I Am Juden

by Stephen Uzzell

  Two detectives were smoking outside my apartment, backs pressed to the wall, felt hats trapped and tipped above their foreheads. The flash of my face at the glass failed to rouse them.

  I ducked back out of sight and flattened my own spine against the cool plaster. I had finally decided to run when a door slammed shut in the corridor. Almost simultaneously, the one I was sheltering next to in the stairwell pushed open. Rudolf Ditzen appeared in the opening, head bowed, arms crossed behind his back. He lurched forward violently as if pushed, and I stood aside.

  Ditzen’s hands were cuffed in bracelets. Inspector Schmidt followed him out onto the landing.

  ‘Oberführer Mohnke.’

  ‘Inspector.’

  I stood holding the door while the two smoking detectives came through, the first one carrying a cardboard box.

  ‘He was hiding it under the floorboards,’ the detective said. ‘Tenant below heard him scraping around and reported the noises.’

  ‘Hiding what?’

  The detective opened the lid. The box looked empty, until he tilted it into the light. As the shadows receded, I saw a fountain pen and two bottles of ink and a bundle of plain white postcards.

  41

  By the end of May 1942, I’d filled almost two ledgers’ worth, detailing my flight from Kiel to Wilno and Camp Moda, the first fateful donning of Harry Mohnke’s uniform, and the consequences of that decision. I wrote every evening from six to nine, fired by caffeine. Most of the work was done in the armchair in the corner of the living room where Augustus Brühl had died. When my back began to ache after longer sessions, I moved onto my bed and wrote propped up against the pillows.

  Two ledgers covering the forst forty years of my life, locked away in the safe. I would take them out most evenings and re-read a few pages, before continuing with my third, which dealt with life in and around Jozefinska. The autobiography had become a diary, a way to process the daily madness. Most days it was the only intelligent conversation I got.

  I’d just finished transcribing the previous day’s events. As if Ditzen’s arrest wasn’t enough to way on my conscience, there was Dr. Zurokski’s news from Lublin. It had taken a day, but I’d just about talked myself down from a full-scale anxiety attack. The riddle of Damian Plotz’s identity wasn’t unravelled, I decided, but it had been definitely been tugged at. At least nobody had any idea that Harry Mohnke was part of the knot. A tattooed blood type was all the Gendarme had unearthed, and as Zurowksi said, the Belorussian wasn’t likely to talk. I’d decided my positon was safe when a barrage of knocks thuddded outside. The janitor, probably, come to gossip about Ditzen.

  I tucked the ledger under my mattress and went to unlock the door.

  ‘Karl,’ I said, utterly stupefied, gripping the door like a plank.

  Mende and I barely exchanged pleasantries at Jozefinska and certainly never discussed where I lived, although my address was easy to find, were he so minded. Clutching a brown paper bag, my colleague lifted out two dirty eggs, jiggling them in his palm like a conjuror.

  ‘Straight from Izzie,’ he said, his favourite chicken.

  ‘Thanks… Very kind.’

  ‘Catch, quick.’

  He feigned a throw and snickered when I whipped my wrist against the door-frame mid-flinch.

  ‘Take ’em, then.’ He dropped the pair into my cupped hands and brushed past me into the hallway with a snide, ‘You’re welcome.’

  I scrambled after him, stopping to set the eggs down on the kitchen worktop. One started rolling towards the edge as I was leaving, but I caught it and nestled them both in a folded dish-cloth.

  When I caught up with Mende, he was making himself comfortable in my favourite armchair.

  ‘Enjoy those yolkers,’ he said. ‘Might be the last you get.’

  ‘Oh.’ I took the opposite sofa. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’

  ‘We’ve got a fox prowling round the courtyard.’

  Wincing, he tugged his pistol free from its holster as if the barrel still burnt against his shirt. Metal clinked on the glass as he set it down on the table.

  ‘Hate foxes. Nasty little diseased vermin. Coming into our house, staking a claim on things what don’t belong to him. Can’t have that, can we, Harry?’ With the usual scowl, he glanced up at the corners of the room behind me. ‘Bit pokey, this place.’

  ‘It’s snug enough.’

