CHRISTIAN GERMAN GYPSY JEW
DOESN’T MATTER WHICH ARE YOU
BUY A SMOKE, HAVE LOTS TO SELL
LET’S ALL SMOKE
OUR WAY TO HELL!
VI.
“Hmm, this is different,” Fritz says after I sell him one of the first packs from the resurrected cigarette factory. There’s finally been a lovely spring thaw, and everything seems to smell better, fresher, greener. Finally.
He looks at the plain paper wrapping. “What brand?”
“My supplier is testing a new tobacco mix.”
“Much better. Yes, much better.” He inhales deeply, smiling. “Something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Arab.”
“Anything, except who my new supplier is. Hitler might claim them for his staff, and then where would you and I be?”
“You know, I studied several languages in school. I wonder how someone like you manages German so well. And I’ve heard you talk to your street urchins in Yiddish.”
I turn around, displaying my deplorable clothes, and says, “Why, yes. My wet nurse was Jewish. And our cook was German. The upstairs maid was French. What an education.”
“And you being the idiot child of geniuses.” He takes another pull of his cigarette, holding in his smile.
Change the subject, fast! He’s beginning to get too close to things about me. But it’s not like my hand doesn’t have a few cards to play. “You know, I can get you … other things,” I bait.
“Such as Chopin’s heart? Ah, Chopin … a heart that made music like his is probably still beating,” he says, almost lyrically. He looks off into the distance, as though hearing the delicate notes of a piano étude. “But I prefer Wagner. Can you get me some Wagner recordings?”
“I’ll work on it. Until then, how about some poetry? Just the other day I got my hands on a lovely old edition of Don Juan.”
He looks me straight on. “Did you?”
“Leather-bound. A bit worn, but still in good condition. Do you like Lord Byron?”
“Not necessarily.” His stance changes a bit. “You know, Arab, usually by your age, there’s at least some peach fuzz. And your voice …”
“What about my voice?”
“You should be singing baritone, not alto, by now.”
We stare at each other for a moment. What are our eyes telling each other? “Oh, so now we’re talking opera?” I ask.
He casts me a wry glance. “Yes, of course. Wagner, remember?”
Okay, so he knows I’m a girl. That’s Problem B. Problem A is what my life hangs on: my race. But I have two sweet aces up my sleeve—Lord Byron and Henri.
“Can you detect a slight hint of mint in that cigarette?” I ask, changing the subject again.
“Yes, now that you mention it.”
“You have a delicate palate, Herr Obersturmführer. They stack every other bale with sacks of mint.”
“Very nice. I’ll take all you have to spare.”
I’m not about to tell him we used a mixture of Lysol and kerosene to clean and grease the rolling machine.
“About that copy of Don Juan … How about I hang on to it for you. In case you change your mind.”
“I’ll change my mind about the time you grow a schmekel,” he says, flicking his cigarette into the gutter. “See, I speak Yiddish, too. Oh, and while you’re at it, change your blood.” He smiles back at me.
“If anyone can, it’s me.”
“That reminds me. I met a friend of yours.”
“I have a friend?”
“Tried to sell me some information.”
My heart thunks hard. Easy, Arab. “Really? What was his name?”
“He didn’t give it.”
“And did you buy this information?” Keep it light. You know what this is about.
“No, his price was too high. Especially for information I already have.”
“Well, good. Hate to see you taken advantage of.”
“Anyway, he said he has a message for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Yes, that was the message! He wanted you to remember there are sharpshooting snipers everywhere.”
“Yes, so they say. Always got to be looking up, then, don’t we?” I keep looking east and he keeps looking west. Well, now we know. We both hold each other’s nooses.
No more is said about it. I wonder if this is what they call an accord. A small peace between a Nazi and a Jew, right here in the middle of a war.
“And that reminds me. Just got in some excellent brandy.”
“Brandy?”
“Odd about brandy—every day it ages, it becomes more valuable.”
