Will just trying be enough?
Ziggy pulls up the sleeve of his jacket to reveal bare skin. ‘As you can see, Livi, I don’t have a number on my arm.’ Ziggy hangs his head.
‘As you know, Ziggy, I don’t care. I don’t care if you lied, cheated and stole to stay alive – no one can judge us for what we went through. I just want us to be close enough to share our stories, whenever we want. And I’m not a saint or an angel – we all survived by doing whatever we had to do.’
Now is the moment, Livi sees, that she has to tell him what she wants, and either he will agree or she will never see him again.
‘I’ll marry you on one condition, Ziggy Ravek,’ Livi tells him. ‘That we talk about what happened to us whenever the mood takes us, that we tell our children and grandchildren what happened, that we never stop talking about it. We can’t hide this stuff or pretend it’s in the past and try to forget about it.’ She pauses. ‘Tell me, have you even forgotten one thing about the camps?’
Ziggy shakes his head. ‘I remember every second of every day,’ he says.
‘That’s a lot of memory, isn’t it? Unless we want to spend the rest of our lives trying to shut the door on something that nearly destroyed us, we’d better get used to the fact that the camps are as much a part of our lives as each other.’
‘You said you’ll marry me.’ Ziggy is grinning, reaching into his pocket for a small box. He flips it open and takes out a ring which he slips onto Livi’s finger.
She holds up her hand to admire the tiny green stone. ‘It’s the same colour as the woods in spring in Vranov,’ she exclaims.
CHAPTER 31
Rehovot
1952
L
ivi wanders through the rose gardens of the Weizmann household, her arms full of blooms with which to make new flower arrangements. She places them on a garden bench and continues her journey amongst the bushes, alert for the tiny buds which will return an abundant crop of roses the following year. The gardeners have turned the soil earlier that morning and the rich earth is dark and so inviting that Livi bends to pick up handfuls of it, which she lets sift through her fingers.
‘You are my land now,’ she whispers to the earth. ‘My home. Thank you for taking us in.’ Livi does not hear the president approach with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion; when she turns back round, the men are sitting on the bench where she placed the roses, watching her intently.
‘Ah hem,’ President Weizmann says.
Livi is startled, the soil still falling from her hands. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I—’
‘Livi, what ever are you sorry about?’ says the president, laughing. ‘You are right, this is your land.’ He turns to the prime minister. ‘David, maybe you would agree it’s more Livi’s land than ours.’
Ben-Gurion nods, with a sad smile.
‘You have lost so much, Livi, suffered more than any of us can imagine; if anyone has earned the right to be here it is you and your sisters,’ continues the president.
Livi rubs her hands on her apron, stepping off the soil onto manicured lawn. Briskly, she walks over to the bench and gathers the flowers.
‘The president’s right you know, Livi. This is your home now, and it is our honour to watch you claim it.’ Ben-Gurion stands and gives Livi a short bow.
‘Thank you, Mr Prime Minister. I will leave you both as I’m sure you have important matters to discuss.’ Livi is blushing, keen to be on her way.
‘Have we, David? Do you have anything important for us to discuss?’ President Weizmann asks, playfully.
‘Oh, I’m sure we can think of something,’ Ben-Gurion replies, as Livi hurries away.
*
Livi no longer skips to work and she hasn’t for a while: the president is very sick and Livi’s worst fears are realised when, in November, she arrives in the kitchens to be told that he died in the night.
For the rest of the day, Livi watches hundreds of men, women and children gather outside the gates to weep for the man who had dedicated his life to giving them their promised land.
Livi thinks about promises as her own tears fall. Vows and pacts and bonds and pledges, they all amount to the same thing, really: a declaration to fulfil a dream. Israel has already given her more than she dared to hope for. Her sisters have looked after her, as they promised their father they would, and she knows she has looked after them. Her fingers close around the small knife; it’s always on her person, whether it’s in her bag or in a pocket. She remembers how Cibi used it to feed her slices of onion – such a small thing, but as much a part of their pact as Mumma’s candlesticks. Hell had escaped its moorings and risen to earth in the shape of Auschwitz and Birkenau and all the other camps, and yet, and yet, she had found the knife, and the sisters had found Magda, and Magda had kept them alive on a march to their deaths. Even in hell, they found enough hope to help them fulfil a promise.