He grunted; I did not hear a name.
‘You hungry?’
‘A little,’ I said.
Victor’s hand disappeared behind a fold in his rags and came out with a long, spindly carrot, which he tossed into my lap. I could see the carrot had been freshly scavenged. A clod of damp earth crumpled under my fingers. I bit the tip and chewed, sucking down the sweet juice, then chomped the rest of it into submission in four quick bites.
‘There’s more where that came from,’ Victor said.
‘More is good,’ I managed between mouthfuls.
‘Berries, nuts, mushrooms, the whole heavenly table. We’ll do alright, me and you. It’s not safe to stay here.’
‘I thought the partisans were on our side.’
‘Where there are partisans, there are Germans hunting them. You stay if you want.’
‘Are you with anybody?’
‘A few friends. We have a place, a couple of miles from here.’
‘What kind of place?’
‘It’s like a cave.’
My face must have failed to light up with glee, because he added, ‘Well hidden. Warm. Now the summer’s over it gets pretty nippy out here at night.’
I considered Victor’ offer. On my first day I had not fared too badly by myself. I’d managed to find clothes, and a shelter, although not one I wanted to linger in a minute longer than strictly necessary. But now the October night was drawing in, I’d chosen a stand of deadwood as my bedroom. Victor’s carrot was the first thing I’d eaten since breakfast.
I wasn’t sure what he had seen in me that raised my stock from useless pacifist to desirable cave-dwelling companion in less than five minutes, or why he looked so thin if the forest floor catered such a feast. I decided not to care. I was simply grateful to have found an ally. It was a long time since I’d spent a day with nothing but my own skin for company, and I’d forgotten how to get by.
I followed through a labyrinthine darkness punctuated only by the occasional shard of moonlight through the trees. Along the way, my guide doled out another couple of carrots, mere appetizers for the banquet to come.
After twenty minutes of hard trekking, Victor stopped at an oak as broad as a house and circled the trunk on his hands and knees. I thought he might urinate like a dog.
Thankfully, he didn’t cock his hind leg, but instead extended a thin hand to the bark and peeled off a clump of dark green vegetation, holding it up before my eyes.
‘Moss only grows on the north side, out of the sunlight.’ Victor pointed to a path through the trees. ‘Just checking we’re going the right direction before we fill up.’
‘Fill up on what?’ Pointing at the moss between his fingers, I said, ‘I hope that’s not your heavenly table.’
Victor stepped back to reveal an enormous growth of fungus, some as thick as standing stones, thriving in the cool damp of the oak’s permanent shade.
‘First course, wild mushrooms with basil,’ he announced with a sweep. ‘See those leaves twined around the stalks? Tuck in. I’ll try and find us some garlic next time.’
I joined Victor crouching at the fringed giants, found a sprig of green, plucked a handful of leaves and let the sweet tang of peppery mint melt onto my tongue. Less certain of the fungus, I gripped a white slab and broke off a corner. Firm and fleshy, it smelled of fried mushroom and when I chomped a hole through the cap, tasted pleasantly meaty.
There was enough here to feed a family for a week, and as Victor had said, it was just the beginning. Impressed with his survival skills, I felt the need to offer something in return as we ate.
But all I had was the story of what had happened at Camp Moda. In between mouthfuls, I wiped juice from my chin and asked if Victor was interested in hearing it.
He said, ‘Did you break out?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘By yourself?’ I tried not to feel insulted by his phrasing. ‘Course I bloody want to hear about it.’
I took a deep sigh. This was the first time Camp Moda had become a story to tell. Before now, as recently as twelve hours ago, Moda had been my all-consuming world. I had stopped believing in possibility of life beyond its borders. The realisation that every act of salvation the Chaze had wrought was condemned to the past and would not – could not – be repeated, hit me for the first time, and it hit me hard.
Julius Ritter, Oswald Zgismond. My friends were dead, or as good as. Only I had survived.
More immediately, I could not decide where to begin my tale. Reels of memories of a summer of war looped behind my eyes, and left me queasy. From the night those first bombs fell, everything had happened so quickly.
