Korczak gets up, exchanges a few words with Misha and pats him on the shoulder.
*
Pan Doctor sits back down on the bank alongside the children, sleepily listening as they discuss their project. Szymonek and some of the younger children are building a city of sand and twigs for the ants. Behind them long bleached grasses shiver in the breeze. Yellow butterflies tumble above like blown petals. He breathes out. It’s a relief to be away from Warsaw and the ominous headlines shouted out by the news sellers each day. Here, all that matters is a quarrel by the swing, a lost sandal or a bruised knee. And there are twenty new children this week, twenty little books to get to know and decipher – his favourite thing.
Pan Doctor takes out his notebook and writes something down. He likes to mull over how to solve the small problems that come up each day. The mystery of why Sara suddenly refuses to eat bread, for example.
And then there’s the problem of boys. This year he arrived at Little Rose to find something of a mutiny on his hands, a roomful of little boys indignant with life’s injustices. Erwin was chosen to voice their complaint. Why was it that Pani Stefa always favoured the girls, praised them more, gave them the best jobs to do, while the boys it seemed were constantly in trouble?
Dear Stefa, it’s such a relief to see her back from her visit to Ein Harod. His depression lifted the moment she arrived home, handing out oranges and good wishes from their past pupils in the kibbutz.
And hasn’t it always been Stefa who ran everything really, who kept a steady hand on the tiller, right from the very first day he’d met her? A very plain twenty-six-year-old, determined to make the neglected orphanage she’d taken on into a real home for a hundred underfed children.
Now they’ve worked together for what, over a quarter of a century? People talk about how homely Stefa is to look at, but there’s nothing plain about Stefa; her face shines when she’s with the children.
And what a joy it is once more to walk with his dearest friend through the gardens around the dachas each evening, discussing the children, she in her inevitable brown dress, he smoking a cigarette; a middle-aged spinster and a confirmed bachelor with a family of a hundred children to care for.
Of course it was two hundred children, before the board at his Polish children’s home sacked him. A Jew can’t take care of Polish children any more, it seems. So many years to build bridges of understanding between two cultures. Moments to tear it down.
It still hurts like a bereavement to think of those children. He hasn’t seen them for over two years now. His children. They’ve always spent the summer camp together, but not this year.
Yes, he’s scolded Stefa for coming home and cancelling her plans to retire and live in the sun in Palestine. But what happiness to see her again. Not changed one bit. You rarely see Stefa with her hands still. Stefa who endlessly mends, folds, sorts, puts a cool hand on the forehead of a child with a fever.
Is it any wonder that she sometimes finds it easier to be pleased with the girls, has always been tempted to love them slightly more with their clean pinafores, their brushed hair and their willingness to be neat and tidy?
So many years in a boy’s childhood when you might ask what purpose boys serve exactly, with so many things broken and trampled and their repulsion for water and soap. Why is it always the boys who make all the mending, and largely the girls who do it? Perhaps he should introduce a day when the girls must rip their frocks and the boys mend them. He makes a note of that in his pocket book. Why not? It could go in the calendar, a fixture along with first snow day when everyone must miss school and the day when everyone gets up as late as they want.
At least he’s solved the mystery of the ripped trousers. Stefa had said she’d never had to mend so many pairs.
He had the feeling it was something to do with the new mania the boys had for sliding down the wooden handrail on the veranda steps. He’d tested the theory, ripped his own trousers on a nail snagged away in the wood: quod erat demonstradum. Strictly illegal, of course, to slide down the banisters in the home, so he’d had to go before the children’s court again.
Only fair, he’d told little Sara, only fair. We all have to abide by the same rules, from the youngest to the oldest. The law is a beautiful thing.
But that still leaves the problem of the boys sulking. How to make them feel proud of being boys? A child like Erwin, messy and noisy, but bold enough to find himself a job in a factory at only eight.
In time all their energy and boldness will serve them well, as men. Yes, life will demand all of that and more, but how to make them proud now of the little men they are today?
