12
The third person everyone in the ghetto knew apart from Rubinstein and Korczak, the one everyone despised, was a man called Adam Czerniakow. He was the head of the Jewish council, and he was standing less than five meters away, on a podium in the middle of the street, giving a speech. He was almost completely bald with a large nose, wearing a perfectly cut light gray suit and smart polished shoes. A man of impeccable taste.
A small orchestra stood waiting to play. In front of him a group of children and their parents were listening to him speak. The head of the Jewish council was here to open a new playground. “Never forget, when times are hard, or if they get worse—no, especially if they get worse—the children are our future.”
He waited for a short moment, and several grown-ups started to clap. Czerniakow seemed to thrive on the little round of applause, as if it had life-giving properties. I suddenly remembered one of the characters from Hannah’s stories. There was a million-year-old chemist named Vandal who made children cry so that he could brew an elixir of life from their tears. When I pointed out to Hannah that Vandal could not have lived a million years ago because humans didn’t exist then, all she said was, “My story, my rules.”
How wonderful to create the world as one pleased. Even if it’s only make-believe.
I didn’t listen to the rest of Czerniakow’s speech. My meeting with Amos had disturbed me. And to make matters worse, the apple juice was rumbling in my stomach. Amos had been right to warn me about that: Drinking too much, too fast could make me ill.
But what really made me feel sick was the fact that he had been ready to kill me. For the first time in my life, someone I cared about had threatened me.
It was true, I did care about Amos. He had saved my life and that kiss had been special.
Well, it meant nothing now.
I’d never care about Amos again.
Let him play Masada with that Esther of his.
Fanatics. Idiots—the lot of them.
Amos would probably have loved to stab Czerniakow, too. Everyone said the head of the Jewish council was a traitor who bowed to the Nazis’ demands and did nothing for the Jews. There were only a few people who didn’t think so. Jurek, for example, defended Czerniakow. One time when I was slagging off the leader of the Jewish council, he said, “Why don’t you all just leave Czerniakow alone? The deluded fool really thinks he’s doing what’s best for us. He believes everything would be even worse if some corrupt person had the post instead of him. Someone like that tyrant in the ghetto of Lodz. Czerniakow allows himself to be spat on and humiliated by the Germans. All because he thinks he’s doing his best for us.”
“He hasn’t made anything better for us,” I answered.
“At least he tries,” Jurek had said. “Which is more than most of us can say.”
Czerniakow turned round and signaled to the orchestra. The musicians started to play a merry tune, and I wondered if the Jewish council was paying them for the performance, or if the chance to play in front of an audience was enough, even if all they got was a round of applause.
Czerniakow called to the children. “You may start playing now.” And the children ran to the shabby playground. As I watched the leader of the Jewish council, the smile slid from his face. The effects of the applause had worn off, and he could not keep up his spirits any longer. Maybe Jurek was right after all. Maybe he was doing everything he could. Maybe he simply didn’t have enough power to come up with anything better than a miserable playground.
But no matter what kind of a person Czerniakow really was, his behavior made one thing very clear: Amos was an idiot. If the Germans were really going to kill us all, the leader of the Jewish council would know about it. And he wouldn’t be opening children’s playgrounds and talking about the future of the children all the while.
Czerniakow patted the head of a dark-haired girl whose parents had allowed her to put on a pretty green dress that was going to be filthy in less than five minutes. Anyone capable of smiling and patting a child like that couldn’t possibly believe that the child and the whole ghetto were about to be annihilated. No Jew could be that evil. Nor could anyone else—not even the Germans.
Yes, Amos was stupid if he thought he knew more than the head of the Jewish council did. It felt good to start calling Amos an idiot in my head. Idiot, idiot, idiot!
Oh, it was going to be good to forget about him at last. I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about Daniel anymore. He was the boy I really loved.
There—I’d said it: I loved Daniel.
Or I’d thought it, at least.
The children and the musicians spurred one another on. The merrier the music, the wilder the children played and vice versa.
What a pity that Hannah was too big for playgrounds. I would have loved to see her join in the fun.
I walked home. And when I reached 70 Miła Street, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Hannah was sitting on the front steps kissing a pale, gangly boy at least half a head taller than me. This had to be Ben, the fifteen-year-old she’d told me about.
“What do you think you are doing?” I asked, appalled.
