by David Safier
“I … I know that.”
“Well, why ask, then?”
“Why Rummy?” I wanted to know, relieved that he hadn’t intended anything else.
Amos pointed through the open kitchen door into the hall, and there, lying on a chest of drawers beside a vase with half-dried-out flowers, was a pack of cards.
“That is the only card game I know.”
I burst out laughing.
We played cards into the night. I got annoyed every time Amos cheated, and was really pleased when he didn’t notice me cheating as I dealt the cards. It was the most untroubled evening I had spent in a long time. It kept feeling as if I was living a normal life. Almost.
Once I’d beaten him for the seventh time, Amos stretched and announced that he was going to have a bath to get rid of the smell of bacon.
“Then,” he said, playing the just-married man so gallantly that I had to smile, “I might smell as lovely as you do, Mira.”
He went into the bathroom, and I used my advantage shamelessly. There was only one bed in the flat. But it was a real bed! And I wanted to have it to myself.
I went into the little bedroom, which was practically full with just an oak cupboard and the bed, stroked the feather bed with my fingers, and took off all my clothes except my underwear. I hoped that there would be a nightgown or, even better, a pair of pajamas in the cupboard for me—in the Hollywood films the heroine always wore pajamas that were far too big and belonged to the man she secretly loved. And, of course, she looked amazing.
Unfortunately, there was only a suit for Amos and a long skirt and a blouse for me. Uncle had put them there so that we would be able to walk through Warsaw without attracting attention when the time came to meet the Polish resistance and negotiate about arms. He hadn’t thought about nightgowns and pajamas.
So I got into bed in my underwear and cuddled up under the blankets. Lying in a real bed made the illusion of a normal life perfect for a blessed moment.
But the moment only lasted a very short time because Amos appeared, dressed in his shirt and underwear, and asked in an amused sort of way, “So we are going to share the bed?”
“Whatever makes you think that?” I asked.
“Well, you are lying in it.”
“You are sleeping on the floor,” I explained.
“Whatever makes you think that?” he asked.
“You’re a gentleman,” I said.
“I’m not, actually. Sorry.”
“I know that.”
“I know you know.”
“But even you would never make your wife sleep on the floor.” I smiled.
“You’d never make your husband sleep on the floor.” He grinned back and slipped under the covers before I could even say, “Don’t you dare.”
I was startled to be lying in bed side by side, and a bit surprised that Amos had kept his smelly shirt on. Why didn’t he take it off and just keep his underwear on? Was it for decency’s sake? Did Amos do decency?
I moved away so that there was as much room as possible between us. But still, here we were sharing a bed, half-naked. And, apart from the shirt, he smelled so good. Soap and Amos. I’d never noticed before, but I liked the way he smelled.
Would it be nice to touch him? As nice as his kiss? Suddenly after more than a year, the kiss in the market had leaped back into my mind. Was he thinking about it, too? But then he started to snore.
He definitely wasn’t thinking about that kiss.
I was terrified of falling asleep and dreaming about the fat pig. As long as I stayed awake, I could tell myself that everything had worked out in the end. But in my dreams, the SS man would come back and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. I didn’t want to be alone with my fear, but I didn’t want to wake up Amos, and let him know how pathetic I really was. And if he gave me a hug to make me feel better, I’d start to cry. Because of the fat pig, because of the nightmares that had been haunting me for weeks. And because of Hannah. Once I started crying, I would never stop. I’d go to pieces. Forever! And I’d never be the same again. I’d lose the strength I needed to complete my mission for the resistance.
I fought off sleep as best I could, but I lost. I didn’t dream about the fat SS man, though. Perhaps I could have handled him. Instead … instead, the Mirror King appeared.
Until now, I had imagined him to be a funny-looking man made of mirrors, the way the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz was made of straw. But in my dream he was a huge, malformed, humpbacked monster made of thousands of razor-sharp mirrors. Mirrors of distortion!
