Millions of Pebbles

by Roberta Kagan

  “Of course. Go home now, Caleb.”

  Caleb quietly walked out the door. If everything went as planned his life would change forever today. He would never have to return to that horrible job again. Walking slowly, he kept out of sight by ducking in alleyways until he saw Rumkowski come marching down the other side of the street. His heart beat fast. Come on, you idiot, do your job, he thought, and then Heimy came strolling out of his blacksmith shop and followed Rumkowski into the nearby building. He grabbed Rumkowski and pushed him against the wall. Caleb waited a few minutes but not too long, then he walked in to find Heimy pounding his fists into Rumkowski’s stomach.

  “What’s going on here?” Caleb said, his voice strong and filled with shock.

  “Help me!” Rumkowski yelled.

  Caleb drew the gun he carried and shot Heimy point-blank in the head. Blood flew onto the walls as Heimy fell on top of Rumkowski. Together, Caleb and Rumkowski pushed him off. Caleb helped Rumkowski to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I think so. He was trying to rob me.” Rumkowski was standing now, bent over at the waist and breathing hard.

  “Yes, I’m sure he was. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Rumkowski nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it,” Caleb answered and turned to leave.

  “Here, wait. Take this,” Rumkowski said as he took a couple of bills out of his pocket.

  “No, that’s all right,” Caleb said. “I didn’t do it for a reward.”

  “I owe you. You saved my life. What can I do to help you out? Better housing, better work detail?”

  “I sure would like to work for you, Mr. Rumkowski. I’d like to be one of your policemen. I think I could serve you quite well.”

  Rumkowski studied Caleb and smiled. “I think you’re right,” he said. “I believe you’re right.”

  And that was how Caleb came to work as one of Rumkowski’s henchmen in the sonder, the special forces police in the Lodz ghetto.

  CHAPTER 7

  The first time Caleb saw Zelda Lipman, she was standing in line at the butcher shop with her two children by her side. Initially, he was not attracted to her. In fact, he thought she looked small and helpless like a baby bird. Her long, crooked nose reminded him of a beak. He noticed she had bruises on her face and collarbone, which she’d made a futile attempt to cover with some old makeup that didn’t match her skin. Caleb knew who Zelda was married to because he listened to the rumors that spread through the ghetto, and word had it that Asher Lipman was known to be a brute.

  But one afternoon he’d happened to see Zelda in the alleyway between two buildings embracing a man, with her skirt hiked up over her waist. This would not have mattered much to Caleb; he saw this sort of thing happen before, but the man was Benjamin Rabinowitz. From the first time Caleb saw Benjamin, he hated him. Benjamin was the husband of Lila Rabinowitz, the girl who had rejected him. He’d tried to offer her extra food and a better job, but she showed him no interest.

  “What is it with you, Lila? Why don’t you like me?”

  She’d sneered at him. “I love my husband. And a good-for-nothing thug like you could never hold a candle to a refined man like my Ben.” That was when Caleb’s hate for Benjamin Rabinowitz was born. He was not accustomed to women treating him this way, and he wanted to know what Benjamin had that he didn’t. So he decided to find Ben and follow him. To Caleb’s surprise and dismay, Benjamin reminded him of the rich Jewish boys he’d met when he was young, who had shunned him because his family was poor. These boys had a way of dressing and mannerisms that even now made Caleb feel inferior. And even though Benjamin was quiet, and Caleb didn’t really know anything about him, the way Ben looked and carried himself reminded Caleb of a world that had shut him out when he was very young. Consequently, he despised Ben, but he also found himself obsessed with Ben and his family. When he made rounds walking through the ghetto, he always made it a point to pass the Rabinowitz’s apartment.

  One day he noticed Lila did not walk home from work at her regular time. He watched for the next three days, but he did not see her nor did he see the little boy who was always by her side.

