The Teacher by Michal Ben-Naftali

Author:Michal Ben-Naftali
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Letter
Published: 2019-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

21

It was an odd prison, in which children and adults of all ages crammed into three-story bunks, the innocence of its inmates its widest common denominator, a prison that was run and supervised by criminals, an upside-down world that could have been experienced as a crazy game had it not become an absurd and taxing reality. Not because they had to do anything, but precisely because they had to do nothing, had to shrink their existence to nothingness, to diminish their existence into a battle over the perseverance of existence, a battle sustained by the memory of the promise that all this was temporary, that they would be released at some point. Confronted with the merciless possibility that had barreled down on them like a monster since they embarked on their journey that they would never have more time, that time might come to a complete and utter end, this sudden excess of time was a curious surprise. And yet, for those among them who had lost hope, time had lost its meaning. It froze as though deprived of its inherent continuity and rid itself of any expectations. It could not be used. It no longer served as a steady anchor that allows one to deviate from it back and forth in order to understand what is happening by way of comparison or imagination.

Before the car doors were opened and they disembarked from the train at what was revealed to be their final destination, she had not been able to take an interest in the names of the stations they had passed, not until the rumor of the assumed name sent the passengers into a frenzied panic. But now she wanted to know, as if by knowing the name she could decipher something about their destiny. They walked for a very long time. Some of the heavy equipment was loaded onto the truck that carried the elderly, the sick, and the children, but there seemed to be a shortage of trucks. She heard people bitterly complaining that the leaders were exploiting them, the same leadership that had assembled already at the beginning of the journey, by the Austrian border, according to the relative size of the Zionist parties and representatives of other groups, in an attempt to create a semblance of control amid the chaos. She had lost track of time and couldn’t gauge how many kilometers they had traveled with their exhausted bodies, shriveled from the journey and the crippling hunger. She did her best to endure, lowering her gaze under the silk headscarf. Her baldness made her feel lighter and more exposed to the wind, and she was suddenly gripped by the childish desire for a caressing hand on her head, which she immediately fended off out of fear that she couldn’t bear even her own touch. She struggled to aim her gaze higher, off the ground and away from the legs that marched on it, wearing a frozen expression that maintained the automatic motion and pace, which

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