BY THE EYES YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL

 

She gambolled like a billygoat, that old woman. She was completely taken with Peggy's Cove. With newfound freedom of a born-again she clambered the rocks in her newly-affected sneakers. She led the children. Second childhood yes, but on reflection I decide it must be her first.

She never did have the opportunity to be a child in Europe and in her youth was already experiencing hells of uncertainty. When I was a boy she seemed to me an old woman although she can only have been in her late twenties when I was born.

As a youngster I can remember the embarrassment I used to suffer, the child of a shuffling immigrant, shy and inarticulate, speaking a garbled melange, a babel of anxious tongues.

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Dachau. She has that in her experience. Better than say, Auschwitz. Dachau was classed as a Status I camp; only about three hundred thousand Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political dissenters, Jehovah's Witnesses; scum, affronts to the Master Race, perished there. In Auschwitz, it was more like two million.

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She's amazed seeing the raucous black-backed gulls; they circle the rocks, the water, settling and calling, my mind's pterodactyls. Her cohorts, Shauna and Gerrold, clamour after her. "Look - look Daddy! Bubbie's found a whale!" When I lift the glasses I see the bloated carcass of a tuna.

The breakers roll in, white-capped soda water, and hit the oblique elephant grey rocks, spilling spume, tossing salt at us. I tell my mother, her grandchildren, they are too close. They refuse to move back. My mother calls me an old woman. Nothing will do but that I must trudge back to the parking lot to fetch the picnic lunch.
"It's raining."
"Whaaat raining! Whad'r'yu talking? God is crying a liddel. Go, go ... bring the lunch."
My children think their grandma is the cat's ass. They like to see me ordered around for a change. It satisfies a subliminal urge for revenge.

We sit on the rocks and eat egg-salad sandwiches. Soggy. She's delighted at the wet. All the other tourists have faint hearts. They park their cars, get out briefly to take photographs and leave. I absolutely refuse to take pictures. I abhor people who capture their images for fond posterity, standing before public monuments or natural wonders, polluting the environment with their pathetic egos.

There's a thick mist rolling in off the water and before long the lighthouse is obscured in a pudding of gentle grey. I'm uncomfortable sitting there but she is overjoyed, rapt, and the children are hyper. "Whad's the hurry?" she asks.

Three days ago, at the Minas Basin, Five Islands Provincial Park, another miracle. She followed the tidal bore, a crazed pied piper to my children. To me the sandstone cliffs looked threatening somehow, hostile. To her, another indication of theistic exterior decorating. The vast red sands brought to me nightmares of spilled blood. She capered through the sucking sands - three exuberant children to a squinting eye - finally coming back, like a kid, having to go to the toilet.

Her tennis shoes transformed from their recently sparkling white to brick red, looked like stigmata. I shuddered.

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I drank in experience, memory, with my mother's milk; relieved her eventually of all remembrance.
"Shush" she used to say - "shtill" and she would place an admonitory finger to her lips - "Deddie is writing his memories". Memoirs? Memories.

On the box cars it was hot. Many people pushed together. Solutions there were many. A chemical sprinkled on the floor. People had to pass water ... when the wet touched the floor the chemical worked and there was gas ... everybody dead.

Gas warfare on a civilian cattle car.
Such respect for the written word. She communicated her homage to me and I tiptoed around my solemnly documenting father.

Special commandos in the camps ... before the ovens, check the teeth for gold. A father throws in the body of his child. A husband pulls gold from the mouth of his wife's corpse ... maybe he follows her ... into the pit.

My brooding silent father, his lugubrious face hung with recollections of the abyss.

And all the village was there. Lined up beside the hole they had dug. When the firing started people fell. More fell over the first ones. They were told to be neat - fall in the hole. Wounded crawled over the still bodies. After, dirt covered everything - the dead and the still living.

My father was sure his older brother was still living. Somewhere. He wrote letters of enquiry everywhere. My mother's family was gone. Everyone was gone. They met here, not there. A sweatshop. Both were union agitators. Both committed to the socialist ideal, but timidly. When I was eight years old I was as tall as my mother. When I was twelve I was taller than my father had been.

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The landscape stretching on either side of the road to Peggy's Cove had been eerie. Inhospitable rock surfaces, scraggle-bushes and misshapen trees. Insisting on growing where no vegetation could reasonably hope to thrive. A desolate moonscape. If sitting on the granite at the cove amidst swirling fog, tasting salt, seeing the Atlantic dimly through a grey mist uncannily resembled to my mind primordial time, the saline soup out of which amino acids brewed biological life - then the barrenness of its approaches heralded an aftertime, yet in earth's sere future.

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At the Ovens, we walked along a stony path. every now and then we'd stop at a lookout to peer out over the vast Atlantic, the breakers assaulting the peculiar rock outcroppings. Above, the sky was a threatening slate grey. You could taste the salt in the air.

A sound like thunder. Trudging down precarious cement steps to the bowels of a cave, where the thunder reverberated. The inexorable force of water wearing the weary stone.

