7
“Sausages!” the street seller with the grimy beard shouted. “Sausages with mustard!” At the sight of those sausages, my mouth started to water, despite the fact that they were small and shriveled and the seller was using his fingers to spread them with mustard, instead of a knife!
Together, Daniel and I wandered through the summer heat from one food cart to the next. For a small sum you could buy beans, soup, potato patties, or those sausages covered with filthy-fingers mustard. My stomach rumbled loudly. But by now I couldn’t even afford the puniest sausage. In the nine weeks since the “Night of Blood,” as it had come to be known in the ghetto, I hadn’t ventured over to the Polish side once because the SS had started to hunt the smugglers in earnest, as well as the underground activists. To emphasize their new brutal course of action, the Germans now drove a truck into the ghetto each morning and threw the bodies onto the street—the people they had caught on the other side of the ghetto wall the day before. The bodies were a warning.
No one was allowed into the graveyard without a permit now, and because I couldn’t afford any forged papers, there was no chance of me even getting a foot inside the gates, let alone through the hole in the wall over to the Polish side. Trying to climb over the wall in any other place was pure suicide these days. If you got anywhere near the wall, the Germans started shooting. We knew SS soldiers sometimes hid ready to jump out and mow down the smugglers with their machine guns. Frankenstein was said to have shot more than three hundred people so far, single-handed. Like most of the rumors in the ghetto, the number was probably exaggerated, but what if he had “only” murdered seventy or eighty people. If a single German monster could kill so many smugglers—or people he suspected might be smugglers—on his own, how many would have been murdered so far by all the guards patrolling the wall? Two hundred? Three hundred? More than a thousand, maybe?
All this didn’t exactly encourage me to risk anything new.
But still.
My stomach was rumbling, and my family had practically nothing left to eat.
“I’ll have to risk it,” I said to Daniel, and sounded far more determined than I actually felt.
Of course my boyfriend knew what I meant when I said “risk it.” We’d talked about it thousands of times; there was nothing else left to talk about these days, but we’d talked ourselves out. Which is why he didn’t repeat any of his endless arguments to try to dissuade me. I’d heard them all many times before. He didn’t warn me that they had started shooting corrupt Jewish policemen, or tell me that last week they’d even killed two women who were pregnant. He just looked at me and hoped that I wouldn’t do anything.
“It’s easy for you,” I said bitterly. “Korczak looks after you. You get fed on a regular basis.”
“It isn’t much,” he answered quietly.
A man beside me took a bite of sausage and clearly enjoyed it. The sight of him made me even more hungry and cross, which is why I snapped at Daniel.
“But at least you get something to eat!”
I was sorry right away. I was well aware that there wasn’t enough food at the orphanage to go around.
It’s not a good idea to pick a fight when you are starving and you are surrounded by the smell of food. I got a grip and explained things more calmly. “I can only afford the cheapest bread,” I said, and showed him the gray loaf I had just bought. “It’s just chalk and sawdust; there’s hardly any real flour in it at all.”
“If you get yourself shot, you won’t be able to buy any kind of bread,” Daniel said. He seemed to be immune to all the smells of food around us. Being an orphan, he had been used to doing without from an early age and could cope with hunger far better than me, a poor, spoiled doctor’s daughter. Why couldn’t I be as strong and steadfast as he was? Of course he was right: If I died, things would be even worse for Hannah and Mama. But if I didn’t do anything, my family was going to starve to death. When all my money was spent—and that would be by next week at the very latest—we wouldn’t even be able to buy the sawdust loaves of bread. What was I supposed to do then?
“Anyway,” Daniel started to tease me, “if you go and get yourself killed, I will murder you!”
I had to laugh at that. “You do have a strange way of saying you love me,” I said.
“At least I do say so.” Straightaway, Daniel tried to cover up the small reproach he’d just let slip by laughing. He was right. I hadn’t ever said the weighty words “I love you.” Precisely because my mother had shown me just how damaging love can be.
Ever since we started going out together, Daniel had been waiting patiently for some kind of commitment from me. Slowly, my silence seemed to be getting to him.
And it was mean of me. What would it cost me to say “I love you.” Just three little words. Daniel was my anchor, after all. Without him I’d have lost my way ages ago.
Tell him now. I took a deep breath, as if I were on the verge of diving into deep water, and said as I let my breath out again, “You know I…”
I didn’t get any further, though, because—silly me—I couldn’t do it.
“You…?” Daniel asked
I was searching for the right words. Why on earth was this so difficult?
