by Jane Yolen
As if bestowing a gift on an unworthy peasant, Dr. Norenberg turned this time to Mama and said, “Here are the candies. But I shall endeavor to find you some real medicine for your husband, and I hope, in return, you will give this bag of sweets to my wife.”
“Done,” Mama said.
It was the shortest sentence Chaim had ever heard her utter. He was impressed.
Until, of course, she added, “My husband I are indebted to you, Dr. Norenberg.”
The dentist bowed, much more deeply than was necessary, and clicked his heels. “And we you, madam.”
Well, that part, Chaim thought, is actually true. Probably the only true thing anyone in the Norenberg family has said so far.
He followed his mother out of the hall.
3
Papa’s cough had been soothed somewhat with the application of two of the hard candies and the promise of medicine. He lay down for a bit to rest.
Meanwhile, Mama managed to put all of the clothing away, Papa’s meager bits in Chaim’s scanty closet and her own vast array of clothing and shoes stuffed into Gittel’s slightly larger closet. Next she rearranged the few potions and notions—as Papa called Mama’s beauty lotions—on the dresser in Gittel’s room. It was a rapidly dwindling supply with no way to refill any of the bottles.
When she came back into the kitchen, she took out two packs of cards from the drawer next to where the cutlery was kept.
“Durak!” she called, and both Chaim and Gittel came over to play.
Mama invited Sophie to join them, but she replied rather stiffly that her father didn’t allow his children to waste their time on games. “We are to write under his direction instead.” Then she stood and headed for the bedroom door.
Mama sniffed. “Essays! While the world falls down around their heads.”
Gittel laughed. “And cards are better, Mama?”
Mama smiled in return. “Oh, much better. See? Already they are making us happy, and we haven’t even dealt them out yet.”
Chaim realized that Sophie had looked rather longingly at the cards in Mama’s hands before leaving the kitchen. Maybe, he thought, I mistook disdain for regret.
And then the games began.
Gittel was already accomplished at durak. A natural, Mama had called her. So they played that first. Each time she won, Gittel gave a sly grin in Chaim’s direction, as if to encourage him to try harder. He just laughed.
Bridge—with its card counting, its reliance on statistics and possibilities—that was Chaim’s favorite. And the fact that he had to talk little during the game.
At last, Gittel yawned, hand over her mouth, then said, “I’m tired of durak. Let’s play some bridge.”
Chaim knew she was fibbing. She had given the hand signal for doing this only for you: thumb to her breast, pinkie extended. It was no secret that he was the one who preferred bridge. But twins—they took care of each other.
“I’m tired of it, too,” he said, and before Mama could demur, he’d scooped up the bridge cards and dealt them out.
They played bridge for an hour, hard to do with just three of them, but Mama was used to taking charge of two hands. There was little talk besides the bidding, as if no more words needed to be said.
As he won hand after hand, Chaim teased Gittel back, not with words—why waste them?—but with his own grins. Once he even stuck his tongue out. It was all in fun, after all. It kept them quiet.
Or perhaps they stayed quiet fearing anything said aloud might be misinterpreted by the Norenbergs. Perhaps the Norenbergs really were collaborators, Jews who worked with and for the enemy. Or spies.
These days in Łódź, anything was possible.
* * *
• • •
When, a little later, they heard the front door open and close, they put the cards down as one. Papa signaled Gittel to get into the pantry, which had a false wall that he’d carefully made when they first moved in. A friend of his had advised doing such a thing. A friend who’d gone missing at the last resettlement.
Girls were in more danger than boys, so Chaim stayed in the room as a guard.
Then Papa and Mama went out to greet whoever had come in.
Listening at the kitchen door, Chaim heard the beginnings of a muttered conversation with Mrs. Norenberg. When he peeked out, the hallway was empty, so he followed the thread of voices to the living room, watching and listening there.
Papa was saying, “Never ever open that door without knowing who’s . . .”
“It was just my husband going out to find you some medicine. He’s a saint, that man.” Mrs. Norenberg’s voice was a bit flustered, even whiny.