The bell in the onion-domed steeple of the convent nearby rings out midnight. Misha goes through the boys’ hut shaking them awake. He signals for them to be silent as they pull on their shorts and jumpers. In front of the hut, Korczak assembles them in the darkness, a band of expectant and now wide-awake eight- to fourteen-year-old boys.
Stocky little Erwin and thoughtful Sammy with his long features and dark, almond eyes – among the older boys now at almost twelve – have been sent to break into the kitchen and fetch a sack of potatoes. Korczak’s written a note for them to leave on the kitchen table promising that he’ll replace them tomorrow.
Abrasha’s missing. It’s not like him to be difficult. Then Korczak sees the child’s slender form, running from the wooden huts, his delicate features lit up with a broad smile. He’s been back to fetch his violin.
The dark air is cool with scents of earth and grass. A full moon casts sharp, monochrome shadows. With muffled whispers, the boys set off towards the forest, torch beams arcing across the obscure grass, the thick stars crowding along the Milky Way above. The pine trees of the forest rise up like a dark wall.
They plunge inside. Glow worms blink on and off. The boys keep their voices low, awed by the sleeping giant of the forest at night; the rusty cries of a fox somewhere, an owl calls out.
They come to a clearing and under Jakubek’s orders – the oldest boy in the home now – some gather firewood in the dark while others dig a pit to bury the potatoes in the sandy earth. They gather in a circle and watch the tepee of sticks catch. The flames grow and send up showers of red sparks.
Abrasha goes to one side in the shadows of the trees and begins to play ‘Night in a Forest’, eyes closed and face blissful. He’s always wanted to stand among the trees with the stars above him and play these wild notes. The boys stare into the flames and listen, eyes wide. Then they sing songs, threading one after another, in Yiddish and in Polish. As the fire settles to embers that quiver with a layer of white ash, Pan Doctor tells a story from a book he wrote for the children when Poland became free, Little King Matt, about a child who tries to run a country and learns that it’s not so easy to do the right thing – especially not to begin with. And an old tale of a boy lost in the forest with nothing but his wits and his good heart to save him, who stumbles across a flying ship caught in the branches of the trees.
Soot and ash on their faces, Sammy and Erwin help Jakubek rake back the embers and dig the potatoes from the sandy pit. The boys pull them apart with their fingers, blow on the fragrant insides as Korczak passes around a paper bag of salt. The best potatoes ever eaten.
Light begins to dawn as the band of boys walk back to the dachas, Sammy at the front playing his harmonica. The girls crowd at the windows of their hut, amazed to see the boys coming home at this hour. And each boy walks past waving, grubby and dishevelled and proud to be so – to be themselves.
Sophia is at the window with the girls, a long cardigan around her pyjamas, wondering why Misha did not tell her about the midnight picnic.
He barely speaks to her all day. Late in the afternoon, when the children are watching a film reel of Mickey Mouse cartoons, Misha suggests a walk, just the two of them. She almost refuses to go, she feels so cross and neglected.
He’s wearing his best white shirt, his plus-four trousers, damp hair ploughed with fresh comb marks a
s if he had somewhere more important to go than a countryside ramble. Would he rather be somewhere else?
The warm air from the miles of open fields buffs her bare arms. The willows along the stream change to pale green and silver and back again in the wind, but she won’t let it distract her from how unhappy she feels. She doesn’t take his hand when he reaches across for hers. She falls behind him a pace or two, looking at his long back and wide shoulders with a feeling of loss, of homesickness for all her hopes.
The wall of dark pine trees casts a sharp shade across the grass as they approach the forest. Suddenly Misha stops and turns towards her. She closes her eyes. He’s going to say something. Her heart lurches.
She feels a slight movement in the air and she opens her eyes to see him kneeling on the grass. She watches, amazed, as he reaches out to take her hand, feels the strange heat of his fingers and palm against her cool skin.
‘I won’t earn much, and I know you’ve still two more years of study but no one can ever love you more, dear Sophia. Would you? Would you be my wife one day? Please say yes.’
