Original subtitles

Downloaded from YTS.MX

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

She laughed.

And then she blew her nose.

She had a cold.

The bullet struck her forehead.

It caught her in the middle of a thought.

She was nine.

I'm sitting shivah.

You sit shivah for the dead.

"Shivah" sounds like the name of a Hindu god.

(CHUCKLES SOFTLY) Maybe it is.

I had a flirtation with Oriental religions once.

I envied the true Buddhists - they were able to reincarnate.

Not like us!

When we're dead, we're dead.

That's life, that's it.

It's the Jewish curse -

we don't have a heaven or a hell

and we don't come back.

It's now or never.

And for me, now is hardly at all.

I'm 80 years old.

I find that unforgiveable.

And... on the eve of a new millennium,

I stink of the past century.

(SIGHS) What can I do?

I'm inching towards dust.

And sometimes I wish it would hurry and just take me

in the middle of a thought or a sentence.

Though preferably not with a bullet to the forehead.

And then I wonder, will anyone sit shivah for me?

Or maybe, in the bright new 21st century,

they won't sit shivah anymore.

Well, I mean, the ultra-Orthodox will, of course,

but something like shivah, in reality,

is not religious.

It's just Jewish.

Eh, you sit on a wooden bench for a week.

You laugh, cry, you argue, you remember the dead,

the particular dead of that particular shivah.

And you eat a lot and you kvetch a lot

and you get a sore behind,

and it reminds you that you are from a people, a culture,

a race of sore behinds and complaints

and heated discussion and-and minds in turmoil

and minds in flight

and minds exploding like the atom.

Which I never understood, but...

..it certainly changed the last century.

And Albert Einstein came from the same street

as my second husband's cousin, so what are you gonna say?

Maybe the past century will, in fact, be the next-to-last century.

And will it all be because a restless people produced restless minds?

When you don't belong anyplace, your mind doesn't belong anyplace.

You're owned by no-one, except God.

And God is only an idea.

And so, if you believe in God, you believe in ideas.

Huh?

Except now, who believes in God anymore,

except the fanatically committed?

And if that's true, who believes in ideas?

Now it's different, of course, because we don't wander anymore.

We have a home.

(GASPS LIGHTLY)

(GROANS SOFTLY)

(GASPS RASPILY) Mm.

(CLEARS THROAT)

Can't catch my breath.

(COUGHS LIGHTLY)

At my age, breathing is one of the few pleasures I have left.

Mm.

(GULPS)

Ah.

(EXHALES HEAVILY)

You know, the elderly are supposed to remember the past

with dreadful clarity,

but yesterday, the present, hardly at all.

With me, it's not so true.

I have only vague wandering images of my childhood,

but yesterday, ah, I remember every single thing about yesterday!

Nothing happened yesterday.

No, trust me!

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYS)

But 70, 75 years ago, Yultiska, a lot happened.

But I'm not so sure what.

Yultiska I see clearly in my dreams.

Because the subconscious is like an elephant, it never forgets.

But when I'm awake, what do I remember?

Huh.

Mud roads.

Tiny dwellings.

I-I-I'm not gonna call them houses, but then I don't wanna say "huts",

so... so "dwellings".

Pink trees.

Well, the blossoms were pink.

And carts and wagons.

Comings and goings.

Traffic, but no exhaust fumes. (CHUCKLES LIGHTLY)

We had an ozone layer in those days.

A pity nobody told us, we could have enjoyed it.

Yultiska - just a little pimple on the face of the Ukraine.

If you squeeze it, it would burst.

Just like all the other shtetls - the little Jewish towns

that clung to the side of the larger Russian community.

Well, sometimes they were Russian, sometimes they were Polish.

The gojim kept killing each other and er...

What do you call it?

Uh...

..usurping sovereignty.

Ha! Sovereignty!

Ukraine - why would anybody want it?

And what would it be like today, Yultiska?

Well, for one thing, it would not be far away from Chernobyl.

But in 1920, when I was born, it was Russian.

And, as usual, there was a civil war going on.

Only this time, between the Russians - red and white.

By the time I was two, there was a famine.

But there was always a plate on our table.

My mother saw to that.

She took in washing.

And with the pennies from that, she bought fruit from a goyishe farmer,

and she sold it in a stand on the roadside.

And with the pennies from that, she bought us food.

To tell you the truth,

I never understood why she didn't just use the pennies from the washing

to buy the food.

But that would have been simple, not enough of a strain

and she would not have been a martyr.

Cos my mother was a saint!

Everyone in the shtetl said so.

Which is curious, because sainthood is not a Jewish concept.

There's not even a word for it.

But she never complained.

She never questioned.

God had dropped a genuine Christian into the middle of a shtetl

and He didn't tell us!

So, I was born into a contradiction.

My mother's milk was never quite what it seemed.

So, the saint...

..Saint Trebela, was the sole provider for my whole family -

my brother Asher, my little sister Rivka,

and Rosella, the middle one,

that's... that's me.

Who am I forgetting?

Oh, Papa!

Papa!

Oh, Papa was... tall.

And, actually, he was... he was quite a beauty.

Especially his eyes, which were always laughing,

though none of us ever got the joke.

Shortly after Rivka was born, Papa announced that he was dying,

and he took to his bed.

He was in bed for years.

And years.

He never stopped dying.

As far as we could see, there was nothing wrong with him.

There was a large wardrobe right next to his bed,

and it was filled with medicine bottles, mostly used,

and herbal curses... mostly empty.

But none of them could cure this... this mysterious illness,

which was a little like God,

in that there was no visible sign of it,

but some fanatical Jew insisted that it was there.

(SIGHS)

And doctors came from miles around.

Always melancholy.

And they brought him medicine. Gifts!

Cos Papa never paid for any of his hopeless cures.

And then people came from neighbouring villages

and brought homemade cures.

If you can imagine this in the Ukraine,

he was a tourist attraction.

The rabbi came and said blessings once a week.

Which exhausted Papa so much that he slept through the following day.

And the local kabbalist came and talked of devils

and mentioned exorcism,

which made Papa smile,

because he had a soft spot for hocus-pocus.

But the saint - mm! - who had a more traditional form of religion,

she threw them all out once a week.

Mama...

Mama truly believed in goodness.

More than that, if you were Jewish,

you had a responsibility to be good.

You'd been put on this earth to perpetuate a higher moral force.

For her, it was just black and white.

And ironically, that made her seem even more of a Christian.

By the time I was ten, I was selling fruit from the roadside.

Asher had taught me Russian, as well as Yiddish.

I had an ear for languages.

And every day I made new signs, which were descriptions of the fruit,

which needed no description.

(CHUCKLES) You only had to look at it.

Melons and berries were luscious then.

I can only imagine what they're like now...

..in Yultiska, wherever it is now, mutating from fallout.

Asher went to the yeshiva.

It was honourable for a boy to study.

Which was very annoying for me,

because I had an overwhelming appetite for knowledge.

I read everything I could lay my hands on.

I fell in love with words.

I memorised large Russian words.

And invented new Yiddish ones.

I became pretentious in several languages at once!

And Asher, Asher came home from the yeshiva

and discussed the Talmud with me,

and we had long heated discussions and arguments

of the kind that girls were not supposed to have.

And I learned that Judaism's greatest contribution to mankind

is asking questions that can't be answered,

and that the glory of our race

is not that we gave the world Moses and Marx and Jesus,

it has everything to do with the invention of the phrase

"on the other hand".

The saint was not impressed with our nocturnal discussions.

Yes, it was hard to move her in any way,

particularly towards appreciation.

She never touched us.

She never kissed us.

She never teased us.

She never... told us we were good-looking or sweet-natured.

She had no pride in us whatsoever.

Her energy was totally in keeping us alive.

She hated answering questions.

Of course, she had to when I had my first period.

She said it was God's curse.

In which she is supported by the Bible.

However, Asher, on the other hand, said, "It might be God's gift."

And I said that if that was so,

I would rather he gave us a calendar.

In the same month, shortly after that,

the Cossacks rode into town.

And I guess, if you have your first period and your first pogrom

in the same month,

you can safely assume that childhood is over.

Yeah, years later, a history professor told me

it couldn't possibly have been the Cossacks,

because Stalin had pacified the Cossacks by then.

Well, he left a few over.

They had big horses and big hats and big whips

and beautiful faces.

At least that's my memory.

But I'm not sure if my memory is of the event

or a scene from Fiddler on the Roof.

In my mind, it's exactly like the movie.

But then, maybe the movie was exactly like the event.

I don't... I close me eyes and I see chorus boys on horseback.

What can I do about it, huh?

It's hard to reach my age

and to have lived through

some of the most tumultuous events of this century

and to be able to distinguish between reality

and the depictions of reality which constantly surrounded us.

Mm! Listen.

They rode through the town and they set fire to the stores,

they broke the windows,

they came into our house.

We cowered behind the stove.

But they didn't try to harm us.

They just smashed everything up and rode away.

