by Leon Silver
Tolek shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It would be good to be among my own kind again.’ Then he waved the argument away and with a smile changed the subject once more. ‘An armament sergeant in my battalion has made me an offer. “You are in your country, Miracle Typist,” he told me. “We all know there is an active underground looking for arms. Make contact with your people. For British pounds I can sell them a few truckloads of guns.” ’
Stunned silence fell over the room. Tolek was yanked out of his seat – leaving behind a mouth-watering blue vein cheese – to join a telephone hook-up with people from all over the country. Tolek imagined executives being similarly wrenched away from office desks, golf courses or operating theatres. Herman and Shimon talked into the phone in a kind of gibberish that sounded as if they had suddenly lost their minds and were back in kindergarten. Surely any British security personnel listening would not be fooled by references to eggs, crayons, paint tubes, pebbles and sticks?
Tolek watched Herman’s wife clear away his uneaten food, including a plum compote, only to spread out an unappetising map. The drawing up of a military shopping list was suddenly much more urgent since his desertion plans were almost as mature as that disappearing cheese. If he was going to desert, this was Tolek’s last opportunity to shop in the Polish military supermarket. Was he going to desert? Frankly he was tired of thinking about it; if he stayed, this arms deal would sure help his acceptance.
Tolek knew that he was slowly giving in to the pressure to defect. He felt almost helpless to resist it, even though he wanted to stay with the army. Maybe his friends were right and he was wrong? They cared about him and his family.
He borrowed a set of ill-fitting civilian clothes from Herman to go out to an urgent political meeting; he wasn’t due to get his proper set of defection civvies for another two days. He realised he would be leaving the Polish Army the same way he’d entered it: wearing ill-fitting clothes in a tense and dangerous environment.
After the meeting, Herman took him to a local restaurant for a quick dinner, where he informed Tolek that he would have to make one more trip back to camp to finalise the arms delivery. And to not get too involved in the food, since it was only a ruse to see if they were being followed. Again Tolek had no chance of finishing the meal before he was smuggled out the back of the restaurant. It was already night-time as they sped by car to a local school, where a group of teachers was performing a drama workshop in a large classroom. Many old friends from Tolek’s youth greeted him with silent nods and he remembered that about eighty per cent of his pioneering youth movement had immigrated to Palestine.
Tolek wondered why all this secrecy was necessary just to go to a parent-teacher meeting. It was heartening to see so many parents taking such an active interest in this children’s drama performed by the teachers, but Tolek was tired and he would rather have finished his meal and be sleeping in a comfortable bed. The proposed arms-smuggling operation weighed heavily on his mind. He had visions of being handcuffed by the military police and facing his family back home in chains, reenacting that moment of absolute loss he’d felt when boarding the rowboats in Split.
He and Herman crammed their behinds into the children’s small wooden seats, while the teachers acted out a silent drama portraying a family sitting down to a Friday night Shabbat meal. One chair remained vacant. As the play unfolded, the vacant chair became the focal point of the family’s attention. The play built tension around this chair. Someone was missing. The framed picture of an older son stared at the audience. Throughout the meal, flashbacks showed the son growing up from a suckling baby to a strapping youngster taller than his father. He was out on an underground mission that night, a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Glances at the wall clock, telephone and empty chair. Morale disintegrated as time passed. The family on the stage were in tatters, propping each other up. Tears flooded the audience’s eyes; Tolek was not the odd man out here. Then the telephone rang. A quiet ring, more startling than a shriek. The mother made the motion of picking it up and apprehensively putting it to her ear. She almost collapsed – her son was not coming home. The family talked themselves into believing that the son might yet come home on a future Shabbat night to sit in the vacant chair. In silent tears they toasted l’chaim to their missing son’s life.
The audience sniffed and dried their eyes then broke for tea and cake, while the actor–teachers mingled with the parents. For parents so interested in their children’s education, some proved very antisocial. Especially the men, many of whom had acquired a sudden fascination with the moonlit night. They sipped tea and turned their heads slowly to take in their surroundings, examining each tree, bush and building.
