The Train to Warsaw by Gwen Edelman Page A

you start then? she asked him. I’ll start like this, he said. In the beginning Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden . . . You’re crazy, she cried. You can’t start all the way back there. But that’s where it all began, my sweetheart. The first betrayal, the first exile, the beginning of old age, the end of eternal life. Everything. I’ll start there, my angel. Where you forced me to eat the forbidden fruit. Where you robbed me of eternal life. That’s where our story begins. In the Garden of Eden. Must you go all the way back there? she asked. He nodded. I’m afraid so. Why are we standing out in this cold? he asked. In a moment They will order us to shovel snow.
    The streetlamps came on. I cannot go to this reading, he said. She took his arm. You must, she said. That’s what we came for. It was you who talked me into this madness, he said. Why did I listen to you?

    They arrived back at the hotel frozen to the bone. Get the vodka, he told her. Vodka was invented for frigid Polish nights. Only that can warm us up. She handed him the vodka and drew a chair up to the radiator. I remember when I translated the diary of the Kaminer girl, she said. She too had been in the ghetto. But she was younger than I. And as you know, she did not survive. They found her account buried in a tin can. The writing was so tiny it had to be transcribed with a magnifying glass. You wouldn’t read it, said Lilka. But there was a paragraph where she described coming up the steps on the high wooden bridge over Ch ł odna.
    It was always packed tight with hundreds of Jews crossing from the Little to the Big Ghetto. I too had climbed those steps. I would stop at the top of that rickety bridge and gaze out at The Other Side. How beautiful it looked.
    They had parks and gardens, and shops full of food. And what did we have, locked up in this filthy deadly asylum like criminals?
    How I longed to be a bird and fly over there. No guards, no armbands. Just endless skies. Get a move on, they shouted. Jews, I said, let us breathe in this view of freedom for a moment. Someone kicked me from behind. Stop this sentimental nonsense, they said, we have work to do. And they shoved me forward. They were right of course. What would it get us to gaze at that most beautiful and unattainable world? It was wartime everywhere, but Over There looked like a paradise.
    From our apartment we could see over to the Other Side. At least in the beginning until they boarded up the windows. I used to watch them walking down the street on The Other Side. It was another world. As far away as the moon. One day I saw a mother and a father with their little girl. She wore a red coat and ate a sweet roll, scattering crumbs as she walked. Once I had been like that little girl. Now I no longer had the right to walk on the street. I no longer had the right to live.
    Lilka held out her glass. I told Edward I wouldn’t translate any more of those. They called her the Polish Anne Frank. Irena Kaminer. And they gave me a prize for the translation. You were in a bad mood the whole ­evening, said Lilka. Yes, because I found the handwringing and mawkishness of the proceedings absolutely disgusting, replied Jascha. I invited you to Venice on my prize money, she said. You didn’t mind that. We got lost in the fog. Do you remember? We were wandering around for hours. We’re going to end up back in the ghetto, you said. Only we’re a few centuries too late for this one. Not like ours. Let’s have another drink, she suggested. To give you strength for the reading. I’m not going, he said, and he lay down on the bed and piled the pillows up beneath his head. Why should I? Make merry with the Poles? What for?
    The whole ghetto was a gauntlet, said Lilka. Squeezing through the narrow streets, people were beaten by Them on all sides. You were lucky to get through with your eyes and arms and head intact. On the days when