The Miracle Typist

by Leon Silver

  When Tolek was next on day leave in town, he walked past two men speaking Yiddish in a café. He introduced himself and discovered one of the men was a Jewish tailor called Ackerman. The tailor invited Tolek home for lunch, introducing him to his wife and two unmarried daughters. The oldest, Eva, had a soft voice, longish light brown hair and eyes of the same colour. Eva stared at him throughout the meal. She was just two years younger than Tolek. He reciprocated her wide smiles, and neglected to tell them that he was married, referring only to his family back home, because a vague plan had begun to form in Tolek’s mind and he was sure he’d need the Ackermans’ help.

  Mr Ackerman, who had a very successful tailoring shop, liked Tolek. He felt a business connection to this young law clerk and told him that he’d come up with a brilliant marketing plan to increase sales: when prospective customers came in to try on a suit, he slipped a five pengős note into the pocket. Once the customer felt the money in the pocket, they didn’t even take the clothing item off again, but bought it on the spot and wore it out of the shop.

  Tolek laughed, saluting the old man.

  The idea of taking advantage of the Ackermans – and Eva in particular – by pretending that he wasn’t married made Tolek very uncomfortable. But he badly needed to take some pre-emptive action. He did not want to be stuck in that camp till the enemy invaded and killed all of the Jewish soldiers. In his cot after lights out, Tolek stared at Klara’s image on his closed eyelids, begging her to understand and replaying in detail the day they had spent together before his conscription. They had handed Juliusz to his grandparents and taken the day off just for themselves. They travelled by train to Lwów, where they had elaborate coffee and cheesecake, then browsed in the chic shops along the promenade. Tolek bought Klara a pair of the latest black ankle boots with silver buckles for the coming winter, and Klara bought him a stunning grey and burgundy tie to wear the day he came home from the army. Then they strolled the Svobody Boulevard and Promenade Alley. They even sat on their favourite faded green bench. They clutched hands all day, never letting go of each other.

  You understand that I need Eva to help me escape and get back to you, Klara, don’t you? She means nothing to me.

  In his imagination, Klara nodded, smiling. She understood.

  Each week, the Ackermans sent Eva to the camp gate with a large parcel of food that included fried turkey and goose and freshly baked Hungarian cakes. Tolek handed these parcels to the hall’s commandant for fair distribution to his comrades.

  It was November. Tolek had been in the camp for nearly two months. It seemed that France and England had not started fighting seriously yet, and Germany had taken control of the Atlantic Ocean with their superior submarine power. Strong rumours suggested that the Polish Council in Budapest was secretly recruiting a new Polish Army to join the French forces. Tolek recruited Lewandowski – a small jolly fellow – and Szymanski – taller and more serious – and together they planned to escape and re-enlist at the Polish Embassy in Budapest. Singer was reluctant to go, as he believed it was too dangerous for Jews to be wandering about without papers. There were also whispers in the camp of a major escape; he would rather wait for that. Lewandowski and Szymanski also had families at home and they were keen to rejoin the army. They told Tolek that another Polish soldier, an ex-construction engineer, had whispered over drinks that the best way to escape the camp was through the sewers, as they led outside the camp’s walls.

  Tolek discussed his escape plan with Mr Ackerman. It was simple: a manhole between the halls led to huge cement pipes used for wastewater in the factory’s chicory manufacturing days and these pipes had outlets in the fields on the other side of the barbed-wire fence. If the soldiers could get from the pipes to the train station, they could board a train to Budapest.

  Mr Ackerman agreed to help Tolek and his friends escape. The men decided on 24 December 1939 as the date to carry the plan out, because Christmas meant there would be fewer guards around. The tailor would purchase three train tickets to Budapest, obtain a timetable, and hire a car and driver to take the men from the cement pipes to the station.

  On their next leave day, Tolek took his two new friends to the Ackermans’ house, where they were measured for second-hand suits to change into after their escape. The soldiers had to look respectable as the train stations were full of detectives looking for German spies and provocateurs and Polish Army deserters. Lewandowski and Szymanski started calling Tolek ‘the fixer’.

