Monastery Read online

  Tamara stopped smiling and held out her hand, requesting the last drag of the cigarette. I gazed at her ankles, her feet. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my thigh.

  That’s your recurrent dream? she asked, serious, crushing the butt into the sand. Sometimes there’s a slight variation, I said. Like what kind of variation? Like, for example I tell the terrorist mabruk. It’s an Arabic word my father uses a lot. It means congratulations. You say congratulations to a terrorist? Sometimes. Or sometimes I say shesh besh, which means six five. Shesh means six in Persian, and besh means five in Turkish. Shesh besh. Six five. That’s what my Lebanese grandfather would shout when we played backgammon on a magnificent mother-of-pearl table that he’d brought from Damascus, back in the twenties, and he’d roll the dice, and get a six and a five, and he’d shout shesh besh.

  We were silent a while, listening to the white noise of the radio, of the faintly rippling water, of a bird, melodious and magnificent and looking half lost in the immense blue sky. Listening to it, I recalled that Beethoven once said or might have said that his inspiration for the first four notes of his Fifth Symphony—perhaps the four most important notes in the history of music—had been birdsong.

  Tamara breathed sweetly, rhythmically, perhaps dozing on her towel. I kept staring at the glistening sea until my vision blurred, and then suddenly, my eyes cloudy and tearful, I realized or thought I realized that there was something essential in those shared waters, something more than the saltpeter and the holiness and the tourists smeared with mud, something even lower than the lowest point of the earth and even more ambiguous than an imposing invisible wall in the sea, something between two countries, between two cultures held apart and brought together by water so dead and so salty and from which we all come and to which we all return, all salted in fire.

  SO, TAMARA GOADED ME, in your dream you deny being a Jew, you deny your roots, your tradition, your heritage, you deny everything to save yourself?

  I dried my eyes with one hand. Tamara didn’t notice. Hers were half-closed, maybe against the sun.

  Yeah, I guess so, I said. You lie? Yes, I lie. Sort of cowardly, don’t you think? Yes, maybe, sort of. And doesn’t that bother you? she said, opening her eyes. What? Denying your Judaism, lying, passing yourself off as someone else just to save yourself. She was leaning on her elbows, her red bikini barely containing her breasts. I could almost make out the dark contour of her nipples. I glanced quickly toward the water. Why should it bother me? I murmured. It’s only a dream, I said, and Tamara made a face, as if to say: Don’t be a fool. Or as if to say: No dream is only a dream. Besides, I said, it’s the same as a Jew passing himself off as someone else, disguising himself as someone else to escape the Nazis. Tamara didn’t say anything. In my opinion, I continued with a barely perceptible smile, it’s better to be a living liar than a dead Jew. It’s not the same thing, Eduardo, she murmured, laying her head back down on the towel, possibly irritated. Her hair, damp and wild and graying slightly, brushed my thigh. I noted fleetingly that her bikini bottom was tucked between her buttocks, as if sucked in by her buttocks, and I felt my penis begin to stir.

  THERE WAS A JEW IN GUATEMALA named Peter, I told Tamara, trying not to look at her white ass, but his name wasn’t really Peter. He was a Polish Jew, a Jew from Polish Galicia named Yosef. He spent the war years in Poland, never leaving Poland, traveling freely through the towns and forests and mountains of Poland, living among the Nazis under a false name. Someone else’s name. The name Peter Zsanowsky. He adopted a Polish identity and the Polish name of a lumberjack named Peter Zsanowsky, and masked, camouflaged, lying, he managed to save his life. In Guatemala, until the day he died, even on his tombstone, he always called himself Peter.

  THE JEWISH GREAT-GRANDFATHER of a friend of mine, I told Tamara, trying not to look at her smooth round calves, managed to get out of Germany using identification papers he’d taken from a German soldier, a Nazi soldier whose last name was Neuman. He escaped, disguised as a German soldier whose last name was Neuman. He escaped, disguised as one of the German soldiers who wanted to kill him. He passed himself off as someone else and that was how he survived. When he made it to Argentina, he decided to keep the name, the name of his executioner and his savior. Neuman.

  THE FAMILY OF POLISH WRITER Jerzy Kosin´ski, I told Tamara, trying not to look at the exposed side of her breast, escaped the Nazis by passing themselves off as a Catholic family. At the end of 1939, the family, still using the name Lewinkopf, fled Łódź, the city of my grandfather. In fact, the house of the Lewinkopfs (on Gdan´ska Street) was only a few blocks from where my grandfather lived (on Zeromskiego Street), and I have no trouble imagining young Jerzy Kosin´ski, still named Józef Lewinkopf, playing dominoes with my grandfather, or playing soccer with my grandfather, or playing hide-and-seek among the trees of Poniatowskiego Park with my grandfather. The Lewinkopfs finally arrived in Dabrowa Rzeczycka, a country town in the south of Poland. They assumed the identity of a Catholic family whose last name was Kosin´ski. They rented an apartment. They hung crucifixes and pictures of the Virgin Mary on the wall, and let them gather dust and cobwebs so they wouldn’t look new or recently hung. Young Jerzy went to church with his father every Sunday. He studied the catechism. He was an altar boy. He made his First Communion. He was careful never to pee outside, in front of his Catholic friends. And that’s how he managed to save himself, pretending to be part of a Catholic family, disguised as an altar boy, and from then on—until the day he died fifty years later in a New York bathtub—using the last name Kosin´ski.