  Later Caleb learned that Lila escaped. It happened at the same time as the old Nazi guard, Werner, disappeared. For several months before the escape, Caleb saw Lila on the street talking to Werner, and now Caleb put two and two together as he remembered Ben’s wife, the beautiful Lila Rabinowitz, with her platinum-blonde hair and blue eyes. He knew Lila had taken Moishe and escaped the ghetto with Werner, leaving Ben behind. But he didn’t feel sorry for Ben; he thought Ben deserved it for being a pompous rich boy. Ben Rabinowitz became the personification of the privileged boys Caleb despised. But now here in the ghetto with Rumkowski by his side, Caleb had power. And with that power he could squash men like Ben Rabinowitz under the heels of the black leather boots that Rumkowski had given him as a gift.

  Time passed, and Caleb worked hard to keep Rumkowski’s friendship. He never questioned Rumkowski’s orders or argued with him about anything. Caleb found Rumkowski to be a disgusting and despicable man, and he secretly despised him, but he made sure that Rumkowski thought he admired and loved him. In return, Caleb received better treatment. He was able to move to a larger apartment, which he did not have to share with anyone else. His food rations were larger, and he had some influence as to who was selected for the transports out of the ghetto to the work camps. Rumkowski was given a quota of Jews that he was expected to deliver to the transport office each day. Although Rumkowski never told Caleb where the transports were headed, Caleb heard rumors that the trains were being sent to a camp called Auschwitz. He wasn’t sure what happened to the people who left the Lodz ghetto to go to the camp, but what he did know was they never returned.

  Caleb had always loved a challenge. He could have easily sent Ben Rabinowitz right off to the camp, but he didn’t want to win that way. He wanted Ben’s girl to choose him over Ben. Caleb set out to win the heart of Zelda Lipman. The first thing he planned to do was get Asher out of the way. Asher was a violent man whose anger Caleb preferred to avoid.

  Caleb went to Rumkowski and asked for permission to add Asher’s name to the next transport list. Rumkowski nodded then he said, “Fine with me. Take someone else off the list, and add Asher Lipman. Doesn’t make much difference to me. Just make sure the quota is filled. I don’t want any complaints from the Nazis that we’re short.”

  CHAPTER 8

  When Asher Lipman received his "wedding invitation," which was what the ghetto inhabitants called the notices that were sent to let them know they had been selected for transport, he turned as white as an eggshell. Everyone knew that the transports led to somewhere terrible. The Nazis tried to convince the Jews they were being sent to work camps where they would be given jobs to do and better rations. But there were rumors in the ghetto that the Jews were being murdered. Asher was terrified. He read the notice twice, then he put his fist through the wall. He ranted and raved at his wife, striking her with his bloody fist and tearing the delicate skin of her lips. Blood poured down Zelda’s face and mixed with her tears. Then Asher turned away from Zelda and his children, who had been watching wide eyed with fear, and walked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Asher headed straight for Rumkowski’s office. He arrived there to find a woman seated at the front desk. When she stood up to take some papers off a counter he saw that she was about four feet two inches tall, with short arms and legs, and a large head. Asher walked up to her and slammed his fist on the counter. She jumped. He glared at her, and in an angry growl he demanded an audience with Rumkowski. She told him to please be seated, and she would speak with Rumkowski. The woman walked away. She returned five minutes later and told Asher that Rumkowski refused to meet with him. Asher began calling the woman offensive names and yelling for Rumkowski. Caleb, along with two other policemen, came out of the back and escorted Asher out of the building.

  Dejected and terrified,
Asher went home to pack. When he walked inside, he looked at Zelda who was sitting at the kitchen table with a wet rag on her lip.

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” he said.

  She looked down.

  “I know I’ve been a lousy husband. I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean any of it.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice hardly audible.

  “If I die, I don’t want to go to hell for being a lousy husband and father.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She just shook her head, but she felt tears well in the corners of her eyes.

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m going to pack a few things. Listen. I don’t have much, but I am going to leave my father’s ring. Sell it if you need food for you and the children.”

