My Father's Number

My Father’s Number

“Somewhere in the world,” my father explains to me, “somewhere, there is or was another man, from another camp - a hell-hole like Auschwitz, that maybe they tattooed with this exact same number.” He shakes his head in an effort to repel tears welling in his eyes. “There could be no worse.” My father whispers. “Who knows how many of my number there could have been, how many they murdered? God only knows?”

He says the word “they” with curled lips that reveal uneven teeth. For an instant, he’s a growling dog as a bit of spittle forms in the corners of his mouth. I’ve heard these questions so often that I know exactly which words and gestures belong together, like salt and pepper. But at that moment it doesn’t really matter. Each time, the questions offer up a brand new mystery that begs resolution.

My father’s numbers are tattooed on his arm, not written in pen like answers on a math cheater’s arm. My father didn’t cheat at math but cheated death instead. And even though he passed all the tests, his numbers provide not one single correct answer. Visible through a black hair forest that grows there, they confirm membership to a unique club. It's one whose formation still haunts him, whose production of evil he survived. YNow, years later, he still struggles to comprehend it.

Occasionally, the black hairs succeed at their vital mission - to distract my father from his past while obscuring his truth from strangers. Mostly, they fail miserably or maybe it’s my knowledge about my father’s numbers, stories they tell and destruction they represent, that render the camouflage useless. I dwell on too many stories alive in those numbers. Some of them I’ve heard in such great detail that,during sleep, they play themselves back to me like movies in slow motion. They whisper the fates of 91,145 faceless men who stood in long lines in front of my father, each marked with a unique number. My father’s number is 91,146. The nine and six have faded just slightly over the years, but number four escapes the dark hair invasion. Four is bold and bright - as resiliently defiant as the man whose arm it dominates.

Our neighborhood is populated predominantly with club members - fathers with numbers tattooed on their arms, young men not yet fathers. Some are so young they behave more like the scared, orphaned teenagers they really are, not at all like the grown men they’re supposed to be. The neighborhood exudes foreignness. There are too many languages spoken too loudly and intense aromas that disclose “old country” origins. The assimilated Montreal Jews avoid our part of the city, calling as “Greeners, ” raw, unrefined, and fresh off the boats. Our lives happen in a little city inside a big city as mysterious to us as the countries our parents have come from.

Rarely is he sorry for himself but when his sorrow surfaces, he steps back. His bitterness transforms to the edge of a cliff that threatens to pull him over. “So, can you believe it – from my village in Poland, some families they went to Cuba? Some through parts in South America you wouldn’t in your mind ever imagine.” He’s quiet for a few seconds, lips pursed as though weighing disasters. “The strange fevers in South America, China, Africa even,” he continues, “killed so many. Then there were bandits who robbed and killed so many, too! So if the Nazis didn’t get them the “banditen” – the bandits, did. Maybe in the end it’s really all beshert?” He likes the Yiddish word “beshert,” –destined, when he talks about the past. No one really cares exactly where our neighbors have come from or why they live in our Montreal neighborhood. The only feature that attracts attention is Jewish immigrants who have no tattoos.

Memories are freshest during Jewish holidays. My father knows that unnumbered men don’t comprehend how haunting a fast can be for someone like him. Many of the numbered men don’t fast at all but my father does. “I fast to remember everything the world must never forget.” He won’t let me fast despite my efforts to convince him I’m old enough because to me and to other children of the numbered, fasting signifies adulthood - something in which grown-ups engage.

“I’ve fasted enough in my lifetime for everyone in this family,” he tells me softly, “enough for all the Jews they left alive in this world. No! Fasting is not for my children!” He’s resigned to his past yet firm about declarations for the future. Unlike some of my friends’ fathers, he tries to hide his bitterness when discussing unmarked men. During the holidays he fails. At the kitchen table he nods his head back and forth in a rhythmic “no” gazing up at an imaginary sky. “How can they know the evils that Yom Kippur brings back to our minds?” He lowers his eyes to stare at the dingy Formica table top. He lowers his voice as well. “Ach, they can’t imagine, how could anyone? Who, I ask you, could believe such things happened -what I saw, that such things people could do?”

Like all adults my parents socialize with, mine have been “to the camps,” places discussed at dinner parties or during family gatherings. Always they’re mentioned in muted voices evocative of a peculiar sense of shame. Occasionally, at a wedding or Bar Mitzvah, my parents encounter a camp survivor whom they knew before Canada. Maybe it’s an acquaintance from the “old country” or from the D.P. camp – displaced persons’ camp, in Germany where they lived after the liberation. The men give each other nods. They glance quickly, surreptitiously, at one another’s arms. The wives don’t notice anymore.

My father tells me a story about the numbers on his right arm. He enjoys telling me that they’re his telephone number. “You see, if I ever forget it, well here it is - easy it is to read, no?” His semi-smile is sorrow-laden, an expression more like hope than belief. I’m convinced my father is a genius for only a truly brilliant man could have thought of something so original. He thinks he’s protecting me from knowledge of worldly evils, a wishful assumption.