  MY POLISH GRANDFATHER, while a prisoner in Block 11 of Auschwitz, I told Tamara, trying not to look at the mole on the curve of her lower back, met a Jewish prisoner they called Kazik, who was one of the men in charge of removing the bodies of those shot at the Black Wall. Gnadenschuss, my grandfather explained. A single shot to the back of the head. They called him Kazik, but his name was Kazimierz Piechowski, my grandfather told me. He was a Pole, from Tczew. He was the ankle guy—the one in charge of dragging all the fresh bodies from the Black Wall, one by one, by the ankles, to the Auschwitz crematorium. In June of 1942, together with three other prisoners, Kazik escaped through the main gate of Auschwitz, dressed as an SS second lieutenant, an Untersturmführer. In a stolen black uniform, a crisp uniform that hid his emaciated body and the number tattooed on his forearm (918), Kazik disguised himself as an Untersturmführer in the SS, shouted in German the orders that an Untersturmführer in the SS would shout, saw the guards immediately open the main gate of Auschwitz (ARBEIT MACHT FREI), and disguised as his own enemy, lying, managed to gain his freedom.

  A FEW YEARS AGO, I told Tamara, trying not to look at the slightly raised red mound between her thighs that might have been the gentle rise of her warm vulva, I met an old Polish Jew who had escaped the Nazis dressed as a little Catholic girl.

  Discreetly, I made a slight adjustment to my bathing suit.

  He told me that one winter day, dressed as a girl, he’d traveled with his parents to a monastery in the middle of a forest, on the outskirts of Warsaw. It was snowing that day in the forest and the monastery, in the snow, amid snow-covered trees, looked enchanted and blue. His parents handed him over to some Catholic nuns at the monastery, along with a fake birth certificate and a fake baptismal certificate, and said good-bye. He was then five years old. He spent the rest of the war living in that monastery on the outskirts of Warsaw, disguised as a Catholic girl, dressed and groomed and made up like a Catholic girl. With golden braids. In a skirt. Living for years among Catholic girls. Kneeling and making the sign of the cross and praying in Latin, along with all the other Catholic girls.

  I sat up a bit. I adjusted my bathing suit once again.

  The first days or weeks at the monastery, he told me, he’d kept his left hand closed tight, balled into a little fist. The nuns tried to open it, to uncurl it, but he just squeezed it harder, tighter, as though preparing to hit someone. He ate like that and bathed li
ke that and prayed like that and even slept like that, with his left hand balled into a little fist under the pillow. Just before he’d arrived at the monastery, his father, kneeling in the forest in the snow, had taken his left hand and had written there, on his palm, in black ink, his real name. His boy name. His Hebrew name. His Jewish name. So he wouldn’t forget. So he could keep it secret. His father, kneeling there, had named him in black ink between the lines of his palm, in secret, in the middle of a forest, on the outskirts of Warsaw. And as he was telling me this, he raised his hand, I said to Tamara. He looked like a witness swearing to tell the truth, I said. But after days or weeks of living in the monastery, his real name had already faded away.

  Tamara opened her mouth slightly, perhaps to say something or ask something, but I didn’t let her.

  I remember that the only time his voice trembled, I said, was when he recited, in a benevolent tone, a tone full of affection, the names of each of the nuns. He still knew the names of each one of the fifteen or twenty nuns who’d taken care of him. I also remember that he described to me in detail the inside of that monastery in the forest, I told Tamara, but I don’t remember anything about his description. He might have described the dark hallways and the ancient walls and the vaulted ceilings of the monastery. He might have described all the religious imagery in the monastery, and the hallways echoing constantly with Latin hymns. But I don’t remember. I remember only his gaze. Because while he was describing it to me, he kept staring upward. An enigmatic, pious gaze, a frightened gaze. As if he could still see that monastery from the inside, or were still inside that monastery now. As if he’d never left that monastery in the forest, I said to Tamara, that monastery that had imprisoned him for years but had also saved his life. Because it was his gaze, I said, his fearful and almost childish gaze, that allowed me to imagine what he felt living there, imprisoned, captive not only to those dark damp walls but also to another language, other prayers, other clothing, another identity. And I was also able to imagine everything else. His parents letting his hair grow long enough to make two golden braids; dressing him in a pink dress and a girl’s shoes; putting a touch of makeup on his lips and cheeks; writing his name on the palm of his hand; persuading him in Yiddish that his name was no longer that one, the one written in black ink on the palm of his hand, but Teresa or Natasza or Magdalena; his parents saying good-bye in front of the enormous door of the monastery in the snow, perhaps both covered in snow, perhaps knowing they would never see him again, perhaps weeping at the sight of that confused, pretty Catholic girl.

