4
I had only gone a few meters when I saw a dirty little man in rags jumping around on the street. It was Rubinstein.
Hundreds of thousands of people lived in the ghetto, but there were three people everyone knew. One was despised, one revered, and one made everyone smile. That was Rubinstein. He pranced about in the street like a clown or like a madman, maybe. He leaped in my direction and stopped right in front of me with a sweeping bow, as if he were a nobleman and me a princess. And he greeted me with his favorite words: “All the same.”
Of course, my common sense told me that people were not all the same in the ghetto, but every time I heard Rubinstein saying or shouting these words, I wondered if he might be right, after all. Especially now, after what Jurek had just told me. We all shared the same ghetto hell, the same fear of dying. Didn’t that make us all the same? Whether we were rich or poor, young or old, sane or insane?
And weren’t the Germans in the same boat, despite all their power over us? They could still lose this war they were fighting—they hadn’t conquered the whole world yet.
Anyway, Rubinstein was the only person in the ghetto who wasn’t afraid of the Germans. When he met SS men he jumped around them in just the same way he jumped around us. He would point at them and then at us and keep saying “All the same,” until the Germans started to laugh and joined in, chanting “All the same,” too. They probably thought it was funny, but perhaps deep inside they could sense that they were just as vulnerable as we were, although they would never admit it.
Perhaps Rubinstein wasn’t insane after all. Maybe it was wise not to be afraid of the Germans. Maybe our fear amused him in the same way that his madness amused us.
Now Rubinstein suddenly laughed out loud. I followed his gaze: At the end of the street a group of SS men were out on patrol. Rubinstein was the only Jew I knew who could laugh when he saw SS soldiers. He bounded on a few meters until he landed in front of Jurek’s shop and started shouting loudly enough for the old man to hear through the window. “Hitler stinks!”
I could see Jurek flinch behind his dusty till.
“Hitler,” Rubinstein shouted, “gave his dog a good old bone!”
Jurek started to panic. The pedestrians around us all hurried away from Rubinstein. I started to feel worried. What happened if the SS men heard this nonsense?
I looked around, but the patrol hadn’t noticed the madman yet—he must be mad; why else would he do something this insane? And so I stayed, wanting to see what would happen next, and forgot the most important rule of survival. It is never, ever a good idea to be too curious.
“Hitler is making love with his own hound.” Rubinstein wouldn’t give up. Jurek grabbed a load of food from the shelf: ham, bread, butter, and dashed out to Rubinstein. He thrust it all into his arms and hissed, “Shut up!”
Jurek was terrified that the Nazis would come and shoot Rubinstein, and then shoot him, too, because someone had been shouting obscenities outside his shop. Even though the old man believed that we were all going to die soon, he didn’t want to be executed today.
Rubinstein grinned at Jurek. “I like jam, too.”
“You little…” Jurek glared at him.
I understood what was going on here: What Rubinstein was doing was the most insane way to blackmail someone.
“I could tell everyone that you’d like to sleep with Hitler, too.” Rubinstein grinned even more broadly. The old shopkeeper couldn’t say a word.
Rubinstein turned around to face the soldiers, cupped his hands round his mouth like a megaphone, and started to shout. “Jurek wants to…”
The SS soldiers looked in our direction. Suddenly, I panicked. I was such an idiot. I should have been gone ages ago.
Jurek put his hand over Rubinstein’s mouth and hissed, “You’ll get your bloody jam.”
The blackmailer nodded happily. Jurek took his hand off Rubinstein’s mouth, and the little man pressed a finger to his lips, to show that he was going to be quiet now.
The SS men looked away. Jurek caught his breath, charged into his shop, and came back out with a large jar.
I had never been so happy to see a jar of jam in my life.
“Strawberry!” Rubinstein was delighted and opened the jar right away. He grabbed a handful of jam and stuffed it into his mouth with pleasure.
There are prettier sights in the world. Rubinstein smiled at me and offered me some, too. I looked at Jurek. I didn’t want to be rude, but I hadn’t had strawberry jam for ages; it cost almost as much as butter on the black market. The old man looked at me and sighed.
“It’s all right, Mira,” he said. “At least he’s stopped shouting.”
As soon as Jurek had disappeared into his shop, I put my hand into the jar and stuffed a huge helping of jam into my mouth. I didn’t care if Rubinstein had already stirred it with his filthy fingers. It tasted amazing.
While I was enjoying the glorious, sweet, fruity flavor, I realized that Rubinstein probably wasn’t mad at all, he was simply ingenious.
“Maybe I could be your apprentice,” I joked.
