The brisk March sun streamed through the trees, over rolling golden hills rich with wheat. Small blades of green grass were beginning to poke up through the ground, in bright, cheery little patches amongst the dry, dead grass. The sky was alive with birds singing, and fluffy white clouds dancing on it’s canvas. All of Holland sang the joys and new beginnings and hope of spring. The sad part of the whole Dutch landscape was the rows of dried up tulips, with empty, lifeless bulbs inside. Once these had been glorious blossoms, gold, pink, purple, blue, and red, every shade of color imaginable. Once they’d swayed in the breeze of a lazy summer’s afternoon, while horse-drawn buggies went by idly.
Once Mama had walked these paths with her, holding her hand and offering motherly insight and wisdom. In these fields, her and Kate and Annaliese had once played hide and seek as school girls, or chased each other in a rowdy game of tag. Papa had picked her up as a small brown-eyed little girl of 4, and pointed out the North Sea in the distance, where his fishing business was. Where ships left on long voyages, to find treasure and go on adventures he’d told her. He’d taught her how to ride a horse, with his strong, yet gentle hands supporting her in the saddle. At first, she remembered she’d clung to him in fear, afraid the horse would bolt and she would fall to the ground. But by the age of 7, she’d become an experienced horse rider, often taking long trips in the afternoon, after she’d come home from school.
Her pony, which she’d fondly called Gilead, had become one of her best animal friends, growing up. When she was sad, she had often gone to the stable at her grandparents house in the country, where he stayed at night. She’d sit on the straw late at night, and cry her woes into his soft, brown mane. It had broken her heart, when the beloved animal passed away, when she was 10. But he had been loved and loved her for five wonderful, memorable years. All of these memories from the past haunted her now, in this barren wasteland near her home. They all seemed so far away, so distant. She felt as if she’d lived a lifetime, instead of the short 19 years she’d been alive. It was like she was an aging woman, looking back on more than half a century of life. She felt old, she felt weary and drained still, physically and emotionally. She placed a hand over her heart, for a moment, as the familiar pressure on her chest set on. She walked further on down the dusty path, enjoying the solitude and comfort this place offered.
But there was also pain, so much pain she thought she would drown in the emotional suffering. It locked itself deep inside her, manifesting itself in the searing burn around her heart, the overwhelming wave of anxiety she now felt. Flashbacks of the past began to surge through her mind, in small sequences, although they were transitioning into bad memories. Kate’s worried, fear- filled eyes looking tearfully into hers. She’d never forget how her sister had clung to her with dread, and her voice, “Nora, I’m so afraid. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be taken to Auschwitz.”
She couldn’t ever erase the affect it had had on her, to see her mother lying so still and pale in that bed, her face flushed with fever. Or the moment when she knew she’d never see her mother in this life again, the strength it had taken to not scream in protest when they were separated as a family. When Annaliese had been beaten so mercilessly, and she had sat there feeling so helpless to stop her sister’s pain. or the sickening, growing sense of panic surrounding her that cold night when the soldier tried to violate her. Frieda’s glazed and sorrow- filled eyes, as she held her dead child in her arms, rocking his tiny head to her breast, with tears streaming down her face. Or the feeling Nora had had had that she could vomit, when she saw those naked, thin bodies, dead eyes staring at her from the ditch, the almost unbearable stench of human flesh burning that had filled her nostrils. The realization that at some point the bodies of her family would be reduced to the grey smoke emitted from those chimneys. Rivkah’s tiny head as she hid behind Nora’s skirt in terror, before they knew the Soviet troops were there to save their lives. Or the god-awful night when the tiny little boy had died in her arms, only a day after the liberation of the camp. The night in the barracks, when she’d been sore and her body aching, wiping blood from her face and back, stifling her cries of pain.
These recollections panned out as she remembered Henry’s kind, blue eyes, paling so sharply in comparison to all the misery and suffering.His strong hand on hers briefly, as he helped her up from the cold, hard ground, the look of pure love on his face that night by the fire when they’d kissed. the desperation when they’d parted for what she knew would be their last encounter. The moment when her heart had stopped, because she thought Annaliese would die from typhus, and then she would have no one, not even her sister to keep her alive. and the empty gaping hole her family’s deaths had left in her, coming back to this place missing so many pieces of herself.
She struggled in vain to remember who she was before the war changed her, before the war took almost everything she had and squashed it to smithereens. Before the nazis ripped out her heart, and stomped on it without a care for how she’d bleed. What was left of her, but an empty, hollow shell of a woman, torn apart by exhaustion, heartbreak, and misery? What use was she to Aunt Margaret or Annalise or Rivkah like this now? She was better off having died back at Auschwitz, with her mother and sisters. Why did she deserve to survive anyway, when so many other innocent souls had perished? She didn’t deserve life, she didn’t deserve to be walking these fields like this, free, liberated, healthy.
All of it came rushing at her in full force, and she suddenly couldn’t handle all she’d been through in the past eight months of her life. She found a small bench alongside the path, beneath the same tree she’d found a haven in the summer before. Dropping her shawl beside her, she sat down underneath it and the tears finally came. Rolling down her cheeks, one at a time, then rushing down her face until she couldn’t stop them. She cried and cried and cried, until she simply was too exhausted to go on. She clutched at her chest in pain, wrapping her shawl tighter around her. She felt completely and utterly abandoned and alone, as if there were no hope. as if these horrible memories would torment her to her dying day. Where was God, in all of this? Why had he let her and so many other Jews, his people, the apple of this eye, suffer like they had?
No comments:
Post a Comment