Suddenly I was quite tired. The day’s travels must have caught up with me. Fed by my new protector, I was set to curl up and sleep, and already felt quite dreamy, as if my mind had surrendered before my body. A build-up of air announced itself in my stomach; I grimaced at my body’s unseemly expulsion.
Something was very wrong.
I glanced down at the crumbs of mushroom cap on my shirt.
***
I awoke from terrible dreams of blindness, unable to open my eyes. The lids were gummed together with a crust of glue. I pulled a bare hand from the rough blanket and rubbed the seam of dried rheum until sleep-dust crumbled and ticked down my nose like ants. My eye-lashes wrenched apart, hair by tiny hair, but still I could not see. Fingers clenching into a fist, I flung out my hand and struck a piece of wood thirty inches from my face. It had the contours of a cage. A spray of earth sifted from the gaps between the planks and rained coolly on my chest. I jerked. The spasm rocked my head, left it shaking at the end of my neck like a bomb, I feared it would explode. But the sensation subsided, leaving ashes of my brain, baked in an oven of bone. I tried calling out but my throat was raw, ripped apart, as if I’d gargled with ground glass. The bitter citric tang of vomit tickled the back of my throat. Guiding my hand down the curving wall of wood, I stopped as the heel of my palm hit soil and dragged a path back towards my desiccated head, stopping at the hem of a second blanket that had been placed underneath my back. I crooked my arm at the elbow, pinched wool near my ears and rubbed, the woollen rustle as loud as a monsoon. In straightening my arm, the wrist collided with an object at my side - something smooth and heavy, with a handle - knocked it over, splash, glug. A wetness seeped under my shoulder, blooming from the blanket. I scrambled my fingers in order to save what was left of the water, but the cup had all but emptied. The remaining dregs barely wet my lips. Unthinking, I hurled the mug against the walls, bunched a handful of wet blanket and stuffed it in my mouth, sucking and chewing until I was swallowing my own saliva.
I lay back on the earth, settling into the head-shaped groove, utterly spent.
***
Maddening grey slithers began to appear between the planks at my feet. At first I thought the light was an illusion wrought by my fevered brain, but the splinters widened, and became so bright I had to avert my eyes. Outside, dawn was breaking. When I squinted again, I could make out the outline of a doorway in the cage, two metal hinges glinting on the left length of the panel.
No sooner had I scrambled to investigate than the gruff barking of a dog came sliding down a slope towards me, commandeered by its master’s voice. I stiffened. Victor had said nothing about having a dog. Indeed, there were times last night when I thought he might have been raised by one.
I must have fallen ill after his mushrooms, and passed out on the forest floor. Victor had been sitting next to me the whole time I gorged; he made no attempt to stop me from eating anything dangerous. Now here I was. Poisoned and trapped in some kind of cave or cell. Stripped naked, for the sake of a few clothes.
Why hadn’t he killed me? Why nurse me back to life with water and blankets?
There was only one possibility: he wanted me alive. For what ends, I could not – I would not – conceive.
If there was a way in to Victor’s cave, there had to be a way out, even if it meant heaving away a b
oulder. I pushed up onto my shaking hands and knees. The ‘cave’ had the proportions of an upended bath tub, barely big enough to turn myself around. I lunged in circles, a dog chasing its tail, butting the walls, finding nothing but the suffocating contours of my own cage.
Sweat-soaked, hyper-ventilating, I collapsed to the ground. My frantic efforts had twisted the blankets to one side. I lay on bare earth, slick shoulders collecting grit.
The sound of man and animal picked up as they drew closer. I withdrew into the rear of the cave and squat on my haunches, ready to pounce, the last futile act of a particularly futile life.
A tall shadow blackened the centre of the door as the dog yapped excitedly, scenting blood.
A key scraped a padlock. The shadow dropped to the ground. A heavy deadbolt clunked.
The shadow returned to full height, a second bolt drew back at chest level.
‘Wake him up, Polo,’ said a Lithuanian voice, and a snuffling beast pushed through the door, breaking open my darkness with a dazzling vision of canine boisterousness.