By the time I'm five, my mastery of numbers is extraordinary. I'm able to count interminably for anyone patient enough or willing to listen. Our lives are so full of numbers. There’s our home address, our telephone number, and my parents’ friends’ telephone numbers in case I should ever need them. “Just in case, because you never know.” That’s what my father tells me, again and again. “You just never know.” He shakes his head, repeating the mantra in a whisper. I’ve memorized my father’s work number, also his best friend’s telephone number and address. I’ve memorized the inked numbers on my father’s arm as well.

On weekday mornings, we walk to school together before he makes his way to work at the clothing factory. It’s his favorite time to quiz me about all our numbers. My father is reassured to know I’ve committed each and every one to memory. I’m distracted by colored maple leaves carpeting fall sidewalks. His insistence redirects my thoughts back to numbers and my eyes toward his jacket covered arm. The number’s significance is much clearer to me. It’s like my first look through a microscope - seeing another world utterly invisible to the eye.

“Again, what’s your telephone number?” My father asks. He holds my hand as we walk. Stepping over puddles, I recite our telephone number while visualizing his arm. But I verbalize different numbers. Our telephone number matches nothing inked on his arm and that recognition triggers goose bumps on my skin. There’s an edge of anger I feel that escapes explanation but resembles betrayal by deception. My father worries endlessly that I won’t know what to do should I ever get lost. He has misgivings about the strategy our teachers outline for us. “Find a policeman,” they tell us. “the friendly man in the uniform. He’ll help you get home.” My father teaches us a different lesson. “You must know your numbers. Always, always know your numbers because they are more important than anything. They can mean your life.”

“So, tell me your address numbers, you know those, right?” my father asks. He’s pleased by my mastery and conveys pleasure with little squeezes to my hand. “Now here’s a bonus question; what about the factory daddy works in?” I guess at the name. “Rothstein’s Garments?” I venture. My answer evokes his uninhibited kisses and hugs. It’s affection that floats and shimmers before my eyes, broadcasting his indescribable relief. These recitations have mysterious powers over him, relaxing muscle tissue, slowing his heart rate, and granting my father permission to exhale.

“Very good, very good!” He smiles. “You can’t imagine what could happen to you if you forget your number. Ah, someday I'll tell you what I saw, what they did to those who forgot. Someday.” He shakes his head and stops talking, hust short of describing consequences of a failed numbers test. Someday is far away. It resides in the same distant place his past life dwells. Meyer tells everyone that his tattoo is his telephone number. Sometimes he pretends to believe it himself. “Well, of course it’s my phone number! How else can I remember it with all the other things I need to keep inside my head?” The more naïve protest his eccentric explanation. “Oh Meyer, tell us what that number really is!” They laugh. Outside of our little community, among French factory workers and English businessmen, my father’s number attracts some attention but mostly curiosity - always curiosity. In the “rest of the city” my father doesn’t roll his sleeves up but once in a while he forgets. At those times he invokes the telephone number story, intriguing the inquisitive. But at work, at the factory, he doesn’t care. He’s there to sew, to wait for his five-year work contract to be over, and for an emigration visa to “the states.” At the factory he wears short sleeved shirts and tells non-Jewish co-workers his story. He makes a joke of it - a helpful entrée for flirting with the girls.

Crossing the littered street, my father makes his way home. He walks six blocks slowly, metal lunch box under his arm and reading the weekly Jewish Star as he walks. The instant he crosses St. Urbane Avenue, he enters a different Montreal where rolling up his sleeves is comfortable because the number on his arm is so ordinary. The table is set Shabbat (sabbath) dinner with a fine damask table cloth, cloth napkins, candles, and a Challah – braided bread. My mother waits for my father to arrive home, waits some more while he washes his hands and comes to the table. She says a blessing and, lighting the Sabbath candles, always adds additional words for those who perished.

He rolls up his sleeves, sits down and prooves he’s in his own world, a private city inside a city. My parents eat slowly and quietly. They’re lost in memories and distant thoughts. I worry about what they might be thinking as I stare, unconsciously, at my father’s moving arm.
“Papa,” I ask, “have we always had the same telephone number?” He notices me looking at his tattooed arm as he smiles at our private little joke. My father knows I understand the truth but cooperate with his charade. He stares at his arm as though it belongs to a stranger and brushes aside dark hairs that grow over the tattoo. “Ah, so many questions! You already know that these are really my numbers from a long ago, very different lifetime.”

“So, just how many lifetimes do we get, Papa?” My question is a serious one – a question that causes him to become serious. His smile recedes to where it came from, making him look older than his years, more tired than he knows. “Some didn’t get any. I got two and your mama, she also got two. We know that you and your brother will have only one.” “But how can you know this, Papa? How?” My father begins the riddle game anew. “We know because there can’t be so much evil left anymore, not in the whole world!” I want to ask him what makes him so sure. His melancholy tones are like musical notes that signal the song is about to end. They tell me to abandon my questions. The collection of memories is wide enough to span a lifetime of Friday night questions.

Story ID:	1829
Written by:	Marlene B. Samuels (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Family History
Location:	Montreal Quebec Canada
Year:	1958
Person:	Father