  When the suits were nearly ready, the soldiers went for a final fitting. Eva Ackerman pinned the trousers on Tolek. When no one was looking, she pinched his thigh and smiled suggestively. On Tolek’s other side, her father boasted about the handsome dowry he’d saved up for his two daughters; it was a time of tension and war, but Eva was twenty-seven, which was old for unmarried Jewish girls.

  It’s going to be harder to escape Eva than the internment camp, Tolek thought as he stood in the old suit that still smelled of fresh soap while Eva slowly massaged his ankle. She smiled up at him again around a mouthful of pins.

  Later, in the bedroom, while Tolek was changing back into his uniform, Eva cornered him with a soft voice and a plan: at the last minute, Tolek should jump off the train and go with her. If they were caught and interrogated, his two army friends would swear he’d taken the train. Tolek would become Eva’s pet, living in the cellar under their house for the war’s duration. She had even organised a rabbi to marry them in the cellar. The girl was efficient.

  Tolek had never thought that pretending he wasn’t married would go that far, but it was too late now to do anything else. He was stuck. Tolek went hot with a guilty conscience about having deceived the Ackermans. This girl saw him as a companion to be counted on during this time of crisis.

  Tolek told Eva his sense of ‘duty and honour’ was his excuse for wanting to re-enlist. It sounded weak, even to him.

  Eva was undeterred. ‘When the war is over, you will come back, Tolek.’ She lifted her skirt slightly.

  Tolek smiled and nodded, and felt worse.

  At the end of the first week of December, the Ackermans invited Tolek to their Chanukah lunch. The family wore their festive clothes: Mr Ackerman in a suit with his shirt buttoned to the neck, and the three women in dresses and shawls. They sat around the table laid with a white tablecloth, best cutlery and crockery and of course the Chanukah menorah set with nine candles.

  As they toasted with sweet kosher wine, Tolek stared into the candles’ flames. Would his family be having the same celebration? Would Klara also be mesmerised by the flames and be wishing for their own miracle? The candles needed to keep burning until Tolek could make it back home.

  * * *

  A week before the escape, while light snow fell, a miracle did happen: Tolek received a letter from Klara, via Ludwig Voyanoff.

  Tolek stole outside the barracks to read it in private. He sat on a frozen log, a blanket wrapped around him, hands shaking as they held the letter. He took out the photo of Klara and Juliusz he kept in his breast pocket. Reading with her photo in his hand made it feel like she was speaking to him. He kissed her handwriting and began to read.

  ‘My liebling, kochanie. I pray that this letter reaches you. We are all well, Juliusz’s and my kisses for you are drawn below.’

  Tolek sucked in a deep breath then kissed the three stick figures surrounded by a rainbow of red lip imprints at the bottom of the letter. Eyes moist, he returned to the letter. Klara wrote that Bóbrki and Lwów were occupied by the Russians, but they were being treated fairly and Klara was employed by the new Russian authorities as a manager for a general store.

  Things could be a lot worse, his wife wrote. In the German zone there were mass shootings, deportations and ghettos, but not in the Russian zone. Young men, Poles and Jews, were being grabbed off the street by Russians, but there was no open discrimination against the Jews.

  Klara wrote that Soldier Kubiak had made it home from Stryj and had come to tell her that T
olek was well and was going into exile with the army. She had been so thankful for that message and more thankful that Tolek had stayed with the army, because Kubiak had been stopped and searched many times on his way back to check if he was a Jew. He’d seen men hanging from trees. Kubiak also told Klara that Esig Hertzcovitch had intended to come back home. He hadn’t shown up yet, though perhaps he had changed his mind and returned to the army. Klara hadn’t told Batya that her husband was supposed to have returned home. In her letter, she asked Tolek to please send any news of Esig.

  Tolek lifted his eyes. It wasn’t good news if Hertzcovitch hadn’t made it back home by the time Klara had written. Something had gone wrong. Thank God for Captain Gultz’s advice and his cousin Nester’s confirmation. Thank God Klara had made him stay with the army. He had made the right decision.