Of course, it was perfectly obvious what was going on. My little sister was far too young to be kissing anyone, but that was exactly what she was doing. Pretty passionately, in fact!
Hannah let go of the redhead, who at least had the decency to go red. Hannah didn’t have any such decency. She pushed a strand of hair out of her face, laughed, and answered back rudely. “What does it look like?” I could have slapped her.
“You do it with Daniel, too,” she said.
“But I’m older and I don’t do it in public and…? Why on earth am I bothering to argue with you?”
“I was wondering,” she grinned back.
Now I could have slapped her again.
“P … perhaps I should g … g … go?” the boy stammered. By this stage, he was so red in the face that he looked as if he was going to burst.
I was angry and wanted to say something horrid back at him, but I wasn’t mean enough to make fun of him. “Yes, I think you should,” I said.
“Well, I don’t think so,” Hannah disagreed.
“B … b … but…,” Ben stammered.
“You’re staying,” she ordered. She wasn’t looking at him, though. She was staring at me defiantly.
The boy looked from one sister to the other. He was obviously trying to figure out whose fury would be worse.
Poor lad.
He came to the conclusion that Hannah was the greater danger and stayed where he was. I didn’t know what else to do so I grabbed Hannah’s wrist and yelled, “You are coming with me!”
“Let go!” she cried while Ben looked as if he might stop breathing any minute. “No!” I said, and dragged my sister up the steps.
“Let go, I said!” She was furious and thumped me on the arm. Right on my wound. I screamed and everything went black for a second. I let go of Hannah and held on to the railing so as not to collapse on the stairs.
“What’s wrong, Mira? What did I do?” Hannah sounded scared.
Her voice came from far away.
“I … I th … th … think y … y … you … hurt her,” Ben Redhead said.
“I can see that.”
The pain ebbed away slowly. I let go of the railing, cradled my arm, and managed to open my eyes. Everything was blurry, but I could see that I’d dropped the bag of bread. Ben Redhead picked it up while Hannah helped me. The pain was more bearable now, but I felt sick.
“What happened to you?” Hannah asked, pointing at the dried blood on my sleeve.
“Later,” I gasped, and fought the urge to throw up all the apple juice Amos had given me.
Thinking about Amos made me feel sick all over again.
Hannah turned to Ben Redhead. “It would be better for you to go now,” she said.
He thought so, too.
He gave her the bag with the bread and asked, “Will I … I see you to … m … m … morrow?”
“Of course you will,” she said quickly.
I was too weak to stop them from meeting.
Ben Redhead smiled, looking pleased—this young stutterer really seemed to like Hannah—and hurried off.
“I’ll help you get upstairs,” Hannah said.
She hadn’t panicked. She was doing her best to deal with the situation. My little sister was a lot more mature than I knew. Apart from where boys were concerned, of course. I was proud of her for a moment.
And then I threw up on the stairs.
13
I couldn’t eat any of the sawdust bread at dinnertime because I felt ill, so Mama and Hannah shared it between themselves. Although you couldn’t really call it sharing. Hannah ate more than two-thirds of the loaf, stuffing it into her mouth, munching loudly, and burping several times. She was doing this on purpose to annoy me. She was cross because I’d stopped her kissing Ben, and I hadn’t told her how I’d got the wound on my arm. I didn’t want her and Mama to know how stupid I’d been about Amos.
Hannah took advantage of me being weak. “Don’t forget, Mira,” she said. “You are not my mother. So stop acting like you are.” And then she burped even louder.
The rest of the evening, we didn’t say a word to each other. And instead of telling us all a good-night story, Hannah just mumbled one to herself. Something to do with two children from the ghetto. A boy and a girl. The boy had red hair and the girl was very upset because no one could see how grown-up she was.
It wasn’t very hard to work out who those ghetto kids were supposed to be. They liked kissing each other very, very much, Hannah told no one in particular.
No, it wasn’t at all difficult to guess who she had in mind.
But the children had to hide their love because there was an evil governess. I had a fairly good idea who the governess was supposed to be, too.