My mother is indefatigable. The children encourage her, disparage my lagging steps, my nagging voice. There, at the end of the trail, she clambers down like a moufflon. The children right after. I don't want to follow but feel I must. I watch incredulously as she looks about closely at the rocks, the sand below, and begins to fill a paper bag with rubble.

"Maw, what are you doing?"
"Gold!" she whispers, an excited conspirator "You diden see the gold? I'm taking it you should send the kinder to universidy."
"My god, that's not gold - it's pyrite!"
"Nu, nu. You watch for pirates, I'll take the gold for my darlinks."
And the children, excited too by the tourist garbage they had read, scrambled in their eagerness to gather gold.

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Vituperative accusation, recrimination. You'd think having been through all that, they'd have learned to live in peace with one another. After living hell wouldn't security bring serenity? Instead, my childhood atmosphere was continually bruised with imprecations, accusations - shrieks in the night. Hysterical nightmares.

My father taciturn, brooding, recalling - writing. A reminder, a living reminder of Auschwitz - a number III camp. Death-intensive.

Often, in my later years, long after he died, I would wonder. Is this the stuff I am made of - my genetic inheritance? Might that explain my modest temporal success, my failure in matters spiritual, as a human being? Sara always liked to say that, to observe that I had no depths of emotion, no vital inner springs.

Oddly, as I grew older my mother seemed to shed the weight of her years. Oh, she still looked a little old lady; more grey, wrinkled than ever. But her character changed. Her vitriolic spite seemed to languish and die when my father did; subtly at first so one could hardly notice. And trust was regained.

Ever since I can remember she feared goyim. "The eyes" she'd say again and again, "you can see by the eyes". And what did that mean? It meant if ever one was in doubt whether a new acquaintance, a passing stranger, was a Jew, a look at the eyes was sufficient.

I grew up with the admonition never to trust gentiles. So I never did. Instead, Jews screwed me. And when I'd say to her, how do you know? She'd cite specific instances. "Ven I'm in a strange place ... alves a Yid vill come and speak mid me, Yiddish." Never mind that I'll point out to her all she has to do is open her mouth to pronounce her Yiddishness.

It's the eyes, always the eyes. A fellow sufferer. The torments of hell gloom in the orbs of every Jew; vicarious experience through antiquity.

"Don' talk mid strangers" she always told my children. They have her example. Voluble and expansive she became as she grew older, and she even began, tentatively, to admit that gentiles might have worthwhile attributes. Before long she began trustfully, like an eager child, smiling at strangers, inviting exchanges in her febrile, fractured English.

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In Lunenburg the first thing I noticed was the huge old trees festooned with grey-green hangings - Spanish mosses, and lichens flourishing in the damp salt air. Another otherwordly look, albeit partially dispelled by the flow of tourists, the clink of cash.

Old wooden gingerbread houses from Victoria's heyday. Widow's walks, second stories humped over the narrow streets. The waterfront, the shipbuilding yards; old ships in dry dock, old men working to repair them, a lost art. The sharp odour of the cannery. At night when my mother and the children slept in the motel, I walked around. Past the railroad tracks, the creamery, through a back alley to stumble across an ancient cemetery - a monument to the sailors, the locals, the fisherfolk.

Somewhere out there, in the vast wetness, a foghorn sounded as regular as time sifting - a lonely wail. I could almost believe it was a grieving leviathan lost in time's fey mists.

On my way back to the motel the romance dissipated. Two carloads of village cretins burned rubber around screeching turns. Yelling incivilities, tossing emptied bottles and used condoms on the road - a precipitate jolt of modernity.

In the morning, waiting impatiently for hundreds of shining Winnebagos to leave the huge parking lot across from the motel, I fumed. They had been parked there for the three days we spent at the motel. A pride of metal motor homes, gregariously touring the Maritimes.

A head trailer, the proud property of 'Jim and Mable Marleysides of Barre, Vermont' (inscribed on the sides), outfitted with a walkie-talkie, directed the flow of traffic, holding up all other vehicles. While I swore, the children tumbled on the back seat pummeling each other for choice seating. Sometimes the left side is the preferred one, sometimes the right. My mother sat beside me, untroubled. Wasted time does not bother her.

"Relex, Harry - relex" she tells me placidly, herself looking out the car windows, enjoying everything - the prolonged wait in the stifling heat, the children's querulous voices, the honking of car horns behind us, the malodorous fumes of the canning factory.

Finally, I pull up beside the Tourist Information, a kitschy replica ('cute' my mother says) of a quaint old lighthouse. A light drizzle has started and here, on the other side of town, the mock lighthouse stands on a spit of land raised high, looking down over a sheltered marina, sailboats bobbing around a wharf.

Inside, only two other tourists - an elderly couple, tall and refined looking. Dressed in vacation wear, but distinctively so. They look attractive, moneyed, intelligent: perfectly teamed cover models for Geriatrics On The Move.

On the counter, a display of travel literature, sightseeing brochures, maps, guidebooks. Behind the counter, an attractive woman. Smiles at me, returns to conversation with the gentleman. A huge coffee pot bubbles and wafts its aroma around the room. Beside it on a tray, an inviting selection of doughnuts. A sign reads 'coffee 15 cents, - doughnuts 25 cents'.