Asher was shouting, Rivka was crying,

I was doing a little of both, as befits the middle child.

Mama?

Mama...

..she found a broom and she started sweeping.

And then Asher and Rivka and I had exactly the same thought.

In all the fuss, somebody had been forgotten.

Papa!

"Papa," we said.

Mama put down the brush, went into the bedroom.

She came out, she picked up the broom,

she continued sweeping and she said, "Papa's dead."

We ran into the bedroom

and we saw that the wardrobe full of medicine

had collapsed onto the bed.

And Papa's hand was sticking out from under it, clutching an enema bag.

And we could see part of his leg,

covered in ointment of rosemary and honey.

He had been crushed to death by medicine.

Years later, when I became an agnostic,

that memory would, just for a second, make me believe in God again.

(EXHALES HEAVILY)

Papa's was my first shivah.

We... We ran out of wooden benches.

I think that people just wanted proof that he was really dead.

Mama was in her element.

Totally impassive - it was God's will.

A few weeks later, on a hot afternoon,

I sold my last grapefruit and I went for a walk in the woods.

And I saw a field full of lilac trees, covered.

And I heard a voice.

It was singing.

Singing in an unknown tongue.

I... went a little nearer, to hear this delirious sound.

It was uh... Gypsy, maybe Muslim, maybe Spanish,

maybe... African.

And it spoke of lovers and demons.

I had to know.

I crept a little closer.

I hid behind a bush.

And I saw, in the distance, a fragile figure holding on to a tree.

Holding.

Holding and swaying at the same time.

I got a little closer,

and suddenly the figure turned, and I saw its face,

covered with... sweat and dirt

and desire and longing.

It was Mama.

I ran.

I ran away from the woods, away from the song,

back to the shtetl.

When she returned home...

..Mama was scrubbed and cool,

and she had on her saintly face,

and she started to cook.

But I never thought of her as a Christian again.

I had to get away from Yultiska.

But Asher beat me to it.

He married a girl from the next village.

Her name was Hiya, and she was a catch.

Her family were merchants.

And the parents gave them money, and with it they moved to Warsaw.

(INHALES SHARPLY)

Asher left me with the fruit stand and the sister

and the mother who was really a pagan.

And each day I grew a little.

And each day I died a little.

At the same time.

I did not belong.

Asher wrote and said, "Come. Come, if you can."

He had a child now.

"Hiya could use some help around the house.

Come, if you can."

He wrote to Mama, "Send Rosella to Warsaw.

She can take a train from Kiev. Send her to Warsaw."

Mama looked at me.

A dry, cold look.

The same look.

Always the same look.

I was desolate.

I knew there was no money for a train.

Mama... went into the bedroom and returned with a scarf.

It was orange and blue. It looked like...

..like the scarf of a magician!

Wave it and a rabbit appears.

There wasn't a rabbit.

Instead, there were kopeks.

"I saved," Mama saved.

"For when it's life and death."

"But, Mama," I said, "going to Warsaw isn't life and death."

"Yes, it is," she said.

(COUGHS RASPILY) Oh...

(INHALES DEEPLY)

Now, maybe it is all in my mind.

Maybe there really is nothing wrong with my breathing.

Maybe I... I just panic.

Maybe I should sip some water.

(GULPS)

Mm.

(EXHALES SLOWLY)

The first time I couldn't catch my breath was in Warsaw, summer 1937.

We were in a cafe in Krochmalna Street.

And it was chaos!

The artists and prostitutes, and-and-and pickpockets,

and... and those funny little men who sold lottery tickets -

you could win an American eagle made of chocolate

or three coloured pencils.

And... And the waiters were shouting abuse.

And there was talk and noise,

and always the possibility of some kind of seduction.

Asher and his friends were drunk and laughing,

and Hiya was in a good mood for once.

And the room seemed to go round and round, like we were in a spin dry.

I suppose it was the wine.

We were celebrating my first year in Warsaw.

And then suddenly the spin cycle abruptly stopped.

And there was a man at the table -

a large man with long red hair and one earring.

And his shirt was open, and he had no hair on his chest.

Every man in Warsaw was hairy.

And he had one perfect blue eye, and the other was of glass.

One... One dead little island

in the middle of all that life.

And suddenly Asher was introducing me to him.

And I knew, without a doubt,

that there would never be anyone else.

And we made love that night,

surrounded by canvas, paintings.

Youssel's.

Paintings of shtetls.

Of mud roads and lilac trees.

Imitation shtetls surrounded me in this garret in Warsaw,

where, for the first time in my life, I was free...

..and I was a woman.

Once, when I was a child, I heard the sound of bed springs in the bedroom

rocking and thumping,

but there was no other sound.

No human sound.

And I lay there in the other room, terrified.

Terrified of that silence.

But with Youssel and me, there was so much noise.

Moaning and groaning and shouting and screaming

and... and... and...

No, no, no. No. I...

And we lived happily ever after.

(CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

(SNIFFLES)

Now, Youssel wasn't a great artist.

He wasn't bad, but he was no Chagall.

Who is?

I think Jews are not visual.

Look at the way they dress!

I think it's because we're not allowed to reproduce an image of God.

Now, whereas the gojim,

oh, they love nothing better than a naked man

in a sadomasochistic ecstasy, strung up on wood,

or... or... a-an arrow piercing his nipple.

Sex and God are very confused for the gojim.

But for Jews, they're quite separate.

We can't see our god, so we can't desire Him.

When He betrays us, when He abandons us, which He always does,

we feel betrayed by a parent, not a lover.

Or... like a parent, one day they just die.

(SIGHS)

But with Youssel and me, there was no religious dimension.

Not at all.

In fact...

..he was... he was insatiable.

He wanted everything today!

As if there was no concept of tomorrow.

Maybe he knew.

And when we weren't making love, we were at the movies.

(CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

We loved Westerns.

The canyons and the desert and the...

..tumbleweed blowing into an empty town

and the stagecoach riding round the bend.

And we liked those silly Yiddish movies.

The shtetl movies with Molly Picon dancing around the shtetl, singing...

# Yidl mitn fidl

# Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay

# Y... #

And sometimes Youssel might sell a painting.

But he didn't make a living.

And... the last thing he needed was a wife.

But soon he had a wife.

And then, a year later, a child.

I named her Esther.

And she had red hair, like her father.

And blue eyes.

Two!

He never told me how he lost his eye. He refused.

But sometimes, in the middle of the night, he would wake up screaming,

and I would hold his head and stroke his brow and...

Then, of course, Esther would wake, and I would go to her.

And in the morning, he would accuse me of deserting him,

and I didn't care about his pain.

And I said, "I don't know what your pain is."

And he would accuse me of being blind.

And I would bite my tongue and not say, "You're blind.

You're half-blind, and I don't know why!"

(SIGHS)

When we made love,

h-he would plunge into me.

But I could never really enter into him.

Emotionally.

Foreplay was all I was allowed.

And...

And sometimes, in the closest relationship I would ever have,

I felt... outside.

Like that tumbleweed blowing into an empty town.

And I would miss Yultiska.

And I would worry about Mama and Rivka.

And I would lie awake

and listen to the sound of the soldiers marching outside.

When the Nazis first...

When the Nazis first came into Warsaw, I... I wasn't too worried.

I didn't think it was anything... anything to do with me.

You know, I-I liked Warsaw, but I had no affection for Poland.

(CHUCKLES GENTLY)

And my feeling was, "Can the Germans be any worse?"

(CHUCKLES)

(SIGHS)

I don't remember the ghetto.

(SIGHS)

Well, OK.

(BREATHES HEAVILY)

We were packed together.

We were taken out of our homes.

And relocated in a small area.

Then they built a wall around us.

12 Jews to a room.

Uh... Maybe it wasn't 12. I...

I don't remember.

But I'll tell you what hell is.

Hell is 12 people snoring in the same room.

Youssel had bad dreams all the time now.

I didn't have bad dreams.

You have to sleep to have dreams.

And I was afraid to sleep.

I was afraid something would happen to Esther if I slept.

How did this happen?

How did this happen?!

Yesterday, we were walking across the Gravettian bridge.

A month ago, we were in the cafe in Krochmalna Street,

eating chocolate cake.

Cake!

Now, we had half a chicken for the entire room - 12 people.

Well, I don't know if there was 12. I... I just don't remember.

What was going on?

And who was this... man with red hair and an earring?

What was I doing with him?

I should be in Yultiska, selling fruit by the roadside.

Soon there wasn't even half a chicken anymore, and we were starving.

I went to find my brother, Asher,

and he was at the other end of the ghetto.

He and Hiya...

..were in a room with nine people.

They had lost their child to cholera.

When I entered the room, Hiya was screaming.

And Asher told me to ignore her.

But I couldn't ignore her.

I had to try and comfort her.

She called me a bitch!

She pulled my hair!

I slapped her!

And then suddenly I was screaming!

And I... I didn't know why.

They had no food.

Asher said he had a contact who could get me a job in a factory.