  She stood up and put her arms around him. He pushed her away. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  “Asher . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry too.”

  “For what?”

  “For not being the best wife.”

  “You were the best, Zel. I just never knew how to show love.”

  In the end, Asher Lipman, the man who ruled his wife and children with an iron fist, was powerless. Like all the other Jews who had been given their wedding invitations, the next morning he was led to the train station where he was handed a small loaf of bread with a little jam, then Asher was forced onto the cattle car at gunpoint and sent away on the transport to hell.

  After Asher was gone, Zelda was full of a mixture of emotions. She felt guilty that she had such a strong sense of relief, and even though he’d been a terrible husband, her heart broke for him. Zelda no longer had to endure his beatings or fear that he might hurt one of the children.

  It was hard for Zelda to accept the rumors she’d heard that the people who were sent away on the transports were being murdered. No one would kill perfectly good workers when they could use their labor for free. No, she didn’t believe that the Jews were being sent away and killed. Zelda thought they were probably being sent to work camps where they were forced into hard labor. After all, they’d chosen to take Asher, and everyone knew that Asher was strong and capable of heavy, physical work. If he didn’t return, it would mean one of two things—he’d either died from excessive, hard labor or from starvation. If he was alive, Asher would return. Asher was the sort of man who would never leave Zelda of his own free will. Sometimes when he was in a fit of rage and beating her senseless, he told Zelda that he owned her and that she was nothing but a possession to him. “I could kill you if I chose to. You are mine,” he would say. And when she thought about those words, she felt her stomach knot. However, last night before he went to pack he’d said the kindest words he’d ever spoken to her. And she could not get those words out of her mind.

  Sometimes when she was alone after Ben and the children had fallen asleep, she thought back on her life with Asher. Theirs had been an arranged marriage. At first she tried hard to please him. She wanted to love him, but it was not possible. As the years passed, Asher had turned any tender feelings she had toward him into hatred. Even now as she tried to remember the good things about their marriage, it was impossible to think of him without the memories sliding into that dark, hurtful, and violent place that was so much a part of their lives together. Still, she didn’t want to think of him suffering. After all, he had been her husband since she was only thirteen years old. It was his face that she looked at each morning and his clothes she washed each week. He was the father of her beloved Sarah and Solomon. And her children were the only family she had left. When all the Jews had been rounded up in her neighborhood and taken to the ghetto, Zelda’s parents refused to leave Poland. Her father, who had migrated to Poland from Russia, had sworn he would never face another pogrom. So when the Jews had to register in order to be identified as Jews, her father became frightened. He was certain there would be another pogrom like the one where he had lost his own father, when he was a child in Russia. Zelda’s parents had not gone to register, and Zelda knew that if they didn’t they would be in trouble, so she took both of her children and went to her parents' home to plead with them to register. The apartment was deathly quiet when she arrived, and as soon as she walked in Zelda knew something was not right. Holding Sarah and Solomon’s hands, she explored the apartment where she’d grown up. The house, as always, was spotlessly clean. Zelda remembered the Hanukkah parties she’d had with her cousins, as they walked through the living room. She and her cousin Sadie had played dreidel for hours on this very floor. In the kitchen, her mother’s favorite pot was on the stove clean and ready to make a batch of chicken soup. The Shabbos candleholders were lined up on the windowsill as they had been every day that Zelda could remember. Gently, she touched them and thought about the wonderful Shabbat dinners she’d enjoyed with her parents before her marriage.

  “Stay in Bubbe and Zede’s living room and wait for me,” Zelda told Sarah and Solomon. That was because, although she didn’t want to believe it, she already knew what she would find when she entered the bedroom.

  “I’m scared, Mommy. I want to go with you,” Sarah said.

  “No, I’ll be right back. I’m not going far, just into the bedroom. You stay here and hold Solomon's hand,” Zelda said to Sarah, then she turned to her son. “Take care of your sister for a few minutes for me. You’re a big boy; I can use your help today.”