“I…”
“Thief, thief!” Suddenly we were interrupted by a woman shouting.
A skinny little girl no more than seven or eight years old ran past us. She was wearing a hat that was far too big, a once-white, now very grubby man’s shirt, and no trousers. And no underwear, as we could plainly see when the shirt flew up as she ran past, revealing her little bare behind. She was holding an open jar filled with jam. And she dodged through the crowds as fast as she could. The girl was being chased by an old woman in a tattered skirt. I noticed that though she was missing two fingers on her right hand, she had more fingers than teeth!
The girl looked over her shoulder to watch out for the old woman and bumped into the legs of a passerby who started shouting at her. She should be more careful, damn it! He’d string her up from a lamppost if it weren’t such a waste of good rope. The old woman managed to catch up. The girl tried to pull away, taking a couple of panicky steps, but the old woman had grabbed hold of the end of her shirt and she lost her balance, stumbled and fell over, jar in hand. All the jam slopped onto the street.
The girl got down on all fours and started to gobble it up like a dog.
I watched the little thief and wondered what I would end up doing once all my money was gone. If I got as hungry as the girl, would I steal from someone? Eat from the filthy street?
Would Hannah?
Could she turn into such an animal?
I imagined my sister on all fours, and shivered in the summer heat.
Daniel put an arm around me and said softly, “You’ll never be that desperate.”
He knew me inside and out. “No, I won’t,” I replied. “And Hannah won’t be either!” And all at once I was certain; the sight of the girl turned street mongrel had finally convinced me that I had to act to spare my sister such a fate.
I would have to start smuggling again. But not like before. I’d be more cunning this time. And more importantly: I needed help.
Daniel mustn’t know anything about this. I didn’t want him worrying about me, and I didn’t want to argue about it, not even for a second.
“I know that look,” Daniel said.
“Which look?”
“The one that tells me you are going to do something really risky.”
“I’m not going to do anything,” I lied.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
He didn’t believe me.
“At the orphanage,” he said, smiling, “I always check to make sure the children haven’t crossed their fingers behind their backs when they promise anything.”
“I’m not a child!”
“Sometimes you are.”
There were moments when I hated the way he pretended to be years older than me instead of only seven months.
“If you call me a child one more time, I’ll go home right away.”
“All right, then,” he said. “I want you to stay. But do you promise?”
He looked at me closely.
“Of course I do,” I said with a firm voice. I even gave him a little innocent smile to make it all the more convincing.
Daniel hesitated, then he nodded. He’d decided to trust me. Sometimes, of the two of us, he was the naive child. Which made him all the more lovable.
“I must get back to the orphanage and help with lunch,” he said, but he didn’t want to leave just yet. I gave him a soft little kiss on the lips, so that he would be able to drag himself away. And he smiled, said goodbye by kissing me back, and walked off placated and convinced that I was on my way home to my family in Miła Street. But I was on my way to look for Ruth. At the infamous Britannia Hotel.
8
Even in broad daylight, the neon sign was lit up in red lights. The letter H for Hotel flickered on and off. A burly bouncer stood beneath the H. He wore a long trench coat, despite the summer weather, trying to look like a tough gangster. But he was just a simple thug who had to follow the real ghetto bosses’ orders—men Ruth went to bed with every night. It was the bouncer’s job to make sure not everyone got into the bar-slash-brothel. Only people with a lot of money who were prepared to spend it on booze and women were allowed inside. And people like me, I hoped, who had a friend who worked there.
I walked straight up to him and said, “Good afternoon, I’m Ruth’s friend.”
The bouncer pretended not to notice me.
That wasn’t quite the reaction I had been hoping for. “I want to see her,” I said.
“And pigs might fly.”
A bouncer and comedian. A rare combination. Not a good one.
“Ruth is expecting me,” I lied.
The guy treated me like I wasn’t there and stared past me toward two SS soldiers who were walking along the other side of the street. They had shouldered their guns and were eating ice cream.
I caught my breath. Even though the Germans were concentrating on their ice cream and not taking any notice of us, I was still afraid of them.
I was no Rubinstein who could laugh at them in the face. No one was a real Rubinstein except for Rubinstein.
The bouncer nodded at the soldiers. They nodded back, bored. This simple exchange of greeting was no surprise to me. The Germans got a portion of the winnings from the Jewish racketeers, and of course the soldiers went to the brothel, too. They might be the “master race” but they could still screw a Jew. Did that mean that Ruth did it with Germans, too…?
… I didn’t want to know.
