Read Online The Train to Warsaw by Gwen Edelman - Free Book Online Page B

blanket. Here we are in the Garden of Eden, he said. She took one of his dark curls between her fingers. Tell me, she said, what was it like, the Garden of Eden? Ha, he replied. What was it not like? Full of every tree and flower in creation, fruits hung from the trees in their fullness, eternally ripe. Birds sang, butterflies also sang. What happiness. Morning, evening, another day. Time without end. And then Adam extracted a rib and brought forth his misfortune. She pinched him. How can you say such a thing? He gripped her arm. Come here my sweetheart, let me touch your skin, smoother and sweeter than any pear or peach that hung in the garden. Come my angel.
    Tell me more, she said, about the Garden of Eden. Why did Adam listen to her? he asked, his hand between her legs. What a madman. She comes up with a crazy scheme and he falls for it. Their skin glistened with moisture, her hair was wet at the temples. She pressed her face into his cheek. Where did they do it? she asked. Where did they do it? They did it everywhere.
    The garden was theirs. Adam lay with her on soft ground, open to the sky. He didn’t yet know that God saw it all. Did they do everything together? she wanted to know. Everything, he replied. Everything there was to do in this situation. Show me, she whispered. Show me what he did to her in the heat of the day. He took a handful of her damp hair and kissed her mouth. He ran his hand along the curve of her waist. And then he climbed on top of her. I’ll show you, he said. I’ll show you what they did. Again and again. Until the snake came . . .
    It was stifling in that little room, she said now. No air, no light. She dried her hands. But that night we forgot, didn’t we, where we were? I was madly in love with you, he said. But I didn’t want to show it. It’s not good to spoil women. They shouldn’t know their power over you. Do you think I couldn’t tell? she asked. When we marched to the hospital the next morning, I was in a daze. God forgive me, I didn’t see the dead and dying, I even forgot the terrible stench.
    Have you been with your smuggler? my mother asked with disdain, and she turned away. What a foolish girl you are. Lilka shrugged. She wanted a Jewish policeman for me. Not a smuggler. The bitch, said Jascha. She understood nothing. Jascha! You mustn’t talk about her that way.
    The bathroom was filled with steam. It fogged the mirror and floated above the tub and the sink. I can barely see, said Lilka, mopping off her face. It’s like a steam bath in here. An old Jewish tradition, he remarked.
    In the ghetto, said Lilka, you couldn’t survive if you didn’t have someone to love. It was the only thing that could save you from despair. Everyone was getting together—old women with younger men, old men with young girls, scholars with former party girls, yeshiva boys with modern girls.
    Before the war, said Jascha, two doors away from us was a pharmacy with a hunchbacked woman behind the counter. She was a famous matchmaker. Nearly invisible in the dim recesses of that little shop, she dispensed all kinds of medicine while sizing up her customers. She spoke in a small voice like a bird. Because of her hump she could not look up at customers directly, but had to incline her head slightly. She could read people in a moment. She cross-pollinated the shy with the bold, the plain with the dazzling. She saw something that others did not. It will work very well, she would say whenever her taste was questioned. Let the lion lie down with the lamb, the dove with the coyote, the rabbit with the hawk. You’ll see. Golda knows.
    Would she have matched us, I wonder? Lilka wanted to know. Never, he replied. You’re not my type. And seeing her expression he stroked her cheek. Oh darling, I’m only joking. You’re still a beauty, he told her. I’m nearly sixty. Not to me, he replied. For me you’re still a young