“We don’t believe in saints,” Mama said flatly.
“But I do,” said Mrs. Norenberg in a quieter voice, as she turned away.
Chaim shrank back into thought. She believes in saints? Then Mrs. Norenberg wasn’t Jewish. So why is she here?
Papa said, “He should have asked me where to go, where the pharmacy is. There’s only one left in the ghetto. Better to go to the hospital, though.”
“Was he wearing his coat? With the star?” Mama sounded concerned.
“Of course,” Mrs. Norenberg said. “He’s not stupid. In fact, he’s brilliant.”
Chaim kept his face impassive, giving nothing away. But he thought, Brilliant isn’t necessarily smart.
Just then a hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “A spy!” Bruno’s face was pink with anger.
Pulling roughly away, Chaim declared, “It’s my house!” Meaning he couldn’t be a spy there. Then he strode into the living room, Bruno at his heels.
“He tried to make me out to be a thief,” Bruno said loudly to his mother, somehow realizing that Chaim had already expended three of his five words for the hour and wouldn’t—or couldn’t—defend himself further. “But he’s a spy, and that’s worse.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Papa said. “He lives here. All rooms are open to him.”
“I live here now, too. Is the kitchen open to me?” Bruno said, once again sounding triumphant.
Mama nodded. “Oh yes, the kitchen is open to you, Bruno. Just not the drawers and doors, because everything in them is my province. As everyone knows, a woman’s kitchen is her castle.”
Bravo, Mama! Chaim thought.
Gittel joined them from the hidden pantry room. Behind her marched Sophie. Both had obviously heard the last part of the conversation, for Gittel, smiling mischievously at Bruno, said, “There is a moat around this castle. And here be dragons.”
“Dragons?” Bruno looked puzzled.
“I’m one,” said Gittel, her fingers twisting her braid through her fingers.
“I’m two,” said Sophie, surprising everyone, especially herself. She gave Gittel a look from under her long lashes as if to say, I’m on your team now.
“I’m three!” Chaim said, and his triumph was greater than the one Bruno had just expressed.
By the look on his face, Bruno knew it, too.
* * *
• • •
For the rest of the morning, Bruno remained out of sight in the big bedroom until Dr. Norenberg returned, looking flushed and annoyed.
“It took me hours to find the hospital,” he said as soon as he was in the door, “because no one would stop to talk to me. I was like an island in a sea of people, and they simply flowed around me.”
“They were being careful,” Papa told him. “You might have been . . .” He’s going to say it—a spy! Chaim thought.
Instead, Papa finished with, “taken by the Nazis. No one wants to be near that. Nazi nets are so wide, they often ensnare any innocents around.”
“Why would I be taken?” Mr. Norenberg began. “What am I guilty of?”
Guilty, Chaim thought, of being a Jew.
“You were brought here. Why not take
n away?” Mama asked, her voice quietly sensible.
But Dr. Norenberg was not be so easily stopped in midtirade. “All someone needed to say was that the hospital was a simple two blocks away. It took me hours.”
“I’m surprised,” Papa said dryly, “that you didn’t get arrested, standing like an island and haranguing people on their way to the factories. Maybe the Nazis have a fondness for dentists. But if you’d told me you were going out and why, I would have drawn you a map.”
Chaim was about to summon a few more words, but Gittel put a hand on his shoulder. Instead he looked down at his hands so he wouldn’t laugh. Dr. Norenberg was clearly not someone who tolerated laughter, especially at his own expense. But out of the corner of his eye, Chaim saw the doctor toss something at Papa, something in a bit of brown paper wrapper with a twist at each end. Chaim would get the paper after, when Papa was done with it, to use for his writing.
“I was on a mission to find you the right pills. And all for the sake of a handful of candies.”
“Oh, Doctor, he meant nothing by that. It is the constant coughing. It has worn him down. We are so grateful . . .” Mama began.