Although the bouncer made an effort to appear relaxed, I could see the fear in his eyes. Since the “Night of Blood,” SS patrols shot Jews for no reason whatsoever. Just for fun. The gangsters were no exception. Neither were children. Only yesterday, three children had been murdered in front of the Bersohn und Bauman hospital. One of the women from Kraków had told me—oh yes, things had got so bad that our devout flatmates had actually started talking to the likes of me. They were scared. The children had just been sitting in front of the hospital, and then the SS men had shot all three of them out of the blue. When I heard this, all I wanted was to keep Hannah locked away in our hovel in Miła Street forever.
When the soldiers moved on, the bouncer released a silent but perceptible breath. I realized that his fear was my chance. I took a step toward him and drew myself up to my full height—I only just reached his chin—looked up at him and grinned. “You know how Rubinstein gets his food?”
I managed to catch his attention. So much so that he stopped ignoring me, and said, “Of course I do—what are you talking about?”
“I could start shouting that Hitler should be shot,” I said, grinning broadly. “Or that he is making love to his dog.”
“You … you wouldn’t do that!” The fear was back in his eyes.
“I was Rubinstein’s apprentice,” I laughed, and took a few wild leaps into the street just like the ghetto clown.
The bouncer had no idea what to make of me.
I landed back in front of his feet and laughed at him, “All the same.”
My performance wasn’t very convincing, but it didn’t have to be. It was good enough. The guy didn’t want to take any risks.
“So,” he asked cautiously, “is Ruth really a friend of yours?”
“That’s why I said so.”
“Oh well, it can’t do any harm to visit a friend.”
“No, it can’t,” I smiled.
I went past him, up the couple of steps, and entered the Britannia Hotel.
9
I walked past an unattended cloakroom and went through a heavy red velvet curtain into the dimly lit bar area. Apparently, daylight was not wanted here. The atmosphere was smoky and the furniture was pretty shabby considering the amount of money customers spent here. One of the three chandeliers hung crooked from the ceiling, the top of the wooden bar was cracked and splintered, and the tablecloths were so dirty they appeared not to have been changed since before the war. But the men who were drinking vodka at this time of the afternoon hadn’t come for the decor. They were here for the young women who were paid to flirt and drink with them. The Britannia girls were really beautiful; none of them were gaunt and hungry like I was. They had womanly curves, and, of course, they were wearing makeup. Most of them were definitely wearing too much makeup, but one redhead sitting at a table not far from the entrance had an elegant shade of red lipstick and rouge. I’d have loved makeup like that, but there was no way I’d ever be able to afford that kind of luxury. I’d have felt jealous if she’d been wearing more than a negligee and black frilly panties, and if she hadn’t been in the process of being groped by a man with flabby hands who was kneading her breasts like wads of dough.
Instead of making me feel claustrophobic, the sorid atmosphere lifted my spirits. A female singer, accompanied by a bored-looking pianist, sang in a smoky voice:
Night and day, you are the one, only you beneath the moon or under the sun …
American music!
It was forbidden everywhere, but they were playing it here. The music transported me out of the Britannia Hotel, out of the ghetto, out of Poland. Away from war, hunger, and suffering. Across the Atlantic to New York.
In my fantasy, I was dancing down Broadway with Daniel, whirling down the street, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the musicals. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t dance in real life, had never learned how, and would probably fall over my own two feet if I tried. But then I remembered the argument a few moments ago and realized that Daniel wouldn’t want to dance with me on Broadway or anywhere else if he found out that I was in the Britannia Hotel at this very moment. All at once, the imaginary dancer turned into Stefan.
I think of you day and night, night and day …
I kept telling myself to stop thinking about Stefan, but it never worked. He kept coming to mind all the time, and there was nothing I could do about it. It wasn’t fair to Daniel. I tried to order dancing Stefan to turn back into Daniel, but he refused.
The singer stopped singing and the pianist played the final chords of the song, but my daydream wasn’t over yet. I was lying in Stefan’s arms.
With all my might, I pushed Stefan away and ran to Daniel, who was wearing normal clothes now, standing in front of a cinema on Broadway where City Lights was showing. I hugged Daniel as tightly as I could. Not just because I felt guilty, but because he was my only hope. He was my life; he was the one I loved. And I said the words I couldn’t ever say in real life, because I was ashamed of myself and because they were true, “I love you!”
“You’re lost in thought, Mira.” Someone laughed beside me as the piano player started to play “I Get a Kick Out of You.” Ruth stood beside me, wearing a pink negligee, black fishnet stockings, a black suspender belt, and so much makeup that she looked older than sixteen. What the heck. Hardly anyone ever looked younger than they really were in the ghetto.
