The Miracle Typist

by Leon Silver

  Lieb stopped eating and got up, trying to sit Tolek down, but the soldier refused.

  ‘You didn’t know? I’m so sorry. Everyone is dead, only your brother Ijio survived. The Poles and Ukrainians helped the Germans kill them all. Poles are living in our houses and your parents’ restaurant. Even the Jewish cooking smell in the streets is gone.’

  Tolek flopped down. He rubbed his eyes, trying to see Lieb clearly.

  ‘Your father, Mendel, died from sickness during the first Russian occupation at the start of the war.’

  So Jan’s dispatch was correct. ‘Do you know what Tatte died of?’

  Lieb shook his head.

  ‘He was a diabetic,’ Tolek mumbled. ‘He kept it under control with regular shots of insulin.’

  ‘I can say that after the Russians marched in at the start of the war, insulin was probably no longer available. No medicine was.’ He paused. ‘I know that he was properly buried. I saw his tombstone… And your brother’s – Lonek.’ Another pause. ‘But even the dead were not spared. The cemetery was desecrated, tombstones knocked over, smashed – the Stars of David have been chiselled out. They don’t want us there, Tolek, even when dead.’

  Tolek shook his head, unable to focus.

  Lieb clutched both of Tolek’s hands. ‘I’m so sorry to tell you… your mother, Lieba, was rounded up and shot by the Germans after the Russians had left. Your wife, Klara, and Juliusz were shot by the retreating Germans, near the end of the war. Shot near the church with a few other women and children.’

  Tolek’s mind closed. He simply chose not to believe Lieb. The man had shifty eyes and he was wringing sympathy and help from a soldier.

  Even though Tolek dismissed Lieb’s lying words from his head, at night in bed he kept seeing the rifles pointing at Klara and Juliusz. His seven-year-old son crying and clinging to his mother. Why wasn’t Tolek there to comfort them in their last minutes? Why wasn’t he there to cover their eyes with his hands? What was the use of living without them? He didn’t even know what his son looked like at seven… And he’d lost the stick-figure drawing.

  Tolek cried to himself in the dark, his wife’s and son’s last terrifying moments dancing like shadows on the wall. ‘I should’ve gone back. I should’ve been with them, should’ve used my strength to protect them.’ The memory of the smiling German soldiers in the desert after the flood commenting on his wife and son’s pictures – ‘schöne Frau… hübscher Junge’ – tormented him in the dark.

  He grappled for Klara and Juliusz’s photo to banish the horrors. In a finger of street light shining through from the top of the blind, he gazed at their matching collars, their heads touching and big black eyes connecting, united in their love for him. He thought of Klara’s hand on his neck, Juliusz pulling him down for a hug.

  Tolek walked around in a daze. He couldn’t sleep or eat; he drank endless coffees.

  Two weeks later, Tolek received further confirmation of his family’s fate. This time from Chaim Gimple, a childhood friend from Bóbrki and Lwów.

  Chaim clutched Tolek to his chest. ‘After the Russians withdrew, I joined the AK Partisans and we followed the liberating Russians back home,’ he said softly. ‘Everyone had been murdered, Tolek. Your family, my family, and everyone we knew. A total elimination. Very few survived, a handful. There are no Jewish traces left in Poland. We’ve been exterminated, Tolek. We never existed.’

  Tolek nodded like he was demented.

  ‘From Lwów’s 150,000 Jews only about 1000 survived. From Bóbrki’s 2000…’ Chaim shook his head, his eyes moist.

  ‘But my wife and son were hidden by the church?’ Tolek argued, against all hope. He felt an instant connection to Chaim Gimple, and didn’t want to let him go. Maybe he would remember that Klara and Juliusz had been saved. He took him to his apartment, gave him a few shirts, a jacket and a pair of trousers. Money to buy an exit visa and a boat ticket from Genoa to the USA. Chaim stayed with Tolek for a few days together with several other in-transit refugees, sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the apartment. When Tolek put him on the train to Genoa, he wished him all the best. Despite all the money and clothing Tolek had given him, Chaim left lighter of baggage than when he had arrived; the confirmation of the Klings family’s destruction had been permanently lodged with Tolek.