  ‘Just you here?’

  ‘The three of us,’ I said.

  ‘Three?’

  ‘What’s the expression? Me, myself and I.’

  Mende leant over the table and used two fingers like a bat to flick the pistol grip. Hypnotised, I watched the gun spin round on its chamber like a roulette wheel.

  ‘No family?’

  ‘Not in Cracow,’ I said. ‘My father lives in Dahme. It’s not something I like to talk about, but you might have heard the gossip.’

  ‘Bunch of old women,’ he said contemptuously.

  ‘Aren’t they. My father’s old friends with Julian Schermer, that’s all. He was here a couple of weeks ago, actually. Schermer, not my father.’

  I stopped babbling and drew away from the gun. It had come to a stop, with the barrel pointing directly at my groin. Leaning back on the sofa, that’s when I saw it - after Karl Mende, the second most terrifying object in the room: a Jozefinska stationhouse hard-backed ledger under his chair, behind the paper bag.

  I was sure I’d locked the book away after tonight’s session. But there it was, lying on the carpet.

  Did Mende notice it while I was in the kitchen fussing over his eggs? Had he opened it, seen my Hebrew, then pushed it out of sight?

  Was I gone long enough for any of that to happen? It had only felt like seconds at the time.

  ‘I got a wife back home,’ Mende said. ‘Wife and son.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘You being sarcastic?’

  ‘Not at all. I love children.’

  ‘The boy’s eleven. Tomas.’

  ‘Nice name.’

  ‘Doing well at school. Very good with words, the teacher says. Like you, Harry.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Don’t shit a shitter. You’re a smart bloke, nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘You used to be a teacher, I heard.’

  ‘Ah, the gossip again.’ I wondered what else he’d learned. ‘I worked in a university for a while, yes.’

  ‘You worked in one,’ he said, curling his lip. ‘Sweeping the floors, was it?’

  ‘I was a professor. It was a long time ago. Another life.’

  ‘I know that feeling. I haven’t seen Tomas since they opened the Ghetto last March.’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘Cologne, unfortunately, with the wife’s mother. Bloody British butchers.’

  The RAF had been bombing the city for two years now, on an almost weekly basis.

  ‘Tom wrote me his first letter last week.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘Want to see it?’

  The conversation had taken an odd dreamlike quality.Why did Mende want me to read his son’s letter? Perhaps he didn’t trust the teacher’s praise and wanted a second opinion.

  ‘Sure, why not. Bring it in one day.’

  Mende bent down, groped under the seat and come up clutching the ledger. When he opened it, the pages were blank, whereas mine were filled with dense Hebraic script. We were both stealing office stationery. Me for my memoirs, Mende as some kind of scrapbook.

  Flicking through to a folded sheet of cream paper carefully preserved in the centre of the book, he teased it out, pinching the edges like the relics of a saint. He handed me his son’s letter.

  Tomas’ writing was printed rather than cursive, but it was neat, almost obsessively so, with good grammar, save for the occasional lapse in punctuation. The boy was a very articulate eleven year old. His teacher was telling the truth.

  I’d scanned as far as the third l
ine when Mende said, ‘Speak up.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Come on, read it out loud.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, the tone inviting my indulgence. ‘I like to pretend I can hear him.’

  I knew Mende was lazy, but this made no sense. Surely if he wanted to ‘hear’ young Tomas, he’d read the letter to himself, rather than suffer my halting tones.

  That’s when it hit me. The thought tumbled through my mind, falling into place like a deck of riffled playing cards, image after image: Mende’s paltry paper-work; the forms he’d dump on me, citing ‘tiny’ or ‘foreign’ handwriting; his ever-present copy of Der Stürmer, worn – I saw now – as a trusty shield of deflection; the crossword puzzle inked in with nothing but tiny swastikas; the non-existent clue about leather cutting.

  Mende couldn’t read.

  As in, he didn’t know how. A fully-functioning illiterate adult. Office-work he somehow bluffed his way through, but a letter from his son was different. That’s why he’d sought me out tonight, at home.

  ‘From the beginning, then,’ I said.

