The Girl Who Counted Numbers: A Novel (New Jewish Fiction) by Bernstein Roslyn

Author:Bernstein, Roslyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amsterdam Publishers
Published: 2022-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

6

To get into the morning session at Beit Ha’am, Susan had to arrive early, before 8 a.m., in order to be processed by security. She handed the guard her ID and they took her picture and searched her for weapons. They emptied Susan’s handbag and opened her lipstick case and compact, too. They took all of the cards out of her wallet. After that, they escorted her into a holding pen until it was time to let the spectators enter the courtroom. There was to be no talking and no note-taking and cameras were strictly forbidden.

There were ten Moroccans from her class, looking scared and overwhelmed. There were two survivors looking gray and full of despair. There was a student from Hebrew University who was writing her dissertation on the Holocaust. Susan recognized a bus driver on the Number 6 line and the man at the stamp window in the Central Post Office. The reporters were in a separate holding area, behind a glass divider. Hannah Arendt sat in the front row, a notebook in hand.

Esther wore a black dress and black stockings for the occasion, as if she was in mourning. She avoided looking at Ezra although she greeted Susan. “We have seats just behind the reporters’ section,” she said, a clear sign that her friend, who’d made the arrangements, had clout.

A bell rang and they were shown into the courtroom. The guard ordered them to walk slowly, one behind the other. “No talking,” he said. “Absolutely no talking.” The famous glass booth was empty. Eichmann had yet to arrive. Two workers were cleaning the glass door and a third man was testing the microphone in the booth. In front of each seat there was a pair of headphones for translation. Susan turned the dial on hers to English. Ezra and the Moroccans turned theirs to French. The man on Susan’s left set his headphones to German.

At 9 a.m., a door opened and the judges entered. Everyone was asked to stand. Five minutes later, two guards escorted Eichmann into his glass cage. A man behind Susan screamed out, “Haman!”

Every Jewish child knew the story of Purim. How Mordechai, the Jew, saved the Jews of Shushan from wicked Haman’s plan to exterminate all of the Jews in the kingdom. Dressed in a blue and purple gown with a gold crown on her head, Susan had once played Queen Esther, Mordechai’s cousin, in a Hebrew school production. The audience clapped loudly and shook their noisy groggers when Haman was hung on the cardboard gallows that they’d taped together, gallows that were originally intended for Mordechai, the Jew.

Susan was thinking about Eichmann’s fate. Of course he would be judged guilty, but how would they kill him? If they gassed him, the way he’d gassed millions of Jews, where would they bury him? There would always be some fanatic who wanted to dig up the grave, a loyal follower who wanted to lay fresh roses on his stone.

She could see the headlines: Brawl erupts at Eichmann grave; two men injured, three arrested.

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