My mother bustles proprietarially over to the offerings and dispenses largess to the children. She pauses beside a visitor's book on the counter, sets down her coffee to laboriously scribble her name, the date, her city and province, with the stub of a pencil. Everywhere we went on this trip, every little museum, information kiosk, art gallery - every place that boasted a visitor's book had to be signed by her. She was even jealous of my signing in at motel registers. She had a compulsion to leave an indelible mark behind her; an indication, a tangible one, that she had been there.

I listen to the tail end of the conversation, the young woman shaking her head in agreement to something the old man is saying. It appears that they will be taking a ferry to ... where? I don't know. They turn and are about to leave but my mother is starved for new faces and, flanked on either side by a child, she corners the couple on their way to the door. I mentally shrug my shoulders; the old couple can no doubt look out for themselves; and decide to ask the young woman about the ferry service - where it goes, what it costs.

"You like this place, this Lunenburg?" my mother asks them innocently and they, pleasant enough, assure her that they do.
"Ve hef been here before, many years before. Zer hef been many changes, but we loff zis place." My mother nods solemnly.
"You zchud go and zee ze canning vactory" they tell my mother. "Ze children vud loff it." Despite their accents they sound somehow cultured, patrician. Unlike my mother's lumpish turn of speech.
"Mine zon diden wand to go: she tells them turning a peevish glance in my direction. I refuse to be drawn into the conversation.

The woman at the counter tells me there is a very nice lookout upstairs. From the top of this building, she says, one can look out across the bay, on a good day see quite far across the Atlantic. No, good viewing days are not frequent, she says, and we both agree that this is far from a good viewing day. Wordlessly, by motioning, I invite Shauna and Gerrold to come up with me. They're agreeable to leaving their grandmother for the view.

"From Detroit you are ... Doktor and Mrs. Neumann?" my mother's voice coyly asks the couple, drifting up to us as we climb the steps. I wonder how she knows - I didn't hear any introductions - then I recall the visitor's book. It occurs to me then, that my mother may think they are Jewish, the old couple. She wouldn't know the subtle distinction between Neuman and Neumann. But, I tell myself, the eyes, she'll be able to tell by the eyes.

They looked like nice people. Your average citizen. Yet I couldn't help imagining a typical conversation with such people, post '45. Conversation? Interrogation, perhaps.

But Madam Neumann, how can you say you knew nothing?
It iss zo! Ve mind our own bissniss. Ve had no idea ...
But the odour, the stink everywhere - unmistakable! And when the wind was just right ...?
No. Zer wass nozing like zat! No zmell.
Herr Neumann. The boxcars of people. Where did you think they were going? What was to be their ultimate disposal?
Ze camps. Ze vork camps. (Arbeit Macht Frei)
All those numbers could never be accommodated in those areas! Did you never wonder where those unending numbers of people, those unrelenting box-carred humans were being deposited?
To vork. to build ze Vaterland. Anyzing elss wass imbossible!
You heard nothing of mass murders? Ovens? Genocide? What about book bindings, lampshades, and soap?
Bropoganda!
The statistics speak for themselves.
Nonzenss! Zix million iss bropoganda. Zousands berhaps, but in effery war iss zivilian gasualties. Bezides ... ze Jews must haf done ZOMSING to merit zuch special treatment as you describe ...?

Those names, those damn haunting stinkplaces that cloud my brain. Treblinka, Belsen, Nordhausen, Dora, Buchenwald, Ohrdruf, Dachau, Flossenburg, Maidenek, Auschwitz - that infamous lineup of hellholes. Deutschland Uber Ales!

First the lineups, the medical examinations. Healthy men - there. Strong women - there. Old people, sick people, children - over there. There was like this: The Disrobing Room, The Disinfecting Room. Everything will be all right, they said. We will take care of you.
The Shower Room - Zyklon B. A big room, the Shower Room. Windows high up to look down when everything is over. A hose to wash away the ordure of fear.
Next. The Storage room - bodies stacked like wood; fuel for the ovens. They perfumed Germany's air.
The Crematorium - the Chimneys. From the Storage Room a last look for gold.

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From the top of the observation tower on the pseudo-lighthouse we leaned over a wooden parapet running the length of the platform to look out over the water - other waters anointing my children's dark heads. The woman at the counter was right. the view must be spectacular on a good day. Even now, in the mist and rain, I could see that; standing on this promontory the view must be very special.

I could imagine the conversation downstairs, my mother happy to make the brief acquaintance of such 'nice' people; another souvenir of her sojourn to the Other Canada she had never seen. And soon we hear her steps, uncharacteristically heavy on the stairs and I turn to see her face, grey and tired-looking. Confused and childlike, she looks at me.

"I wass sure ... I said to them in Yiddish ... by the eyes you can always tell. Harry, I couldn't believe. His face got hard and she got funny and they pushed away from me. Ran away from me! Harry, how could this be?"