And in every mirror, I saw something horrifying: my brother beating me, a doll raping me, being gassed, burning alive in the ovens, and more and more and more … And all the while the Mirror King shrieked, “You must pay, you will pay!”
“What for?” I screamed. “What did I do?” I howled and howled, while the monster grew bigger and bigger, and more and more mirrors sprang open. I watched the barbed wire on the wall come to life and start strangling me; I saw my own father throwing me out the window, and Ruth coughing up more and more ashes until I was buried alive.
“You know very well why you must pay,” the Mirror King bellowed.
In his face, I could see reflected eyes, Hannah’s, Papa’s, Mama’s; Ruth’s, Daniel’s, and the German soldier’s. The eyes began to bleed, and these eyes—not mouths for some reason, no, it was the bleeding eyes—all started screaming at me, “You are alive instead of us!”
I woke up screaming. Amos sat up beside me. “What is it, Mira? What’s wrong?”
There was nothing I could do, I had to cry. My dreams had defeated me. I was lost forever, and now I knew why. I was paying. For being alive!
But before I could even say, “I was meant to die,” Amos said something so surprising that I stopped crying right away, “You know what, Mira? Let’s go to the cinema tomorrow.”
48
We put on the clothes Uncle had provided and walked through the streets of Warsaw in broad daylight. I was wearing the smart skirt and Amos had a suit and hat on. When we got to the Schauburg cinema, we joined the line. There were a couple of Poles and a lot of German soldiers out on a date with their Polish girlfriends. None of them would ever have dreamed that there were two Jews in their midst. They didn’t even look our way, apart from one or two soldiers who were staring at my bottom to see if I could be a more attractive lover than the one they had already. But of course, I was far too skinny for those soldiers.
Taking me out to the cinema was completely insane, but it was pretty damn wonderful, too. Amos treated me like a queen. He hadn’t fallen in love with me or anything, although he kept referring to me as his darling wife. He just wanted to cheer me up. And he wasn’t the kind of person who could sit around doing nothing while we waited for Uncle to come. It would have driven him nuts.
We sat at the edge of a row, just in case we had to get away fast—even if we were being reckless, we couldn’t ignore the danger altogether—and when the lights went out, my heart pounded with joy. The cinema wasn’t showing any of the Hollywood films I loved; they were banned for Germans and Poles, too. Instead there was a funny film called Quax, der Bruchpilot, starring Heinz Rühmann as a young man called Quax who was in flight training. It was in German, of course, but I could guess what it was about.
There was a lot of singing, and the hero wasn’t a bit like how the Germans usually saw themselves. At the start, he was an endearing, timid little crook. Of course, if you started to think about the film too much, you could tell that the story was a lot of propaganda to encourage young men to join the Luftwaffe. But I didn’t want to think about that, I wanted to laugh. And so did Amos. No matter what.
About halfway through the film, Amos suddenly grabbed my hand and didn’t let go. After that, I didn’t notice what went on, on the screen, and I couldn’t care less what Esther would say or what Daniel might think. Sitting in the cinema, holding hands, I realized what kind of person I wanted to be. Someone perfectly normal who
led an ordinary sort of life.
After the film, we strolled back to the flat hand in hand. Amos kept laughing and said, “This is part of our cover. We are young and we are in love.” I couldn’t help thinking that—just now—Amos longed for a normal life as much as I did.
I enjoyed our walk so much that I left it to my “husband” to keep an eye out for Germans or szmalcowniks. We walked on holding hands until we saw Uncle coming toward us. “There you are!” he called. Of course his friendliness was just put on. After all, we had deliberately defied his order not to leave the flat. “I was just coming to get you,” he said. “Olga is expecting us and there is plenty to eat. You know what she’s like,” he laughed, and I could smell the alcohol on his breath again.
“That’s our Olga!” Amos laughed along.
Uncle took us to a car, and we climbed into the back. He started the engine and drove off. The reckless way he set off showed us how angry he was.