“Then,” the man joked back, “I’ll show you how to get the richest Jews to give you a five-course meal.”
“I’d really like to be able to do that,” I laughed.
A madman’s apprentice! And I’d wanted to be a doctor.
Rubinstein put his tongue into the jar and started to lick the sides. Now I didn’t think I’d have any more.
“Do you really think that we’re all the same?” I asked.
He took his face out of the jar and answered, while red blobs of red jam dripped down his chin.
“Of course I do, and we are all free, too.”
Was he being ironic?
“But that’s ridiculous,” I replied.
But Rubinstein turned dead serious all of a sudden. “No, it’s not!”
He wasn’t a madman anymore, or a clown. He was suddenly a man who saw the light.
“Everyone is free to choose what kind of human he wants to be,” Rubinstein said, looking straight into my eyes. “The question is, little Mira, what kind of human do you want to be?”
“One who can survive,” I answered quietly, fending him off.
“I’m not sure that’s enough to justify life,” he answered. He wasn’t laughing at me, but he was smiling. Then he bounded off with his bounty and left me wondering what kind of person I wanted to be.
5
I climbed up the stairs of 70 Miła Street. It was terribly crowded. Not because too many people were heading back to their flats at the same time. No, for lots of people, the staircase was all they had. Whole families slept on the stairs and landings, ate their rations sitting on the steps, and stared listlessly out through the broken windows no one ever repaired. When the Nazis set up the ghetto, they didn’t care whether it was going to be big enough for all the people it would have to hold. There weren’t nearly enough flats. Which meant that many people lived in every room of every house, and in the rafters, on the staircases, or in the cold damp cellars. And now, in the spring of 1942, the numbers were actually increasing every day, as more Jews were brought in from other countries.
When we were relocated, our family was lucky enough—or rather we had enough money—to get our own room. Before we moved into the ghetto, we’d lived in a spacious five-room flat. But we were forced to give it to a childless Polish couple, who were very happy to have our furniture, as well. All we were allowed to take with us was a handcart loaded with a few suitcases. We pulled our cart through the streets of Warsaw among the silent, ghostlike procession of thousands of Jews on their way to the ghetto. We were guarded by Germans. And stared at by the Poles who lined the pavements or sat at their windows, and didn’t seem to mind that their part of Warsaw would be Jew-free from now on.
When we entered the place where we were going to live at 70 Miła Street, my mother burst into tears. One single room. For five people. Without any beds. And a broken window. There were tears in my father’s eyes, too. He had spent the few days between the announcement that a ghetto was being set up in the most run-down streets of Warsaw and the start of the resettlement doing everything he could to find an abode for us. He had run from department to department, had bribed officials of the Judenrat—the Jewish council set up by the Nazis—and ended up paying thousands of zlotys. Papa had managed to make sure that we wouldn’t freeze to death in the streets when winter came.
When we entered that tiny empty room we didn’t feel grateful, though. And he never forgave himself for not doing more to help his family and his dear wife who suffered so much.
I had to walk through a larger room to get to our own. An extended family from Kraków lived there. We had not managed to become friends over the past couple of years. These people were quite religious. The women wore head scarfs, and all the men had beards and curled side locks, which went down to their shoulders. While the women did the housework, the men spent the whole day praying. That wasn’t exactly my idea of a happy marriage.
The women were washing clothes in large metal tubs and looked down their noses at me as usual. I was young, I wasn’t wearing a head scarf, I had a boyfriend, and I was a smuggler—reasons enough to despise me.
But I’d stopped caring about what they thought a long time ago. And I’d stopped trying to be nice.
Ignore, ignore, ignore.
I opened the door to our room. Mama had drawn the curtains again. She didn’t want any sun in the darkness of her life. I closed the door behind me and opened the curtains and the window to air the room. Mama groaned quietly because of the sunlight. But she couldn’t manage any real protest. She lay on a mattress we had swapped her favorite golden necklace for during the first winter. The necklace had been a present from Papa on their tenth anniversary.
Mama’s long gray hair stuck to her face, her eyes stared into the distance. It was hard to believe that this woman had once been a beauty, or that my father and a Polish general had fought over her. It almost ended in a duel, but she had intervened and saved Papa from being shot.
She had loved him. Loved him incredibly. More than anything in the world. Even more than us children. His death had destroyed her completely. Since then, I’d started to think it was a bad idea to love someone too much.
My boyfriend, Daniel, saw things differently. He thought love was our only hope. He was probably the last surviving romantic in the ghetto.