Another officer is approaching us on horseback and Fritz turns on me. “And if you don’t cross this street when you see me coming, Polish pig, you won’t live to regret it!” he shouts, taking his Luger out of its holster. I bow my head and slink away. If I had a tail, it would be between my legs.
“Von Segen! Quick! Follow me!” the captain shouts. I recognize him. Wilhelm Schneider. I still have the scar on my head and the sign STUPID POLISH THIEF to remember him by. Several more officers bully their horses through the crowds on the sidewalk.
Fritz mounts Hummel and they trot down the street, scattering pedestrians and cart vendors as they go.
“What’s happening?” a young woman coming up the sidewalk asks me just before I can slip into the shadows.
A dozen more soldiers run to the intersection, stopping all traffic and rounding up every person on the street. I see she has her Jewish armband sewn onto her sleeve. I rip it off.
“No, I’ll be arrested!” she cries, picking it up.
“You’ll be arrested anyway.”
“Jews are being shot for not wearing these! Look, you’ve ripped it!” she continues. “Now I’ll have to go back home and fix it.” I try to stop her, but she insists on continuing on down the street toward the commotion.
“Stupid woman! Go ahead! Run back into the burning barn!” I shout after her. I look around. Where have all these people come from? Nazis have rounded up dozens and are pushing everyone into the streets. I turn and weave my way through them to get out of here.
I head down an alley and come back out two streets over. Finding myself right by the Crystal Café, I hide in the shadows I know so well. Oh, God, I don’t like the looks of this.
The soldiers, each armed with a rifle, point, butt, and use their weapons to herd the group of seventy or so people. The soldiers examine papers and weed people out, pushing others out of their way. Several dozen are lined up along the curb. Onlookers pop their heads out of windows, emerge from their stopped autos and streetcars, and watch with a vague, helpless curiosity.
The breath of excited horses, sturdy soldiers, and confused people mingle and fill the spring air. I catch the terrified eyes of the woman whose armband I ripped off. She’s trying to convince an officer all her papers are in order and shaking her loose armband up as proof.
“Count off by threes!” Schneider commands the Jews left standing on the curb. They do as they are told. “Nein! Auf Deutsch!”
“Eins, zwei, drei … eins, zwei, drei …”
Oh God, there’s Spades. Oh please, Spades, don’t be called out. I sink lower behind a hedge.
“Dreier! Step forward!” About a dozen people step out of the line. Including Spades. “The rest, go there, with that man!” Then, to Fritz, he shouts, “These idiots don’t understand. Translate, Obersturmführer.”
Fritz steps forward and reads in Polish from a card. “There has been some illegal activity in this district. There has been theft of German property. To make it perfectly clear that we will not tolerate any activity by subversive Jews, we are ordered to take appropriate action.”
With that, Wilhelm Schneider takes out his Luger and trains it from head to head of the men and women lined up. People are crying, pleading, praying. Oh God, he’s going to do it!
I see their plan and I know their action. We onlookers aren’t the target. Today. I
come out of the shadows. Spades and I lock eyes. God, his face, his eyes! I close my own eyes the minute I hear the pop of the gun and the fall of his body. Next, it’s the woman with her armband still crumpled in her hand. Then, Schneider signals his troops and pop! pop! pop! A volley of accurate shots, the remaining dreier crumpling to the pavement, falling silently on one another like so many armloads of hay on harvest day.
The street is silent. No shouts of horror. No wrath, no indignation, no protest. Just silence. The Germans quickly move to restart traffic, usher away those Jews who are lucky to have called out eins or zwei, and within a numb instant, all is normal on the street—people walking along, gingerly stepping around the bodies; cars and streetcars continuing, and the Germans returning to their patrol, after propping up three of the bodies against a wall as a warning to everyone. A woman in the middle of two men. Laughing, a young soldier places one hand of each dead man on the woman’s breasts.