The dog’s tail thumped from side to side as she snaked towards me, throwing her paws on my shoulders and daubing my nose and lips with a greasy tongue. I fell back against the back wall, coughing and spluttering.
The man clicked his tongue; the dog scuttled back to his heels, whining. Her master crouched down to my level in the doorway, a silhouette against the sun. Beyond him, a dirt track, leading up to a well-tended vegetable garden.
I focussed on the man’s face, craggy and drawn, with a pair of thick, raised eyebrows. He wore a neat, pointed beard and a mass of slicked back curls, glossy and black.
‘If you’re contagious, you better hope the dog don’t catch it.’ He had switched now to halting German.
‘Water,’ I gasped. ‘Water.’
He looked down and raised the mug I’d flung in anger to his knee. It balanced there as he retrieved a canteen from deep inside his suit-coat and poured. He put the mug back down on the floor between us, and pushed it towards me.
I crawled to it and drank; he refilled and pushed it back. The middle fingers of his hand were crowded with jewelled stones, red, white and green. I noticed the same arrangement on his right hand, resting on his knee.
‘Thank-you,’ I said.
With an extravagant flourish, he said, ‘Bitte sehr, mein herr.’
‘You don’t have to – I’m not German.’ I spoke now in Lithuanian. ‘Victor?’
He bared his teeth in a grimace ‘Who the fuck is Victor?’
‘The boy who… The boy I was with.’
‘You were alone when I found you. When Polo found you.’ The man patted the dog’s head next to his shin. I could see now that her chops were grey and grizzled. Two minutes ago, she’d been as excitable as a pup.
‘Where?’
‘Not far from here, near the stream where I fish. What were you doing, spying on me?’
‘I was lost. I think I was poisoned.’
‘By this Victor, you’re telling me?’
I nodded.
‘Poisoned how?’
‘In the forest.’
‘Berries?’
‘Mushrooms.’
‘You’re lucky to have survived. Jewish?’
I nodded. ‘I was a prisoner – ’
‘Enough. I don’t need to hear all that. You rest. I’ll be back later with some soup.’
‘But - ’
‘Yes?’
There was nothing meaningful I could think to ask, but I wasn’t yet ready for the man to leave.
‘I am Jozef. Jozef Siegler, from Wilno.’
‘Welcome to my kennel, Jozef Siegler. You may call me Mr. Poplowski.’
‘I hope I will not bring you trouble.’
‘So,’ the man said, giving a curt bow. ‘Sleep. You’re perfectly safe.’
When I awoke again, I could smell smoke.
My worst fears were confirmed when I blinked open my eyes to the orange glow in the corner of the kennel.
But the flame was confined to the wick of a candle, and behind it, resting against the wall, was Mr. Poplowski, the dog’s head pillowed on one thigh, an open book resting on the other. The doorway was no longer visible, the night a seam of coal beyond the planks.
Mr. Poplowksi was a small man. The restrictive proportions of the kennel fit him perfectly. Engrossed in his pages, Mr. Poplowski had not noticed me stir: I lay perfectly still, watching him read. He wore the same dark suit, with only a rather grubby vest underneath. I couldn’t remember if he was earlier wearing a shirt or not. Complementing the six rings on his fingers was a crossed amulet around his neck, embedded with a large ruby. When Mr. Poplowski came to the end of his page, he glanced down at the candle, and then, as if sensing my wakened presence, over to the bed of blankets.
‘The golem awakens,’ he said.
‘How long have you been there?’
‘Is my presence unsettling for you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I’ve brought books – you might be an educated man yet. Books and,’ he made a motion with his eyes like he was casting out a line, ‘food.’
I followed his gaze across the kennel to the side of my bed, where there was fish soup in a bowl with a spouted lip for drinking.
‘Bread,’ Mr. Poplowski said. ‘On the other side.’
To my right, a plate of soft white slices with the crust removed.
I wiped my slobbering lips with the back of my hand.
‘My brother’s recipe,’ he said. ‘Spiny little perch hardly do it justice. I did the best I could with my knife, but… careful of the bones.’