I took off my best dress, carefully put it on a clothes hanger, and then hung that up on a nail on the wall. I changed into a patched blue blouse and a pair of black baggy trousers, and started to make the omelet. Hannah was due back from the underground school any minute. In fact, she should have been back by now. Hopefully nothing had happened to her. I was always worrying about that child.
Mama never said much, and she never asked me any questions. I still wanted her to share in my life in the outside world, though, so I usually pretended to have a conversation with her where I spoke both parts:
“And how was your day, today, Mira?” I asked.
“Quite successful so far, thank you!” I replied.
“Really, Mira?”
“Yes, really. I made lots of money and have bought loads of food…”
I wondered for a moment if I should mention the szmalcowniks, but I didn’t want Mama to worry about me, assuming that she was actually capable of worrying about anyone anymore.
So instead, without even thinking about it, I said,
“I kissed a boy I didn’t know!”
And she smiled. Mama hardly ever smiled. A little explosion of happiness went off in my heart. I desperately wanted her to keep smiling, and so I chatted away:
“It was wild, and passionate and daft … And fantastic somehow…” Goodness, it really had been fantastic! I suddenly had a desperate wish to kiss Stefan again.
Mama smiled even more. That was so lovely. When I saw her looking like that, I couldn’t help hoping that she might be able to be happy again.
Hannah came in at this moment. She could be light-footed and boisterous at the same time. She was an elflike creature, shabby clothes with cropped short hair—she’d had lice last month and I had to cut off all her hair. When I’d fetched the scissors, I’d actually expected her to have a tantrum, but she’d turned the whole incident into one of her stories.
“If my hair grew any longer, I could wind it into twelve long braids. I’d use them like extra arms and capture people. I’d be able to hurl my enemies through the air because of the mighty strength of my hair. And I’d win every fight.”
“Well, then,” I’d said, laughing, “why don’t you mind me cutting it off?”
“Because everyone would notice those braids and they would come and get me. I could use them to beat up soldiers and throw them through walls, even, but the soldiers have guns. And not even my hair can stop a gun. The Germans would shoot me. And then cut off my braids as a warning to everyone who wanted to grow their hair to fight. It’s better to lose my hair now, before it turns into a weapon and the Germans find me out.”
Hannah didn’t want to be strong, she wanted to be invisible. If you were invisible you had more chance of surviving in the ghetto. As soon as I put the plate with the omelet onto the table, Hannah pounced on the food and started gobbling. Mama pulled herself up from the mattress, sat down beside me on the last available chair—I’d used the others as firewood last winter—and we both started eating, more slowly than Hannah. We let her eat more than us, but we always stopped her before she ate too much.
“Why was Mama smiling when I came in?” Hannah asked with her mouth full. Her manners were appalling. But no one had the time or patience to teach this child any manners.
“Tell me, what was going on?” she asked again. A bit of egg threatened to fall out of the corner of her mouth. Just in time, she caught it with the tip of her tongue.
“Mira kissed a boy,” Mama explained in her thin voice. “And it wasn’t Daniel!”
Before I could explain that the kiss had meant absolutely nothing at all, except for the fact that it had saved my life, and that I loved Daniel and only Daniel, and that it didn’t mean a thing if talking about this kiss made me feel nervous or made me go red, Hannah said,
“Oh, so did I!”
Now it was my turn to nearly drop my omelet.
“You!—You kissed someone?”
“After school.” So that was why she was late.
“Who?”
“Ben.”
“Does he go to school with you?” I started to smile. I thought that the idea of a twelve-year-old giving my sister a kiss on the cheek was very sweet.
“Nope,” she answered.
With all this talk of kissing, Mama was drifting away again, back to the days when my father was alive and they were still happy together.
“Is this boy even smaller than you?” I teased Hannah.
“No, he’s fifteen.”
Now I really did drop a bit of omelet.
“And he is really, really nice,” Hannah said.
“Any boy nearly my age out kissing twelve-year-olds is not nice!”
“And he does French kissing.”
“Whaaat?”
“He’s a good tongue kisser,” Hannah explained, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to say.
She was far too young for this. Not to mention what it might lead to. I looked at Mama—she should do something! Anything! She was Hannah’s mother, not me! But Mama got up from the table and went to lie down again.
“Hannah,” I said while she grabbed Mama’s plate, “don’t you think the boy is too old for you?”
“Nope!” she said, chewing away. “Just a bit too shy.”
“You kissed him?” I was shocked.
“Isn’t that what princesses do?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Well, they do in my stories!” Hannah gave me a huge smile. If the Nazis didn’t manage it first, this girl was going to be the end of me. How could I stop all this nonsense? I needed help. Someone who knew more about dealing with children than I did. Daniel.