Tolek’s inquisitive look was answered by Herman – ‘Looking for British police spies’ – before he yanked Tolek through a small door that had suddenly opened in the stage’s back wall. It led to an inner room full of radios, telephones, charts and maps. And four very serious people, two men and two women, including the photographer, Shimon Brietfeld. So this was why everyone upstairs was watching the night through the doors and windows. Tolek was told to sit down and keep quiet.
The phone rang and the photographer picked it up so fast that Tolek was sure he doubled as a magician.
‘They’re safe,’ Shimon announced with a sigh. The other three smiled and clinked whisky glasses. Tolek clicked glasses as well, understanding that he had been taken to the play and this ‘real life’ underground operation to make him feel as though he was already an active member of this pioneering community. His head was bursting with the decision he had to soon make. Stay with the army or leave?
Tolek spent that night with the Solomons, and the next day Herman offered to drive him to camp with the shopping list. Tolek agreed to go back on two conditions: he would take no part in the delivery of the arms and he didn’t want to know the contents of the list. He was reluctant to burn his bridges with the Polish Army. He knew that being dropped off at the camp would look suspicious and wanted to hitchhike, so he refused Herman’s offer. He also wanted that extra time to think through the suggested defection and how he could get his family to join him in Palestine.
Before getting on the highway with his thumb out, he stopped at an English servicemen’s pub. Cradling a whisky, he looked up to see a young RAAF pilot smiling and raising his beer glass in cheers.
‘Tolek Naftali Klings,’ Tolek said.
‘Joe Levy.’ He smiled even more. ‘Jew.’ He patted his chest, then clapped Tolek’s back. ‘Melbourne, Australia.’
Now Tolek was smiling – an instant connection. ‘Umchoo? Redn Yiddish?’ Our tribe? Speak Yiddish?
Joe shook his head, he didn’t understand. ‘No problem.’ He called out to a friend, who came over to translate, explaining that Joe spoke only a few words of high-school Hebrew. This Levy seemed very happy to meet Polish-Jewish Tolek. He told him they could be related, because his father was Russian and his mother Polish. Each had immigrated to Australia as children with their parents. Joe obviously wanted everyone in the bar to hear this; he acted so loud and confident with his soldier friends, so ‘un-Jewish’, that Tolek asked him if he knew what the large Star of David meant, the one that was hanging around his neck.
‘Of course, I do, mate. It’s the zodiac sign for Jupiter.’ Then he laughed, slapped Tolek’s back and told him, ‘Only kidding, mate.’ He had received it for his bar mitzvah at the St Kilda Shule.
‘But how can a synagogue be named after a saint?’
Joe laughed again. ‘That’s the name of the suburb!’
Tolek asked him to be honest and tell him how many Jews had deserted the Australian Army in Palestine.
The interpreter explained it twice but Joe just shook his head and shrugged. ‘As far as I know, none,’ he said. ‘Why?’
Why indeed. That was the final nail in Tolek’s desertion coffin. He was changing sides as soon as the arms deal was over. No Australians Jews had deserted because there was no anti-Semitism in t
heir army. They were proud to fight for their country. He would just have to take a chance on Jan Bielatowicz.
When he returned to the camp, Tolek discovered the Polish Carpathian Brigade was getting ready to pull out. The officers wouldn’t tell the men the proposed destination, but it was common knowledge that it was Egypt and the desert beyond. General Rommel, the famous German Africa Corps commander, was giving the British a hiding. The Allies needed extra troops to defend Suez.
Tolek’s timetable for desertion had shortened to now or never.
He met Jan Bielatowicz in the lunch tent. The Correspondent was already drunk. So what, he often was. Jan didn’t believe Tolek’s feeble excuse for returning to camp for a day during his leave: to check if Klara had answered any of the telegrams he’d sent through the Red Cross and the army. ‘Did you forget your toothbrush?’ he drawled. ‘Let me know where to contact you, I’ve already sent Kot a message to get any news about your family.’
They made small talk about the coming fight in the desert, but their eyes carried on an entirely different conversation.
