The Girl Who Wouldn?t Die

by Randall Platt

  “Was ist das?” an officer demands.

  “Nichts, nichts,” Lizard says. “Drunk. Ich bin … a … a—”

  Otto gives them a sloppy grin. “Betrunken. Nur ein bisschen.” He put his fingers up to show “just a little,” then nearly falls over. Lizard grabs him.

  Otto grins at the policeman. “Ich bin gerade Vater geworden.” He cradles his arms and rocks an imaginary baby.

  “Ja, ja. Glückwünsche,” the officer says, offering his congratulations. Then he asks for identification. Otto touches his uniform and steps back, looking offended.

  Oh, please have your identification, Otto, I say to myself.

  The officer keeps his hand held out.

  Otto turns to Lizard. “They want our papers. Hope you have yours.” His Polish is slow, broken, and slurred.

  Both produce their cards. Thank God! One officer examines them under the glow of his flashlight. He shows them to his comrade. They exchange glances.

  “Gestapo?”

  Lizard catches my glance over the shoulder of his interrogator.

  “Betrunken?”

  Again, Otto looks like he’s cradling a baby. “Feiern!”

  The officer then looks at Lizard and asks, “Mit diesem Polen?”

  “Ja,” Otto continues, now standing a bit steadier. I make out him explaining that “this Pole” is in his employ and has brought him the news of the birth since Otto was on patrol.

  I know how the officers’ minds must be working. What if this Gestapo clearance is real? What happens when this fellow German and his Pole assistant sober up and realize they were yanked off the streets like so much Jewish baggage? The officers confer, and I eavesdrop, catching snatches of their conversation.

  “Gestapo pass? Could be forged.”

  “Out here, drunk, with this common Pole?”

  “He reeks of the sewers.”

  “Middle of the night, in this weather?”

  “And here, in the ghetto?”

  “No, doesn’t add up. Better to follow the book and take them in. Make some inquiries.”

  “Besides, it’s cold and I want to get off these streets.”

  Both officers now have their Lugers drawn. “Kommen sie mit uns,” one says, taking Otto gruffly by the arm. Then, to Lizard, “Du auch!”

  I watch and look at the odds—three Lugers between us, two policemen, Lizard and me, and one “drunk” Messiah with a Gestapo pass. Hell, even I’m curious how this is going to play out.

  “Where are you taking us?” Lizard asks.

  “Ja, wo es?” Otto asks.

  I already know where they’re going to take them—Pawiak Prison—now headquarters for the ghetto security and the Gestapo. God, what do I do? My first thought is Ruthie. I can just go back, grab her, take her with me, and …

  No, I can’t. I can’t leave Lizard, Otto, the rest. Damn it! I should be thinking of Ruthie! What if I get killed? Damn it to hell!

  I run ahead to beat them there, thinking of how I’m going to help Otto and Lizard as I run. I have only a few blocks to come up with my plan—any plan!

  An out-and-out ambush so close to Pawiak is out of the question. One gunshot, and no telling how many inside will hear. Even at this hour, in this freezing night, search lights, guard dogs, marksmen will follow.

  I have my knife on me and I know Lizard always travels with one. But I have no idea if he’s ever used it for … this purpose. Does he have what it takes to make a stand? To do what he has to do?

  And who knows if Otto has a weapon under that long coat?

  Lights along the prison walls cast long, threatening shadows down on the drifting snow. The road into it is well-shoveled but shines with thick ice. The arched entry makes it look like a huge black mouth, open and ready to devour its prisoners and shit them out the back door.

  I stop and hide inside an alcove in the wall.

  Footsteps. What’s my plan? It has to be from behind. Do I have the strength to slit a throat, clean through the muffler and the collar? And if Otto and Lizard don’t spring into action exactly when I do so, I’m dead.

  Lizard knows I’m out here somewhere. He looks down each alley and alcove as he passes. I hope the dim light coming from the prison walls will show enough of my face. Enough for establishing eye contact. For the nod of my head. Anything.

  I take a chance in showing my forehead just as they pass. The officers have their mufflers low around their hats, holding in their breath. Otto sees me first. Then Lizard.

