Death in Twilight

by Jason Fields

  “How is that your job?”

  “The Judenrat is making it my job.”

  Teitel raised his eyebrows and waited for more information.

  “I was called into Mordechai Zimmerman’s office this morning, out of the blue,” Aaron said, not bothering to mention his father. “When I got there, they dumped this on me.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because I was a gendarme, moron!” Aaron said sharply. “How many real police do you think we have in here? How many men here have ever conducted any kind of murder inquiry?”

  “I see your point,” Teitel said, taken a bit aback by Aaron’s tone. “But why did you say yes? I know I wouldn’t want to get involved in this.”

  He paused.

  “Actually, please take that as a request. Don’t get me involved in this.”

  “You are involved, though,” Aaron said, shaking his head. “Anyway, after a brief appeal to my better nature … ”

  “A failed appeal, I imagine.”

  “Right. After that, though, he threatened to shut us down,” Aaron said. “Blaustein, the head of the police, was in the office with him and they seemed to have at least some idea of what we’re doing.”

  “You thought they could do it?”

  “I thought they could put me in a concentration camp, and probably you, too,” Aaron said. “Even if they just took us out of action for a few days, it was the timing that worried me the most.”

  Teitel nodded.

  “So, does that mean anything for tonight?” he asked. “Do we still go ahead?”

  “Even if we wanted to stop the delivery, I’m not sure how we’d do it this late,” Aaron said. “We go ahead. I’ll meet you at the house on Kozikowska Place after curfew. In the meantime, can you ask around and see if you can find anything out about either Berson or Jaruzelski?”

  “Aaron, this is not something I want to get involved in,” Teitel said. “I’m not a detective. If you have to do it, then you do it. It’s not my battle, and I think I might desert if it was. Whatever happens to the Judenrat or the Jewish Police, it’s a good thing.

  “And if you haven’t learned the lesson from today at the hospital, let me tell you what it is: The Germans are coming for each and every one of us. They will not be happy until every Jew in Miasto is dead. Every one of those bastards that’s helping the Nazis? Let them go first.”

  Teitel’s face was red as he finished.

  “Fine. Don’t help,” Aaron said. He wasn’t pleased.

  “I’ll see you tonight.”

  Aaron turned and twisted to get out by the same door he’d come in. He felt a hand grab his coat and looked back down.

  “You’ll need this,” Teitel said, handing him a pack of cigarettes.

  Aaron nodded his thanks.

  When Aaron pulled himself up into the alleyway and dusted himself down, he felt a hard lump in each of the front pockets of his coat. He reached in and found potatoes. He pulled out the one from his left-hand pocket and bit into it raw. The taste of the starch wasn’t wonderful, but there was no way of knowing where his next meal would come from, so he swallowed it down.

  Chapter 7

  Aaron’s stomach wasn’t happy with the raw potato that it had to digest, bathed as it was in a sauce of 120-proof slivovitz. He felt both bloated and hungry at the same time. Another cigarette might have helped, but they were far too precious to waste in such quick succession.

  At least the alcohol gave him a false feeling of warmth as he made his way back out of the alley and onto Wadowice Street. A few people had returned to the sidewalks, talking quietly, sharing whatever gossip and misinformation they had about the events in front of Breslaw Hospital. Cold never overpowered people’s need for news, and it wasn’t likely the massacre would make it into tomorrow’s Nazi-approved newspaper.

  Word of mouth — rumor’s pretty cousin — was the language of Miasto. A quiet word was often the only way to find a supply of food or fuel, or to avoid German soldiers looking for a good time in the ghetto by beating, raping or killing Jews.

  On Wadowice, Aaron could hear snippets of conversation. People who knew nothing asked others who knew less whether today’s massacre meant the entire ghetto would be liquidated. People spoke of relatives missing and rumors of entire Jewish settlements being erased by a mix of bullets and flames. What difference was there between Miasto and a shtetl, other than size? Obviously, the Germans weren’t intimidated by scale; they had invaded the whole world at once, after all.

  The more optimistic argued that the Germans needed the Jews for their labor, that their slavery was their salvation. Otherwise, why concentrate them all in one place and work them so hard? Killing Jews was just wasteful.

  As Aaron passed the small groups of men huddled in the street, he heard the rationalizations, the “guarantees” of safety. Reasons why these men would never face the guns.

  “I can still work my sixteen hours every day. They need me,” one man said.

  A few steps later …

  “Those people were sick. All they were doing was soaking up food,” another said. “Killing them even makes sense in a kind of sick way.”

  A block further on …

  “If we just work harder, surely … I mean, they may be evil, but even Germans aren’t crazy. They’ve always been thrifty people.”

  Aaron understood the need for rationalization, even hope. What advantage would there be for people to believe they were doomed?

  The men and women of the ghetto were not fighters, by and large. They had been merchants, doctors, sellers of junk, manufacturers, seamstresses, lawyers and more than a few religious scholars. The scholars were the most useless; men who refused to take any unnecessary part in the life of the body, instead devoting their lives entirely to study and to teaching.

  Give them guns and watch them shoot themselves, Aaron thought.