You’re disappearing soon, aren’t you, Jan’s said.
If only you knew Not only am I leaving, but I’m taking half the Polish Army’s hardware with me.
I’ll miss you, sparring partner!
Tolek didn’t know how to answer that. Would he miss Jan? Yes, probably, especially now when the overt anti-Semitism had stopped and they were becoming friends.
That night, as the trucks were loaded with Polish weapons for the underground’s war, Tolek realised neither condition he had set Herman would work out: he had seen what was being put inside the trucks and the Polish sergeant refused to leave without Corporal Klings – Tolek was his insurance policy. He was coming with them or the deal was off.
What choice did Tolek have? On the road near Haifa they were met by a civilian truck carrying three men. The men tied up and blindfolded the sergeant and his men and took over the driving of the convoy. There was some confusion about whether to blindfold Tolek, but in the end the men decided against it. Tolek would have preferred to have been blindfolded.
They drove to a huge warehouse at the foot of Mount Carmel. As the doors shut behind the trucks, the side of the hill opened like Aladdin’s cave. The trucks entered a brightly lit storeroom carved into the mountain rock and a horde of young men descended to unload them. Tolek recognised the man in charge: a famous political figure whose picture was plastered over the papers allegedly for his connection to the Haganah.
The celebrity pumped Tolek’s hand. ‘This stuff you got for us tonight, especially the –’
Tolek closed his ears, he didn’t want to know. The politician’s lips were moving, his eyes sparkling like a kid unwrapping birthday presents, but Tolek heard nothing.
‘So that when the bullets start flying –’ Tolek reopened his ears to hear the end, ‘– in your new home, you might even find yourself behind one of these pieces you brought us tonight to defend our new homeland.’
He gave Tolek a small bag full of English pounds. ‘Tell your Polish friends there is more. They can keep the change.’ He laughed. ‘A deposit for the next time.’
Without me, Tolek vowed.
He was scared to go back to camp with the happy Polish sergeant, his three men and the bag of cash. If they got drunk and started boasting, they would all be court-martialled and it would be the end of any plans to rescue his family as a victorious soldier at the end of the war.
Allowed to rest in his cot at last, Tolek was plagued by nightmares of dingy cells and was relieved when morning came. He had decided to defect and join all the other Jewish soldiers to make a life here before rescuing his family. The decision was a relief in itself.
But disappearing wasn’t easy and he felt some pangs of regret about the good men he was leaving behind. However, the underground’s need for him was greater than the army’s – and the underground owed him now. Maybe if he asked, they could smuggle his family out before the war’s end.
* * *
Back in Haifa, Herman had made a joke of the situation.
‘Don’t worry, Tolek, we’re professionals, everything’s arranged.’ He nodded in disgust at Tolek’s Polish Army uniform. ‘Stay in that at least until you’re in the truck. And don’t worry. No one will come looking for you in the kibbutz. In a year you’ll be a native, speaking fluent Hebrew, fit and suntanned. A viable contributor to the kibbutz economy, ready to embrace your family into a new, clean life without fear.’
Tolek would have preferred to embrace his family in Poland.
‘You’ll be picking oranges, collecting eggs.’
All Tolek wanted was to launder shirt collars in Bóbrki with Klara.
‘They might start you at the bottom. Shovelling chicken shit in the hen houses.’
De-crate that dry-cleaning machine, show Tatte’s cousin in Stryj how to operate a successful dry-cleaning business.
‘Eat healthy, home-grown food.’
At lunchtime, he would race back to the shop from the solicitor’s office. Klara would serve a hot-pot lunch: delicious chicken soup with globs of fat swimming on the surface. He would cuddle her closely in bed all night. Spoon into spoon.
‘When the war is over, we’ll fight for our independence. You’ll be an integral part of it.’
One war was plenty for Tolek. He was not in a hurry to start another.
Herman laughed. ‘I was only kidding about the chicken shit. After yesterday’s little deal you’re a celebrity. They might let you collect the eggs.’