It was run by a woman who was friendly to Jews

and took on more than she needed.

(SIGHS) But only women.

And then... Oh, then Hiya started to beat her breast.

And Asher took a rope and tied her hands.

Wh-what were we doing here in Warsaw?

What were we doing here in Warsaw?

And then Hiya began to vomit.

And everyone in the room started screaming at her,

and I ran out into the night air.

Except... there wasn't any air.

And back to my room, where Youssel was lying, staring at the ceiling.

Esther was telling herself a story.

She was three.

"Where were you?" he said.

I took his hand.

"Where were you?" he said.

"Why did you desert me?"

I started work in the factory.

They escorted you out in the morning and escorted you back at night.

Youssel did not want me to leave, but we needed the food.

The women could smuggle scraps of food back.

The young soldiers were shy of body searches.

One day in the factory, we heard a noise from the ghetto.

We ran to the window, and smoke was rising behind the walls.

(FIRE CRACKLES)

Some of the women fainted.

I... I lost control of my body.

(CRACKLING INTENSIFIES)

I shat myself.

Youssel and Esther were in the ghetto.

(SCREAMING)

And we could hear screaming f...

No, no, that's wrong. We didn't hear screaming.

(SCREAMING STOPS)

That night, we returned to the ghetto.

The streets were filled with bodies.

The buildings were burning.

SS men were walking with dogs.

I found my room.

Everything in it had been smashed to pieces.

It was empty.

Where were Esther and Youssel?

I walked the streets, calling Esther's name.

Passing other mothers calling the names of their children.

One giant corral of names

filled the ghetto under that red sky.

Years later, somebody offered me LSD at a party.

I said I didn't need to take it, I knew what it was like.

Hallucinations.

A minute stretched into an hour.

Strange visions soaring in and out of your mind.

And the feeling that you will never get back to reality.

I-I knew what it was like.

I went to Asher's room.

It was empty.

Asher was gone, Hiya was gone.

A hand pulled me off the sidewalk.

It was Simcha, a man who had been in our room.

He had hidden in a cellar on the other side of the ghetto,

but when the raid began, he was in our room.

And Youssel had handed Esther to him.

Said, "Take her to the cellar."

But Youssel had stayed behind.

How could he slip unnoticed through the streets,

with his red hair and his earring?

So, he said to Simcha, "Tell my wife... Tell Rosella..."

"..to protect our child."

Thank you, Youssel.

Thank you very much.

Love of my life.

Later, someone told me

they saw him marching in the left line of prisoners.

The... The line for useless people.

The line for one-eyed men.

They marched them into the woods where the machine-guns were.

Fertiliser. They made the bodies into fertiliser.

(SIGHS) I wonder what they did with his earring?

I don't remember any of this.

Simcha and Esther started running.

Now, he didn't look at me when he talked.

He closed his eyes.

He said they passed a soup kitchen.

The Jewish Committee was handing out soup!

And Esther broke away from Simcha.

He covered his face when he talked.

Esther ran towards the soup.

They'd never distributed soup before.

A young Ukrainian soldier was passing by.

A young blond Ukrainian.

He could have been from Yultiska.

Stalin and Hitler were friends... for the minute.

The Ukrainians helped the Germans to guard the ghetto.

But why soup today?

Simcha said, "The soldier had a small gun."

Small. He kept saying, "The gun was small," as if the size was important.

Esther ran towards the soup.

The soldier aimed his gun.

His small gun.

Esther reached the soup.

The soldier pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit her on the forehead.

He might have been from Yultiska.

H-he was just passing by.

Simcha started to cry.

Esther's body lay in front of the soup.

It was just water.

It wasn't really even soup.

I kicked S...imcha in the stomach.

I was supposed to protect her.

Thank you! Thank you very much, Youssel!

Simcha fell to the ground.

I ran out into the street, and I don't know what happened next.

(GASPS RASPILY)

You know, if I were a Buddhist,

this would count as points on the next life!

(CHUCKLES)

(BREATHS SHAKILY)

(SPLUTTERS)

Yes, it's almost time for my pill.

(BREATHES DEEPLY)

For the breathing.

(CLEARS THROAT)

I sat shivah in the sewers.

There were no wooden benches, but God makes allowances.

Not that I believe in God.

God died in the ghetto, when I kicked Simcha in the stomach.

But, on the other hand,

I still needed rituals.

So, I sat a kind of mental shivah

for Esther, for Youssel,

for Asher, for Mama and Rivka,

because somewhere inside I knew that they were gone.

Later, I met someone from a village near Yultiska,

who described the end of our shtetl.

The Nazis marched all the Jews into the schoolhouse,

locked the door...

..and burned it down.

Easy.

Screams from behind the walls, again.

So, I uh... I sat that kind of shivah for two years.

I don't remember how I got into the sewers, that's a blank,

but... but once there, oh, yes, I remember everything.

There were 30 of us.

I was numb.

Novocaine.

Two years.

You do things in order to stay alive.

I remember everything.

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYS)

This I will say.

We talked of Jerusalem.

By the waters of Babylon, beneath Warsaw...

..we remembered Zion.

The Promised Land.

"Promised"!

Just ours.

No-one else's.

No Cossacks, no Nazis, just us!

Safe.

(BREATHES DEEPLY)

Well, then... the war was over.

One day, Nazis were marching into Warsaw,

and the next day, Russians.

One day, Stalin and Hitler were friends,

the next day, they were enemies.

It was nothing to do with us.

I was still numb, but my feet worked.

I got out.

I had to get away.

Away from the Russians.

I had to go someplace safe.

Where? Where was safe?

Ah-ha! Yes.

Germany was safe.

Long lines of refugees passing from Poland into Germany,

the place that destroyed them,

that was now, itself, destroyed.

We passed through Dresden.

I saw a child with no arms crawling down the street.

The streets were rubble.

I found Americans.

They welcomed us.

They gave us cigarettes.

I'd never smoked before.

I smoked for the next 50 years, and now I can't catch my breath, so...

They gave us soup.

They put us in a camp.

Well, they called it a "centre", but it was a camp.

(CHUCKLES)

It wasn't a bad camp.

Nice camp.

But it was still a camp!

Barbed wire and bunk-beds.

The war was over.

What was I doing in a camp in Germany, where it was safe?

I was officially called a "displaced person".

Ha! I could have told them that long before!

The camps... Oh, the camps were overcrowded.

No-one knew what to do with us. We had no homes to return to.

But I had a place to go.

I had Palestine.

And I was adopted by the Zionists in the camp.

I was a heroine because I had fought back in the ghetto.

Actually, no.

When the ghetto rose up for that final gasp of fury,

I was already in the sewers.

But I let them believe what they wanted to believe,

because they were my ticket out.

Now, one day the smugglers arrived -

high-priced criminals paid for by the Haganah.

They bribed the soldiers.

200 people were selected from the camp, from our camp.

Some of them wore three pairs of clothing and a knapsack.

I travelled light - I had soap and a towel.

We climbed through a hole in the fence.

They pretended not to see us.

There were trucks.

People screamed - they thought it was a trick.

But the next day, we were in France, in Sete, by the sea.

I'd never seen the sea.

I thought it was just another hallucination.

And there was a boat in the harbour.

It was falling apart.

We were marched on board, herds of us,

falling, rushing in the dark.

But once on board, we were no longer cattle.

Now we were sardines.

If you rolled over, you got an elbow in your nose.

The boat set sail,

and secretly negotiated its way out of the harbour.

The French turned a blind eye.

But the British were determined to stop us from going to Palestine.

The British had won Palestine on the Monopoly board

and they were determined to hold on to it and to their dignity.

Their foreign minister was a man called Bevin,

and he was the goy from hell!

He only allowed 1,500 Jews a month into the Holy Land.

Certain basic facts about the war seemed to have escaped him.

The Haganah were trying to sneak as many Jews as possible

into the country.

Although "sneak" is hardly the word.

We were a creaky old bo...

We were a creaky old boat on an open sea and difficult to miss.

Within a day, we were being tailed by British warships.

The mood on the boat had changed.

We were allowed on the open deck,

and suddenly there was an accordion playing,

and the sardines were singing and dancing.

I heard melody.

The Mediterranean was playful,

and the sea and the waves hypnotic,

and I felt some of the numbness...

..begin to wear away.

Then I... Then I saw children throwing a ball.

A little girl playing hide and seek.

A tiny little...

No.

I couldn't bear it.

I didn't want to remember.

I closed my eyes.

I didn't want to remember.

And when I opened them, I saw a man's chest.

A hairless chest.

I realised the chest was attached to a sailor, who was smiling at me.

Why was he smiling at me?

(CHUCKLES NERVOUSLY)

There was a chill from the sea, and he put on his shirt.

Except he was clumsy, an-and he put his head into the hole for his arm,

and he was stuck.

Suddenly, my body went into convulsions.

My spine went into spasm.

My stomach jumped.

There was an electric current across my breast.

And I knew this was it.

Finally... (SPLUTTERS)

..I was going to die.