If it wasn’t for the unlucky dozen lying dead, a few pockmarks on the wall of the café, blood congealing on the sidewalk before it can slip into the anonymity in the sewers, no one would be able to tell anything has happened.
I’m frozen. I’ve seen the bodies, I’ve seen the roundups, I’ve heard the gunfire. But now, here in this café, where I’ve sat so many times. Spades. The woman with her useless Star of David.
Finally, I duck around a corner and dissolve into the back alley. Then I stop cold, not sure of what I’m seeing. There, crouched down, leaning against a building, forehead resting on his folded arms, is Fritz, his horse’s head low next to him as though consoling him. It reeks of fresh vomit. Fritz is breathing hard. I back away, but I step on a piece of crushed glass and it echoes through the new-dead silence. I stop. He looks up.
He stands, pulls his Luger out, and aims it at my head, hand shaking. I put my hands up and slowly back up a few steps. His crushed face is contorted and anguished, no longer handsome and dashing. His eyes are red and his face is wet with tears.
“Are you as good as your word?”
“Yes.” I try to look at him and not down the barrel of his Luger.
“You never saw this,” he growls, teeth clenched.
“Saw what?” I make a feeble attempt to smile.
The Luger slowly comes down, and he wipes some spittle from his chin.
“I’ll see about that brandy.” It’s all I can think of to say.
Writers write of irony. The brandy I have to sell is the same brandy I stole off a German delivery truck I was pressed into unloading just a few days ago. How could I not liberate a few bottles? So … I am the reason for the roundup. So … those twelve people lying dead in the street died for my sins.
If Christ died for gentiles’ sins, then twelve Jews just died for mine.
SEPTEMBER, 1940
I.
Spring and summer have passed, and now, as fall approaches, I realize how much I’ve changed. The massacre was months ago, but I can’t get the images out of my mind. I think that’s what Hitler wants. He wants us to stand by and silently witness—the wall going up, the deportations, the massacres, the randomness of life here in Warsaw—hell, in all of Europe now, for all I know. The only news we get is ground out by the Nazi propaganda machine. Anyway, I don’t have time to worry about Europe.
But these nightmares—not like me at all. I close my eyes and see those twelve dead people, gunned down because of a torn armband and some Nazi’s rage over a few bottles of stolen brandy. How will I ever forget those faces, that woman without her armband, Spades … all lined up against that café wall?
And my family—any of those twelve people could have easily been my family. Maybe even my baby sister, since Jewish children are granted no quarter. The first thing I did that night was make an angry gash in the wall of my home hole—one gash for each life lost. I smashed the bottles of brandy and pledged then and there I was going to avenge those lives—if someone doesn’t take mine first.
Those gashes are the last things I look at each night and the first things I look at each morning.
The Germans are good as their word, I’ll give them that. They started building the wall in April. Did they ever! Nine feet high with shards of glass cemented into the top. Concertina wire coiled on top of that. This isn’t a friendly, backyard fence, the kind that makes for good neighbors. The roads in and out of the Muranów neighborhood, the Jewish quarter, are barricaded with barbed wire and thick beams. They take on the appearance of checkpoints with guard towers. One thing’s obvious: without a work permit or a pass, once you’re “quartered” there, don’t plan on coming out the way you went in.
In one way or another, I’ve checked on my family all summer, even though, between the construction, and now the cutting off of streets and alleyways, it keeps getting tougher to get over and back.
“How long has it been since you heard anything?” Lizard asks. We’re sorting out packages of cigarettes for our boys to sell to the work crews as they head back from building the ghetto wall. “Maybe the phones are just out of order.”
“I called six days in a row. No, something’s happened.”
“Did you call your neighbors?”
“No phones anywhere. So I’m going over. You don’t know my father. He’ll get himself and Mother and my sister killed. He gives orders; he doesn’t take them. Besides, it’s not my father I’m worried about. It’s my mother and sister.”
