by Jason Fields
Aaron found himself somewhere between fury at the little thief and pity for the little girl. As his adrenalin cooled, the pity won out. He reached into the bag and pulled out what remained of the small loaf of bread.
“This what you wanted?”
She didn’t speak. She simply looked numb, defeated. She didn’t try to move, she didn’t reach for the bread. She waited to be punished.
“You have parents? Brothers or sisters?”
No answer except the beginning of tears.
Aaron was not in a position to help every little girl in the ghetto. The Judenrat itself was in no position to do so. There was simply not enough of anything and the need was beyond knowing.
But that was the larger view and the girl in his arms was very small.
His firm grip turned into something else. Tears reached his eyes. It was too much. It was all too much. Perhaps his soft reaction was because of his lack of sleep or the hunger that gnawed at him despite his lavish breakfast. Maybe it was the funeral procession, which trailed behind it the reminder that death had once been treated with respect. Whatever it was, all he could think of was how close this little one was to her own funeral.
And why?
No why.
He knew the outcome of the girl’s struggle on the streets was inevitable. But he could delay it a little.
He put the child down. She did not move.
He took the sack and put it in her hands, deciding to keep the loaf of bread he had already pulled out. She sagged a bit with the weight.
Finally, her eyes met his and she said one word.
“Thanks.”
She ran.
Feeling both infinitely better and worse, Aaron continued looking for his address. He didn’t bother to see where the girl went. His solace was another cigarette pulled from his jacket and sucked down in just a few breaths.
He found the place he was looking for in just another minute. Rather than one of the funeral homes, it was a simple stable. The sign above a wide doorway — clearly intended for wagons to pass through — read “Hershkowitz & Sons.” Horses harnessed to a cart were painted to the right of the owner’s name. The paint was fading but the image was still clear, with touches of bright color still to be seen in the team’s tack. It had no air of a religious place, any hints of holiness cleverly hidden from the casual eye.
Up close, Aaron finally found what he was looking for. Synagogues were traditionally proudly marked, inscriptions and holy symbols welcoming in the congregation. But this was a sign for a different time, pride giving way to discretion.
On a human-sized door to the right of the larger one, Aaron saw shallow carving. The words were the same ones he had seen on Berson’s flyers; the Shema, the declaration of God’s existence and singularity in the universe He had created. A statement of belief and words of courage.
There was no one outside the building and both doors were closed tight. Aaron approached slowly, giving anyone behind the windows a chance to see him and decide that he was neither German nor an obvious threat. He knocked on the smaller door and waited. A minute, two. No sound from inside. He replaced his knock with a bang and waited again. One minute, two. He saw no one come to the window, he heard no sound from inside.
Should he stay? Even with the relative warmth, the sweat under his arms was beginning to cool uncomfortably. Aaron stamped his feet and thought again. If he was stymied here, what should his next step be? There was no time to question every member of the Jewish police. Germans that Berson might have encountered on the night of his death — who might have caused his death — were unavailable for questioning. Perhaps he could return to the building where Berson had lived and hope to find additional roommates with a grudge. Or maybe he should canvass the neighborhood where the body was found.
After another half hour, Aaron felt he couldn’t wait any longer.
As he turned to leave, he caught the sound of a cane on cobblestones. Using it was an older man with a white beard and every sign of deep religious faith in the mode of the small towns and villages of the Polish countryside. Of course, since borders were known to be fluid in this part of Europe, he could also have been from the Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Estonia or Latvia.
The rabbi — he could be no one else — wore a black hat made of beaver fur and the silver hair beneath it shone. Payos hung over the stems of the glasses perched on his nose. So perfectly did the glasses reflect an air of study, they seemed almost an affectation. He peered over them to examine Aaron.
“No service this morning, rabbi?” Aaron asked.
The man didn’t bother to deny was what he was.
“I am sorry to say that you missed it. We begin early, as the sun rises,” the rabbi replied. “I’m on my way back from breakfast with my wife.”
The voice matched the man in every regard. It was rich, it was full, it was filled with Yiddish, even as the words were Polish. It reflected a lifetime of deep thought.