I placed the bowl at my lips and tilted, straining the liquid through my teeth. It was still warm, a garlicky broth thick with soft flakes of white meat.
‘It’s wonderful.’
‘Your belly’s bigger than your eyes. Half now, half later. You’re still sick.’
I tried to work out how long I’d been down here. From dark to light to dark again. ‘I must have slept for a whole day.’
‘Try multiplying that by three.’
‘Three days?’
‘If I wanted to wait on somebody as long as this, I’d have got married.’
I was speechless. Three days since my flight from Camp Moda? Impossible. Without wishing to be crude, there was no physical evidence of a prolonged stay. Urine may have seeped into the earth but its distinctive odour would have lingered. Yet the kennel floor was dry and the air smelled of nothing except hot wax and fish soup.
‘I’m aware my manner is brusque, in case you were moved to point it out.’
‘If brusqueness is the price for saving a man’s life,’ I said, ‘I gladly accept.’
‘It was your fair hair that gave me pause. I thought you might me German.’
‘All that glisters is not gold,’ I said.
‘Merchant of Venice.’ Mr. Poplowski snapped his jewelled fingers. ‘A scholar after all. There are educated Germans too, so they tell me, I knew you were not one of them. Do you know how?’
With the air of a pontificating rabbi, Mr. Poplowski raised his index finger in front of his nose. ‘Only a Jew awakens in a cage and accepts the terms of his incarceration without so much as a whimper.’
‘We’ve had a lot of practice.’
He quoted Shylock’s Act III soliloquy in reply. ‘If you poison us, do we not die?’
‘And if you wrong us,’ I concluded, ‘do we not revenge’
‘Bravo.’ He clapped his leg in half-hearted applause. ‘I have the Collected Works back in my library, but for tonight I settled on something a little less… intellectual.’ He held aloft the book’s scarlet jacket from his thigh.
‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ I said, reading the embossed gold.
‘You’ve read it?’
‘I’ve always been meaning to.’
‘You should,’ Mr. Poplowski said. ‘How about Ambrose Bierce behind, leaning against the wall?’
There was a second booked
propped up behind him. Abrose Bierce was a minor American author who had caused a sensation a quarter of a century ago, when he’d vanished without trace while touring battlegrounds in Mexico.
I said, ‘The Devil’s Dictionary?’
‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. A tale from a very different war.’
The American Civil War, in fact. The short story commences with the narrator Peyton Farquhar about to be hanged by Unionists for sedition, but the rope snaps and he plunges to freedom in the eponymous water below the bridge to make his escape. It is only with the very last lines of the tale that the reader discover the rope never snapped at all. The flight along the river was nothing more than Farquhar’s dying meditation.
The story seemed doubly ghoulish to me now, given my current predicament. But it could have been worse. An evident student of the Gothic, my captor might have reappeared with a copy of Edgar Allen Poe’s Premature Burial.
‘A morbid choice of reading matter, now that I think of it,’ Mr. Poplowski said, as if my thoughts had been projected on the kennel wall. ‘There’s quite a library in the cottage if you’d care to name your author of choice.’
‘Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘As you wish.’
Mr. Poplowski roused his dog, tucked the two books into his suit pockets and collected my dish and plate.
‘It was delicious,’ I said.
‘I expect you’ll be wanting toast and tea for breakfast.’
‘I don’t want to put you out,’ I said. ‘Any more than I already have.’
‘Come on, Polo, let’s leave him be. Do you want the candle?’
‘Take it. I may knock it over in my sleep.’
‘We’ll talk more in the morning, you can’t stay cooped up here forever.’
In the last few minutes of our conversation, I had become filled with a creeping dread. Alone in darkness once more, it bloomed. I imagined the fish soup in my stomach, fermenting alongside the remains of the fungus. Had I fallen prey to Victor’s poisoning trick all over again? Who in their right minds feeds a sick man fish soup? I became convinced the two were father and son, that Mr. Poplowski had returned to finishing what the boy could not. After all, the forests of middle Europe are rife with legends of bloodthirsty dynasties like Vlad the Impaler and his descndants, who put Hitler’s Reich to shame…
I Am Juden Page 19