#275 Inside the Emotion of Fiction LILLI CHERNOFSKY by Nina Vida

What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing “Lilli Chernofsky” in 1991.  The writing of it was interrupted by other projects, but I began to write seriously about the German-Jewish WWII exodus to Shanghai in 2014 and finished in 2016. 

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-and-austrian-jewish-refugees-in-shanghai

Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work?  And please describe in detail.  And can you please include a photo? I met many of the Jewish Shanghai survivors at a survivors’ reunion in Anaheim in 1990.  I conducted personal interviews by mail and telephone and had written a first draft when my agent at the time said she wasn’t interested in the story of the Shanghai Jews, so I put it aside. 

Left: article on the reunion. Right: Nina Vida in the 1990s. Copyright by Nina Vida.

On and off during the years I would go back to it, but it wasn’t until Jennifer Geist (BELOW LEFT) at Brick Mantel Books expressed interest in the project that I developed the final book. One thing that weighs on me.  I had promised those survivors I interviewed that I would be writing a book about their experience in Shanghai and that when it was finished I would get in contact with them, but by the time I actually finished the book and it was published, almost everyone I had been in contact with had died.  I would have liked to have handed each one of them a copy and said thank you, that I hoped I had done their lives justice.  But it was not to be.

https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.n.geist

http://www.brickmantelbooks.com/

What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I have an office upstairs in my home where my library and computer and files and correspondence are.  When working on a book I would write (computer) at odd times of the day.  Sometimes I would wake up out of a sound sleep at four in the morning with something that occurred to me in semi-sleep that needed changing, fixing, editing. 

Nina Vida working in her office. Copyright by Nina Vida.

During the actual writing, I didn’t hear or see or contemplate anything but what was in my head and fingers.  No music, no food, no distractions of any kind.  I liken it to a single-minded trance, a monkish absorption.  My husband could come to my office door and speak to me and I literally didn’t hear him.  Complete ascetic immersion.

Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference.  This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.

25

Chapter 4

December, 1940

Forty people—young, old, babies, small children—waited at the train station, bundled up in heavy coats, extra socks tucked into waterproof boots, thick scarves wound around necks, the yeshiva students shivery in the same destroyed clothes they were wearing when they arrived in Kovno, (Moses gave the youngest student his black coat and stood with his back hunched against the gale gusting in from the east.)

At seven-thirty the locomotive roared toward them, a screen of lavender smoke scumbling its shape and turning the black blot a frost gray. The men, Intourist travel vouchers safe in their pockets, carried suitcases, packets of food, paper bags filled with breakable items. The women held the children. Warm breaths gauzed the frigid air.

Papa had been at his desk when they left, the window curtain behind him leaking light, the air smelling of seeping frost and the velvety soap that sat in the dish in the bathroom. The eggs Mama prepared for him sat untouched on a plate.

Please come with us, Papa,” Lilli said.

“When the world is perfect I will come to you.”

She felt the heat of his hand through her headscarf as he gave her his blessing.

And I will carry you on eagles’ wings and I will deliver you to Me, he mur­mured in her ear.

Lilli looked back at Kovno. She could see children skating on a frozen pond. Snow drifted across rooftops, scuffed up against the trunks of trees and lay in slate piles at street corners. She wished she had a camera. She wished she could run home and tell Papa she loved him, but Moses had his arm around her waist and was pulling her toward the train.

The tracks hummed, the train’s wheels squealed, metal sparks flew into the cold air, and suddenly everyone was in one small spot. Arms and legs flailed,

Nina Vida

26

small packages fell, a child screamed, an old man’s cane stabbed the air like an errant saber.

“Be a good girl, Lilli, and take care of your brother,” Mama said, her lips like a smooth cube of ice on Lilli’s cheek. “And always remember that it is a mitzvah to be kind to the less fortunate.”

“But you’re coming with us.”

“Not now.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Hurry,” Aaron hollered from the train steps.

For a moment Lilli thought of letting the train go. Trains came and went. There would be another train.

“Go, Lilli,” Mama said and gave Lilli a small shove.

“No.”

“We’ll come, I promise you.”

Moses lifted Lilli in his arms and carried her up the steps into the train.

“Do you know how foolish you are, how stupid?” Aaron said, his lips cracked with cold, his eyes glistening. “You knew she wouldn’t leave him. What were you thinking, that you can stay behind and let me go without you, that I would leave you here?”

It began to snow again, soft white sheets covering the broken bits left behind on the station platform. The train was moving, the pavement slipping by, crack joining crack joining crack until it was just a dizzyingly smooth gray surface gliding by. Mama looked tall standing on the platform by herself, the wind blowing the spent curls of her wig, her hand waving and waving and waving.

Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write?  And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? The emotion of this excerpt lies in the knowledge that not all Jews were able to find a way to escape a tragic fate.  As a Jew and as a human being, when I think of their suffering, I feel it as my own. 

Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. With the advent of the computer age, there’s been no need to mark up pages; I just retype them – over and over and over and…

http://ninavida.com/

Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature: http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html

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