She can’t speak. There’s a minute tremor in his hand, thrumming like a message in a wire. He buries his lips in her palm. Everything in her melts.
‘Yes, yes, of course, darling Misha.’
All the tense anxiety is swept from his face. He leaps up and holds her so tightly. They kiss deeply, then walk on, stopping to kiss again as they travel in a dream through the woods, bursts of sunlight illuminating the path when the treetops part above them. In a clearing they find a fallen tree covered in thick moss. They sit down, tight in each other’s arms. Birds sing with the cadence of wine filling a glass. Tall pines enclose them, the sky their roof.
He looks down at her hand. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have a ring yet.’
She shrugs. ‘It’s not important. But two years. You don’t mind waiting so long? Another two years until we both graduate.’
‘It won’t be so long. It’s the right thing to do.’
She looks down at her hands, thinking of Sabina, white-faced and exhausted, holding her beloved baby Marianek nine months after the wedding. They both know that a pregnancy would mean the end of Sophia’s degree. So they’ll wait. She’s glad he understands how important it is to her that she graduates.
But it won’t be easy.
They kiss and embrace, tracing each other’s warmth and contours.
The singing of the birds fills Sophia’s ears. She closes her eyes, not sure at times where her skin ends and Misha’s begins.
Can they really wait another two years? She thinks of Rosa, who gave up her degree to marry Lolek.
No, she won’t do that.
Misha goes still, whispers, ‘Look.’ Behind them, there’s the shape of a deer through the trees. It’s wandered so close in their quietness that they can catch the smell of its leathery goatiness. It shudders, bucks and flees away into the forest.
They walk out of the trees, dazed by the afternoon sun and by their immeasurable happiness, fingers laced together, the whole world surely a gift just to them. Across the fields, in front of the dachas, lines of white tea towels over the vegetable frames are fluttering like flags for a celebration. Niura sees them coming. She’s been waiting for them, Sophia realizes. Niura runs towards them and seeing their beaming faces she too begins to cry.
‘I thought I’d burst all day. I’m so happy, so, so happy.’ She pauses. ‘But you did say yes?’
Sophia laughs. ‘I said yes.’
Niura hugs her and by now the children have caught on. They run out and jump up and down. Pan Misha and Pani Sophia are getting married.
‘I should really give up education and go full-time into the matchmaking business,’ laughs Korczak. ‘Another pair of you tying the knot.’ With the Newerlys and the Sztokmans, they’ll be the third wedding from among the staff of student helpers.
‘If it’s with your blessing,’ says Misha. Korczak has become a second father to him, or the mother he lost.
Korczak kisses them both on the forehead. ‘When I see you dear children, such hopes for the future. With every blessing I can give you. But what blessing can I give you except for the longing for a better world, for love and forgiveness, for truth and for justice, for a world that may not exist today but may exist tomorrow perhaps?’ He hugs them both to him, a little roughly, coughing away a thickness in his voice that sounds like a man close to tears. ‘My children,’ he says and then is all action and gaiety, clapping his hands. They must have dancing after supper, songs.
He sends Abrasha to run for the orphanage camera and Sophia and Misha stand on the dacha steps to have their picture taken. She is one step up to be more on his level, white ankle socks and strong tanned legs, a summer dress and her bright hair gleaming with the sun. He is in plus fours and a white open-necked shirt, and both of them with such smiles.
For the rest of the week, the little girls have a passion for dressing up and playing weddings, kidnapping various boys to act as grooms. Few of them stay long before they run off to play football again, throwing down their silk shawls. Apart from Erwin, who, bashful and shy, offers to be the groom for his adored Halinka, his face pink with pride.
He’s always loved Halinka, from the moment she arrived at the home on Krochmalna Street as a shorn and skinny little lamb who refused to speak to anyone else.
So when she pushes the net curtain out of her eyes and promises to love him for ever, Erwin too promises. He will love her always, take care of her always.