According to Hannah, the ghetto children were walking through the book market when they saw a book bound in beautiful red leather. The title 777 Islands was printed on the cover in green letters. That was all. Nothing else. No author’s name. No publisher. No nothing. The children, Ben and Hannah, were fascinated by this foreign-looking book. But the bookseller, a man with a wooden leg, wanted them to work as his slaves for a year before they could have it. So they decided to steal it instead. They ran away with the book, thinking that the one-legged man would never be able to follow them. But he was surprisingly agile, despite his wooden leg—like he was from a different world. The bookseller threatened the children with death and damnation if they didn’t give the book back at once. The book would swallow them and they’d end up in the Hell of No Return, he said.
Of course, the two children didn’t believe a word he said and kept on running. They were afraid that he’d beat them with his wooden leg if he caught them. They ran into a backyard, saw the trash cans, and hesitated for a moment. When they realized that they had no choice, they jumped into the cans in order to hide. They stayed in hiding until the one-legged man gave up at last and went away. They heard him mumbling away to himself, “The Mirror King will get you, the Mirror King will destroy you…”
Once the coast was clear, the children crawled out of their hiding place and studied the book more closely. It was a sort of travel guide. But to a world that didn’t exist. 777 magical islands were described in the book. 777 islands full of marvels. Full of danger.
One was covered in carnivorous trees, for example, and another one was inhabited by giants who wrote poetry without vowels—fff, grr, fff. The terrifying Scissor Men lived on yet another one. They cut all the travelers who chanced upon their island out of life and pinned them into a giant album, like pictures.
The children turned the pages of the book, and then all at once, it started to glow. They were surrounded by red light, and suddenly they left the ghetto and found themselves on board a magnificent three-master, sailing across the never-ending seas. The sun was shining. The sea breeze filled the sails, and the air was perfectly clear.
Unlike most of the children in stories, Hannah and Ben weren’t naive. They knew right away that they had been carried away to the world of the 777 islands. And they were so glad, they jumped for joy. Of course, they knew that this was probably a dangerous world—as I said, they weren’t naive—but they weren’t trapped in the ghetto anymore.
Suddenly they heard a voice behind them. “What are two stowaways doing aboard my ship?”
They turned round and saw a cuddly little rabbit standing there, wearing an eye patch and a broad-rimmed hat, and holding a telescope.
“I’m Captain Carrot,” the little rabbit announced.
Such a silly name! The children found it impossible not to start laughing. So they did: “Captain Carrot…”
“This is the most feared name on all the high seas!”
“Sure…” The children laughed even more.
Captain Carrot didn’t like giggling children, so he said, “You are going to die!”
“Somehow, it doesn’t sound scary when a cuddly rabbit says that,” Hannah giggled.
“Well, how about I say it!” they heard a thundering voice behind them say. They turned around and found themselves standing face-to-face with a giant werewolf. There were bits of raw meat hanging from his jaws. They didn’t want to know what he’d been eating.
“W … we should never have st … st … stolen that book,” Ben Redhead stammered.
But Hannah disagreed at once. “I’d rather die out here on the great wide sea than have to live in the ghetto for another second.”
My sister stopped mumbling at this point, said something that sounded like: “To be continued, or not, depending on whether we live to see another day,” and closed her eyes.
A minute later, she was snoring loudly.
But I couldn’t sleep. Hannah’s little story worried me. My baby sister would rather be dead than survive in the ghetto.
I’d had no idea how unhappy she was. And then I had made things worse by not letting her kiss Ben. No wonder she had turned me into an evil governess in her story.
“I know how much you do for us, Mira.”
I jumped. All at once, my mother was talking to me. She hardly ever spoke. Certainly not at night.
“You think I don’t notice, but I do,” Mama continued. “I watch you.”
She was lying on the mattress next to mine and made no attempt to talk quietly. She knew that nothing could wake Hannah up once she’d fallen asleep. Not even shooting German gunfire.
“You work so hard,” Mama said.
Incredible: She’d said more in a few seconds than she usually said all day.
By the light of the moon, I could see that she was smiling. Not in an absentminded way, which usually meant that she was lost in thought, remembering Papa. No, Mama was smiling in the present. Her approval pleased me somehow, although it was a real surprise.
“Do you still feel ill?” she asked.
What was all this about? She never asked me how I felt. On the other hand, I didn’t usually come home with a stitched-up wound on my arm.
“Everything is okay,” I said. “It’s all right.”
“Hannah’s wrong, you know,” Mama continued.
“What?” I asked, confused.
“You are like a mother to her.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the one who looks after her and tries to give her an upbringing.”
That was true enough.