  As Tolek farewelled Chaim, he silently begged him to spill news of his family’s survival. Klara and Juliusz were still alive. They had to be. They were hidden by the church so they are still alive, the Germans wouldn’t fight the Catholic Church; they must be in a refugee centre somewhere. Tolek promised himself that as soon as he was back he’d grab his wife for another night at the hotel room in Lwów. No – two nights. Then they’d sit on their courting bench in the esplanade and he’d watch the setting sun reflect in Klara’s eyes.

  Tolek covered his apartment’s mirrors, and said the Kaddish for Mamme nightly. But he didn’t say the Kaddish for his wife and son. His wife and son were still alive. He would wait till Ijio arrived, his brother might have better news.

  Images of Mamme were constantly before his eyes, awake or asleep. Lieba fussing over him with food, that big bear hug drawing him right into her body. Juliusz’s eyes lighting up when Bubbah bent over him.

  The fog never left him. How could he be alive if his family were dead? He concentrated on helping the thousands of refugees pouring into Milan; maybe someone else was helping his refugee wife and son. Tolek contacted the Joint in New York, and they sent him a trickle of funds. Somehow these Jewish-Polish refugees found their way to Tolek and the other Polish soldiers. An underground network. One told the other, pulled in another, then travelled on, disappeared, like a link in a continuous chain – all these DPs ever anxious to leave the graveyard of Europe. Tolek was still in the army and his uniform and army papers were a tremendous help. He didn’t even mind not getting paid any longer, even though he was well aware that the British were still paying the Poles for all their listed soldiers.

  Tolek knew he could insist on getting paid, but he had lost his taste for butting horns with the Polish Army. When his savings ran out, he started looking for ways to make a living. It was not difficult; his uniform was equal to a degree in business. He sat in the coffee lounges in the Galleria, reading the newspaper and waiting for business to come his way. Being Jewish was a bonus. Those Semitic features – for which he had endured years of persecution by the Poles – now proved a handy asset. Surviving members of his tribe were drawn to him and customers were aplenty. One morning, before he had finished his first coffee, he was approached by a Jewish refugee: ‘Send some parcels to Palestine for me through the uncensored military post. I’ll pay you twenty US dollars a parcel.’

  There was nothing to it. Every day Tolek sent a few parcels for the man through the uncensored military post without inquiring what was in them. After a week, just for the hell of it, Tolek upped the price to US$100. No problem. For a few weeks, until the parcels ran out, Tolek made US$1000 a week.

  He was one of the smaller operators. The whole Polish Army in Italy, and probably other armies as well, were busy running all sorts of black market rackets, all scrambling to cash in as quickly as possible on the good fortune of having survived the war – soon they would be officially discharged and the bonanza would be over. The higher the rank, the more money could be made. Officers were never challenged by other officers – they were probably in on the deals.

  A highly placed Polish officer approached Tolek with a scheme. The officer would collect French francs from Polish soldiers returning from leave in Paris. He’d give the money to Tolek, together with a list of false Polish soldiers’ names, and Tolek was to exchange the francs at the bank for many times their worth in Italian lira. Later the lira were converted into US dollars. Tolek also helped the Polish officers who smuggled gold coins and jewellery from the Middle East, working as a middleman to sell the popular currency to the refugees.

  Occasionally, Tolek even did a legal deal. A refugee-turned-busi
nessman approached him in the Galleria with a suitcase full of German ballpoint pens. This was a new product for Italy, where no one had seen biros before. Tolek took 4000 biros on commission and sold them to newsagents around town for a great profit.

  These business deals kept Tolek sane and gave him a place to go to every day. Yet a mixture of sleep, dozing and wakefulness made him toss and turn all night. He woke screaming from dreams in which Klara and Juliusz asked, Why weren’t you with us, Tatte?

  Tolek walked around most days in a daze, eyes pulled open by force. He’d get up in the morning, wash, shave and dress. Yet he didn’t keep the money he made, just enough for sustenance. He manically emptied his pockets to every DP who crossed his path, never planning for tomorrow. What tomorrow was there without his family?

