Read Online Sunrise West by Jacob G.Rosenberg - Free Book Online Page B

in the south of Italy — by coincidence, at Santa Maria di Leuca, not all that far from our own DP camp. ‘We heard there that my uncle, my father’s brother, survived and is living in Naples,’ Szlamek explained.
    â€˜Naples is a big city,’ said Mendel. ‘Do you have an address for your uncle?’
    The boy took a small piece of paper from his pocket and showed it to us. I shook my head as an even bigger coincidence hit home. ‘You’re in luck,’ I said. ‘That’s the displaced persons’ building — the very place we’re headed for!’
    We arrived early in the morning. Naples was drizzly and not yet awake. I thought the sky looked as if dawn had been overtaken by dusk. The light rain that was falling could be seen only against the still-burning streetlamps. As the three of us climbed the staircase of the building for displacedpersons, Szlamek stopped suddenly and asked us to leave him on his own; but then almost at once changed his mind.
    â€˜No, please stay behind me — in case it’s not the right door.’
    He stood in the long dark corridor for a good while, hesitating, holding his breath. Then, at last, his little fist landed with a gentle thud on the brown timber. A woman opened the door. Szlamek stepped back shyly, but then he spotted the man in the shadows behind her. Like a shot he had bolted past, crying ‘Father, Father!’
    They ran into each other’s arms. The man clasped the boy to him; Szlamek hung tightly from his father’s neck. When they finally let each other go, we were invited in and Szlamek broke the good news about his mother and sister. The woman looked on in silence — she understood the situation, understood that she no longer belonged here. She had snow-white skin, and jet-black hair held in place with an ivory comb. It was heart-wrenching to watch her quietly packing up her meagre belongings, then sobbing goodbye to a man with whom she had hoped to rebuild her torn life. Before she left she managed to give the bewildered little boy a prolonged hug.
    Szlamek’s father, whose name was Lev, asked Mendel and me to stay for a cup of coffee. I sensed that he wanted to explain, to justify himself. ‘I didn’t know that my wife and children were alive,’ he stuttered, burying his face in the steamy cup.
    â€˜You’re not to blame,’ I reassured him clumsily, knowing full well that I sounded neither convincing nor convinced.
    â€˜But Szlamek, tell me,’ Mendel mercifully interrupted. ‘What made you hide the truth from us — that you were really looking for your father, not your uncle?’
    The boy shifted in his chair. ‘Mother told me that, to protect his life, our patriarch Abraham told the Philistines that his wife Sarah was his sister... And besides,’ he added, ‘we didn’t know what sort of a person she was, that lady who tried to steal my dad.’

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    Â  Chameleon  
    My science teacher taught us that there is a microbe, known as Trwałnik (endurer), which has the ability to live through hot and cold, through boiling and freezing water; it can sleep for generations in an iceberg, or within the burning sands of the Sahara, then re-emerge when the opportunity arises. Such a trwałnik was Piotrek Królewicz, a man who had first crossed my path before the war.
    There is a story that most Poles whose names end in ‘cz’ are descended from eighteenth-century Frankist Jews who converted to Christianity. (Frankists, followers of Jacob Frank, were an extreme messianic sect that grew out of the earlier Sabbatian movement led by the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi.) The majority of these converts integrated, with time, into the Catholic fold; but occasionally, individuals would appear in their midst who, like Piotrek, retained a lifelong propensity to turn with the wind.
    Nobody knew where Piotrek came from. Apparently he had been born out of