“I am so grateful that you are looking after Hannah,” Mama said.
No, I didn’t want this. “You are our only mother,” I said.
“I haven’t been for a long time now.” Mama sounded sad. “We both know that.”
I didn’t want her thanks. All I wanted was for her to start being our mother again, damn it!
“I should have been a better mother to you, too.”
I sighed. It wasn’t the best time for this kind of conversation.
I would have loved to crawl under the blanket and stay there for the next few days, I was so tired. But Asher was counting on me. If the smuggling action failed because of me, they’d make me pay for it.
And Ruth would have to pay, too, for recommending me. And all my family. Asher was fond of making an example, to make sure that no one disobeyed his orders.
I was in way too deep not to go.
Why couldn’t I disappear into a magic book and take everyone I loved with me? Or be in England solving crimes with good old Lord Peter Wimsey?
“I love you,” Mama said.
A while back, I would have given anything to hear her say this, but not now. After all this time, listening to her just made me sad.
“And your father loved you, too.”
“So that’s why he only helped Simon, then,” I snapped.
“Love isn’t easy,” Mama said.
I sat up on my worn-out mattress and scowled at her.
“No one can be strong all the time,” my mother said, “especially in times like these. You shouldn’t judge us too harshly.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Oh, get off your high horse.” Now Mama sat up, too. “Papa did everything he could, he tried everything. But he didn’t have any strength left. He was a good man. He’d have had to be a cold, self-centered person to last any longer.”
She hadn’t just accepted that Father had killed himself. She’d actually forgiven him!
I couldn’t do that.
“I know you can’t force love,” she continued, “but when someone tells you they love you…”
Like her now, and Daniel, too.
“… and if you love that person, then it would be the right thing to let them know.”
She had said more tonight than in all the time since Papa’s death. I knew that she would feel better if I said I loved her, too.
But I was still angry with Papa, and with her. Why was it my job to comfort her?
Plus I had to climb the wall tonight.
Then she smiled again. She looked sad, but she smiled.
“You can’t,” she realized, and gently stroked my cheek. She lay back down on the mattress, wrapped herself in her blanket, and closed her eyes.
And I still couldn’t say, “I love you.”
14
Of course I didn’t get any sleep. I was cross with everyone: Mama, Hannah, Amos, and his stupid girlfriend. He’d called me a kid in front of her, and even worse, I’d acted like one. And I was cross with Daniel. He was my friend but I couldn’t tell him what I was up to.
I felt so lonely.
But I was cross with myself, too, for following Amos—and getting stabbed by Zaccharia—and for getting into all this mess. And now I was running through the ghetto in the middle of the night, in the drizzling rain, breaking the curfew, which meant that I’d be shot if I met a patrol.
So I’d better not meet one.
It felt strange to make my way through empty streets. During the day, there were so many people about that it was hardly possible to stand still, but now, in the light of an odd streetlamp or two, the streets looked uncannily large and wide.
I approached the meeting point at the corner of Zimna and Żelazna Streets. Every section of the wall was guarded, including this one. So Asher’s men must have paid a lot of money to all the guards, both the German soldiers and the Jewish police. I wondered if my brother was one of the policemen involved. Probably not. Ruth had seen him at the Britannia Hotel in May, and he’d told her that he was too important to do guard duty anymore. He’d said he worked in the department that reported directly to the Polish police. Ruth didn’t know if it was true, or if Simon had just been showing off like a lot of the customers. At least he’d gone to bed with one of the other girls, not with Ruth. They’d made fun of his poor lovemaking afterward.
I could see the silhouette of the wall at the end of Zimna Street. I knew that it had been built by human hands, but in the dim light of the streetlamps with all the drizzling rain, it was like a force of nature. An unconquerable barrier formed at the beginning of time that would still be standing when all mankind was gone, Jews and Germans included.
At this distance, the barbed wire along the top reminded me of the forest of thorns in one of Hannah’s stories. It was about a man made of thorns who could never touch Maid Vera, his one true love, because he always hurt her.
Although I couldn’t see the broken glass from here, I imagined it cutting my hands open. The mere idea stopped me in my tracks in the middle of the street.
How was I going to get over the wall with a wounded arm? Already, the area around one of the stitches was so swollen, it felt as if it was going to burst. I’d put on my leather jacket to cushion it, but I doubted it would be enough to protect the wound.
