Chapter FIVE

Cape Town, South Africa, January 1978      

I first saw the tattoo the morning of Hylton’s bris, the day after our reconciliation.

While I’m laying out platters of sandwiches on the dining room table for the small celebration that afternoon, Rifka sets about washing the breakfast plates. She unhinges the gold clasp on her watch, slides it off her wrist, and, with measured deliberation, lays it on the countertop next to the sink, a ritual I’ll become familiar with over the years.

Then I see it. KL.

Two letters tattooed on the top of her wrist, the pressure marks from the watch face still impressed over the inked insult. I feel the creep of skin prickle across the back of my neck, my shocked gaze lingering on the tattoo while she dries a plate without looking up. There’s something olde-worlde in how she wipes it, nestling it in the bent crook of her elbow, her fingers hooked over the rim, the way her mother might have done.

“We must pray Hylton will never know war,” she says softly, as though to herself.

A chill travels up my spine, and for an instant, time is suspended before I excuse myself and leave the kitchen. I go to our bedroom, where Zak does his daily dictation, updating patient charts.

I shut the door behind me.

“You didn’t tell me your mom was in a concentration camp,” I blurt, my mind reeling.

He stops dictating and looks up. “I’m sure I did.”

I shake my head.  “No, Zak, you didn’t.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because knowing would have made a difference.”

“A difference to what?”

I sit on the edge of the bed, gathering my thoughts.

“To me, Zak, that’s what. If I’d known she was a survivor when we were dating, I would have handled the whole thing differently. It explains so much about her behavior. I’ve been around survivors my whole life. They’re damaged people, Zak. I learned from my parents’ stories how it affected them.” Fleeing Germany in the 1930s with the abrupt dislocation profoundly affected my mother, who suffered a lifetime of depression. “I wish you’d told me.” 

“I’m sorry, I thought I did.” He swivels his chair away from the desk and faces me. “Look. The last two years with her have been crazy. What can I say? Just so you know, she’s always been difficult – it got worse after my dad died – so it wasn’t about you. I don’t want you blaming yourself.”

“But knowing she was in a concentration camp would have helped.”

“In what way?”

I throw up my arms. “In what way? It would have helped me, Zak. I would have understood that it wasn’t just about me. There were obviously other reasons why she behaved towards me like that.”

He gets up, sits beside me on the bed, and takes my hand. “I don’t know why she was like that, Vivy. She’s always been overprotective. She’s just a difficult person. We all learned to live with it.”

My mind’s spinning. There’s so much I want to know. Need to know.

“Which camp was she in?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?” I stutter. 

“I don’t know because we never talked about it. It was off-limits.”

“Nothing?  Your whole life, you never asked her?”

“No. I just knew she’d been in a camp because of the tattoo and from a few things she told us,” he says guardedly. “Look, you’re seeing it for the first time. We saw it every day. The tattoo was just there, a fact of our lives. What do you want me to say?”

“But weren’t you in the least bit curious about how she got it?” I press.

“Of course I was,” he says, growing defensive, “but I knew ... I could sense that I couldn’t talk to her about it. That’s how a lot of survivors are, Vivy. They don’t talk about it.”

There’s a knock at the bedroom door. “Hallo-o,” Rifka says from the other side. “Veevyen, please, you should come to the kitchen. Come help me finish. We don’t have too much time.”

Zak and I exchange looks. “You better go,” he says. “Let’s talk about this later.”

I walk back to the kitchen. She’s putting away the teacups and breakfast plates.

“Here, let me help you,” I say.

“No tenks. I have my job; you have yours. Somebody brought more food. Your friend.” She points to a plastic dish piled with chopped herring a neighbor had dropped off. “You should put it on a nice plate.”

Regret surges through me as I observe her from the kitchen door, stacking the breakfast plates carefully so as not to chip them. If only I’d known, I’d have been more forgiving.

Deep in thought, I prepare the herring platter and weigh whether I should ask her about the tattoo. But reason tells me now’s not the time. The baby cries, and I stop what I’m doing and go to the nursery. The pacifier had fallen out of his mouth. When I return, Rifka is wiping down the countertops.

She looks up. “The baby is okay?” 

I nod yes when it hits me—

Pinned on the wall above my desk is a quote by Eli Wiesel I’d scribbled on a scrap of paper when I was toying with interviewing Holocaust survivors in our little town: “Whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness.” I intended to publish their testimonies in a book whose title would bear Wiesel’s quote. It had been years since I'd promised myself I would write it. But I never did. The cosmos had other plans …

The moment my eyes fell on the tattoo, I knew. I knew in my bones when we stood side by side at the kitchen sink, I was going to be a witness.

It became an obsession, a fathomless horror and fascination that would consume me over the next thirty years.