And then, I heard this... this noise, a sound from my throat.

A strange heaving sound.

(INHALES SHARPLY)

(COUGHS)

And I realised I... I realised what was happening.

I w... (SPLUTTERS)

I was laughing!

I had forgotten.

I hadn't laughed since the cafe in Krochmalna Street.

Something Youssel had said.

He kissed my cheek, which was wet from tears of laughter.

(CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

Had that really happened?

And now... here I was, on the open sea,

in another life.

And this silly sailor, with his head in the arm hole,

had made my body scream, "Ha-ha-ha!"

Who invented that sound?

Those... syllables? Huh?

If "ha-ha-ha" is a word,

then it's the only one that exists in every language.

And then... then the sailor,

who had produced this "ha-ha-ha", winked at me

and disappeared into the crowd.

He returned that evening.

We were still on the open deck.

He sat beside me.

Or rather, he fell beside me, because...

..he tripped on a rope attached to a pail of water

and splashed the water over us.

We were squeezed together, refugees on either side.

He was flirting with me.

At least I think that's what he was doing.

I had no experience of flirting.

Youssel was very direct.

On that first night in the cafe, he said to me,

"I think we should fuck."

Well, I blushed, but I thought we should, too,

so I wasn't gonna do anything to pretend otherwise.

His name was Sonny.

Sonny Rose.

And he spoke Yiddish.

His parents came from a village not too far from mine.

But he was born in America.

Most of the sailors on the boat were Americans.

(CHUCKLES) None of them had any experience on a boat.

But they all had dreams of Palestine.

They didn't have to be on the ship.

We did.

And that made me like him.

I asked him if he was from the Wild West,

w-with "Injuns" and tumbleweed.

And he said, "No, New Jersey."

Which made me like him less.

And when I told him my name, he said, "Oh, what a shame! What a shame!

We can never marry. You would be Rose Rose!"

I'm not sure that my face showed it,

but in some way, I-I smiled.

I think.

Mr Bevin didn't smile, though.

His warships moved closer.

The next morning, the sailors hung a flag across the top of the boat.

It had a Star of David on it.

And a sign, as well.

A sign which renamed the ship "Exodus 1947".

I can see that sign so clearly.

But then, how? How could I, standing underneath it?

Am I thinking of the newsreel?

Or of the Paul Newman movie?

Or did I just crank my neck back?

How can I tell? How can I tell?

Sonny helped to put up the sign,

but he lost his footing and dangled from the Star of David

until his laughing shipmates helped him down.

We were nearing land.

Promised land!

Only nearing.

We were still in international waters, which were supposedly safe.

And that night, the warships moved to our side.

They squeezed us.

Then they rammed us.

And we heard English voices on the megaphones.

What were they saying?

And then came the tear gas.

British sailors boarded, wearing steel helmets.

They had clubs, we had soda pop.

Now, the Haganah had loaded our hardest food supplies on deck

for us to fight with.

Refugees were hurling cans of kosher corned beef at steel helmets!

I saw one of the sailors being clubbed.

I saw a 16-year-old boy,

whose parents had been wiped out in the camps,

get shot in the face.

He died with Palestine on his lips.

I picked up a potato.

I threw the potato!

Suddenly, everything that had happened in the past seven years

was released in me through potatoes.

I threw potatoes for my child.

I threw potatoes for Youssel, for Mama.

And I was screaming.

I was exhilarated.

I was almost happy!

And my aim was good -

I was wiping out Mr Bevin's boys with potatoes.

Now... Now, I saw someone aim a gun at me,

and then... I was on the ground.

Sonny was on top of me. He'd thrown me to the ground.

A bullet whizzed past, over our heads.

And Sonny dragged me into a corner where there was no fighting,

and he kissed me.

His lips tasted of flesh.

Youssel's tasted of cherry vodka.

He said, "I just saved your life."

I looked at him.

I hated him for it.

So, the British had the boat.

The hulk - the remains of the boat.

The Royal Navy towed us into the harbour.

We were entering Palestine at last.

But we were under arrest.

We started to sing Hatikvah.

Listen, Hatikvah is not the Marseillaise,

but as national anthems go, it has too many verses

and nobody knows the words.

But the Jewish settlers were on the docks, waiting for us,

and they knew the words,

and their voices blended with ours,

and... it was just another hallucination,

but this time with a musical score.

Sonny grabbed my hand.

He was crying.

All the Americans were crying.

But the refugees weren't crying.

We were too tired.

Was it ever going to end?

We landed.

The Mandate police came on board

and took us off the boat in single lines.

Goodbye, sardines, hello, cattle.

Palestine didn't look like much.

It was dirty and hot,

and there were insects everywhere.

And strange-looking Arabs in robes and headgear.

And camels and Jeeps.

And the settlers were cheering us as we marched past.

And suddenly, the woman in front of me fell to her knees on the ground

and screamed, "Palestine!"

And I thought what a sentimental fool she was.

And then I felt dirt grazing my chin,

and I realised I was on the ground and my lips were touching the dirt.

And I thought the earth tasted of cherry vodka.

But that was in my mind.

And I didn't know why I was on the ground

and I didn't know why I was crying.

And the police pulled me up and marched me back into line.

They marched us to another ship.

And then they took us to another ship,

and we sailed away from Palestine.

It had been a mirage.

Five hours in the Promised Land.

A-a stopover on a cruise ship.

A-a-a quick package tour to salvation.

And now we were headed for Cyprus.

Where they had, guess what - camps!

Camps for illegal immigrants.

The Americans were on our boat, as well.

And Sonny, the next morning...

Sonny, who understood a compass,

realised that we were not sailing to Cyprus after all.

We were on the open seas, heading back to Europe.

Sonny was agitated by this.

"I mean, the Exodus had created a scandal.

The entire world was watching us," he said.

"The British had overplayed their hand.

They had a public relations disaster on their hands."

I looked at him, stupefied.

If you had just been through a war in Europe, not to mention a holocaust,

you weren't exactly sure what "public relations" meant.

Soon after that, we landed in Hamburg.

We refused to disembark.

British soldiers burst onto the boat and clubbed us.

They were getting quite good at that.

And they dragged us off the boat, and they took us to a train.

A woman screamed when she saw the train - it had barred windows.

I was hustled onto the train. It was chaos.

I didn't see Sonny, but he was with the Americans, so he was free.

Suddenly, there was a lot of steam.

The train started to move very slowly.

(TRAIN SLOWLY PUFFS) And I saw Sonny

running alongside the platform.

He was shouting. Shouting my name.

(TRAIN WHISTLE BLASTS)

I went to the door, which was still open.

"This is ridiculous," he shouted.

"Jump off the train, Rose.

Jump off and marry me!

I'll take you to America.

Then we can go to Palestine later.

Jump, Rose!

Jump!"

(TRAIN SPEEDS UP)

I-I didn't know what to do.

My heart was barely alive.

(STUTTERS)

If my body jumped, it wouldn't bring love with it.

And maybe I still had a husband.

After all, how did I really know that Youssel was dead?

Someone saw him marching in a line towards the machine guns,

but did they see a body?

On the other hand, how could he have survived?

"Jump!" he screamed.

The train was leaving the platform now.

It... It was the train to... to nowhere.

At least I think it was leaving.

You know, maybe this was a movie.

How often had I seen this scene?

The platform and the steam and the lovers.

"America!" he cried.

I leaned out of the train.

But how could I have a future?

"America! America!"

I shut down my mind.

I closed my eyes.

What did it matter?

I jumped!

He caught me.

Then he dropped me. (CHUCKLES LIGHTLY)

And then we were surrounded by soldier with guns,

who were shouting at us.

And I watched that train, the train to nowhere,

disappear into the mist.

Into what my kind would later call... the old country.

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYS)

Papa would be proud - I take medicine now.

For the breathing.

For the cholesterol.

For the kidney.

For this.

For that.

(PILLS RATTLE)

I'm doing what Papa dreamt of doing for so long - I'm dying!

Not specifically, but when you're 80, you are, in essence, on the way out.

Isn't it strange that I'm still alive?

How many times I closed my eyes and said,

"Now. Now. Take me now. I can't go on.

If there is a god, you'll take me now."

And at that moment,

I really believed in Him.

And then I open my eyes, I didn't.

But... that's God.

He's like a policeman - never there when you want him,

and he arrests you when you're innocent.

Why do I spend so much time talking about something I don't believe in?

The problem is, I uh... I can't swallow pills.

I choked on an aspirin and... almost died.

And that is not how I wanna die, right?

I wanna go quietly, in the middle of a sentence.

So... (CLEARS THROAT)

..I chew my pills.

The problem is, they taste like donkey droppings,

so I have to kill the taste.

Voila!

(CHUCKLES)

OK.

This is uh...

..peanut butter vanilla.

It's a new flavour.

I like to be au courant.

I know, I know!

I'm eating ice cream to take a pill for cholesterol.

I'll tell you something. Who cares?

So...

(CRUNCHING)

OK.