I slunk into a doorway and kept an eye on the street corner Asher had mentioned. No one was there yet. I had to wait.
4:30, 4:35, 4:40. There was still no one anywhere. No smugglers, no Jewish police, no one at all. The sun would be coming up soon, and then my trip over the wall would turn into a suicide mission instead of just a life-threatening one.
Should I go home and risk Asher’s wrath? Or should I get closer to the wall to see if any smugglers from the Chompe gang were hiding in the shadows somewhere?
I didn’t have any choice. If I gave up and angered Asher, I’d be putting Ruth’s life and my family’s at risk. Going to the wall risked only my life.
I wasn’t cross for getting myself into all of this mess anymore. Now I was plain scared.
I left the doorway and headed toward the wall. Cold sweat trickled down my face and neck, but I forced myself to go on and got as far as the street corner. The wall was less than five meters away. I still couldn’t see anyone else. What was wrong? If I’d been supposed to go on a mission by myself, surely Asher would have given me more exact instructions.
Something fishy was going on. The sweat gathered on the back of my neck. I needed to leave. Asher wouldn’t blame me for breaking off a mission that had obviously gone wrong before it even got started.
I had just decided to go home when I noticed a ladder lying on the ground. Was it meant for me? Was I supposed to put it up against the wall, climb up, and look over to the other side? To find the Polish helpers waiting to tell me what would happen next? But wouldn’t Asher have told me all this beforehand? Maybe not. What did I know about his smuggling tactics?
If this was really what I was supposed to do, I figured, then I wasn’t going to be smuggling food into the ghetto. We’d have needed men waiting to load the food onto carts. Maybe I was supposed to climb over the wall to smuggle American dollars, the hardest currency in the ghetto and in all of Poland, probably. Perhaps in the whole world, even.
Whatever my task was, I was never going to find out if I didn’t get the ladder and start climbing.
I couldn’t afford to hang around doing nothing any longer. The time bought by bribing the guards could run out any second now.
My hands started to shake, and I calmed down only when I touched the rough wood of the ladder. I leaned it against the wall in a dark spot well away from the light of the streetlamp. It was about two and a half meters long, so I would have to pull myself up the last meter—with a wounded arm! But at least the drizzle had stopped. This was one of those situations where every little bit helped. I started to climb up the ladder rung by rung. As fast as I could. If I was going to be a part of this madness, then I was going to get it over and done with as soon as possible.
When I got to the second-to-last rung, I held on to the ladder with my good hand and reached up with my other arm to brush away the broken glass where I was planning to climb up onto the wall. The wound hurt like mad, but I ignored the pain as best I could. The chunks of glass were big, and I had to make sure that I didn’t cut myself—I’d forgotten to bring gloves—and that they didn’t fall noisily to the ground.
Above the glass, I saw the barbed wire. I remembered stories about soldiers in the First World War who had lost their lives trapped in wire like this. Would I be able to squeeze beneath it if I lifted it carefully? And if so, how was I supposed to get down on the other side? Would my contact person—if there was one—be waiting with a ladder for me? I thought about calling, to see if anyone was there. But no! It was far too dangerous.
I held on to the wall with both hands, and pulled myself up to check the situation. I peered over to the Polish side between the glass and the barbed wire. Immediately, I recognized what an idiot I was. I had misjudged the whole situation. There had been smugglers on my side of the wall who I’d been supposed to meet, but they’d left the ladder and fled once they’d seen what I could see now. German soldiers were approaching from every direction. They were quiet, controlled, swift, and efficient.
Two hundred meters away from me, the chain of men had already joined up. Why on earth were the Germans surrounding the ghetto? I didn’t know, but one thing was certain. I didn’t want my head to be a possible target for another second. I climbed back down the ladder as fast as I could, left it standing where it was, and ran through the empty streets, while the sun came up over the wall behind me. I would never make it home without being seen, so I hid in a doorway and fell asleep in the end, totally exhausted.
A couple of hours later, I woke up to the noise on the street. I scrambled to my feet—my arm was still hurting like mad—and set off. I soon realized why the soldiers had surrounded the ghetto. Flyers had been put up everywhere:
NOTICE
By order of the German authorities all Jews living in Warsaw, without regard to age or sex, are to be resettled in the East.
I read this and all I could think of was: Chełmno.