  By then the soldiers were beginning to hear a lot of rumours and had seen newspaper articles and pictures of the liberated concentration camps and gas chambers. Tolek often returned to the army admin as there was always a chance that Klara could have somehow contacted the Polish army. One evening the Jewish soldiers sat in the canteen discussing these horrific scenes. The pogroms against the Jews began as soon as the Germans took over from the Russians: ghettos, concentration camps, mass shootings. The millions burnt and murdered. The Polish and Ukrainian population enthusiastically helped the Germans annihilate the Jews, stealing their possessions and moving into their houses.

  The soldiers were incredulous. ‘These reports and pictures can’t be genuine… This coverage… it’s impossible.’ They believed the reports had to be propaganda by the victorious Allies.

  At the back of Tolek’s mind circled Jan’s Kaddish article and the correspondent’s drained face after Tolek told him his woodland experience. He must’ve known all this. Stanisław Kot would’ve known.

  After stewing over these terrible pictures and declarations, Tolek couldn’t stand the tension any longer. He conjured up a plan to use his accumulated leave to go home and find his family, make sure they were all right, and then return to the army until he was demilitarised.

  He asked for an appointment with Captain Kasprowicz, a decent man who would support him.

  ‘Sir, I’d like to ask your permission to use some of my accumulated leave to travel back home, check on my family then return until I am demilitarised.’

  Kasprowicz took out two glasses and poured whisky into them. He shoved one over to his corporal. ‘Look, Tolek, I understand, I know the rumours of what has happened to the Jews.’ He took a drink and Tolek followed. ‘And yes, you can go, with my blessing, but I must warn you that the Russians have closed that part of our country to all travellers. They hate free-wheeling Polish soldiers especially. I can tell you a dozen cases of our soldiers caught and imprisoned as anti-Soviet elements. They are not put on trial, they just disappear. Some have even been sent to Siberia for reorientation into the socialist system.’

  The CO swallowed hard. ‘Think about it carefully before you go, Miracle Typist.’ And he smiled and extended his hand for a shake.

  Tolek couldn’t stand it any more. He still wasn’t sleeping. He decided he was going to go back, no matter the risk. He ordered a fake Polish civilian ID from a forger in the Gallerias, a document that stated he was a DP, a Polish-Jewish citizen from Bóbrki.

  18 The Modena Speakers

  While waiting for his papers to be ready, Tolek went back to the villa in Cesenatico to see if he was needed and to tell the army of his plans. Here he heard talk of a group of concentration camp survivors recovering in Modena. Together with three other Polish-Jewish soldiers, in a jeep borrowed from the motor pool, Tolek set out seeking the truth, with no concept of what the term ‘concentration camp survivors’ meant. Tolek especially was not yet willing to connect that term with the American newspaper pictures of liberated camps. Sure, he’d had meetings with DPs and other refugees on the run, but none matched those images of the skeletons in rags from the front pages.

  There wasn’t much of a hurry to commence the sojourn. The four soldiers slept in late, had a good breakfast, and just for the hell of it, taunted their personal servants, German POWs they’d nicknamed Hans and Schvantze. Then they travelled to Modena, an almost two-hour drive past Bologna. The area had seen some heavy fighting and farmhouses, stables and barns had been destroyed. They drove through the grand city centre with its squares and palazzos, the large synagogue looming; workmen were busy repairing the building.

  When they arrived, Tolek double-checked the address – an ordinary single-storey building on the outskirts of the city. He knocked a few times on the door until it was hesitantly opened just a few inches by a frail old man.

  ‘Shalom…’ Tolek tried the international Jewish greeting. Without answering, the man turned and shuffled away, leaving the door open. The soldiers looked at each other, shrugged and followed him into a large, dark room, their eyes taking their time to adjust from the strong daylight. The outside wooden window shutters were closed and bolted, and one small oil lamp was lit in the corner. Tolek experienced a momentary, nauseating déjà vu of the men awaiting for the Grim Reaper in his father’s cousin’s home in Stryj at the start of the war. The wide eyes of the four people sitting in the room – one man and three women, all very frail and old – attached themselves to the soldiers’ faces.