“But the question is,” Ruth said, still laughing, “what on earth are you doing here?”
As I slowly came to, she nodded at a waiter who was whistling along to “I Get a Kick Out of You.” He immediately poured her a glass of champagne. Or was it just cheap sparkling wine? I knew absolutely nothing about drinking. Apart from a glass of red wine at Passover, I’d never drunk any alcohol. Whatever she was drinking, it wasn’t her first glass this afternoon, judging by her breath and the rather delirious tone of her laughter. “Mira, you aren’t looking for work here, are—?”
“God, no!” I interrupted her before she could finish asking. It was too awful to contemplate.
“Good! Because you are too ugly, you know.”
“Thanks a lot,” I replied.
“So what do you want?” Ruth asked, and sipped her drink.
“I want to join a smugglers’ gang!”
Ruth choked on her champagne.
While she coughed away, I asked, “Can’t you introduce me to someone who can help?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Please. For friendship’s sake?” I asked, just in case.
I was the only person from the old days who still spoke to her. She didn’t want to lose me as a friend. So she replied:
“For friendship’s sake.”
10
Shmuel Asher’s mustache was so thick, a dozen mice could have hidden in it. His face was covered in scars. He was a powerful man, and it was safe to assume that the men who had inflicted those scars ended up looking far worse once he’d finished with them. If they had lived.
Asher was the leader of a group of crooks and thieves called Chompe, and Ruth was his favorite whore. In fact, he was said to truly love her. She’d told me this, bursting with pride, and I’d felt awful. She was so gullible. It was well known that Asher and many other men preferred underage girls.
I was in no danger of being a girl Asher might fancy. I was too bony. We sat at a table in a corner of the bar. Asher had his back to the wall like some desperado in a western who worried someone would shoot him from behind.
The singer was drinking at the bar while the piano man tinkled the keys softly and Ruth slid up and down Asher’s lap, pressing her cheek to his. The huge man ignored her attentions and asked me: “How could you possibly be of any use to me?”
“I’m an experienced smuggler,” I said, trying to sound confident.
“What sort of experience?”
Ruth suddenly stared at me. If I told Asher about the graveyard, he would know that she had betrayed one of his smuggling routes to me.
Her fear was contagious. I touched the tablecloth. My fingers stroked the little burns in the fabric and touched crumbs of food. I managed to calm down a bit.
“I climb over the wall,” I lied. I’d never climbed over the wall in my life.
Ruth was relieved I hadn’t given her away.
She smooched Asher’s face as he stared at me. “Where do you climb over?”
“Usually at Stawki Street, not far from Pokorna Street,” I lied some more.
“There are less dangerous places.”
“There aren’t any safe places,” I said.
“The safe places are where we have bribed the guards,” he grinned.
“You bribe the guards and I can’t smuggle on my own anymore—that’s why I want to join you,” I said. This part was true.
“It’s pretty brave to walk in here and demand to be a member of my gang.”
There was no way I could tell from his expression or the tone of his voice whether he was impressed by my boldness or offended by my behavior.
“We could use someone new. I’ve lost a few men in the past couple of weeks.”
He said a few, but I knew that he meant he’d lost many men. So this increased my chances of getting work. But it also worried me—in fact, it really scared me. It wasn’t even possible for the members of the infamous Chompe gang to survive as smugglers these days.
“But tell me,” Shmuel asked as the waiter brought him a cup of thick, tarry coffee. “Why should I choose you of all people to join my gang?”
“Because it’ll pay off,” I replied.
“A lot of people say that,” he said. “Give me another reason.”
I tried to think of one. What could I offer the king of thieves?
“Because…,” I stammered.
“Because?” he asked, and I was at a loss for words.
“Because,” Ruth spoke up all of a sudden, and stroked Asher’s cheek, “I’ll be especially nice to you.”
“You have to be anyway,” he replied.
“But it’s even better when I love you.”
That convinced Asher. He and Ruth seemed to have something else in mind when they used the word love than I did. He beamed at Ruth, took a sip of his coffee, and said, “Welcome to the Chompe gang!”
“Thank you!” I said. I looked at him briefly and then turned to Ruth. She was the one I was really thanking.
“You can start tonight,” Asher said. “At four thirty a.m. At the corner of Zimna Street and Żelazna Street.”
Tonight?
It was sooner than I had expected. Or wanted. I would have to climb over the wall in just a few hours’ time. And try not to get killed in the process.