  Aaron was one of the few men behind the walls who had ever held a rifle, let alone a grenade.

  That needs to change, Aaron thought.

  He shook himself and shook off the words he’d heard. He entered his own state of denial, which allowed him to focus on the task at hand and let him believe there was a purpose behind it.

  Again, he brought his focus back to the case.

  With Gersh/Jaruzelski dead, Aaron decided that his next avenue was to look into Lev Berson’s life outside of the Jewish Police. To begin, all Aaron had was Berson’s address.

  Berson lived on a street that had been quite posh a half-century before. Now, Krawcy Boulevard was lined with tenements and small factories making cheap clothes. Aaron wasn’t looking forward to the long walk to get there.

  Even though the ghetto was small compared to the rest of the city, Krawcy was at least twenty-five minutes away by foot. The cold had retained its knife-edge, and the wind was relentless. Aaron suspected that the sun’s feeble showing was intended as a purely ironic touch. He decided to find an alternative to his gum-soled boots.

  Not long ago, Wadowice and Krawcy had been joined by a streetcar line that made the trip between the two stations in less than 10 minutes, keeping its riders warm on the way. But streetcars had been constricted along with every other aspect of the life of the Jews of Miasto. Before the ghetto had been completely enclosed, people with Star of David armbands were forced to ride in separate cars from the rest of the passengers. The stated reason was the same as that for the construction of the ghetto. The civil authorities, under instruction from the occupying military authorities, proclaimed Jews to be carriers of disease — particularly typhoid. It was a sensible precaution to make sure they traveled separately.

  That hadn’t been enough in the end. Eventually, it became clear that the only way to safeguard the Aryan and Slavic populations was to ensure that Jews were kept within the boundary of the ghetto as much as possible. An exception was made for Jewish laborers on their way to and from factories or labor camps. On those occasions, Jews were either marched out en masse, or carried out in gray, ope
n-topped trucks. There was no longer a reason for streetcars to stop in the Jewish district at all.

  The cars still passed through, though now it was more like a bobsled run, with the tracks’ path acting as the chute. The route was lined by makeshift walls to keep any illicit contact between the district and the city to a minimum.

  Still, the end of regular trolley services was not the same as the end of industry. An older form of transport had come back into vogue. Horse-powered buses now ran down a few streets. They were makeshift things, and it amazed Aaron that the horses hadn’t been eaten and the vehicles pulled apart for firewood. He would’ve been less surprised had he known the companies behind the buses were German and the Jewish fares ended up in their pockets.

  An enclosed bus drawn by an enormous, though emaciated, horse pulled up in front of Aaron and didn’t quite stop. He swung on and one or two patrons climbed off. The vehicle wasn’t crowded, and the heating system, unfortunately, depended solely on the density of bodies aboard. Aaron moved forward, handed two zloty to the driver and found himself a seat. He had hoped to simply watch the streets roll by and say his thanks for getting out of the wind, but another passenger had a different plan. A woman stood up in the middle of the cabin and began to beg.

  “Please,” she said. “I have a dying child at home. Every day he’s thinner and more pale … ”

  Aaron had no desire to look at her, but for some reason he did. In that, he was unique among the riders. The woman was young, she had been pretty, and if she was acting, she was truly excellent.

  A voice answered the woman’s plea.

  “Who do you think you are to beg from us? Do you think we don’t go home to the same place you do? To the same circumstances?”

  It was an elderly woman who spoke, a woman who wore fur around her neck and the remnants of a once-fashionable hat. It was slightly frayed, but must have cost her hundreds of zloty when she’d bought it.

  “If you can walk, you can work!” the old woman continued.

  “There is no work … Please … ” the younger woman replied.

  Aaron knew it was true. Unemployment was as high as 80 percent, leaving the 300-calorie ration cards and charity as the only sources of sustenance for most.

  “There’s always work for a pretty one like you.”

  The beggar began to cry. She headed to the back of the bus and the exit, seeing only her own feet. No one’s eyes followed her. As she passed Aaron, he slipped his second potato into her pocket without her noticing. He said nothing.

  The entrance to Krawcy Boulevard appeared on his left and he made to stand, turning so that his elbow slammed into the back of the old woman’s head. Her hat fell off and her forehead hit the glass of the window she was sitting beside. What Aaron muttered as he climbed out of the bus may have been an apology.

  Eight Krawcy was on the left as Aaron walked down the street from where he had jumped from the bus. There was little to distinguish the building from those around it. It was five stories tall and it was neither attractive nor strikingly ugly. It was as gray as everything seemed to be in the ghetto. The glass in the windows was unbroken and some of the apartments were lit.

  There was an electric bell in the entryway, but it didn’t work. The locked door had several glass panels, allowing Aaron to see that the hall beyond was filled with people. In the cold, with most schools and synagogues closed and large gatherings prohibited, the hallways of tenements had become the focus of social life. Many buildings had transformed themselves into communes.

  Aaron knocked and a woman holding a half-naked 3-year-old boy — it was his bottom half that was bare — put the child down and came to the door. She saw the military cut of Aaron’s coat and hesitated for some moments before opening it wide enough to ask him what he wanted.