But unable to watch his mother humble herself any further before Dr. Norenberg, Chaim pulled away from Gittel’s steadying hand and abruptly left the room, to spend the next twenty minutes in the bathroom wishing, just this once, that there was a hot bath waiting for him. A long soak was just what he needed. What each of them needed.
Papa most of all.
Gittel Remembers
When we lived in our old house, Mama and I loved to look at her jewelry, taking down the boxes in which they were stored color-coded for easy sorting.
“Mostly costume jewelry,” she’d explain, “not expensive but fun.”
And then she’d open up a violet-colored box and drape long waterfall strands of amethyst beads around my neck, or clip dangling olive earrings from the green box on my ears, or even twist garnet bangles around my arms from the red box. I felt like a Gypsy or a queen. Like Queen Esther. It was Purim every day.
She never let me wear her wedding ring, though, or her engagement ring, that sparkling diamond surrounded by smaller diamond chips. “Tiny but perfect,” she told me. “Those are always on my fingers, my pledge to your father.”
Once we were removed to the ghetto, Mama sold most of the costume jewelry to pay for extra milk, bread, butter on the black market. She thought it was a secret, but I knew. I knew because I found the red and green and violet boxes stuffed against the back of the dresser, and they were empty.
Papa would go out one evening as if to a meeting but instead head toward that secret market, which moved every few days. He had to be very careful. If the Nazis had found out, he could have been arrested or killed on the spot. But maybe they did know and wanted to buy cheap jewelry for their lady friends.
Or maybe Papa was just lucky.
“Not lucky, he always said. “Careful. If you take great care, luck will follow.”
Luck, in our sign language, is a touch to the palm of the left hand lightly with the right pointer finger, letting it bounce back. How quickly that touch comes and goes. Like luck.
Oh, Papa . . . how were we to know that luck is just fickle and does not care who it visits. Or when.
4
Early the next morning, Papa shook Chaim awake, saying, “We have to talk, my son.” Then he broke into a round of furious coughing and downed another one of the doctor’s precious pills.
Through sleep-encrusted lids, Chaim eyed his father. Papa looked unhappy or distressed or something. Chaim couldn’t quite read his expression. Worried, he sat up. Nodded. Waited to find out what the talk was to be about. Perhaps a scolding over his behavior toward Bruno?
Papa cleared his throat and said in a kind of hoarse whisper, as if something besides a cough was stuck there, “Though you haven’t been able to have a bar mitzvah, I think you have become a man anyway. And so I have a man’s job for you.”
Not willing to spend even a few words on this moment in case they were spent unwisely, Chaim kept still.
“The ‘cough drops’ the dentist got for me may take days to work, if at all, and we do not have the time. Still, I cannot ask a man I don’t trust to do something for me that might put our entire family in danger. And his.”
Whatever Papa asks me, Chaim thought, I’ll do. It was clear Papa counted on that.
Papa drew in a deep breath and, surprisingly, did not break into immediate coughs. “Mama and I were discussing this difficult next step even before the Norenbergs arrived.” He stopped for a minute, then added carefully, “Their coming has simply moved up the time to do this.”
Chaim nodded as if he understood where the conversation was going.
“Other families,” Papa said, “have been talking about it, too. And all the talk has given me ideas, which I’ve shared only with Mama. She’s always been the one who could keep secrets. But I have had to learn to do so as well.”
Chaim wiped a hand across his eyes and then his mouth, trying to keep from yawning.
“But we weren’t ready to take those steps,” Papa added. “Not then.”
“Those steps?” Chaim breathed the two words out. They seemed to hang in the air, balanced precariously between them.
“And now,” Papa continued, “now that this new . . . um . . . difficult family is here, Mama and I realize enough food will be even harder to obtain. Unspoken anger is already boiling amongst us all. Space will soon make us monsters. Monsters who lie, monsters who cheat.”
“Who steal . . .” Chaim whispered.
“Monsters who report other people to the authorities,” his father added, nodding. “Chaim, I can’t stand what this is doing to Mama and Gittel and you. Besides, there are certain to be more resettlements to come, and no one knows where those removed have already gone. To stay here is death by slow starvation. To get on a Nazi train may mean something worse.”