  “Yes, Mommy,” Solomon said, then he took Sarah’s hand. “Don’t be afraid,” he told her. “I’ll protect you.”

  Zelda took a heavy breath and forged ahead. She found them. Her parents. There they were, her kind and loving father, her sweet and capable mother, lying side by side on the bed holding hands. For as long as Zelda could remember they always held hands. They had the kind of marriage that Zelda only dreamed of. The two of them had always been best friends and lovers. Everyone who knew them knew they were very close, and now they were locked hand in hand, together for eternity. Lovers and best friends in death as they had been in life.

  The days following her parents' deaths were hard days for Zelda. To make matters worse, she could not lean on Asher. He wasn’t a warm and endearing man. When he found her crying on one of their first nights in the ghetto, he asked her what was wrong. She told him, “I miss my parents. I can’t believe my parents are dead. I will never see them again.”

  “What’s done is done,” he said, his voice cold and hard, the stink of whiskey on his breath. “There’s nothing you can do to change it.”

  She looked away. He’d walked over and tenderly caressed her shoulder. For a moment she thought that she detected a kindness in him, a quality that perhaps she might love. But as quickly as that kindness peeked out of the darkness, it disappeared. He shook his head, raised her face to meet his eyes, then he said, “If you’re going to survive here in this hell, you’d better toughen up.”

  She nodded and felt her chin quiver. Tears fell down her cheeks.

  “Stop it. That’s enough,” Asher said, and he walked out of the room leaving her alone to cope with her sadness. His cold heart had taught her how to be independent. She’d learned not to need him for anything.

  When Zelda met Ben, for the first time she saw a man who was the polar opposite of her husband. Ben was gentle, educated, and soft spoken. Because Asher was so cruel, these were qualities she longed for in a man. She liked Ben from the first day the Lipmans had moved in to the apartment, although she would never have let him know.

  As the weeks passed, her feelings for Ben grew leaving her scared and confused. He was always kind to her children, but when he’d stopped Asher from beating her son by taking him out for a drink, she realized she was falling in love with him. From that first time when he had touched her in the sacred place she’d reserved for her husband and no other man, something had ignited inside her. She found from that day on that she thought about Ben constantly. She wanted to make love to him all the time, and even though she felt guilty and shameful, she trembled with desire a
t the sound of his voice or the touch of his hand.

  The day that Ben and Zelda became lovers, everything between Zelda and Asher changed also. Zelda tried harder to please her husband, probably out of guilt but also out of fear that if he suspected anything was going on between her and Ben, he would kill them both. She was always afraid of doing something that might raise his suspicions. Now he was gone. And although she didn’t want to think about him suffering in a work camp, Zelda Lipman was no longer living in fear of her husband. She was free of him at last.

  Ben was shocked when he found out what happened to Asher. He was sick to his stomach due to the guilt he felt over his affair with Zelda. But he still longed to be with her, to comfort her, and to provide the shoulder she might need to cry on to assuage her own guilt. The day after Asher left on the transport, Zelda met Ben after work to walk home with him as she always did. For several moments they walked in silence, but he could see by the dark circles under her red eyes that she had been crying. He waited for her to speak. When she didn’t he took her hand. “How are you doing?” he asked, his voice soft and sympathetic.

  “I feel guilty because of us.”

  “I know. Me too,” Ben muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. “Do you want to end it with us?” he asked, afraid she might say yes.

  She shook her head. “No, Ben, I don’t. Except for my children, you have been my only joy in life.”

  “I am so glad you said that,” Ben said, squeezing her hand.

  “Do you think it’s true?” she asked, looking down at the ground.

  “What’s true?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, tell me.”

  “You don’t believe that they are killing the Jews that go away on the transports, do you?”

  “Of course not,” he said, not sure if he did or didn’t believe it. “Why would anyone kill perfectly good workers? The Germans aren’t fools.”