  “I’m here about Lev Berson,” Aaron said.

  The woman frowned at him and began closing the door while at the same time saying, “He’s not here.”

  She was a little surprised when the door wouldn’t close fully, eventually looking down to see Aaron’s foot wedged in the doorframe.

  “I’d be surprised if he was,” Aaron said. “But I’d like to speak with anyone who knows him.”

  “Why?”

  The woman wasn’t budging. To resolve the situation, Aaron put his weight on the door, which gradually inched open. The woman leaned against the other side, but wasn’t heavy enough to stop him.

  “I’m happy to talk with anybody,” Aaron said, using his best cop voice. “But if you like, I can start with you.”

  The woman’s defiance was brittle and shattered as Aaron gave a final little push.

  “I don’t know him very well,” she said meekly. Then with more strength, “Who are you? Why do you want to know about Lev?”

  It was a good question. Aaron had thought about what he would say when people asked. Announcing that he was working for the Judenrat was not the way to gain people’s trust. And telling them that he was investigating Berson’s death was hardly the best way to keep it a secret.

  In the end, he said, “I arrived from Serca about a week ago, and Lev Berson is the only name I know in the city. I figured that since he works for the Judenrat, he might be able to help me get set up here.”

  Serca was a village not far from Miasto that had once had a thriving Jewish community. Aaron had met several men from there who had been forced into the Miasto ghetto at literal gunpoint. The village also wasn’t far from where Berson had grown up.

  “Well, I don’t know how much help he can be. He hasn’t done very well for himself.”

  The woman moved back from the door and picked up the toddler who had never stopped clawing at her worn and modest dress.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you have eyes. You have a nose. He lives here.”

  She punctuated her words with a roll of her eyes and a dismissive sniff.

  Aaron sniffed, too, in sympathy, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The miasma was composed of all the stinks of the ghetto brought together in a single lungful. There was the rot of old food, the rot of unwashed bodies living on top of each other, the rot of illness and the loose shit that comes with it.

  The woman saw his expression and her answering look shouted, “I told you so,” with a wicked gleam.

  “I get your point, but I’d still like to talk to him,” Aaron said. “I haven’t been able to find him and they’re so disorganized at the Judenrat that the only thing they could give me was this address.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t know where he is, or what he does with his time,” the woman said.

  The toddler was now nibbling on some hair he’d been able to work free of his mother’s tight bun.

  “Does he have roommates?” Aaron asked as he tried to maneuver himself around the woman.

  “Who’s so rich that they don’t have roommates? My baby and I live with two other families. It used to be my apartment. And it was small then,” the woman said bitterly. “Lev’s apartment is on the fifth floor. Do what you want.”

  Her voice was flat. She had no more time for Aaron.

  “One more question: Does he get along with the people here?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “Anybody have a problem with what he does for a living, let’s say?”

  “People do what they have to. Who can judge anyone else these days?”

  She turned away from Aaron, and with her child at her hip, sorted through a pile of cloth lying nearby, looking, it seemed, for something to use as a diaper.

  His way cleared, Aaron moved further into the building. From behind one door he heard the sound of prayers. From behind another, the sound of a husband and wife arguing about whatever married people argue about. Loudly.

  Children were using the stairwell to play with marbles. Men perched above them and watched, some making wagers. They called down hints and suggestions that sometimes sounded like orders. No one moved aside as Aaron worked his way
up the staircase.

  Wash lines were strung from the bannisters and the array of clothing and rags that hung from them was colorful if pitiful. Circumstances left no room for modesty concerning ladies’ undergarments.

  On the third floor landing a kind of tent was set up, made from ropes and blankets. The blankets billowed gently and small sounds of hushed lovemaking filled Aaron’s ears, turning his cheeks crimson. He quieted his steps and continued upward.

  There were more tents set up in the fifth-floor hallway by people looking for the pretense of privacy. Aaron decided to start his inquiry with the floor’s original apartments, complete with solid walls and doors.

  He started on the right side of the hall. A knock on the first door brought him nothing but a groan. Aaron then pounded more loudly, but with the same result. He decided to move on. He could always come back if he had to, he figured.

  The next door opened at the first tap, and a young, somewhat elegant young man peered out.

  “I’m looking for Lev Berson,” Aaron said by way of introduction.

  “Well, he lives here, but he’s not here at the moment,” the young man said. “May I ask who you are?”

  Aaron saw no reason not to be friendly. He put his hand out.

  “Aaron Kaminski. Damn. I could really use his help.”

  “How so?” the man asked. “I’m Manny Cohen, by the way.”

  “Do you mind if I come in?”

  Cohen started a sweeping gesture of welcome, but stopped half way through, obviously thinking twice about his impulse toward hospitality. In the end though, politeness won out.

  “Please do, though I have nothing to offer you, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, a place to sit will be much appreciated,” Aaron said, as Cohen moved aside to let him into the room.

  And that’s all it was, a single room, a squarish box really, with one window and a radiator that looked as if it would clank brutally if there were any steam coming up through the pipes.

  Little fear of that, Aaron thought to himself.