so it happened, and we lived.
She paused.
The rioting went on for three days, she continued, her voice now striding on in a faster cadence. Hundreds died by gunfire. Meanwhile thousands died from typhus, from starvation. The kitchen was raided, and people could not be stopped from stuffing down everything they could get their hands on. But their bodies could not digest it all. Many choked. They died. Death by eating—who could imagine such a thing?
The British gave us aid, yes. But they also betrayed us. They had made a deal with the Nazi officers. The Germans did not surrender outright. Instead, the camp had been declared a “neutral zone,” and inside it, the Germans and their Hungarian guards were allowed to remain armed. Armed! The British army’s excuse was typhus, confining the epidemic to the camp. But typhus isn’t spread person to person. Lice spread it; to people confined to lice-infested buildings, like ours. The purpose of the guns was to keep us locked up, to shoot us if we did not behave.
And we did not behave. I should say it was the leader, and those he led, who formed the disciplined core of our misbehavers. I cannot understand how they did it, but within hours of the British soldiers’ arrival, they had captured weapons, taken up positions, gained control over parts of the camp. Who were these men? I asked myself, because I had never before seen such Jews: warlike, organized, tough. They were Polish Zionists, I learned, with lifelong commitments to creating a Jewish state in Palestine, and they had spent all their days training to take it by force, if necessary. These were the men who went on to organize the camp, who eventually joined the Irgun and Hagganah—the Jewish militias that fought the British and the Arabs in Palestine—and who now run Israel: these same warlike, organized, tough men. Whatever Israel is or will become, we have inherited their warrior nature.
She laughed. And look at the trouble it has gotten us into, she said.
There was a long pause.
All during the rioting, she continued, I tried to stay close to the leader. He kept stopping to take aim at the rooftops, where the Hungarians still patrolled, meanwhile trying to calm the half-mad prisoners who were starved and parched and desperate for help, telling them where to assemble, where to find food and water, whom to ask for when they got there. Somehow everyone believed him and trusted in him, and he knew how to express himself with his eyes, his hands, his body, and people did what he told them to do. And I, too, did what he had told me to do: I stayed close. I stuck myself at his side.
So we came to the evening of the third day, Michal went on. At twilight the camp seemed to be stilled: no more gunshots, no more mobs. I had stayed with the leader all this time, and on that third evening we found ourselves in an empty barracks. There was no forethought: Suddenly we grabbed each other. Desire simply exploded from somewhere deep within us. One moment I was overcome with the realization that I was free—my God, free! Alive!—and the next my body demanded its pleasures. Sex! As battered as my body was, I wanted it, wholly, completely. I ached for it: sex, life, which at that moment seemed the exact same thing. The act was quick, hurried, fumbling, greedy. But it was sex. With desire, the first sex I’d had with desire since … everything.
She laughed.
And then he simply buttoned up, walked out, and told some passing men where the food-distribution point could be found.
She paused at length; the tape machine droned on.
Weren’t you upset that he just left you? the patient asked her mother finally.
Oh, no, said Michal with a laugh. Not at all. I admired it, admired him. His charisma, his sangfroid—you do know what that means, my little American ignoramus, sang-froid?
I’m not an idiot, the patient replied to her mother.
Of course, said Michal.
And I don’t appreciate your calling me an ignoramus. Yes, you went through a great deal, but still: That doesn’t give you the right to treat me as if I’d spent my life on a marshmallow.
A long hiss of empty tape followed. There was not a rustle, not a cough. How surprising was the patient’s sudden expression of resentment! How long had she been sitting there chafing at Michal’s mild derision, which I had thought almost affectionate?
The patient on