“You are certainly welcome to join us tomorrow morning, if you wish,” the rabbi said, a little more warmly. “We would be very pleased if you did.”
“Actually, rabbi, today I’m just as happy to find you alone,” Aaron said. “I’d like to talk to you about a man in your congregation.”
“And who is that?”
“Lev Berson,” Aaron said, his voice giving nothing away.
There was less than a moment’s hesitation. If Aaron hadn’t been looking for it, he was unlikely to have noticed anything amiss. As it was, it seemed to the former gendarme as if the rabbi considered claiming not to know Berson at all.
Instead, the old man shuddered as if a cold wind had struck him, though the day was perfectly calm.
“Hmmm. Well, there’s no reason to talk out here, in the cold.” the rabbi said. “Come. I think I can manage a cup of tea. At least we can agree to call it that, yes?”
Now he smiled and felt in his coat pocket for a key. Finding it, he inserted it into the lock, turned and pushed on the door with a shoulder. Grudgingly, and only under a persistent assault, the door yielded.
The barn was cold and empty, some straw was scattered about on the floor and in the vacant stalls. A few chairs filled the center of the space in a horseshoe pattern — an ironic touch, Aaron thought, since there obviously hadn’t been horses here for some time. A table was set up at the open end, and a few books lay on it. Aaron and rabbi the passed through the room quickly, with little time for Aaron to see that the books were from the Talmud, the accumulated wisdom of the Jewish people, compiled over the course of more than a thousand years.
The air that greeted the two men in the rabbi’s office was considerably warmer than any Aaron had felt for a while, even in the Judenrat’s offices. A coal stove had been left burning while the rabbi enjoyed his morning meal. Aaron wondered at the extravagance.
The rabbi took a seat behind an ornate desk, motioning Aaron to a simple chair in front of it. The younger man found himself looking up at the older one, though they had been equally tall when standing. The rabbi rooted in his desk for a minute, giving Aaron a chance to take in his surroundings beyond the remarkable coal stove.
Shelves lined three walls. They were roughly cut and assembled, with every inch taken up by leather-bound volumes — some of obvious antiquity. The books behind Aaron were simply stacked, apparently not deserving shelves of their own. The spines identified the contents sometimes in Hebrew, sometimes in Yiddish.
In one case, Aaron suspected the words might have been in English, but he wasn’t sure he would know. Languages had never been his strong suit. He spoke only four, and just Polish and Yiddish with fluency. His Hebrew belonged to a child of thirteen, mainly because after his bar mitzvah he had no interest in studying it further. His scraps of German came seemingly out of the air and from the vocabulary that overlapped with Yiddish.
The rabbi had finally found what he wanted, which turned out to be a leather notebook and a fountain pen. He opened up the little book and scribbled something
down before lifting his eyes to Aaron, who wondered idly if the stove had been left burning simply to keep the ink liquid.
The two looked at each other for several minutes without speaking. Aaron was attempting to use the old police trick of silence in the hope that the rabbi would feel compelled to fill the void and perhaps give something away.
The rabbi had apparently invented the trick. He might as well have been a painting of a revered religious figure.
Okay, then, Aaron thought, and gave in.
“Was Lev Berson a member of your congregation?” Aaron asked again.
“Yes.”
Silence returned.
Aaron decided to try another tack as he became uncomfortable under the old man’s gaze.
“I’m sorry, rebbe,” Aaron said deferentially, and using the more intimate form of the Jewish term for teacher. “I know nothing about your congregation — or you yourself for that matter. Could you tell me a little?”
“I think, first, it’s only fair to ask who you are, and why you want to know about us,” the man replied. “Excuse my caution, but … ”
The rest didn’t need to be said and the rabbi didn’t say it.
“I’ve just arrived here from Serca … At the Germans’ invitation,” Aaron said, with small, bitter laugh, which was met by a twitch of the rabbi’s lips. How else could a Jew travel anywhere, now?
“My family knew Berson’s, and I was hoping to find him in the city after I got here,” Aaron continued. “I was hoping that he might be able to help me set up here. There doesn’t seem to be much other help available.”