Well, let him be angry. The outing had been worth it. No one could ever take this memory away from me.
“Where are we going?” Amos wanted to know.
“To the meeting,” Uncle snapped.
“That was quicker than we thought,” I said, surprised.
“Your stinking letter got things moving.”
That sounded like a good sign.
“Where is the meeting taking place?”
“That is a secret. As soon as we are out of town, I’ll blindfold you.”
“You don’t trust us,” Amos said, and you could tell how much his pride was wounded.
Uncle burst out, “Of course I don’t. You fucking Jews march through town where anyone can catch you any minute, and don’t give a damn that you are putting me in danger.”
“Who are you calling a fucking Jew, you shithead?” Amos was furious.
“I’m calling you a fucking Jew, you fucking Jew!” Uncle shouted back.
Amos lunged at him. He forgot that he might cause an accident. But I could see it coming, grabbed his shoulders, held him back, and whispered, “Don’t!”
Amos stared at me, boiling with rage, but he calmed down a bit and leaned back in his seat.
“The girl’s got more brains than you have,” Uncle jeered, “not that that’s difficult.”
I wanted to hold Amos’s hand again to show him that we were a team, real comrades, not just a pretend couple, but as soon as I touched his hand, he pulled it away, stuck it in his pocket, and stared out the window.
As we left the city, Uncle threw blindfolds onto the back seat and ordered us to put them on.
“It’s a pleasure,” Amos said bitterly, “then we won’t have to look at you!”
We drove for about half an hour, and then the car stopped and Uncle sniggered, “Let there be light.”
We took off the blindfolds and found ourselves in a wood. As we climbed out of the car, my lungs filled with fresh air. All the mingling smells of flowers, trees, and moss threatened to overwhelm me. I hadn’t been out in the woods for years.
But I pulled myself together. I wasn’t here to enjoy the scenery like some Pole out on a jaunt with her beau. This wasn’t the time or place for any semblance of normal life. We were here for the cause. Our cause.
We walked toward a dilapidated hunting lodge that looked deserted. Two Poles were waiting for us at the door. One man had a gray mustache, while the other was clean-shaven with a receding hairline.
“The Jews send us children,” the one with the mustache scoffed. But the other man said, “Bravery is not a matter of age.”
Both men were wearing dark leather jackets, and the friendlier one introduced them, “I’m Captain Iwanski from the Home Army. This is my commanding officer, Colonel Rowecki.” Then he turned to Uncle and said, “You can wait for our guests outside.”
Uncle nodded obediently and headed away. No doubt he was off to sit in the shade of the trees and knock back a couple of drinks.
“Please come in,” the friendly captain said.
We followed them into the cabin and sat down at a table. The captain poured out glasses of schnapps and said, “Let’s drink, and then we’ll talk.”
We all raised our glasses, though the frowning colonel with the mustache did so reluctantly.
“To a free Poland,” the captain said.
“To a free Poland,” we repeated. We clinked glasses and drank. Not being used to schnapps, I shuddered. Amos didn’t pull a face, though, and the two Polish officers drank the schnapps as if it were water.
“Let’s get down to business,” the colonel said. He seemed to be annoyed about this meeting. Maybe he was against it altogether. “You will receive twenty guns.”
“Twenty guns?” Amos repeated in disbelief.
It was such a ridiculously small number that the colonel might as well have said: You can have twenty dummies.
“Twenty guns,” the colonel confirmed.
“And then we’ll take it from there,” Iwanski said encouragingly.
“That’s not enough,” Amos protested.
Iwanski’s eyes told us he knew, but his CO explained, “We need the weapons for our fellow countrymen.”
“I was born in Poland,” I protested. “My parents were born in Poland. And my grandparents, too!”
The way the colonel looked, I could see that he didn’t care. This officer had the same enemies as us, and, just like us, he had joined the underground and was risking his life to fight the Germans. Yet he didn’t think of us as Poles.