“Isn’t your mother always sick? Maybe she’s …” Death has become so second-nature in everyone’s thoughts. Lizard catches himself. “I mean …”
I try not to visualize my mother getting tossed onto a truck like the old woman with the Luger, to be hauled Elsewhere. No work will set old women free.
“Could be. But then there’s Ruthie. The poor kid’s got a club foot. And you know what the Nazis think about imperfection. And if she’s becoming anything like me, well, you know what a mouth I have.” No work is going to set her free, either.
“Well, maybe he can buy their way out. And doesn’t he have a lot of influence in the Jewish community? Aren’t they letting the Rabbis and the muckety-mucks take care of their own?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m getting myself over there today.” I resist the urge to light a cigarette, knowing we need to keep our supply for selling and bartering.
“When will you go? Mrs. Praska says half her kids are sick, so production might be slow for a few days.”
“Damn Krauts sure caught on to the sewer system. Have you seen them welding some of the covers closed? Damn inconvenient.”
“You’re asking for it traveling the sewers these days. Watch out for kerosene or poison gas. If they suspect anyone’s down there, bombs away! You’re on your own in the sewers. Just you and the rats.”
“If this war has taught me anything, it’s the value of careful.” I smile at him, but he’s not smiling back.
“Still, I think you better think this over, Arab.” Lizard slings several canvas bags of cigarettes over his shoulder.
“I have thought it over, and I’m going.”
“Well, just remember there are all the Praskas, and me and our boys to consider. If you get your head blown off, what about our operation here?” He grabs my hand and catches my eye. “I mean. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Now is no time for this sort of talk, I think. “Well, Lizard, you’ll muddle through somehow. You know where my hideouts are, you know where I stash things. If I don’t come back, you can have everything.” I pull my hand away from his. “Fifty-fifty becomes one hundred percent.”
“Let me know the minute you get back. Promise?” Now he smiles, but there’s concern in his eyes.
“I’ll come here first thing. Won’t even stop for a beer.”
II.
I stuff some supplies into my canvas bag, wondering what I should take on my trip over to the ghetto side. Luger? What if I get caught and searched? That’s going to look a bit suspicious. On the other hand, it also might save my l
ife. I decide against it and put the gun back into the hiding spot in my hideout’s wall. I decide to take my knife instead—easy to hide, and useful in many ways.
I sling my bag over my shoulder and head out onto the street, looking both directions before I round each corner. While I make my way across town, I think about bigger things—my family and just how the hell I should approach my father. On the streetcar, I remember how his anger controlled so much of our family. On the side streets, I remember how my mother seemed powerless. In the sewers, I remember how I have always looked out for just myself.
As I pause before a shop window and look at my reflection, I see only little Ruthie looking back. I wipe some sewer goo from my cheeks and pinch some glow into them. Sunken cheeks are all the rage these days—something I’m doing right, at least. Everyone is suspicious of chubby cheeks.
I run my hand over my head, feel something, pluck it out, then put my cap back on straight. I fuss with the scarf around my neck, trying to look halfway feminine.
Just like all the other times I’ve come to check on them, I hide across the street. Already this neighborhood is in disarray. Garbage is piled up along the streets, gardens are untended, abandoned belongings are stacked in the yards of the neighborhood houses. There he is! Up the block. It’s Tuesday—rent collection day. I take a breath for courage, come out of the shadows, and cross the street.
He sees my shadow and holds his cane up. “I don’t want any trouble!”
Then his cane slowly comes down, and we stand staring at each other. Who is this man? I know I’ve changed, but I’m shocked to see how much my father has transformed. Thin and bent and gray. A forty-seven-year-old ancient man. The once-zealous glow in his face is replaced by a desolate look of hunger and fear.
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
“Abra!” He gasps my name, like evoking a ghost. He steps closer and stares into my eyes. “But … you’re dead,” he whispers.
The Girl Who Wouldn?t Die Page 9