Chaim couldn’t think of anything worse than slow starvation.
“We must find a way to leave Łódź. Just our family. Let the Norenbergs have the apartment, and may it bring them some peace, as your mother puts it. She’s a kinder soul than I’ll ever be. But we must find that way quickly. For that we will need—”
“Money,” Chaim whispered.
“Money,” Papa agreed.
Chaim nodded again. It was amazing that his parents had been talking about this for a while and he’d never guessed. He began to puzzle about his next words. Maybe I understand, Papa. Or I agree, Papa. Or—
But before he could say anything, Papa held out a closed fist to him, then slowly opened it. There was a linen handkerchief in his right palm. With two careful fingers, he spread the handkerchief out until it covered his whole hand. In the very center of the handkerchief, lit by the small kerosene lamp on the bedside table, was a ring.
Chaim’s breath caught in his throat. It looked like a magic ring in a fairy story. There was a sparkling jewel, tiny but perfect, in the center, with glittering shards around it. “Mama’s engagement ring,” Chaim whispered.
Papa nodded. “I need . . . we need you to take this to Motl the Pawnbroker’s this morning. It’s too expensive to sell on the black market. We’d never get a fair price. But Motl . . .” Papa seemed to shudder just a bit. Shrink just a bit. Then he pulled his shoulders back and asked in a straightforward way, “Do you know the place? It’s off Towiansk.”
This morning? Chaim was stunned. At the very same time, he was glad not to have days, weeks to worry. Maybe Papa knew it was best to spring the plan on him like this. He breathed the street name out rather than speaking it aloud. Towiansk. It wasn’t far, nine blocks, but far enough to be a dangerous journey these days for a Jew.
“You’re a good son,” Papa said, starting to cough. “Take the ring.” The hand not holding the ring went up to his mouth but could not s
top the grating, choking sounds.
Chaim took the ring. Held it in his open left hand. Watched as Papa drank a sip of water.
When at last Papa could speak again, he said in a raspy voice, “Tell no one where you’re going. I’ll say you are out buying some food, as you have done before.”
Well, thought Chaim, as I have done twice before. The market was on their same block. He could get to it in less than a minute. Two at most. Towiansk Street was five times farther than that. Maybe ten times. Easy if there were no Nazis around. Dangerous now. How dangerous, he didn’t know, but people died all the time on the street. At least that’s what Mama says.
“That way,” Papa continued, “the Norenbergs won’t expect you back too soon and ask pesky questions.”
“Does Mama know?”
“It was she who gave the ring to me,” Papa said. “It’s the next to last bit of gold she has. ‘And with a diamond, too!’ she said. After that, all we’ll have to barter with is her wedding ring and my father’s pocket watch.” Papa was quiet for a minute, then cleared his throat.
“Look, my strong son, Łódź is dying, and we are dying with it,” he said solemnly. “It has a past, and possibly a future. Just not with us Jews in it.” His voice seemed to be getting stronger.
The medicine must be working! Chaim thought. He wished he could think well of the dentist because of that. At the very least, he was thankful to Dr. Norenberg. But this moment, what was most important was that Papa had spoken to him man-to-man, made him feel ready for anything that he might have to confront.
Chaim nodded. “Plan?” he whispered.
“First sell the ring. How much you get for it will let us figure out what the next steps will be. And how soon.”
Chaim yawned. He couldn’t help it. The last vestiges of sleep were hammering at him, like Nazis at the front door.
Tousling Chaim’s hair, Papa said, “I’ve written a letter to Motl for you to give to him, so you don’t have to talk. And . . .”
Chaim wished he could say, Don’t bother, Papa, I’ll talk to him on my own. Bargain with him. But he was afraid to chance it. Their future lay in his hands, not in his mouth. Papa was right to send a letter. He yawned again, set the precious handkerchief and ring on the bedside table, and got dressed. Handkerchief and ring in his left pocket, letter in his right. The letter made a crinkling sound as he slid it in.