  I paused, while with the fingernail of my index finger I scratched at tiny slivers of salt.

  Of course he lost his parents, I went on, and he lost his childhood, his innocence, his name, his religion, his country, and even his manhood, but he saved himself, dressed as a Catholic girl for years in a monastery in the forest. He denied his Judaism and he denied his manhood and that’s how he saved himself, I said to Tamara. Or who knows, I said, maybe his Judaism and his manhood were seized from him, and that’s how he saved himself.

  The only sound was the insistent scratching of my fingernail on the salt.

  And that’s the way it is, no? I said to Tamara, who was staring at me harshly, almost forlorn. Everyone decides how to save themselves, I said. Perhaps with a fundamentalist doctrine, or a series of fables and allegories, or a book of rules and norms and prohibitions, or the disguise of a lumberjack or a German soldier or a Catholic girl or an Orthodox Jew, or a cowardly lie told in a dream on a plane. With whatever it takes, whatever makes the most sense to us, whatever hurts the least. Tamara stared at me, more forlorn than ever. Though the truth is that they’re lies, I said. And we all believe our own lie. We all cling to the name we believe suits us best. We all act out the role of our best disguise. But none of it matters. In the end, no one is saved.

  I’d said it as if it were something definitive, or as if I knew what I was talking about, or as if I really believed it.

  I fell silent, staring out into space. I felt void. But void of words. Void of emotions. Void of color. Void of all that fulfills us or that we imagine fulfills us.

  Suddenly, I felt a dull ache in my left hand. I hadn’t realized that I’d been clenching it for some time, tightly, into a fist. But despite the pain, I didn’t want to unclench it. Maybe out of a desire to keep up the macho pose. Maybe out of fear that on opening it I’d find there—written between the lines of my palm in black ink—my other name, my Hebrew name: Nissim. Eight days after I was born, as per Jewish tradition, and because Eduardo isn’t a Hebrew name, my father named me Nissim. My Hebrew name, Nissim, means miracles. But seeing my clenched fist, it struck me that that name, my other name, my Jewish name, the name that my father had one day written in black ink on my tiny newborn palm, over time had also faded away.

  Tamara raised a hand and held it out to me, perhaps just stretching, perhaps searching for my hand, perhaps in search of a cigarette that was no longer there, and let it drop onto my thigh. And she left her hand there. Warm, soft, immobile, palm up. As if it were any old object or as if it were not her own hand, but the hand of someone else. Another’s hand. A foreign hand. A fragile hand, dry and warm and salt-stained.

  So are you saved? I didn’t understand her question. Suddenly, her voice sounded distant, hoarse, velvety. Are you saved, on the plane, from the Arab terrorists? I looked down, searching for something. Are you saved, at the end of your dream? I looked for her back, her freckled shoulders, her wide hips, her round white ass almost naked and covered in tiny translucent hairs. Her hand lay motionless on my thigh. In the distance, the mountains of Jordan stood gray and still.

  About the Author

  Eduardo Halfon was born in Guatemala City, moved to the United States at the age of ten, went to school in South Florida, studied Industrial Engineering at North Carolina State University, and then returned to Guatemala to teach literature for eight years at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Named one of the best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogotá, he is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the prestigious José María de Pereda Prize for the Short Novel. He has published eleven previous books of fiction in Spanish. The Polish Boxer, his first book to appear in English, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection and finalist for the International Latino Book Award. Halfon currently lives in Nebraska and frequently travels to Guatemala.

  The Translators

  Lisa Dillman translates from Spanish and Catalan and teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She has translated numerous books by Spanish and Latin American writers including Andrés Barba, Christopher Domínguez Michael, Sabina Berman, and Juan Filloy.

  Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator with some forty books to his name. His translations from Portuguese, Spanish, and French include fiction from Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and nonfiction by writers ranging from Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pelé. He is also the editor of the new Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. He lives in Brighton, England.

  BELLEVUE LITERARY PRESS is devoted to publishing literary fiction and nonfiction at the intersection of the arts and sciences because we believe that science and the humanities are natural companions for understanding the human experience. With each book we publish, our goal is to foster a rich, interdisciplinary dialogue that will forge new tools for thinking and engaging with the world.

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