  ‘‘Dear Father, I hope you are not alarmed, you should not be, unless you know where one of the Wellingtons went. I have heard that it caused heavy causalities by the railway yard. But this I know because I saw, and so did everyone else in the house.

  ‘Here is my story: I heard the clock strike 11 o'clock. I was in bed and just going to sleep. Between two 'clock and 2.30 o'clock, Nanna Hannie woke Grandpa Kurt and told him she could hear the guns. Grandpa woke Mother and Mother woke me. We were all awake by now, and started making our way down to the bunker. We saw flashes and then heard "Bangs" and "Pops" on the stairs.

  ‘Suddenly a bright yellow light appeared and died down again. ‘Oh! It's alright’ said Grandpa. ‘It's only a star shell’. That light appeared again and we Mother, Nanna and Granda and I rushed to the window and looked out and there right above us was the Wellington!

  ‘It had broken in half, and was like this: it was in flames, roaring, and crackling. It went slightly to the right, and crashed down into behind the church!! It was about a 100 yards away from the house and directly opposite us!!! It nearly burnt itself out, when it was finished by the Fire Brigade.

  ‘I would rather not describe the condition of the crew, of course they were dead - burnt to death. They were roasted, there is absolutely no other word for it. They were brown, like the outside of Roast Beef. One had his legs off at the knees, and you could see the joint! The Wellington was bombed from an aeroplane above, with an incendiary bomb by a Lieutenant Kleine. We have some relics some wire and steel framework.

  The weather is beastly but Auntie and Uncle are jolly people, hoping you are all well, love to all. Your loving son Tomas.

  Please don't be alarmed, all is well that ends well (and this did for us). We are all quite safe. Mother will write again soon.’

  When I looked up, Mende’s mask of indifference had slipped. His right eye, normally aggravated by squinting, was now leaking tears. He rubbed the moisture into the side of his nose and shook his head as if dispelling a bad dream.

  ‘You read beautifully,’ he said.

  ‘What a charming boy. I can see how proud you are.’

  He cleared his throat in mute agreement.

  ‘Look, while it’s still fresh, why don’t you write a little reply. It’d make his day.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ Mende said. ‘Didn’t bring my glasses. Maybe when I get home.’

  ‘Come on.’ Before he could stop me, I swapped the letter for the ledger on his lap. ‘You tell me what you want to say, I’ll write it down, then you copy it up when you get back. How’s that sound?’

  ‘You sure don’t mind?’

  ‘Mind? I’m a professor, remember, or I used to be. A beautiful blank book like this, it’s my duty to fill it.’

  I found a pen in my shirt pocket, tapped the nib on the first page and said, ‘Dear Tomas…’

  42

  A couple of days later, Mende found me in the bathroom after coffee and asked if I would help with a letter to his wife. He came to my apartment that evening, and the next, wanting to write again to Tomas. Whether out of habit or sheer bloody-mindedness, he never failed to show up without his trusty copy of Der Stürmer under his arm. At least I managed to wrest back my favourite chair the second time, by leaving a pair of underpants draped over the back like an anti-macassar when I went to answer the door. Mende took the sofa when he saw them. I regarded this as a minor victory, until he kicked off his boots and socks and lolled about like a seal, rubbing his bare flippers all over the arm-rest.

  The following Tuesday he dictated three more communiques, not to family, but old foes who had once wronged him. There was a lot to get off his chest. The cinema projectionist who’d shown the reels of Leni Riefenstahls Victory of Faith in the wrong order, the jockey who’d crashed into him on the home straight at the Munich Brown Ribbon and the old school teacher who’d sent Mende out of an examination for tapping the desk, accusing the boy of ‘communicating answers in morse code’. Each monologue came out fully-formed; I could tell Mende had been rehearsing all week. He began innocently enough, with a ‘You probably remember me from winning the Grand National in 1933’ or ‘Greetings from Cracow, the Jewel of the Reich, where I have been stationed at the personal request of Governor Hans Frank’. Mende would go on to give his selected career highlights, before ending by settling old grievances, one of which had not been aired for thirty years. These shifts were signposted with a faux-magnaminous ‘I forgive you, by the way,’ or a ‘It was such a long time ago, I hardly remember,’ before going on to recount the details with a degree of recall to shame Marcel Proust.