  Some of the Russian occupiers were Jewish communists, Klara continued. The Russian corporal in the general store was also Jewish. Klara was working long hours, earning enough ration stamps to help out his parents, as the restaurant had been closed. Juliusz was well and being looked after by his grandparents. He missed his tatte terribly. Klara had managed to get Ijio a job as a cook in a Russian soldiers’ canteen to earn more food stamps. Could Tolek imagine his middle brother working long hours six days a week?

  Klara must’ve been grinning broadly when she wrote that – Ijio was known for his playfulness and his love of cards and billiards. ‘Red ball in the corner right pocket’ was his famous boast. Tolek looked up at the low clouds and drifting snow, his heart rising in his throat. Tolek’s family would pull through and, under the Russians, the Jewish civilians would survive. The war would not last forever. He would re-enlist in the new Polish Army and, together with the British and French, they would crush the Germans. He would keep his promise and return to kiss away those teardrops from Klara’s face.

  Tolek returned to the letter.

  A group of Ukrainians had gone on a drunken rampage, Klara wrote, working their way through a hospital, shooting all the Jewish patients. His youngest brother, his beautiful baby brother, Leon – ‘Lonek’ – had been there, recovering from influenza. He was shot with the other Jewish patients.

  Silent tears stung Tolek’s eyes. He couldn’t read any further. Klara must’ve cried so hard to have had to write that news. He thought of Lonek, alive, vibrant, healthy and well. Nine years younger than Tolek, Lonek was such a decent human being, a peaceful, gentle soul. He was in his second year in technical college studying port engineering. When Tolek came home late from work, Lonek would be sitting at a desk, studying upstairs. Tolek used to put his arms around his younger brother and Lonek would lean his head back into his embrace and sigh. Spoiled Lonek was never short of money, because Tolek gave him all he wanted.

  Lonek, lucky not to have been called up, now dead in a hospital at home.

  Tolek cried out in pain. He wrapped the frozen blanket around himself like a tallith, a prayer shawl, and swayed forward and backwards, praying for Lonek’s soul. Heavy snow fell on him but he didn’t feel it as he sat shiva as best he could, mourning for his younger brother, keening to God.

  The first candle on the Klings family menorah had been snuffed out.

  4 Escape to nowhere

  Lewandowski and Szymanski dug Tolek out of the snow and took him inside the building to the wood stove. Tolek couldn’t look his colleagues in the face; he hated them all, even the good ones. How could they let innocents like Lonek be slaughtered all over Poland?

  The chill was inside him now, and he dreamt every night of the escape, constantly lifting heavy iron lids and jumping into black holes. The sooner he could get out and fight back, the sooner this nightmare would be over.

  Finally 24 December 1939 arrived – escape day – and Tolek forced himself to focus on the plan. The clock slowed and it seemed to take forever to reach five-thirty. But when the time came, Tolek, Lewandowski and Szymanski met at the sewer grate between two barracks, each man carrying a parcel wrapped in a torn grey bedsheet containing the trip essentials: a change of underwear, shaving and washing utensils, and personal items such as money, photographs and letters wrapped in oilcloth against the wet sewers. It was already dark and the yard was deserted. The rest of their colleagues were on day leave in town or inside the warm barracks, playing cards and drinking. The Hungarian guards were also by the fires inside their barracks, drinking and missing home.

  The three men dislodged the iron grate with metal hooks, then lifted it. Szymanski jumped in and whispered, ‘The water isn’t too deep. Jump in, fixer.’

  Tolek hopped into the blackness, followed by Lewandowski, who stood on Tolek’s shoulders and moved the heavy cover back into place. Overwhelmed by the sudden blackness and stench, the men waded into the huge cement pipe. Stale water lapped past their knees. They switched on small torches and rats squealed and fled in all directions. The three soldiers tied handkerchiefs around their mouths and noses and breathed by taking in short gasps of air. Their heavy army boots sank into slime up to their ankles and Tolek could feel soft objects floating past his legs. The men squinted and held on to each other, speaking softly and trying to keep cool heads. Other wastewater pipes branched off at odd angles and they worried that they would surface inside another factory hall, escaping from one jail cell to another rather than finding the outside world. They concentrated hard, hoping they were going in the right direction as their senses became confused in the wet darkness.

