Arnold Zable - Cafe Scheherazade

At great personal risk, for he could have faced execution for such an act, Sugihara opened his heart to those who clamoured for assistance. Zalman was one of many who filed from the footpath, through the wrought-iron gates, up the small flight of steps that led to the consulate door. Sugihara did not even 96 look up at him when he finally reached his desk. He was too busy applying the stamps.

Over a period of weeks, until the Kovno consulate was closed at the end of August, Sugihara issued thousands of visas. Two assistants sat in the corridor to help him cope with the demand.

Even as he left the consulate for the final time bound for the

Kovno railway station, he continued to stamp the visas of frantic refugees.

They pursued him through the streets. They gathered about him at the station. They followed him onto the platform. They clustered at the windows of his carriage. They ran beside it as the train began to move away; and all the while Sugihara stamped their outstretched papers; all the while he responded to their pleas.

He had followed his conscience. He had honoured the ancient maxim. He had done all he could. It would cost him dearly in terms of career, and it would take many years before he would finally receive the honour that was his due, as someone who had dared to shine a light in the falling darkness.

Zalman left Vilna on 8 February 1941. The city was covered in snow. The skies were clear, the sun's rays unimpeded. He left his room at noon, and travelled to the Vilna station by sleigh. The

"Sugihara Jews" departed at two in the afternoon. They travelled in a carriage reserved especially for them.

As the train moved through the Lithuanian countryside, 97

Zalman recalled the moment, two months earlier, when he had entered the Vilna offices of the NKVD. His fate rested in their hands. He risked being deported to labour camps for daring to ask for an exit permit, but he had little choice. Otherwise

Sugihara's stamp would be worthless. He needed to find a way out of Russia to Japan.

Zalman was questioned at length. The room was bare, except for a desk, two chairs, and a photo of Joseph Stalin. Weeks later

Zalman joined the anxious crowd at the notice wall outside the

Vilna Intourist bureau. When he finally saw his name on the lists of those who had been granted an exit permit, Zalman was elated.

As soon as one battle ended, the next began. The Soviet authorities demanded that the train tickets be purchased in

American dollars. Zalman's ticket was finally paid for in currency sent by relief organisations in the USA. There had been many times, in the previous fifteen months, when he felt he was trapped in a rat's maze. Only now that he was moving east did he feel free. At least, for the moment.

The train stopped in Minsk late at night. The carriage was disconnected. Zalman fell asleep, and when he awoke he found he was on the move again. He arrived in Moscow that afternoon and passed the time riding the subway. He marvelled at stations carved in marble, and at underground platforms adorned with chandeliers. He marvelled at the tiled walkways, at the sculptures and mosaic-decorated wails. And at the quietness with which trains glided through a labyrinth of cool tunnels, like phantoms moving in an underworld trance.

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The trance continued as he boarded the trans-Siberian, in the pre-dawn hours. The train journeyed over flatlands of snow, and through the Urals, blanketed in snow. The whole of Russia was under snow. Yet for the passengers it did not seem real. They travelled in comfort. The train was heated. Conductors served hot tea. Those with extra money could purchase vodka as they dined.

Zalman was lulled into a reverie, broken occasionally by a glimpse of stations flitting by. He glanced at the sides of railway tracks along which prisoners trudged under armed guard, their heads bent, their shoulders drawn, their eyes fixed in a helpless gaze. It was a fleeting vision of hell; a brief encounter with the other side, followed by darkness, the pulse of the train, the curving of rails in a rhythmic refrain.

The passengers alighted for an hour in Novosibirsk, deep in central Siberia. The platform seemed deserted. Zalman walked towards the waiting rooms. Without warning he was among crowds of people. They milled about like robots. They moved slowly, as if lost.

Whenever they glanced at Zalman, envy flickered in their eyes. He was well dressed, while they were in rags. He walked with a sense of purpose, while they shuffled aside to let him pass. Others remained squatting on the platform, hunched over their luggage, as if guarding their meagre possessions with their lives. In their eyes, Zalman was from another world. He sensed it, and wanted to reach out and touch them. But instead he recoiled in fear and hurried away.

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Day became night became day, and on the following night they moved beyond Irkutsk, along the cusp of Lake Baikal. The lake was covered in ice that glowed under a full moon. The ice shone with blue-white light. There was enough light to read by. Zalman would never forget the details of this night, its stillness, its clarity, the full moon rising above an inland sea.

He stood alone. His fellow passengers were asleep. There was a keenness in the air. In that moment he felt a surge of joy, a subdued excitement. He was on the way to the unknown, yet, as the train drifted by Lake Baikal, he did not care. He did not wish to be elsewhere. He wanted this moment never to end, this moment of journeying in solitude, through calmness, past an unknown sea illumined with lunar light.

At the end of the line loomed Vladivostok, a port city squatting on the eastern rim of the empire. The passengers arrived towards evening and were ordered to remain in their seats. They felt uneasy. Troops patrolled the platform. There were rumours that their visas were invalid, talk of last-minute cancellations. "We will never leave Russia," whispered some. "We are trapped," murmured others. "How could we have believed we would be able to escape?"

It was still dark when Zalman and his fellow passengers disembarked. They were ferried in buses to the wharves. The city remained a shadowy presence on the periphery of their vision.

Here and there they registered the twinkle of lights 100 and street lamps. Before them stretched the black waters of the bay.

The passengers were hurried towards the wharves. They cast their eyes down so as not to meet the customs police's gaze; and they kept quiet. It was the silence of those who have lost the power to determine their fate.

As a grey dawn broke out over the harbour the passengers boarded a Japanese freighter, manned by a Japanese crew. A Russian officer stood by the boarding plank. Zalman presented his documents. The officer tore off the Russian transit visa, and in that instant, Zalman felt it with a startling certainty: this was the moment of no return. He had been severed from the past, from friends, family, and all he had known. He was adrift. He was a refugee. He would always be a refugee.

His only security was his fellow passengers, the three hundred or so he had travelled with from Vilna. They were the last constant.

They were exhausted and disoriented. They hovered on the brink of the unknown. But they were together, a herd of kinsfolk, assembled by chance. And in this they found comfort.

Zalman seems like a man permanently perplexed. He sits in

Scheherazade on a week-day afternoon. Again he sips his coffee slowly, savouring the taste, savouring his thoughts, devouring the sun that pours through the window. In the years of his retirement, this is what he loves most: to savour, to take his time. 101

"Our centre of gravity had shifted," he tells me. "This is what I sensed as I stood aboard the boat on the day of our departure.