But they were

not his.  His people were the men in his division, men who were dressed

like he was, in drab, helmeted to protect themselves.  They shared

coffee, cigarettes, they joked.  The ones from the South had familiar

accents.  They passed around pictures of their girls, of Betty Grable. 

They were fighting for those legs.  For Veronica Lake's curtain of hair. 

               The story is: We always arrive too late, never knowing what the other

has seen.  We open gates that others have locked.  Scraping the earth as

we pull.  Rooting out grasses tethered, clinging. 

               He did or did not tell the prisoners he was Jewish.  Is it too much to

say that he saw his own death there? 

               Probably. 

               Did you try to use Yiddish?  Did you look for those who could understand

English?  Did you ask them, as the doctor asks you, "What is your name? 

What is your family name?  Where are you from?  How old are you?  Are you

in pain?  Do you know what is wrong?"  Did you ask them in Yiddish, the

language of your early lullabies and curses: "Brothers, sisters, where

did your lives go?  At what point did you feel it fly from you?  Did you

strain to catch it?  Did you shrug, did you turn away?"


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