residence, you said all kinds of strange things, in delirium or perhaps it was true. One time you asked me why my brother did not come to see you. I said what brother, what brother? But you didn’t answer. That is how our conversations went. Then you talked about your husband but one named Samuel, not the name of my father. Maybe it was a mistake, or insanity, or the life you had, or the one you wished you had had. In your sleep you would also scream the name of a girl Josephine. I remember you would shout “Josephine, you are so small, so small...”
Sometimes you would talk about a trip to Paris. I will never learn nor will I be able to reconstruct our life with what you said or with what you didn’t want to say. Probably they were imaginations of a little girl which got mixed up in the life of a poor old lady. Probably they were real memories that you didn’t want to talk about. Maybe they were memories of your sister that got mixed up with yours, perhaps a twin sister. Maybe you had a twin sister named Josephine. When you were alive you didn’t want to talk about it. Perhaps now you will talk to me from the tomb. I always thought that one day when I would come to see you, you would tell me something. On a sunny day, in the elder care residence, in the garden when I would come to visit you, you would tell me things: what happened there, the siblings you had, what kind of family you came from, where the money came from, where the endless riches, until ten years ago, when you told me the Swiss bank account was depleted. Now you had to be stronger. You said that the money had been depleted and it was the truth. You had always had the prettiest dresses. At age eighteen you bought me a car. In those days that was very rare. In the year sixty six not even the rich kids had cars, and not an ordinary car, but the best car they made back then a Peugeot 404. All the kids envied me although they always said I was always the strange kid in class. The one nobody wanted to talk to. Not only did they not talk to the poor kids, the cross-eyed, the lame, or the sick mama they also marginalized the richest kid in class. But I didn’t care. I had my world. Up to now you and I were my world. There was nothing outside the walls of our house that interested me. Now I come every day to your tomb trying to reconstruct that world of ours with words, or at least trying to disappear as slowly as possible. Because it was a marvelous world. In it I could imagine what you would not tell me. Once I dreamed that in Warsaw you had been a whore but not an ordinary whore, but an elite whore, whose favors were sought by all the Ritchie Rich folks in the city. In the dream I felt proud but on waking I realized I had overstepped – and even making my own mother into a whore – made me ashamed and for two days I couldn’t even look at you. I’m sure you thought it was a problem of adolescence but I got over it many times. I imagined you being part of a very rich family. It must have been that way before the Swiss account money ran out only ten years ago. With that money you bought me the house in Rehavia, you took me to the best school. You gave me private lessons and piano lessons. You wanted to buy me security even knowing that money would no longer give us security, not to you or to me, just as it had not in the concentration camp. The money that the Jews hoped so much to be able to use again one day to save their lives, as it had been for hundreds of years, suddenly had no value, not for the Jews, not even the possibility of selling their bodies, and you knew that. Perhaps it went better for us than for the rest, perhaps thanks to that you could maintain your pride and not beg for any financial compensation from the Germans in spite of attempts by the neighbors to persuade you and acquaintances, including your Yemenite assistant who I remember would tell you: “What happened, happened. Now you must live in the present. They also stole my son but
Sometimes you would talk about a trip to Paris. I will never learn nor will I be able to reconstruct our life with what you said or with what you didn’t want to say. Probably they were imaginations of a little girl which got mixed up in the life of a poor old lady. Probably they were real memories that you didn’t want to talk about. Maybe they were memories of your sister that got mixed up with yours, perhaps a twin sister. Maybe you had a twin sister named Josephine. When you were alive you didn’t want to talk about it. Perhaps now you will talk to me from the tomb. I always thought that one day when I would come to see you, you would tell me something. On a sunny day, in the elder care residence, in the garden when I would come to visit you, you would tell me things: what happened there, the siblings you had, what kind of family you came from, where the money came from, where the endless riches, until ten years ago, when you told me the Swiss bank account was depleted. Now you had to be stronger. You said that the money had been depleted and it was the truth. You had always had the prettiest dresses. At age eighteen you bought me a car. In those days that was very rare. In the year sixty six not even the rich kids had cars, and not an ordinary car, but the best car they made back then a Peugeot 404. All the kids envied me although they always said I was always the strange kid in class. The one nobody wanted to talk to. Not only did they not talk to the poor kids, the cross-eyed, the lame, or the sick mama they also marginalized the richest kid in class. But I didn’t care. I had my world. Up to now you and I were my world. There was nothing outside the walls of our house that interested me. Now I come every day to your tomb trying to reconstruct that world of ours with words, or at least trying to disappear as slowly as possible. Because it was a marvelous world. In it I could imagine what you would not tell me. Once I dreamed that in Warsaw you had been a whore but not an ordinary whore, but an elite whore, whose favors were sought by all the Ritchie Rich folks in the city. In the dream I felt proud but on waking I realized I had overstepped – and even making my own mother into a whore – made me ashamed and for two days I couldn’t even look at you. I’m sure you thought it was a problem of adolescence but I got over it many times. I imagined you being part of a very rich family. It must have been that way before the Swiss account money ran out only ten years ago. With that money you bought me the house in Rehavia, you took me to the best school. You gave me private lessons and piano lessons. You wanted to buy me security even knowing that money would no longer give us security, not to you or to me, just as it had not in the concentration camp. The money that the Jews hoped so much to be able to use again one day to save their lives, as it had been for hundreds of years, suddenly had no value, not for the Jews, not even the possibility of selling their bodies, and you knew that. Perhaps it went better for us than for the rest, perhaps thanks to that you could maintain your pride and not beg for any financial compensation from the Germans in spite of attempts by the neighbors to persuade you and acquaintances, including your Yemenite assistant who I remember would tell you: “What happened, happened. Now you must live in the present. They also stole my son but
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