  For light relief as I rested my pen, Mende liked to treat me to his opinions of the men we worked with. Becher was a degenerate who kept pair of knickers in his pocket to sniff. Rottenführer Ritschak was an idiot who’d had shot his own arm off cleaning his gun. Stape would have gambled his own mother away if she wasn’t a toothless old crone. But it was for the Eagle Pharmacy that Mende reserved his most cheerful scorn, specifically Tadeus Pankewicz, the Jew-loving Commie destined for a one-way ticket to camp Belzec.

  ‘But Kunde loves the man,’ I protested.

  ‘That whole shop is rotten. What do they expect, allowing Poles in and out the District like that. Notice how the Commie only employs the most beautiful sales-girls. One wink at the gate guards and they’re through, no matter what they’re carrying. At least half the black market comes through that Pharmacy, maybe more. Not just a few potatoes stashed in handbags either. I heard Irena smuggled grenades stashed in her knickers. She’s hot stuff, but, Jesus Christ, imagine dipping your wick into that without knowing it.’

  If these rumours came from anybody else, they might have some credence. But if the Gestapo looked into everybody Mende defamed, half of Europe would be under investigation.

  ‘If it’s true, it’s happening right under Kunde’s nose,’ I said. ‘He trusts Pankiewicz more than our own medics. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘You didn’t see what happened this afternoon.’

  ‘At the stationhouse?’

  ‘The Pharmacy.’

  The Hauptsturmführer’s stunt was the talk of the Ghetto. He had stopped by the drugstore and ordered Pankiewicz into the office, where he explained they were to play a joke on the two assistants, Irena and Helena. Kunde would cuff the boss, walk him out of the door and then, when they were out of sight, fire his revolver into the air to make the women think Pankiewicz had been executed. He was appalled, but couldn’t talk Kunde out of it. In the end, everything went as the German had said, but during the whole ordeal, the pharmacist couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being marched to his death.

  ‘That’s how much Kunde trusts your friend,’Mende said.

  It was true that eyebrows had been raised recently at the amount of medical certificates handed out by the Pharmacy, allowing residents to travel outside the walls to
purchase drugs Pankiewicz could not provide. He explained it as an inevitable consequence of January’s mass resettlement. The Ghetto population had grown by a factor of two thousand, the Eagle had not. Like all resources, the shop was struggling to cope. The Jozefinska certainly understood that feeling. Medical certificates continued to be tolerated.

  But last Tuesday, one day before Kunde’s stunt, Pankiewicz had stormed through the stationhouse to the courtyard, demanding access to a prisoner in our gaol. A few of us downed tools at the commotion and followed him out. The prisoner in question had been arrested that morning by Karl Mende and myself in connection with an assault on a German soldier. Manni Konigsberg was part of a young Akiva cell, most likely attempting to acquire weapons for the resistance. The soldier was drunk and could remember nothing of the attack, but one of Symche Spira’s informants fingered Konigsberg as the ringleader, and I’d been unable to protect him. Now Pankiewicz was trying to intervene.

  ‘The man suffers from a rare blood disorder,’ he shouted at Werner Fricke, our gaoler. ‘Without an immediate injection of Vitamin B12, he will die in your cells.’

  ‘Saves us a bullet,’ Fricke said. ‘He’s due to be executed in the morning.’

  ‘I will hold you directly responsible for the violation of of the 1929 Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field.’

  ‘Armies in the Field, my arse. He’s a terrorist coward who put a decent soldier in hospital.’

  ‘And you’re putting him in the grave without due process - ’

  I stepped between the two. ‘Look, Fricke, I arrested the bastard. I want to see him rot as much as you. But Pankiewicz has a point. We’ve got to think how it looks.’

  ‘Fuck how it looks. He’s an animal.’

  ‘And a sick animal gets a vet, right? Nobody’s talking about rushing him to Beelitz-Heilstatten. If this glorified pill-pusher thinks he can help, let him. But stand in his way and this gets reported, we’ll end up with Red Cross stationed here, right in the District. Do you want to be the one to explain that to the Hauptscharführer ?’