Sara won’t eat the bread she takes at supper. Sitting at the same table, Erwin is scandalized to see Sara push away her bread each meal. Wasting food. Erwin loves the beautiful meals that appear each day. The rule is, you can take as much food as you want, so long as you eat it. Even Pani Sophia, sitting at their table, can’t coax Sara to eat it.
Pan Doctor is collecting up the soup bowls. He sees the bread, Sara’s lips clamped shut. He crouches down next to her and whispers, ‘Sara, the witches have gone away to the mountains and won’t be back.’
She looks at him with hope in her eyes. Tentatively, she takes a bite, then eats all the bread. She runs off to play, holding Halinka’s hand.
‘How did you know that trick to make her eat it?’ asks Sophia.
‘No trick. I listened. I found out from Sara that her grandmother told her a story about witches living in bread crusts and since then Sara’s been terrified of bread. Sometimes, you have to make up a new story to drive away the old one.’
Humming, he carries on along the tables with his stack of bowls.
The last day of summer camp. Sophia stands at the edge of the fields. The morning light renders the blades of grass translucent and mists through the air. She wants to hold this moment. It’s hard to think of returning to Warsaw with its blackout and its oppressive atmosphere.
Sara and Halinka call to her. The kites are ready and everyone is setting out to the open fields to make them fly. A few sticks and pieces of paper have become birds that rise high on the wind.
‘Pani Sophia,’ says Abrasha as he tenses the string with his violinist’s fingers each time the kite dips. ‘One day, I’m going to fly all over the world and play music that sounds like kites on the wind. Will you come with me?’
‘Yes,’ says Sophia. ‘In a silver aeroplane.’
On the way back to Warsaw, the train slows as it passes through fields filled with Polish cavalry on manoeuvres. The children crowd excitedly at the windows. The soldiers’ uniforms and the flanks of the horses glow chestnut brown in the sun. Slender white pennants flutter above the soldiers’ square caps with their poppy-red bands.
The train picks up speed again, and Misha turns his head to catch a last sight of them. Sophia holds his hand tightly. She knows what he will do as soon they get back to Warsaw.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WARSAW, 31 AUGUST 1939
Misha lopes down the steps of the recruiting office, his face set and angry. All morning he’s been going from office
to office, trying to enlist. They all want to take him, tall and capable and eager to serve for his country, but Misha’s been to university which means he’s been exempted from training, so where should they put him. Then there’s the problem that university also puts him in the officers’ rank, and since a Jew can’t be in charge of Poles they’re not sure if they are allowed to enlist him. No one knows if they are permitted to ignore the old rule – why hasn’t it been abolished? Ridiculous. But in the end it’s always a very regretful no.
Hitler has been demanding that Poland hand over control of Danzig and a slice of northern Poland for months and yesterday, he issued a final ultimatum. The Polish army, however, seems to have been taken completely by surprise, hopelessly disorganized and with no clear plan.
The cafés around Saxon Square are as full as ever, everyone trying to ignore the gritty walls of sandbags piled up in front of the palace. Baskets of petunias hang from the lampposts, apologizing for the loudspeakers strung up beneath them in readiness for any air-raid warning. So far, the speakers have been silent.
He spots Sophia waiting for him at one of the tables set out under the lindens, a low trellis separating her from the people passing along the pavement. Someone has tied their dachshund to the fretwork and the trellis moves each time the hysterical little dog jumps, ears flapping like limp propellers.
She can’t help but look relieved when she hears of Misha’s lack of success.
‘Everyone’s saying it’s all bluster on Hitler’s part. He’ll never dare attack Poland, not with Britain and France our allies.’
Misha puts his gas-mask case on the table. ‘He’s annexed Austria and most of the Czech lands without a fight. So what is he planning to do with the tonnage of weapons he’s amassed just over the border?’
‘Don’t let’s be gloomy. It’s a lovely afternoon. Let’s walk down to the river.’
The Good Doctor of Warsaw Page 5