Sophie's Choice - William Styron [51]
“These long years after, in 1945, when the war was over and I was in this center for displaced persons in Sweden, I would think back to that time when my father and Kazik were murdered and think of all the tears I cried, and wonder why after all that had happened to me I couldn’t cry no longer. And this was true, Stingo, I had no more emotions. I was beyond feeling, like there was no more tears in me to pour on the earth. At this place in Sweden, I became friends with a Jewish woman from Amsterdam who was very kind to me, especially after I tried to kill myself. I suppose I didn’t try very hard, cut my wrist with a piece of glass, and it didn’t bleed much, but this older Jewish woman become very friendly to me and that summer we talked a lot together. She had been at the concentration camp where I was, and lost two sisters. I don’t understood how she survived, there were so many Jews murdered there, you know, millions and millions of Jews, but somehow she survived as I did, just a very few of us. She spoke very good English, besides German, and that is how I begun to learn English, since I knew I would probably come to America.
“She was very religious, this woman, and always go to pray at the synagogue they had there. She told me that she still very much believed in God and once she asked me if I did not believe in Him too—the Christian God—just as she believed in her God, the God of Abraham. She said that what happened to her made more strong her belief of Him, even though she knew Jews who felt now God was gone from the world. And I said to her yes, I once believed in Christ and His Holy Mother too, but now after these years I was like those Jews who think God was gone forever. I said that I knew that Christ had turned His face away from me and I could no longer pray to Him as I did once in Cracow. I couldn’t any longer pray to Him or could I any more cry. And when she asked how I know that Christ have turned His face away from me, I said I just knew, I just knew that only a God, only a Jesus who had no pity and who no longer care for me could permit the people I loved to be killed and let me live with such guilt. It was terrible enough they died like they done, but this guilt was more than I could bear. On peut souffrir, but you can suffer only so much...
“You can perhaps think it is a little thing, Stingo, but it is to permit someone to die without a farewell, an adieu, a single word of comfort or understanding that is so terrible to bear. I wrote to my father and Kazik in Sachsenhausen many letters but they always came back marked ‘Unknown.’ I only wanted to tell them how very much I loved them, especially Kazik, not because I loved him any more than Papa but because our very last time together we had a big fight and that was terrible. We almost never had fights, but we were married above three years and I suppose it was natural to quarrel sometime. Anyway, the night before this terrible day we had a big fight, I don’t longer remember what it was even about, really, and I told him ‘Spadaj!’—which in Polish is like saying ‘Drop dead’—and he rushed away and that night we didn’t sleep in the same room. And I never seen him even once after that. So that is what I found it so difficult to bear, that we don