  Otto stumbles, holds his stomach, and gags. “Uh oh, spucken!” He falls to his knees.

  My cue. I dash up from behind and grab the muffler of one officer, pulling him back and off balance. I hear Otto and Lizard scuffling with the other officer. But I have my own problem! I drop to my knees, using my weight to pull the officer down, but the damn Kraut reaches around and grabs for my face. I bring my knife around jab it into the officer’s neck. I hear him gag, then he whirls and goes for my knife. I strike at him again. Blood spurts from his neck. His hands go to his throat and he struggles to rise. I strike a third time, my knife taking a bigger slice just below his ear. He gurgles and pins me down. His face is close to mine. He struggles to speak.

  “Otto! Lizard! Help me here!” I cry out, struggling now to knife the soldier in his back. He holds me down with rage. He’s not dying! He’s not giving up. “Otto! Help!”

  I hear Otto in his own struggle with the other officer.

  “Lizard!” I screech. “Help me! Kill him! Kill him!”

  I struggle to get out from under him. Lizard tries to pull him back and up, but the officer is fighting like a madman. His hands strike out and pound anything he can find. “Kill him, Lizard!”

  Lizard seizes the man by his hair and pulls his head back. He slices his throat. It makes a sickening sound. I scramble to my feet. And he still isn’t dead. He rises, seizes his neck, then falls back. A thick, foamy blood guzzles from his throat. The man’s face is shocked, disbelieving, even as his eyes meet those of his dead comrade, lying now next to him.

  Lizard looks at me. His face is contorted with horror. He looks down at the dying man, struggling to breathe, trying to speak—praying, for all I know. Violently Lizard stuffs the officer’s muffler into the gaping, gasping slit in his neck. He holds it fast against his struggles, suffocating him. When his gasping stops and the man is still, Lizard looks away, crosses himself with trembling hands, and stands up.

  Otto, out of breath, stands, looking down at the two dead men.

  “If this isn’t resistance,” he says, “I’d like to know what the hell is.” He takes the officers’ weapons, then goes through their pockets for their identifications and anything else useful.

  “Come on! This way!” I call out. I lead them through the back alleys and to the safety of our cellar hideout.

  I have avenged eleven of those first twelve lives taken at the Crystal Café. One more to go. And Lizard is now an official member of the Meet Me in Hell Club.

  XIV.

  Once we’re back safe in the cellar, I turn on Lizard and Otto. “What the hell were you thinking? Out there drunk and having a high old time? You nearly got us killed! What would happen to all of them if you’d—”

  “Take it easy, Arab,” Lizard says, pulling me around by my shoulder. “We weren’t drunk, for God’s sake! That was a ruse! Otto saved our asses out there!”

  “Which wouldn’t have to have been saved if you weren’t out there!”

  Lizard takes a long drink from a bottle of whiskey, then passes it to Otto. “I got to worrying about the truck,” Lizard says. “I didn’t know if I could get it myself, where to hide it, or what. Thought if the going got tough—which it did—thought I could use a good Nazi to help out. So Otto came with me—and it’s a damn good thing he did, so keep your pointing finger out of my face!”

  “Oh, so now you’re doing the thinking around here,” I return, poking his chest with my finger.

  He slaps my hand away and we glare at e
ach other.

  “We knew we were being followed,” Otto says, stepping between us. “They may have even seen us hide the truck in the piano factory warehouse. You don’t think we’d be stupid enough to lead them here, do you?”

  “That’s when Otto said to just follow his lead,” Lizard explains. “We had to come up with some sort of explanation. Who we were and why we were out. So, turns out it’s a damn good thing I had Otto with me!”

  “So now we have two dead soldiers up there and like hell that’s not going cause some problems!” I point toward the rafters.

  “Now you listen to me, Arab,” Otto says. “You were dead wrong to go making plans, risking everything without consulting me. I know a thing or two about trucks. And I speak German, you stupid little—”

  I shove his shoulder but wonder if a slap across the face would have more effect.