Mmm.

Mmm. It's good.

Mmm.

The first time I ate ice cream was in Atlantic City.

Ice cream and frozen custard.

There was a frozen custard stand on the boardwalk,

in front of the burlesque house.

Near the pier.

Just across from the beach where I sold chairs.

(SIGHS)

Sonny was born in Atlantic City.

Which I guess he must have told me during the...

Which I'm sure he told me on the boat.

But I usually wasn't listening to him,

and, as a result, I knew nothing about him.

Mmm.

So...

..maybe he told me during the endless days

when we argued with the soldiers and the immigration officials

and the bureaucrats.

The endless days...

..of filling in forms, when...

..frankly, all I could think of was, "What am I doing here?

Why didn't I stay on the train?"

"Who is this man?"

Finally... the Americans were very nice to us, though.

Mmm.

Sonny had an uncle...

..in some bureau, and...

..I finally received a paper which said that I existed,

and a Jewish chaplain married us in Berlin.

And then I was back on a boat.

(CRUNCHING)

With a husband who was seasick all the time.

Which he hadn't been on the Exodus!

But I nursed him.

And I asked myself, "Who is he?"

(CHUCKLES)

Sonny's parents had a few "who is he?" questions.

"Who is she?"

The boy runs away to be a pirate

and he comes back with a catatonic shtetl girl?

When...

..all they ever wanted was a nice Jewish-American daughter-in-law

called Sheila.

Or Arleen.

(CHUCKLES)

Well, one who at least spoke English.

Which is a little weird, if you ask me,

because they had never bothered to learn the language.

But I was fluent within a year.

But if his parents... spoke Yiddish,

they were not alone,

because Atlantic City was Warsaw-on-Sea.

Which was ironic,

because if ever a people were not built for bathing suits, it's ours.

The air smelled of aspirin and chicken fat.

And suntan oil.

Because the Jews who made the city their summer playground,

they were the fortunate ones

who had had the good sense to get out of Europe when the going was good.

Of course, the guilt hung in the air.

And my presence disturbed them.

(PILLS RATTLE)

I mean, they were relieved that I didn't have...

that I did haven't a... a number tattooed on my arm.

But they were not interested in the images in my brain.

They didn't wanna know.

Of course, I didn't wanna tell them.

Oh...

Once...

..I overheard a woman saying...

.."These people go on too much about the past!

I mean, nobody has it easy. This life is not easy for anyone."

She was wearing a mink coat...

..and it was July.

She was a guest at one of the art deco palaces

that pretended they were hotels.

Palaces from another age.

An age of Scott Fitzgerald, a jazz age.

Beautiful and hideous at one and the same time.

For one dollar, a boy pushed you on a rolling chair on the boardwalk.

A rolling chair was a chair that rolled.

All the terms in Atlantic City were literal.

And you passed...

..the art deco palaces and the dancing waters,

which were coloured water that sprouted in different formations,

hence "dancing",

and the steel...

..the steel pier.

Which had two movie houses,

a vaudeville house,

a dance hall and a diving horse,

which was, needless to say, a horse that dived... into the ocean.

And you passed the arcades...

..and the fortune tellers

and the stores selling saltwater taffy,

which ruined Jewish teeth for the next two generations.

Ah... So, the first night in Atlantic City,

my first night in Atlantic City,

Sonny took me on a... on a rolling chair.

And halfway down the boardwalk, we passed a store selling nuts.

And we were approached by a 6ft peanut

with a huge peanut head,

who danced over to our rolling chair and kissed me on the forehead,

and said, "Hello, little lady!"

And then I knew that I was foolish ever to have thought

that I would leave my hallucinations behind when I arrived in America.

And I wondered if I had survived the sewers of Warsaw

so that I could be groped by a giant peanut.

Why hadn't I stayed on the train

and returned to a nice, sensible displaced person camp?

(CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

Sonny's father owned several beach chair concessions,

and he gave Sonny a...

He gave one of them to Sonny,

and he gave one of them to Sonny as a start-up ladder.

That's an American expression. Although... (SIGHS)

..I couldn't imagine what beach chairs would actually lead to.

We rented our beach chairs by the hour to the sunburn crowds.

Sonny and I would schlep the chairs to a designated spot

in the blazing heat,

which often meant Sonny tripped over a chair,

both of them flying off in different directions at once.

At night, there were attempts at love-making,

but he was as clumsy in bed as he was on solid ground.

And our love-making was silent, like my parents'.

And in the morning, I would be sullen and distant and cruel.

And when I became pregnant, I panicked.

How could I have another child?

A child I would not be able to protect.

I thought of throwing myself down the stairs,

but I could never act on my baser instincts.

And so, Abner was born.

Sonny wanted me to call him Asher.

But how could I say, "Asher," every day and not remember?

So... we called him Abner.

It was close enough, and it was so American.

I... I...

It could even be the name of a cowboy.

I mean, Sonny and I still dreamed of Palestine.

Except it was no longer Palestine, now it was Israel.

A nation, at last.

And we knew we belonged there.

But I could not face another long boat trip.

But I couldn't face another long journey, not just yet.

For once in my life, I wanted to stay put,

if only for a few years.

Sometimes we would go out at night.

There were the Harlem Follies at the Jockey Club.

And the burlesque house, which was fun.

Mainly because the comedians were Jewish and told Jewish jokes.

But then, the comedians on television were all Jewish,

and Yiddish words enter the English language.

Words like "schmuck" and "schlep" and "schmatta"

and "schmooze" and "chutzpah".

We saw Yiddish magicians pulling little Jewish rabbits out of a hat.

And we heard hazzanas - female cantors -

who sang melancholy shtetl melodies.

And I remembered the lilac tree

and finally understood.

And Molly Picon came once to entertain.

She was tiny and depressingly energetic.

And she sang....

# Yidl mitn fidl... #

..as if she was still simulating shtetl life on a Warsaw screen.

We went to the Yiddish theatre and saw plays

in which demons and goblins haunted the shtetls.

And one night we saw The Dybbuk.

The play about a young girl whose body is possessed

by the soul of her dead lover.

When the curtain came down, I was trembling.

Sonny asked, "What's wrong?"

I didn't answer.

I-I could bear to look at him.

I ran onto the boardwalk, then onto the beach,

and I stared at the ocean, which was bathed in moonlight.

I could just rush into the sea

and find that spot where the horizon ended.

Sonny came, rushed up to me, he took me in his arms.

"No, there's another answer," I thought.

"No!"

"I would bring Youssel back to me.

I would make Youssel's spirit possess my body."

Now, if Youssel was really gonna possess me,

I needed to give him a push.

So... So, I decided to dye my hair red and wear one long earring,

as well as trousers,

which was not the accepted fashion for women in those days.

Some kind of prudence stopped me from gouging out one eye.

Eh!

I expected Sonny's parents would be outraged by my new appearance.

But no, they approved.

They thought I looked less Russian.

(SCOFFS) Which was a good thing!

Because, thanks to Senator McCarthy,

Russian was definitely out of fashion.

And my old, more severe look, was suspicious to them.

Th-th-the hysteria over "Reds under the beds"

was in high gear.

And actually, "communist" was just a codeword for "Jew".

There was even a congressman

who made a speech in the House of Representatives

claiming that communists had betrayed and killed Jesus Christ.

Which, as metaphors go, was none too subtle.

And as Americans were no longer very good on horses,

they committed their pogroms around committee tables

and under television lights.

I wasn't too concerned about myself.

I knew that the politicians were mesmerised

by State Department and showbusiness,

but I didn't think they were too panicked

about the beach chair industry.

Still, Sonny's parents were relieved

when I assumed my non-Russian mad woman look.

Which annoyed me, because the whole point about possession

is that everyone around you recognised it.

Youssel's persona within me was not there.

It was only skin deep.

"Right."

He needed inducement!

I found a book about kabbalah,

and in it, the perfect magic spell for summoning a dead spirit.

Now, it involved semen, which was tricky.

But finally, one night, as Sonny fumbled around inside of me,

I asked him to please pull out and cum on my stomach.

As soon as he finished, I scooped up the semen on a piece of cardboard,

I ran into the kitchen

and I mixed the semen with chopped chicken neck

and olive oil and cloves.

Sonny stood in the doorway watching.

I knew he would never forgive me.

Instead, he was smiling in a way I hadn't seen before.

My fascination with his semen was a boon to his manhood seemingly.

He then offered to assist me, smearing it on the bedroom door,

little dreaming that he was helping me to summon my first husband.

But Youssel was curiously uninterested in Sonny's semen.

Maybe if I started to behave more like Youssel

that would give him a push in my direction.

So, I started to...

..swagger a bit around the house.

And I took up painting, and uh...

And once, when Sonny returned from Abner's room,

where he'd been reading him a story,

I accused him of deserting me, and...

..his joy, Sonny's joy, was uncontained.

He thought that I had missed him.

"OK."

"OK," I thought.

Maybe... Maybe it would help if I stared noticing women?

