Crossing the River

Epilogue: Back to the River

Epilogue Back to the River But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. —Genesis 19:26 And in the end, did I ever return? Like so many of my friends, I had deep-seated reasons for rejecting the idea out of hand: the abhorrence, amounting to hatred, of this land of blood, where so many of its citizens had served as enthusiastic hangmen. And whom will you visit there, with all your dear ones absent; your rescuers no longer alive; the ghetto long since destroyed and its land built over again? Will you go to find out who the Lithuanians are who now live in the house you lived in before the war, who might even have kept for themselves some of your family’s furniture ? What point can there be in enduring the pain once again? And what would be the point of confronting again those silent witnesses—the tranquil landscapes, the forests and lakes, which like a pastoral blanket cover up the murders and atrocities that took place in their midst? And, on the other hand, to try once again to confront the difficult memories, to bring them up to the surface, and attempt to diminish their strength. To return and test your own strength, to see if you are able to look back. But Lot’s wife looked back. My heartstrings cry out at the interpretation that says Lot’s wife had compassion for her married sons’ wives, who remained in Sodom. She looked back to see whether perhaps they, too, were following in her footsteps. And when she saw what was happening to her birthplace, her heart broke. After I had safely crossed the river, my mother had commanded me not to look back. I obeyed her, got out of the boat, and headed straight for the gully that led to the opposite hills. That was the first step I took on the journey to my salvation . 266 Epilogue Thirty years passed before I began to look back and to write. The writing itself lasted twenty years. It was hard to remove old bandages that had long since merged with the living flesh. But once the book was completed, my body could breathe again. And that’s when the desire awoke to go back for a visit. Twice even. The first time after fifty-five years, and a second time, four years later. A great curiosity took hold of me as well—how do those places where I passed the first years of my life look? How wide, in truth, is the river I crossed? How high is the green hill from whose hideout I looked down on the ghetto on the other side? What was the size, in truth, of the field in that distant village across which I suddenly saw the sugar factory rise in the air in one piece and crumble into bits, with me there in a field of fire and exploding shells? And my home—my last stable, thick-walled house, with its wide windowsill from which I looked safely out over everything happening in the world, the adjacent yard where I played with my friend, the enfolding streets—essence of early childhood—what are they really like? How will they appear from my present point of view? And so the moment came when the time was ripe to return. The first time we went as two families, Aliza’s and mine. With deep excitement , and not without fears for the safety of our bodies and souls. But we went. I did not regret it. I was shocked by the visit. How had the landscapes of my childhood waited for me here in secret, and I knew nothing of them? A world preserved fifty years and more, where time had stood still; like a lost city in the depths of a jungle that had retained, beneath the thick vegetation, the contours of its former houses and streets as they had been long ago, remembered, familiar. Nothing seemed to have changed, although the city had grown older and more dilapidated . It was a wonder how utterly oblivious I was the first dozen years of my life. After all, these sights were there all that time. Did I merely never think about it? As though a fog were slowly lifting, specific questions sprang up and spurred me to find answers. So I went a second time. At the end of the second trip, after I had seen and...