LITMIR.BIZ

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arsenal also included the Scherenschleifer—as he told me in German—the knife sharpener, who appeared periodically to sharpen the knives and scissors of the villagers. I remember that this same apparition, the quintessential outsider, wearing ragged clothes and a broad-brimmed hat, descended on my village as well.

      The scarecrow of village life, par excellence, for both of us was the chimney sweep, with his black suit and small, hooked shovel slung over his shoulder. The broom and metal ball at the end of a thick, rolled-up wire cord became the emblem of this mysterious figure who would move in and out of houses to remove the soot, a service for which he was paid. I was convinced that my grandparents gave money to this dark specter to get him to stop damaging our chimney and go away.

      But not all fears were induced by the outside world. Many came from within. When he lay in bed at night, Bernie was terrified of a nearby window that appeared brighter than the walls of the room. He thought that a corpse would enter through this dimly luminous square and seize him. I, in turn, felt the ominous presence of thieves, cutthroats, and night owls in the dense forest right next to the house of my favorite aunt in the Odenwald. During overnight stays, I dared not breathe too loudly for fear of attracting their attention.

      The nucleus of Bernie's family—father, mother, and two brothers—was part of a large, extended family. Bernie's mother was one of twelve siblings, and his father had two brothers with sizable families of their own living in Tab. There was a paternal spinster aunt, who, in contrast to his maternal spinster aunt— the strict Aunt Libby of Kiskunhalas—was a gentle woman. Uncle Willy had a limp. He also had a daughter with artistic talent who helped Bernie with an assignment in his drawing class. Unlike his brother, Alexander, Bernie couldn't draw, so this cousin sketched a steam engine for him, and Bernie received a high mark for her efforts.

      Uncle Joe, the troubled member of the family, had several children. His house was in constant disarray, and he frequently had to be bailed out financially. Bernie remembers that a family council was once convened to discuss the miserable state of affairs in Uncle Joes household. Nevertheless, one of Bernie's first adventures into the world of marketing involved one of Uncle Joe's sons, Jeno. Bernie was hired by this older cousin to serve as a distributor for his tiny candy business. Angel Tralala was unceremoniously fired from his job, however, when he ate the candy he was supposed to sell, or “consumed the inventory,” as he puts it today.

      Despite his tightly scheduled days and the inescapable role assigned to him in the religious rituals of the Orthodox family, Bernie was keenly aware of the Hungarian world around him. Most of the non-Jewish villagers were poor sharecroppers who survived on a subsistence diet of homegrown food. Whatever cash they earned, these men spent on alcohol. On Sunday afternoons, Bernie recalls, their wives' and children's cries could be heard as they were beaten by the drunken, angry patriarchs. The black eyes and welts on women and children revealed the violence typical of these poor village men. In the street and stables, the animals —cows, horses, goats —became victims of physical abuse as well. And like any other village in Europe, Tab had its town drunk—Pista Krocsek. Unlike the fathers and husbands who were drunk only on Sundays, Pista Krocsek walked around in tatters in a continual daze. He became the inspiration for Bernie's first poem (which rhymes in his native Hungarian):

      Pista Krocsek walks on the street,

      Under his arm, he carries a big ax,

      And what does he do with that ax?

       He chops up little kids.

      Tab also had some wealthy inhabitants. From the vantage point of his front porch, Bernie admired these “beautiful people” in white outfits who carried tennis rackets under their arms as they made their way to the local court. He yearned to be one of them, to join their relaxed ways of leisure and plenty. But there was a figure the eight-year-old Bernie admired even more than these tennis players —the second lieutenant of a Hungarian military detachment housed near Bernie's home. A well-groomed officer, in his tailored uniform he represented “the absolute epitome of grandeur,” as Bernie told me. It was the first time uniforms played a role in his life.

      Jews who converted to Christianity were also among the upper stratum of village society, but interactions between the rest of the Jews and the Christian community surrounding them were generally hostile. Such antagonism had a history in Hungary that had affected Bernie's family long before his birth. His mother used to break down in tears when she told about the fate of a brother who was killed after World War I. Following the communist Bela Kuhn regime, counterrevolutionary “whites” took over and blamed the loss of World War I and the ensuing “Red Terror” on the Jews. During their “white reign of terror” they wanted to settle scores, and Bertha Schwartz's brother was on their list. They broke into his house and arrested him. When he asked, “Why am I arrested? What am I accused of?” they replied, “You're a Jew, and that's enough.” He was taken away and executed.

      Although he was outgoing and communicative, Bernie had no Christian friends in Tab. For one thing, the strict Orthodox family rituals that structured his everyday life prevented friendships from developing. Even more important, the instilled hostility of the non-Jewish children created a barrier to friendly encounters. Gentile children often bullied and even threw rocks at Bernie and Alexander, targeted because of their Orthodox side locks, especially when they walked unaccompanied through the village. Bernie still remembers one particular tormentor and his frequent daydreams about beating him up. This bully grew up to volunteer for the Hungarian army, and Bernie recalls being pleased at the news that he had been killed in battle.

      On March 15, 1944, the Hungarian National Holiday, a group of Jewish boys from his school who were carrying a Hungarian flag joined the parade through Tab. The other villagers taunted them as impostors with no right to participate and said that they were defiling the flag. They jeered and chased them away from the celebration. Bernie remembers it was usual for the hostile encounters with non-Jewish kids to deteriorate into fistfights and to end with the flight of the Jewish kids, who had not been raised to resort to violent actions or to fight back.

      But the Jewish community had its own defense against such hostility. They would sing Yiddish songs for each other that were unintelligible to the Hungarian-speaking villagers. When I asked Bernie what kind of songs they were and whether he remembered any of them, he asked me to wait while he excused himself for a few minutes. When he reemerged from the downstairs of his home, he carried a tape recorded off a scratchy old record that contained some of these Yiddish songs. When he played one of them for me, I could catch no more than a few words at first. Bernie also had difficulty understanding the text of this melodious, seemingly plaintive song, sung in a minor key. Only after he replayed it did I realize that the message of the song was anything but plaintive. It told in a subtle, almost insinuating way about Christians who behaved violently and got drunk in taverns, in contrast to the Jews, who were pious and hardworking and attended synagogue regularly. We had a good laugh over this subversive piece of musical resistance that had been languishing for years in a bottom drawer. The only other contacts between Jews and Christians took place between poor Christian villagers and the Jewish households who employed them as servants. In Bernie's home, these Christian servants had the task, among other things, of switching the electricity on and off during the Sabbath so that the Rosners could live up to the Orthodox tradition of not working on the Holy Day.

      All villagers, rich and poor, shared an everyday communal life that changed only with the seasons. In springtime the various fruit crops were harvested—cherries first, plums later, followed by apples and pears. Walnuts developed in their soft green outer shells until ripe for picking and peeling toward the end of summer. The threshing season started in August, first with the wheat and afterward, the rye. Sharecroppers would bring their loaded wagons to the threshing machine that ground on all day and into the night, separating the kernels from the chaff. Sacks were attached to one end of the machine, and by moving a lever, they were filled with the ripe grain. According to a certain rhythm and accompanied by an incredible racket, the tightly packed straw would emerge in neat bundles at the other end of the big machine.

      During midsummer, a fair was held in Tab. Large tents were erected for this rural spectacle. Animals, crops, peasants, and merchants all shared this special time that obscured the general poverty. Bernie was forbidden to go to the fair but found the opportunity

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