Section B

Experiences in Exile

We are in Montreal, in an echoing, dark train station, and we are squeezed together on a bench waiting for someone to give us some guidance. Eventually, a man speaking broken Polish approaches us, takes us to the ticket window, and then helps us board our train. And so begins yet another segment of this longest journey — all the longer because we don't exactly know when it will end, when we'll reach our destination. We only know that Vancouver is very far away.

The people on the train look at us indirectly, and avoid sitting nearby. This may be because we've brought suitcases full of dried cake, canned sardines, and sausages, which would keep during the long journey. We don't know about dining cars, and when we discover that this train has such a thing, we can hardly afford to go there once a day on the few dollars that my father has brought with him. Two dollars could buy a bicycle, or several pairs of shoes in Poland. It seems like a tremendous sum to pay for four bowls of soup.

The train cuts through infinite territory, most of it flat and boring, and it seems to me that the ceaseless rhythm of the wheels is like scissors cutting a three-thousand-mile rip through my life. From now on, my life will be divided into two parts, with the line drawn by that train.

After a while, I shrink into a silent indifference, and I don't want to look at the landscape anymore; these are not the friendly fields, the farmyards of Polish countryside; this is vast, tedious, and formless. By the time we reach the Rockies, my parents try to make me look at the spectacular landscapes we're passing by. But I don't want to. These peaks and valleys, these mountain streams and enormous rocks hurt my eyes; they hurt my soul. They're too big, too forbidding, and I can't imagine feeling that I'm part of them, and that I'm in them. I retreat into sleep; I sleep through the day and the night, and my parents can't shake me out of it. My sister, perhaps recoiling even more deeply from all this strangeness, is ill with a fever and can hardly raise her head.

On the second day, we briefly meet a passenger who speaks Yiddish. My father enters into a dynamic conversation with him and learns some entertaining tales. For example, there's the story of a Polish Jew who came to Canada and became prosperous (he's now a millionaire!) by producing Polish pickles. Pickles! If one can make a fortune on that, well — it shouldn't be hard to achieve prosperity in this country. My father is excited by this story, but I retreat into an even more determined silence. "Millionaire" is one of those words from a fairy tale that has no meaning to me whatsoever — like the words "emigration" and "Canada." In spite of my parents' objections, I go back to sleep, and I miss some of the most magnificent scenery on the North American continent.

By the time we've reached Vancouver, there are very few people left on the train. My mother has dressed my sister and me in our best clothes — identical navy blue dresses with sailor collars and gray coats. My parents' faces reflect anticipation and anxiety. "Get off the train on the right foot," my mother tells us. "For luck in the new life."

I look out of the train window with a heavy heart. Where have I been brought? As the train approaches the station, it's a rainy day, and the platform is nearly empty. Everything is the color of gray. From out of this grayness, two figures approach us — an unremarkable middle-aged man and woman — and after making sure that we are the right people, the arrivals from the other side of the world, they embrace us; but I don't feel much warmth in their half-embarrassed embrace. "You should kneel down and kiss the ground," the man tells my parents. "You're lucky to be here." My parents' faces fill with a kind of simple hope. Perhaps everything will be well after all.

Then we get into an enormous car — yes, this is North America — and drive into the city that is to be our home.