  “Stop it! All of you! Am I the only adult here?” Mrs. Praska says, taking a sturdy position between us. She points at me. “You! You listen to Otto!” Then, she turns on Otto. “And you! I’m getting sick of this little private war you and Arab have going! Now, it’s four in the morning and I have sick children and I need it quiet!”

  “I agree,” Lizard growls. “I don’t care who kings this whole damn thing! Let’s just get the hell out of here!”

  Otto sighs. He offers me a pull off the bottle. “Here. Peace?”

  “No thanks. You have a cold. Contagion.” That word brings Lizard’s eyes to mine. “And you told him that, too, I suppose?”

  “We’re a team, Arab!” Otto says. Then he smiles at me. “And some members of the team are a lot more clever than others.” He gives me a friendly shove.

  “More clever or less stupid?” I ask, taking the bottle.

  “Take your pick. Now, I don’t care about the rest of you, but I’m tired, I have a head cold, and I need to get some sleep. I’m turning in.” He looks a bit confused, then asks, “What day is this?”

  “Tuesday. Very early Tuesday morning,” Mrs. Praska growls through a yawn.

  “Good. We have lots to do and only twenty-four hours to do it in.”

  Otto goes to his corner of the cellar. Mrs. Praska casts her eyes to the heavens, takes a drink from the bottle, and mumbles something to herself while she pads back to the children’s section.

  Lizard pulls the blankets aside and looks into our room of sleeping children. “Sorry I was so angry, Arab. Look, I’ve never killed anyone before. It was so easy for Otto. And you, Arab. How could it be so easy for you?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper, looking down at my hands, still shaking. He puts his arms around me and we rock back and forth. “I don’t know,” I repeat.

  XV.

  Before Tuesday’s first light, before anyone has stirred awake, I go up and out and make my way to the cellar of the Minerva Theater, hoping the paint has finally dried. Of all the graffiti I’ve written, these two canvases are my masterpieces, these printed words my best work. I take my gloves off and gingerly test the paint’s dryness. The word perfect doesn’t often get uttered in the middle of a war in an occupation. But I say it out loud and proud. “Just perfect!”

  The canvases are now half frozen so I pull them down and carefully start rolling each one up. I bind them with the line from the rafters and tie them to my waist.

  I put all the greasepaint and stage makeup I’ve found into a rag satchel I’ve made. The nurses’ uniforms get tucked inside my belt. No one will notice a slightly lopsided person walking with a stiff gate and carrying a filthy bundle here in the ghetto. Even so, as I head out I look around every corner before rounding it. These Germans are like hydras—cut off a head and two more appear. No telling what the retaliation will be when they find two of their own murdered and frozen, so close to the gaping maw of Pawiak Prison.

  The cellar is warm and active when I arrive. I get everyone’s attention and, with a flourish, unroll a canvas and hold it up. In block letters are two words—one in German, the other in Polish. It makes no difference which language. QUARANTANE … KWARANTANNA. The word quarantine is universal. And I’m hoping the reaction to that word will be just as universal.

  I explain our plan, from the Kinem Plague to using the greasepaint to create a truck full of sick and dying children. All under SS guard, including three German nurses on a suicide mission. It sounds bizarre, even to me.

  I turn to Otto. “Go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You’re wrong,” Otto states.

  “Damn. Why?”

  “You left out the umlaut.”

  “The what?” I demand.

  Otto takes a smudge of blackface and applies the two dots on top of the last German a. “And you brag about your German.”

  “But drug the children?” Mrs. Praska asks.

  “Well, yes. The younger ones. Like you did when they were all coughing,” I say.

  “I brought opiates and painkillers,” Irenka says, going through the bottles in the box she brought. “Codeine, morphine, ipecac. I just emptied the cabinet. Even some ether. But don’t ask me about the dosages. I’d just finished one year of nursing school when they made me work at the infirmary.”

  “Kinem Plague?” Otto asks, running the words over his tongue. Then, his face finally lights up. “Yes! The Nuremberg Laws!”

  “The what laws?” I ask.

  “Oh, just some little laws Hitler and his henchmen concocted to pave the way for getting rid of undesirables and defects. The incurables.” He looks toward the room of sick children. “Incurables. And I’m sure the Kinem Plague, whatever that is, is quite incurable.”