This was when I realized that I wasn’t a Pole, couldn’t be one even if I’d tried. The Poles would never regard us Jews as fellow countrymen.
“You must help us,” Amos implored.
Before the captain could answer, Colonel Mustache said, “We are already giving you more than is wise.”
“Wise?” Amos was speechless.
“We need the weapons for our own fight.”
“We are all fighting for the same thing,” Amos retaliated.
“This is not the time for an uprising,” the colonel said coldly. “We must wait until the Russians invade Poland. We can’t allow a bunch of Jews to force us to start an uprising before we’re ready. We won’t let Warsaw burn when we have no chance of beating the Germans.”
“A bunch of Jews?” Amos leaped to his feet and leaned on the table, shaking.
The colonel remained unaffected by Amos’s understandable anger. And said, “If we support you, we’ll be committing suicide.”
Iwanski realized that Amos was about to fly off the handle and tried to placate him, “It’s not just our opinion. This is what the exile government in London thinks.”
“The Germans are slaughtering us!” Amos shouted.
“We know,” Iwanski said.
Amos struggled for words, and because I knew that he wouldn’t find them, or at least not any that would avoid a further escalation, I said, “We don’t have the luxury of being able to wait.”
The two officers looked at me, surprised. They seemed astonished that I could actually speak for myself.
“Our people are dying,” I said distinctly. It was the first time in my life that I had called the Jews my people. But we really didn’t belong to Poland. “We have to fight. Now! Or else we’ll all be slaughtered.”
To judge by the two officers’ expressions, this was perfectly obvious to them both. Iwanski poured himself another glass of schnapps, looking uncomfortable. The colonel couldn’t believe that a Jewish girl had spoken to him like this. “Take the twenty guns or do without, as you please.”
“If you don’t help us, you’re as bad as the Germans!” I hurled the words at him.
Iwanski drank.
The colonel’s voice sounded as harsh as his words, “I think it is time for you to leave, young lady.”
Amos roared, “I think it’s time for something…”
I knew there was no point in Amos grabbing the colonel and no use talking anymore, either. So I stood up, dragged Amos away from the table, and said, “I’
m afraid there’s nothing more to say.”
We left the hut. Amos smashed his fist against a tree. The tree remained as unmoved as the rest of the world. No one cared about the plight of the Jews. The Polish resistance wouldn’t help us, and the Allies wouldn’t bomb the railway tracks to the concentration camps.
Defeated, I leaned against another tree. Iwanski came out of the hut.
“What do you want now?” Amos shouted at him.
“To tell you that the young lady is right. You are Poles, too.”
“Your colonel made it very clear—” Amos started to say, but Iwanski interrupted, “I will help you, along with a few comrades, as best I can.”
So the Jews weren’t totally alone after all.
49
We got back to the flat just as it was getting dark. As we closed the door behind us Amos took my hand and congratulated me, “You achieved far more than I did.”
I was embarrassed by his praise and confused by his holding my hand. This wasn’t a situation where we were pretending to be a Polish couple, and touching was part of our camouflage. This was a moment when we were just being ourselves. Mira and Amos.
“You’re a brave woman,” he said, and he meant it.
I didn’t know where to look.
“I … I’m not sure if Esther would approve,” I said, and stared at our hands.
“No, I don’t think she would,” Amos said quietly without his usual grin, and he let go. I was so stupid. Why did I have to mention Esther?
We cooked supper together and talked about what had happened—at the meeting with the Poles, not about our visit to the cinema: That had been a magical outing to an impossibly normal world we would probably never set foot on again. After we’d eaten, we did the dishes and got ready for bed.
“I can sleep on the floor tonight, if you like,” Amos suggested when he came into the bedroom and saw that I was already curled up in bed.
“It’s okay,” I said, and tried to make my voice sound as if holding hands just now hadn’t changed anything between us and that we could happily share a bed like we had the night before.