Huh? Because I remember walking with Youssel down Grabowska Street,

which was near the Muranow Theatre,

and always filled with young actresses.

And Youssel insisted that I walk on his left

so that if I looked at him sideways, I would only see his glass eye.

Supposedly, I would be unaware

that his other eye was checking out every pretty girl who passed.

(CHUCKLES)

No, Youssel was never faithful to me.

I wouldn't admit it then,

but now that I was almost him, I knew it was so.

One night, I placed my hand on Sonny's sister-in-law's right breast.

I knew that I had gone too far

and the entire family would know that Youssel was trying to return.

But his sister-in-law was thrilled!

She asked me to meet her the next day

at the cotton candy store on the boardwalk.

The more I became like Youssel, the more people liked me.

Youssel had become the most popular woman in Atlantic City,

but still he eluded me!

He...

He wasn't inside.

So, then, Miss America arrives.

("THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC" PLAYS)

The Miss America pageant officially ended the summer season

in Atlantic City,

and it was big deal for the beach chair trade.

since the pageant began with a parade.

The beauty queen of every state rolled down the boardwalk

on an individual float,

and thank God onlookers had to sit on something.

You booked one of our chairs a month in advance,

it was that popular.

All the ladies from the hotels put on their best summer dresses

and they oohed and aahed over the pretty shiksas.

And the parade began with a little band,

and then the first girl, Miss Alabama!

Cos it was alphabetical.

And people cheered and whistled,

and were especially excited if the girl was from their home state.

And the perky little Protestant faces glided slowly by.

Abner was playing in and around the chairs.

He was three.

Dangerous age.

The age of Esther.

But... I wasn't too worried,

because I knew that both Youssel and I were looking after him.

Youssel wasn't inside of me yet,

but oh, he was close.

I could feel he was in the vicinity.

It was a blazing hot day.

Sonny decided to buy us ice-cream sodas.

So, he crossed over the boardwalk, in front of Miss Colorado,

and disappeared into the crowd.

I lay back and closed my eyes, and I began to drift.

I opened them again, and there was Miss Delaware,

and I closed them again.

And then... suddenly I heard Abbie.

"Daddy, Daddy!"

I looked across the boardwalk,

as Miss Iowa waved to me.

Sonny was lurching through the crowd on the other... side.

He was holding three cans of cream soda.

He dropped one can.

And he picked it up.

He dropped another.

"Oh, he lost his balance?"

He stepped on a woman's foot, she screamed,

he dropped the third can.

People were laughing at him.

He started to cross to us, but he lurched again,

and collided with Miss Massachusetts.

Well, rather the bottom of her float.

He was down for the count.

Miss Massachusetts didn't miss a beat.

She just kept waving and smiling, and smiling and waving, and...

Totally ignoring the funny man sprawled at the bottom of her float.

Someone in the crowd shouted, "The guy's drunk!"

And I knew that wasn't true.

Sonny never touched alcohol.

And then, in a flash, it happened.

The miracle!

Everything I'd been waiting for.

I... I felt a shudder near my heart.

And then someone was pushing their way into my body.

Oh, it was Youssel.

Youssel was here.

Youssel had taken possession of me.

Miss New Hampshire driving past,

had she seen Youssel dive inside of me?

And over there in the distance was Miss New York.

Was she gonna point and say, "Dybbuk, dybbuk"?

And the crowd was applauding.

But somehow it was... i-it was... it was not as I imagined it.

I thought that I would speak in Youssel's voice.

Uh...

I thought that I would maybe...

I-I thought that I would hear Youssel's voice,

perhaps even speak with his voice,

but certainly I would think his thoughts.

But no.

No.

He took possession with his eye.

He entered my own eyes, and they saw through his good one.

My eyes, Youssel's eye,

brought Sonny into sharp focus,

and saw that Sonny wasn't clumsy after all, Sonny wasn't drunk,

Sonny was ill.

Sonny had some disease.

Sonny was maybe gonna die.

(SNIFFLES)

I took a deep breath,

and I-I-I ran to Sonny and I helped him up.

He said, "I don't know what's wrong, sweetheart."

I said, "No, it's nothing. It's just the sun."

(BREATHES SHAKILY)

But inside of me, inside, I said, "Goodbye, Youssel."

Because I knew, now, that he had to leave, and leave forever.

And I felt his good eye release its hold on my brain.

And I felt his spirit lift up through my body

and out of my body,

and fly over Miss Oregon

and Miss Pennsylvania,

and fly still further over the steel pier

and the diving horse,

and fly further still, off into the humid New Jersey...

..air.

(GASPS)

(GASPS)

(GROANS SOFTLY)

I don't know what the good of taking pills is if they don't help you.

I think these pills are just made of sugar.

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYS)

Mm.

OK, so...

..eight years later, I'm the owner of a hotel in Miami Beach.

Well, that's America.

Go figure!

What could I do?

I had a husband who required a lot of medical attention.

Americans tend to think about illness as unhealthy.

It costs, so I had to go out and hustle.

(WATER POURS)

I took a job ordering food for the Majestic Hotel.

And soon I was running the kitchen.

And soon I was managing the place.

The guests loved me.

I understood them and their complaints,

and I was pleasant when I had to be and cruel when it was necessary.

And it was easy, because it allowed me to protect Sonny,

and Abner as well.

So I could do for them what I had not done for Esther.

Maybe that's why Youssel's eye had shown me the truth.

Maybe. Who knows?

(SIGHS) Sonny's was a rare neurological disorder.

It... It had been building slowly through the years.

When he fell at my feet on the ship,

he was not only manifesting love.

And now, it would accelerate.

Motion, speech, thought, would slowly disintegrate.

The doctors could do nothing.

Our dreams, our fantasies, about going to Israel

had to be tucked away, like his personality,

in a distant closet.

Abner grew.

We called him "Abbie" now.

And by the time he was seven,

his little, thin voice would make the evening announcement

over the Majestic's loudspeaker.

IN YOUNG VOICE: "The dining room is now open for dinner."

The guests were intrigued by me,

because of the Exodus.

That gave me cachet.

It spelled adventure.

Unlike the death camps, which were too dark and too threatening

to be even thought about.

A boat they could deal with.

I didn't tell them about anything else.

Nor did I tell Abner.

I didn't tell him about the ghetto.

Not even about Yultiska.

And I made sure that the guests never spoke directly to him in Yiddish.

I wanted Abbie to be an all-American boy.

I stopped dressing like a demented gypsy.

My suddenly-tasteful wardrobe stood out

from the clashing colours of the Majestic clientele.

And they knew - they knew I didn't quite belong.

But what finally cemented my popularity

was the one true gift that Sonny had given me.

Apart from my life.

Which was my name.

Because who could forget Rose Rose?

What they did forget was the Majestic.

Soon they were saying, "Are you going to Rose Rose's for the summer?"

That's those who still came to Atlantic City.

There were now black ghettos surrounding the hotel strip

and... since victims of prejudice often seem susceptible

to the same disease themselves,

Atlantic City just packed up and moved...

..to Florida.

The Jersey shoreline was desolate.

Mr Peanut stopped dancing.

The burlesque house closed.

And saltwater taffy became extinct.

The owner of the Majestic, Mr Feldstein,

he asked me to become his partner

in a new hotel in the booming Sunshine State.

He couldn't afford to lose Rose Rose!

And so, the Double Rose Hotel opened on Collins Avenue.

And every so often, Abbie and I would turn on the television

on our tropical veranda in Miami Beach

and watch on the news

as another abandoned palace hotel in Atlantic City was demolished.

The boardwalk was littered with rubble.

Like the streets of Dresden,

where I once saw a child with no arms.

Now, every summer a group of young Israelis came to the hotel

and gave us a presentation.

It's unfair to say that they were aglow with youth,

because... it was so much more than that.

There was a passion and belief in the future

that I had not encountered before.

Future?

Future wasn't even a concept in Yultiska.

Or Warsaw.

Or even in Atlantic City or Miami Beach.

Somehow, on some subconscious level,

we knew we were skipping over quicksand.

But the Israelis, oh, they seemed to lack subconscious.

They... They were entirely up front and present,

with no dark or hidden corners.

They showed us slides of their kibbutz.

They sang.

They danced the hora.

And collected money from our guests.

And each time, they urged us to follow them back,

to join in their great adventure.

And each time I wanted to go so badly.

I wanted to be on the edge again.

But...

..now, I was Rose Rose.

With responsibilities.

So, instead of giving...

So, instead, I gave money to plant trees in the name of my family.

I thought it was gonna be rather suitable that Mama would be a tree.

I hoped it would be a lilac tree.

Abbie made friends with the Israelis.

Particularly a young couple, Noam and Ruti.

And when he was 16, I let him spend the summer on their kibbutz.

He left with acne and returned with a clear complexion.

And I knew that he had discovered

not just olive groves and irrigation ditches,

but sex, as well.

Two summers later,

Egypt invaded Israel.

Abbie begged me to give him the airfare to Tel Aviv.