  “And very contagious,” I add.

  “I love how your evil mind works,” Otto says. “If we get out of this alive—which I doubt—but if we do, you’ll always have a job with me.”

  “Big ‘ifs,’” I mutter.

  I hand Mrs. Praska the nurses’ uniforms and the satchel of makeup.

  “What’s all this?” she asks.

  “We ladies are going to wear these.”

  She takes a folded uniform off the stack, snaps it out, and holds it up to her chest. “I couldn’t fit into this when I was twelve!”

  “You’ll have to make it work. And we’ll be wearing long coats anyway.”

  Irenka goes through the stack, holds one up, and asks, “Do you have this in a fuchsia?”

  Lizard gives her a playful shove. I turn to Mrs. Praska. “How are those Nazi uniforms coming along? Get the rank patches like Otto showed you?”

  “Acting! Playacting! How can this ever work?” Mrs. Praska grumbles.

  Almost as if on cue, a child in the back room starts to cough violently.

  I nod toward the coughing child. “And your idea was …?”

  “Not becoming a German nurse!” she says.

  “If I can do it, you can.” How long has it been been since I’ve worn a dress? Well, in this cold, I’m sure as hell wearing pants under it.

  Mrs. Praska gives us her huge, seldom-used smile and holds up a uniform. “I wish to hell I brought my girdle.”

  She trundles off and sets the children to helping with sewing patches and cleaning uniforms. Games, stories, and naps pass the rest of the day—hopefully our last in the cellar.

  XVI.

  “Where’s Otto?” Lizard asks. “I checked the whole cellar. He’s not here.”

  “He told me he couldn’t sleep and was going out for a smoke,” Mrs. Praska says. She looks at her brooch watch. “Come to think of it, that was some time ago. He left at seven and it’s past eight.”

  Lizard and I look at each other. Strange. “If he messes anything up for us, I’ll kill him with my bare hands,” I grumble.

  Knocks come on the coal chute door. “There he is,” Mrs. Praska says.

  He slides down, covered in snow.

  “What the—?” I demand. “Otto!”

  He stands up and starts to knock the snow off. “Sorry. I just went around the front to have a smoke, think about things, and damn, I tripp
ed on a curb or dead something and fell into a bomb crater! Do you know how hard it is to crawl your way up on solid ice?”

  “Did you hurt yourself?” Mrs. Praska asks, taking his heavy coat off him and shaking it off.

  He rubs his shin. “The good thing about being frozen is, you lose all feeling.”

  “You could have ruined everything!” I bark. “From now on, no one goes anywhere alone!” I point a finger at him.

  He points a finger back at me. “That goes for you too, Arab!”

  “Oh look, a duel,” Lizard says, yawning. “I’m getting some sleep. I suggest you do, too.”

  “I’ll take the watch,” I say.

  “Wake us at midnight,” Otto says.

  Shortly after midnight, Wednesday—our day of exodus—I rouse the adults. We quiz ourselves on our escape plan, taking turns playing devil’s advocate, trying to conceive of every wrong-turn scenario imaginable. We repeat any foreign words we might have to use over and over.

  Otto writes on tiny scraps of paper and fumbles with the capsules on the birds’ legs. They coo, as if they know they’re about to be set free.

  “Well, here we go,” Otto says, attaching the capsules and returning each bird to the cage. I help him out of the cellar and follow him to the backyard. Ruthie’s swing is frozen stiff at an odd and eerie angle.

  “Won’t they be too cold to fly?” I ask, noting the pencil-thin legs with the small metal capsules attached.

  “Are you kidding? These birds have been cooped up in their own little ghetto long enough. They know what’s about to happen. They can’t wait to, well, spread their wings. Just like us, huh?”

  “I didn’t think birds flew in the dark,” I say.

  “Well, smart ones don’t. But these old girls are proven night flyers. And they know just where they’re going.”

  I stand guard while Otto pulls a pigeon out, kisses its head, and passes it to me for a kiss. “Eins … zwei … drei …” he whispers as he releases each bird to the sky. They fly up, find each other, circle, and are gone.

  “What do their messages say?”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “Shut up!”