  Tolek cleared his throat and introduced the four soldiers. ‘Umchoo…’ he said. We’re from your tribe. In Yiddish, he explained that they were Jewish soldiers who’d spent the war in the Polish Army, most of it outside Europe.

  There was no answer. The four residents looked away.

  Tolek spoke gently. ‘We’ve heard all sorts of rumours from refugees, from DPs, about the… camps.’ He paused. ‘We’ve come here to search for the truth. We –’ he motioned to his three colleagues ‘– we all have families in Poland.’

  More frail people drifted in from other rooms, staring at Tolek as though trying to work out a mirage. One woman, sitting in an armchair, started whimpering. Another woman went to her and put her arms around her shoulders.

  ‘The children… the young children…’ The whimpering woman looked up and into Tolek’s face. ‘They sent them naked to the gas chambers with a sliver of soap in their hands. Told them they were having showers. And then they burned them in ovens.’

  Two old men, like grey shadows, came in with cups of tea. The cups rattled on their saucers. One man shuffled around the room opening the windows, pushing back the outside shutters. Daylight and air flooded in painfully like water breaching a dam.

  These people were not old at all. Some of them were the soldiers’ age, some younger, some mere youths. They all wore odd winter pyjamas and dressing gowns, or mismatched clothes. Now the difference between ‘refugees’ and ‘survivors’ sank in. These bent skeletons with eyes staring like beacons, how did they ever manage to close those gaping eyes at night to sleep? The photo of Klara and Juliusz, head to head, loomed in Tolek’s mind.

  The old-young woman sobbed. ‘They threw the children into the ovens. Some of the children were still alive.’

  The dam was breached. The other survivors started talking in Polish, German, Hungarian, Yiddish and other languages. All together, over each other, as if they were alone in the room and were talking only to themselves. Trickles, gushes and moments of silence. Time stopped. Tolek listened, swaying. After six years of a brutal war full of death and destruction, he finally lost his soldier’s innocence.

  Later, the soldiers walked out into an orange Italian sunset and a different world. Lovers strolled by, arm in arm in the warm afternoon air, licking ice-creams. Shouting boys played football in a vacant field. Trattorias set up for the dinner trade. Italian enthusiasm, zest for life, music and laughter abounded. Yet these four uniformed men belonged with the wretched souls inside the house. As Tolek drove his colleagues back to their base, they all sat in the jeep in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes and mourning their families, their tribe, their umchoo.

  A train whistle ignited in Tolek�
�s mind the refugees’ stories. He again saw the lips of the Modena Speakers and found himself in the packed transport trains. Tolek, distracted, steered the jeep into a ditch. A crowd gathered while his friends tried to ease stiff, unmoving Tolek out from behind the wheel. They finally returned to the villa after midnight, a military tow truck bringing the jeep.

  The two German POWs, Hans and Schvantze, greeted the soldiers as they were going from door to door, collecting the boots left out for tomorrow’s shine. They really should have returned nightly to their prison camp but since the war was over, no one worried about that any more. Hans and Schvantze made a friendly crack about how peaceful it had been without the rabble-rousers around and put on a quick, good-natured clowning show for them. Court jesters before their masters.

  Tolek watched as his spirit left his body, lifted Hans off the ground by his neck and dug his fingers into the man’s throat. The monstrous steel fingers parted Hans’ skin cleanly without a drop of blood. It stripped the flesh from the bones, surprised at how easy it was and how elated it made him feel. Tolek could hardly contain his pleasure. Schöne Frau, hübscher Junge!

  In reality, Tolek put his tallith on, wrapping the prayer shawl tightly over his head, slipped on his kippah and took out the prayer book given to him in the desert by the Australian Rabbi Cohen. He covered the mirror and lit a candle, prayed over it with eyes brimming with tears, as he tore his clothes and said the mourners’ Kaddish repeatedly until the morning. He beat his breast as he had never done before. He prayed for the graveyard that was Poland. The Polish ‘Garden of Eden’ had slipped off its axle, annihilating its Jewish inhabitants.

  Tolek stayed in his room for the next few days. The dead whispered in his ears and pounded his head. He felt that he would never be rid of the survivors’ voices. They had accompanied him from Modena like hitchhikers.