How could I refuse?

His father had only been a couple of years older

when he ran off to the Exodus.

Abbie went to Noam's kibbutz

and worked in the fields while the men were away.

It famously took Israel six days to win the war.

(INHALES SHARPLY)

It was unreal.

Miami Beach was jubilant.

We had an all-night party at the Double Rose.

We were all warriors.

There would be no screams behind walls again.

The Exodus would not be towed away again.

I cried that night

as I had never cried before.

And I wasn't sure why.

The next day, Abbie phoned me.

He wanted to stay.

I wasn't surprised.

I told Sonny that our child was living on a kibbutz,

that he had, in essence, achieved our dream for us.

Sonny's hand shook, his eyes were vacant,

the nurse fussed.

A few months later, his heart gave up.

I sat shivah, and mourned not his death, but his life.

Abbie returned for the funeral.

And promptly fell in love with one of the nurses at Sonny's hospital.

She was blonde and sweet, and her name was Kim.

Definitely not Jewish.

Abbie stayed on to court her,

and very soon Kim was as much in love with Abbie's dream as Abbie himself.

She took instruction and converted to Judaism

and changed her name to Hava.

And they were married under the chuppah at the Double Rose.

And soon, as if it hadn't happened at all, they were gone.

I was alone.

My husband was dead and my son was gone.

Sonny had been a vegetable for years, but at least he was MY vegetable.

Abbie had stopped listening to me a long time ago,

but, eh, at least it was my voice he was not listening to.

And now...

..now there was such silence.

Not even the sewers had been that silent.

Mr Feldstein tried to make conversation.

He was kind.

And, at a certain age, kindness counts.

Two years later...

..I married him.

Abbie and Hava had a family.

Rafi first, then Irit, and then Doron.

Beautiful children.

Born with the olive features of their land,

as if the earth itself had conceived them.

I went to visit.

My first time since I kissed the ground.

Wasn't like my memory.

(GASPS)

I fell in love with the land.

With the desert and the hills.

And the amazing sense of green.

Green, planted by pioneers.

Green, transforming arid earth.

And I loved, too, the feeling that everyone in the country

looked like my relative.

Even, in some odd way, the unamused faces

in the Arab villages we drove hurriedly through.

There was something in their eyes that I recognised.

A look.

A look I remembered from the sardines on the Exodus.

When I arrived at the airport,

Abbie said, "Welcome home, Mama."

And, of course, he was right, it was home.

I cried when he said it,

and I cried two weeks later, when I left for Miami Beach

and my husband and my hotel.

Which was not doing so well.

Many of our customers had died,

and others were now too old

to have anything to take a vacation from.

The neighbourhood had changed, as well.

It had suddenly become Cuban,

with loud salsa music, which was nice.

And cocaine dealers, which was not so nice.

And... so, I suggested we convert the hotel into a retirement home.

Our guests would just stay on forever

and end their days quietly by the sea.

Albeit to a Latin beat,

with the occasional sound of bullets to spice up the night air.

We redecorated, we hired nurses,

and Double Rose was in business again.

Mr Feldstein and I had our own apartment nearby.

He was an amiable companion,

and he knew to leave me alone when I had my moods.

Every summer, I returned to Israel.

Every summer, I marvelled at dazzling innovation.

But it was changing.

The milk was... slightly sour, the honey a bit tart.

There was a war on a few miles away in Lebanon,

and Jews were being killed again,

but this time Jews were killing, as well,

and we weren't really sure if it was in self-defence.

And we saw photographs of women and children

picking their way through the rubble.

And the rubble wasn't ours, it was next-door, and we were confused.

And our little boys had grown up and started a beard

and had wet dreams

and carried a gun, and marched down the road into another land.

Abbie and his friends on the kibbutz hated it!

Noam and Ruti were in despair.

They were sabras, after all, and they had virtually created this land.

But not for this!

They said, "Not for this!"

But Hava, mm!

Hava was fervently in favour of the war.

Hava - Kim - had the passion of the converted.

She knew what the Bible said about enemies.

And she became increasingly religious.

She started to keep a kosher house.

She cut off her hair and wore a wig.

Abbie was appalled.

And then confused.

And then hostile.

The kibbutzniks and the religious despised each other.

And Abbie and Hava didn't look for common ground.

They pushed each other away.

Their house was choking with tension.

One day, a theatre in Haifa brought a play to the kibbutz.

It was a play designed for a young audience

and, indeed, it was about teenagers in the Warsaw ghetto.

(CHUCKLES LIGHTLY)

Rafi, Irit and Doron wanted ME to go with them.

I had no desire to visit the ghetto, even in make-believe.

Enough already!

But I did want my grandchildren to understand our past,

so I thought, "OK, knowledge is more important than pain."

So, I went.

Now, at one point, a teenage boy leaves his home

to go underground and fight the Nazis.

And his grandmother, an old, fat lady in a babushka,

and talking with a heavy accent,

calls after him using his Yiddish name.

"Yittele!" she calls.

"Yittele!"

Well, a strange noise began to circulate around the audience.

"Yittele!" she called.

The nose grew louder.

"Yittele, Yittele!"

And suddenly, the sound was crashing about my ears like a tidal wave,

waiting to sweep me out to see.

It was... It was laughter!

The kids were laughing.

The kids from the kibbutz were laughing at... at the name.

The kids from the kibbutz were laughing at the name.

Laughing at Yittele.

Laughing at the grandmother, laughing at Yiddish.

And my grandchildren were laughing, too.

And they were looking at me, wondering why I was not laughing.

They...

I said to Abbie, "They thought it was funny!"

"So what?" he replied.

"Well, it's their culture," I said.

"No, not any longer," he replied.

"Certainly not if they're Sephardic or African."

"Mama, we don't speak Yiddish here. Didn't you notice?

We speak Hebrew.

Yiddish was unnatural, it was a-a-a mutant, a mongrel -

medieval German and a bit of Russian and Turkish and French

mixed together in a blender, with a little seasoning and spice.

Whereas Hebrew is our very source."

"It's the language of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."

"And after all those years, we have reclaimed it."

I was stunned.

I actually thought his description of Yiddish was beautiful

and explained why it was so special.

On the other hand...

..I understood his meaning.

And... from his perspective, he wasn't wrong.

He was marching into the future, wasn't he?

Oh, that word - "future"!

"Future" - every conversation about Israel has that word in it.

Still, how could I argue? Well, I tried.

"It does represent something," I said.

"An entire civilisation. A way of life.

A way of thinking that's inspired this novel and that symphony

and a theory of relativity

and a science about the subconscious,

and maybe even ideas about collective living

that have, in turn, inspired your kibbutz.

And if that is lost completely,

then i-if it is utterly wiped away,

isn't that Hitler's final victory?"

"That's just meshuga," he said.

I looked at my son.

"'Meshuga' is a Yiddish word," I said.

He laughed and walked away.

(SIGHS)

Time passed.

I stopped dyeing my hair.

The Double Rose began to lose money.

Mr Feldstein had a heart attack.

I nursed him for two years and then he passed on.

I finally sat shivah for someone who had not died before their time.

Made me feel so grown up!

Meanwhile, Miami Beach had transformed yet again,

and suddenly it was, overnight, the chic and swinging centre of America.

Collins Avenue was prime real estate,

and I sold Double Rose for a fortune.

And the new owners liked the name,

so now, Double Rose is the hottest club in town,

filled with gymnasium bodies and a drug called ecstasy.

(SIGHS) I kept my apartment.

It's good for them to see an old person, I figure.

And besides, Rafi likes to visit me here.

Rafi and his sister, Irit, left Israel some years ago.

Their parents had divorced by then.

Hava remarried.

A settler on the West Bank.

A man with a Bible, a beard and a B-59.

Irit moved to Rome.

Married a Catholic writer and has two children,

neither of whom are raised as Jews.

Rafi moved to Los Angeles. He's a film editor!

He has... (CHUCKLES)

..do I have to say it, long hair and an earring.

And, in addition,

a boyfriend.

A few years ago, I went to visit Rafi in Los Angeles,

and he showed me how he worked.

Well, once I understood about fast-forward and jump-cutting,

I realised there was nothing unusual in my hallucinations

and that movies were just catching up with our minds.

And he took me to a hill that overlooked the city,

and I reminded him

that this abnormal metropolis exists as it is

because a dozen immigrants - Jews from the old country -

made their way here 75 years ago and founded an industry.

What people called a "dream factory".

And that that, in turn, created an image of American culture.

It... It.. It printed visions on our minds.

Cossacks riding through the shtetl

became Indians attacking a wagon train.

And these images seeped into... into all existing cultures,

enriching them, and-and-and...

I could see his eyes were glazing over.

(CHUCKLES SOFTLY) He wasn't interested.

I hugged him anyway.

That's when we went to Arizona.

I wanted to see the real West.

It wasn't so real.

There were no cowboys or Indians,

no stagecoaches riding round the bend.

Just airless towns and unending desert.