Deep down, Tolek was still not convinced, even though his papers were ready. He stayed at the Solomons’ house until it was time to go to the Rutenberg Electricity Company to see Shimon Brietfeld. Then he would get the last-minute instructions about where and when to disappear. The plan was for Shimon to get a driver to take Tolek to kibbutz Beit Oren, a beautiful green place situated on the Carmel mountain range near Haifa. It had recently been founded by immigrants from Russia and Poland, and was part of the Hebrew Socialist Movement, so Tolek would be right at home. Might even have some old friends there. The kibbutz was the base for Palmach’s – the underground’s fighting force – activities against the British. The members there said they would be very excited to receive Tolek with his army training and inside knowledge of how the British system worked. He was considered a prize recruit. They would be proud to create a place for his family for after the war.
The receptionist at the electricity company was a thin, sour-looking man in a bad mood, like he’d been constipated for days. He looked Tolek up and down and seemed to take an immediate dislike to him. Tolek gave him his name, then asked in Yiddish if he could see Shimon Brietfeld.
‘You!’ the man shouted in Hebrew at Tolek. ‘You would like to see him? What for?’
Tolek studied him calmly. The last thing he needed was a public fight. ‘Yes. Please ask if I can see him.’
‘Is it on electricity company business?’
‘No, it’s private business. Shimon knows I’m here – he’s been waiting for me.’
‘What time is your appointment?’ the man asked disdainfully, checking his appointment sheet.
‘I don’t have an appointment.’ Tolek’s calm voice only seemed to enrage the receptionist. ‘Shimon is my friend. He said, “Come see me at any time.” Two days ago he asked me to come here urgently. Can I please see him?’
The little man stared at the soldier, then shook his head. No way. His bottom lip folded downwards, then he rattled off something quickly which Tolek couldn’t understand.
‘Do you speak Yiddish?’ Tolek tried.
‘Only Hebrew. Who do you think you are? A Mr Uniform who can just walk in here and demand to see anybody?’
This brought back memories of the Polish Embassy in Budapest when he’d tried to re-enlist. Only here, he didn’t have to take it. Tolek tried patience for the last time. ‘Look, my friend. You don’t need to call him out if he’s busy. Just telephone him and men
tion my name, that’s all.’
The man shook his head again, holding Tolek’s eye and daring him to make trouble. ‘You’re not going to see him now. Come back in two hours and ask in Hebrew then I’ll let you see him.’
‘Look, you mamzer.’ Anger rising, Tolek moved slowly around the reception desk, eyes threatening. He was strong and fit from the army training and was tempted to pick up the little runt and smash him against the wall. ‘You’re no more a sabra [a Jew born in Palestine] than I am. The stink of Europe is all over you, especially in your ghetto manners. If you don’t tell Shimon that I’m here this minute, I’m going to turn you upside down on your desk, then run through every door until I find him.’
The little man turned white, but his hand shot out to the phone and started dialling. ‘If you touch me I’ll call the British police.’
Tolek couldn’t believe this was happening. His face flushed red with rage. In a dangerous voice he said a final time, ‘Just telephone Shimon. Mention my name.’
‘If you don’t leave this minute,’ the secretary hissed, the phone still in his hand, ‘you will never see him. You’ll only see the police.’
‘How will I see him if I leave?’
‘Ring and make an appointment.’
‘I don’t have time. I have to see him right now.’
‘No. Right now you can only see a jail cell. Come back later. I’ll let you see him in –’ he consulted his watch, ‘– two hours.’
‘You stink, and your bureaucracy stinks!’ Tolek shouted in the man’s face. He took the much-laboured-over defection papers from his pocket and crushed them in his fists, then tore them to bits. He threw them in the man’s face with such fury that the secretary jumped back from the bits of paper and photographs floating to the floor.
Out of the office, Tolek stopped to collect his feelings. He straightened out and looked up at the sky. It was clear and blue, as transparent as the decision he had just made. He felt a huge weight slip off his shoulders and run down his body into the gutter. This was what he wanted most to do – stay with the army and fight to the end.