  As they took endless slow steps, Tolek tried not to think of the military dangers involved. Thrown in jail if caught, locked up for weeks or months – maybe even until the Germans invaded. Or shot as deserters by guards once they climbed out at the other end. His head and heart pounded with the dangers of every step: rats, disease, being captured. Fifteen minutes’ stumbling seemed like fifteen hours.

  Then he saw light, like a shaft from heaven; the hired driver had shifted the heavy grate covering the exit. Szymanski climbed onto Tolek’s shoulders to hoist himself out, then Tolek stood on Lewandowski’s shoulders to do the same. Together he and Szymanski pulled Lewandowski out, then helped the driver push the grate back into place. Tolek felt physical relief as he stood on the cement pipe lid looking up at the cloud-covered night sky outside the internment camp’s fence.

  It was freezing, with a light snow on the ground. The men hurried to strip naked on the white grass of the deserted field, keeping an eye out for perimeter guards, then rubbed their skin raw with wet towels to get the slime and smell of the tunnels off. They put on the secondhand suits and stuffed their dirty uniforms into a sack to be disposed of. In the taxi they felt themselves transformed into different men, the kind who still lived the civilian life they had left four months before. None of the men could have imagined, back when they’d arrived at the internment camp, that they would be travelling back to the railway station in a chauffeured taxi wearing civilian clothes.

  The trip to the station passed quickly and without incident but as Tolek was about to board the train, a cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows.

  Eva Ackerman, the tailor’s daughter.

  Eva leaned towards Tolek and whispered, ‘Remember to come back after the war.’

  Tolek jumped onto the train before she had a chance to pinch his thigh again. He felt blessed to make a double escape. He’d done what he’d had to do to get back home.

  The three men travelled for six hours, arriving in Budapest the following morning. They used the money the tailor had given them to take a taxi to the Polish Consulate, housed in a grand building. The consul himself was a powerful, well-connected nobleman. The Polish flag, white and red with a proud eagle, flew high over the building. Uniformed guards stood at the gate. They silently escorted the men up wide, sweeping staircases. No one asked for papers. The three escapees nodded to each other; the rumours were right, the Polish Consulate was recruiting.

  On the second floor, other suspicious characters lurked in silence in front of an office. Tolek and his friends got
in line, hoping to see the consul. When they reached the front, the receptionist took their names and ranks and said that they would be interviewed by the First Secretary, acting as Honorary Consul. Tolek was anxious, he didn’t know any of the other waiting soldiers, who avoided eye contact. Where they being extra careful or was it his Semitic profile? It was two hours before Lewandowski’s name was called. He left Tolek and Szymanski and entered the office. He hadn’t returned when Szymanski’s name was called, but the second man entered the office anyway. Tolek Klings waited.

  When his name was finally called, Tolek entered to find Lewandowski and Szymanski still inside the room, sitting in chairs on the First Secretary’s right. They stood up when he did, nervously holding their hats, eyes lowered.

  The First Secretary stood tall behind a heavy desk. He leaned forward in his formal suit, a sash across his chest, to look Tolek up and down. The First Secretary’s expression dropped and his welcoming smile disappeared. Turning to Tolek’s two companions, he asked, ‘Is this your friend?’

  They stood at attention, nodding sheepishly.

  The First Secretary stared a cold reprimand at them until they sank into their chairs. Tolek guessed that in their account of their escape they had neglected to tell him Tolek was a Jew.

  As the First Secretary slipped out from behind his heavy wooden desk, his face assumed a kindly, sentimental smile. Tolek watched him embrace Lewandowski and Szymanski warmly in turn, murmuring, ‘My colleague’.

  Back behind his desk, he pressed a button. His assistant entered.

  ‘Take these two men to be processed.’

  Tolek’s companions hesitated. They looked at Tolek, giving him the faintest of shrugs. Lewandowski’s jolliness had disappeared, smile all gone as he mumbled, ‘Sorry, fixer’. Szymanski rested a hand on Lewandowski’s shoulder while he nodded at Tolek. They were supporting him but there was nothing they could do. The First Secretary, irritated, jerked his head, indicating for them to disappear.