And an occasional technicolour canyon.

One day, we drove for hours in emptiness,

and wherever you looked, there was nothing.

And the scale of nothing was awesome!

Finally, we reached a little souvenir shop

that stood alone in the nothing.

Rafi's car was overheating,

so he went inside for some water.

I walked around the front of the store.

The windows were covered with tired touristy watercolours of the desert.

I walked inside.

An old man stood behind the counter.

He was shouting at his son in the stockroom.

The son was middle-aged and disturbed.

Desolate, I would say.

Old man's voice was too rough.

I could hear a slight accent.

I looked at some more of the watercolours,

and they were terrible.

Rafi was arguing with the old man.

The old man refused to give Rafi any water.

I joined Rafi at the counter.

Maybe an old lady would get some water.

And I noticed the old man's hands - they were filthy

and chapped by the sun.

And then I saw his arm.

There was a faded number tattooed on it.

I felt dizzy.

I would never have expected THAT in Arizona, in the middle of nothing.

The old man was shouting at his son, as well as at Rafi,

and I wanted him to shut up.

My gaze swept up his arm to his stomach, which was gross,

and his neck, which was sagging,

and then to his face...

..which was leather.

And his eye.

His false eye that looked right through me.

And his other eye, his real eye,

which was more like a heart.

A heart that had been shattered long ago.

We looked at each other.

For a long time.

And didn't speak.

And then I turned...

..and ran out of the store.

Past the dreadful watercolours, back into nothing.

And I stared at nothing for a very long time.

And then returned to the car.

Rafi was beside me, a pail of water on his lap.

He asked me what was wrong.

I could not answer.

Then I looked out of the car window,

and coming towards us, across the prairie,

was a tumbleweed.

And it rolled towards the car,

and past...

..and out against into the desert and disappeared.

(COUGHS GENTLY)

(GASPS LIGHTLY)

Even though the doctor doesn't believe me about the breathing,

he insists it helps to sip water all the time.

And I do, I forget to sip.

Ah.

I don't remember what I was talking about.

Oh... Oh, yes. Yes, shivah.

(EXHALES SHARPLY) Abbie is angry with me for sitting shivah.

He was on the phone this morning, screaming at me from Tel Aviv.

He lives in Tel Aviv now that the kibbutz has gone kaput.

"It's not your business," he said.

"You're not one of us."

And he's right.

On the other hand...

..Hava lives on the West Bank, in a little settlement

that adjoins an ancient Palestinian village.

Fig trees and rock.

It is, of course, in the Bible, also an ancient Hebrew village.

She took Doron, her youngest, with her when she left Abbie.

I went to visit several years ago.

I wanted to see my grandson, who was still the sweetest boy.

But it was odd being on land that didn't want me.

Where I felt that ethically I didn't belong.

I remember how Noam and Ruti,

drinking too much one night on the kibbutz,

told me that the spoils of war were a curse.

I didn't want to be here.

I didn't want to be there.

And Hava did not make it any easier.

She kept saying, "Forefathers."

"Forefathers this," and, "Forefathers that,"

and uh... and then, in front of my grandchild,

she... she would praise the memory of this man, this Baruch someone,

who massacred a group of worshipers in the Hebron mosque.

I told Hava that was sinful.

She reminded me of the countless Jews

who were, themselves, massacred on this land.

"I know, I know," I said.

"And I mourn them with a depth that even you cannot understand.

But that still does not excuse this Baruch person.

We are supposed to be better than that!

We're supposed to carry a moral light into the world."

"WE?!" she screamed.

"WE?! How can you say, 'We'?

You don't deserve to call yourself a Jew!"

I thought, "Well, my dear, about the same time

my entire family were being wiped out because I was Jewish,

you, my dear, were being baptised in Kansas!"

I didn't stay long.

And I did not see Doron again.

Until last night.

When I put on the television news, and I saw his sweet handsome face,

sweaty and strained and defiant.

There had been a riot - the settlers and the villagers.

Someone attacked someone.

Someone threw a stone. Someone was knifed.

A settler fired on the villagers.

A little girl had been swept up in the crowd.

Well, maybe.

Maybe she had been throwing a stone.

She was nine.

A bullet struck her in the forehead.

And it caught her in the middle of a thought.

Her name was Nora.

Nora El-Karim.

And they interviewed the man who fired the shot.

Well, he wasn't a man.

He was a sweet-faced boy.

Doron.

My blood.

Son of Yultiska.

Son of the lilac tree.

Child of Warsaw, Doron.

He killed a little girl.

He killed Nora El-Karim.

His grandfather sailed a ship...

..to a promised land.

Doron...

..my blood.

So, today, I sit shivah for Nora El-Karim.

It is, of course, a totally empty gesture, I know that,

but I had to do something.

(SNIFFLES)

At first, I thought I would write to her parents

and tell them I was mourning their child.

But they would hate me for patronising them.

Just as I would have hated the grandmother

of the soldier who shot Esther,

had she dared to make a gesture towards me.

Esther, whom I never really mourned.

Because I was too busy staying alive!

Esther.

Whom I never sat shivah for on a proper wooden bench.

So, now I'm sitting shivah for a little girl, and it is meaningless.

A little girl who died with Palestine on her lips.

I talk to Nora in Yiddish.

"It's beseder, bubeleh," I say.

"It's all right."

"It's beseder, bubeleh. Shlof mayn kind."

Abbie is furious.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks.

"Because it's wrong.

Jews don't kill little girls."

"Everyone kills little girls," he shouts.

"It is horrible, but every nation does it."

"But you are still an occupying territory," I said.

"Yes, we are," he replies.

"And although it's not nearly as simplistic as you make it out to be,

I strongly object to it.

In fact, it tears me in half.

And I know that if we don't solve this soon,

we are, all of us, headed for disaster!

But it is our problem. MY problem, not yours."

"But Israel belongs to every Jew," I say.

"Only in theory," he replies.

"What did you do, huh?

You bought a few trees, you sent some money, you paid a few visits.

But did you taste it?

Did you taste it every day?

It is the difference between casual sex and a relationship," he says.

"It could have been yours.

You kissed the ground before any of us,

but you chose to live as an outsider.

A very comfortable one, but an outsider nonetheless.

Just as your ancestors did for centuries.

So, I'll condemn my own son if I choose to, which I do.

But here, in my own country.

I won't let the rest of the world tell my son if he is wrong or right,

and I won't let you tell me

that Jews have to be better than everyone else."

"But I... I'm not the rest of the world," I say.

"I'm part of you."

"No!

You're part of chopped liver and dybbuks," he replies.

"That's something different. That's the past.

This is the future.

Now, I know you hate that word, but it is our only future.

We have nothing else. Do you understand?

Everything else is gone."

And then suddenly, he starts to cry.

My Abbie starts to cry.

"You have to let us go, Mama.

Your shadows will choke us to death.

We can't carry you with us.

Your world is dead!"

And then he's silent.

And I can tell he's embarrassed.

And then he says...

.."You think you're sitting shivah for this girl?"

"That's not what you're sitting shivah for."

"What, then? I ask.

"You tell me," he says.

There's no more water.

What was I saying?

(SIGHS)

I should get another bottle.

I haven't the energy.

I hear laughter outside.

Night-time in Miami Beach.

Someone is always having a good time.

Probably chemically induced.

I don't belong here.

Abbie is right.

But did I belong in Yultiska?

Or Warsaw?

Or anywhere?

Maybe there is a joy in not belonging.

Restless minds, what did I say?

"A restless people produce restless minds."

Maybe God is just a question, like everything else.

I'm thirsty.

(GROANS)

(CHUCKLES LIGHTLY)

The truth is that wooden benches are uncomfortable, but...

(GROANS SOFTLY)

..I have to mourn this little girl, don't I?

(SIGHS)

It's beseder, bubeleh.

It's beseder, bubeleh. It's beseder.

Shlof mayn kind.

Shlof mayn Nora.

Mayn Esther.

Shall I sing you a song?

(SPEAKS YIDDISH)

(SPEAKS YIDDISH)

(SNIFFLES)

A movie I saw in Warsaw, on Krochmalna Street.

With Youssel.

We had just been to a cafe.

I think there was some kind of fight over poetry.

Ha!

Stupid!

No.

Maybe somebody owed someone money

or had slept with someone's friend.

I... I don't remember, but...

Anyhow, in the movie, Molly Picon was making a fool of herself.

It took place in a shtetl,

but it was a shtetl made of cardboard.

It was a set.

Maybe it was Yultiska.

And Youssel put his hand under my blouse while she sang.

# Yidl mitn fidl

# Arye mitn bas

# Yidl, shmidl

# Yidl, sh... #

And his hand pinched my breast.

(INHALES DEEPLY)

(MOANS SOFTLY)

(GULPS)

What was I saying?

# Yidl, shmidl

# Yidl... #

I think that song is a silly thing to remember.

(CHUCKLES SOFTLY)

On the other hand...

(GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYS)

AccessibleCustomerService@sky.uk