Shtetl Days

Such self-abasement was altogether alien to the spirit of the Reich. Good National Socialists never dreamt they could do anything regrettable. Übermenschen, after all, didn’t look back--or need to.

And yet, the heartfelt apologies of an earlier Yom Kippur were some of the first things that had made Veit wonder whether what people here in Wawolnice had wasn’t a better way to live than much of what went on in the wider world. He’d come here glad to have steady work. He hadn’t bargained for anything more. He hadn’t bargained for it, but he’d found it.

You needed to ignore the funny clothes. You needed to forget about the dirt and the crowding and the poverty. Those were all incidentals. When it came to living with other people, when it came to finding an anchor for your own life . . . He nodded once, to himself. This was better. Even if you couldn’t talk about it much, maybe especially because you couldn’t, this was better. It had taken a while for Veit to realize it, but he liked the way he lived in the village when he was Jakub Shlayfer better than he liked how he lived away from it when he was only himself.

#

People who worked together naturally got together when they weren’t working, too. Not even the ever-wary SS could make too much of that. There was always the risk that some of the people you hung with reported to the blackshirts, but everyone in the Reich ran that risk. You took the precautions you thought you needed and you got on with your life.

One weekend not long after the High Holy Days, Wawolnice closed down for maintenance more thorough than repair crews could manage overnight or behind the scenes. Autumn was on the way. By the calendar, autumn had arrived. But it wasn’t pouring or freezing or otherwise nasty, though no doubt it would be before long. A bunch of the reenactors who played Jews seized the moment for a Sunday picnic outside of Lublin.

The grass on the meadow was still green: proof it hadn’t started freezing yet. Women packed baskets groaning with food. Men tended to other essentials: beer, slivovitz, shnaps, and the like.

One of Kristi’s cousins was just back from a hunting trip to the Carpathians. Her contribution to the spread was a saddle of venison. Her cousin was no shokhet, of course, but some things were too good to pass up. So she reasoned, anyhow, and Veit didn’t try to argue with her.

"Let’s see anybody match this," she declared.

"Not likely." Veit had splurged on a couple of liters of fancy vodka, stuff so smooth you’d hardly notice you weren’t drinking water . . . till you fell over.

He waited for clouds to roll in and rain to spoil things, but it didn’t happen. A little dawn mist had cleared out by midmorning, when the performers started gathering. It wasn’t a hot day, but it wasn’t bad. If shadows stretched farther across the grass than they would have during high summer, well, it wasn’t high summer anymore.

Kids scampered here, there, and everywhere, squealing in German and Yiddish. Not all of them really noticed any difference between the two languages except in the way they were written. Lots of reenactors exclaimed over the venison. Kristi beamed with pride as Reb Eliezer said "I didn’t expect that" and patted his belly in anticipation. If he wasn’t going to get fussy about dietary rules today . . .

They might have been any picnicking group, but for one detail. A car going down the narrow road stopped. The driver rolled down his window and called, "Hey, what’s with all the face fuzz?" He rubbed his own smooth chin and laughed.

"We’re the Great Lublin Beard-Growers’Fraternity," Eliezer answered with a perfectly straight face.

All of a sudden, the Aryan in the VW wasn’t laughing anymore. The official-sounding title impressed him; official-sounding titles had a way of doing that in the Reich. "Ach, so. The Beard-Growers’Fraternity," he echoed. "That’s splendid!" He put the car in gear and drove away, satisfied.

"Things would be easier if we were the Greater Lublin Beard-Growers’ Fraternity," Veit remarked.

"Some ways," Reb Eliezer said with a sweet, sad smile. "Not others, perhaps."

Alter the melamed--otherwise Wolf Albach-Retty--said, "There really are clubs for men who grow fancy whiskers. They have contests. Sometimes the winners get their pictures in the papers."

"Our whiskers are just incidental." Veit stroked his beard. "We raise tsuris instead."

Wolf hoisted an eyebrow. Yes, he made a good melamed. Yes, he was as much a believer as anyone here except Reb Eliezer. (Like Paul on the road to Damascus--well, maybe not just like that--some years before Eliezer had been the first to see how a role could take on an inner reality the Nazi functionaries who’d brought Wawolnice into being had never imagined.) All that said, everyone here except Wolf himself knew he was a ham.