“No, not from the Judenrat,” the rabbi agreed, then said nothing further.
“Anyway, I haven’t been able to find him yet, and people spoke about his connection to your congregation, so I was hoping you might be able to help. And also that this would be the right place for me, as well.”
The rabbi sat back and pondered. It was obvious to Aaron that he was wonderful at it. After a few moments, the old man nodded to himself and turned his gaze back to Aaron and dropped a bomb.
“Thank you, Mr. Kaminski,” he said. “I enjoy stories very much. Much of how we learn is through stories, either those handed down to us from our fathers — or those told to us by our friends.”
Aaron looked into the cupboard of his mind where the words usually were, but found it empty.
“Some stories aren’t true, but they are parables that teach us something,” the rabbi said. “Some stories are just lies, like this one. We’ve known about Aaron Kaminski the smuggler for as long as you’ve been in business. We may not seem very worldly, we Hasids, but it’s always good to pay attention.”
“So why ask me who I am?” Aaron asked, both annoyed and embarrassed.
“As I said, all stories have value, even those without truth,” the rabbi said, raising his thick eyebrows a little. “Your story tells me both that you don’t want me to know the reasons that brought you to me, and that you have no idea who I am.”
Bold seemed the only way left to go.
“Okay then, who are you?” Aaron asked.
“Rav Schmuel Levinsohn of Krozni.”
The way the words dropped, Aaron was obviously supposed to have heard of the man, but he hadn’t. He did know enough about the Haredim — the Jews who had refused any invitation to join in the modern world — to know that many followed individual religious princes in their villages, and that the principality was usually passed from father to son. By including the town name in his title, the man was announcing himself to be an important figure, a tzadik, a righteous one.
Aaron, who had become almost entirely secular, had a hard time figuring out exactly how he felt about tzadiks. On the one hand, they seemed a little bit like cult leaders; on the other, he had been brought up to believe they were men of great knowledge and wisdom.
The man in front of him fit nicely into both categories, having wrapped an unwilling Aaron in a cocoon of charisma, and giving the impression of having read every word in all the books around him.
Frankly, Aaron was impressed.
“And, if I can be honest with you, I would greatly prefer to be in Krozni. But unlike the man in your story, I truly was “invited” here by the Germans some time ago,” Levinsohn said.
“And here, I have tried to continue to do what I have always done, which is study and, if I can, help others to do the same.”
“Thank you for that, rebbe,” Aaron said. “If I’d known who you were, I never would have … ”
“Oh spare me, Mr. Kaminski,” said the rabbi. “What do you want Lev Berson for? I assume it’s related to your work, since he’s a policeman?”
Bullshit was clearly getting him nowhere. Time for something else.
“Berson’s dead.”
“What?”
For the first time, the furry brows pulled back far enough for Aaron to see the clear blue of the eyes that lived under them.
“I’m sorry, rebbe. I hate to bring you such news.”
The rabbi’s head bowed toward the blotter on his desk in evident sorrow.
“I understand that this is difficult, but I need to know anything you can tell me about him,” Aaron said, careful to keep sympathy in his voice.
“Why would you need to know anything?” the rabbi said, once again meeting Aaron’s eyes. “I don’t understand. What happened to Lev?”
“He was found dead yesterday before first light. He was murdered, his head bashed in,” Aaron said. “I’ve been asked to find out who killed him.”
The rabbi shook his head.
“You? Why you?” he asked.
Aaron was surprised to find himself a little insulted by the rabbi’s tone.
“Before I became a smuggler, I was a gendarme,” Aaron said. “Unlike most of the so-called police around here, I’ve actually run a murder investigation. A few, in fact.”
“I see,” the great man said. “And you don’t know who did it?”
“That’s why I’m here. I need to know more about Lev; what he did when he wasn’t working; who or why someone would want to kill him,” Aaron said.
The rabbi looked down at his notebook where he had occasionally been jotting something down. It was a beautiful little thing, hand-bound, the paper thick. Aaron wondered if the rabbi was perhaps looking at the name of the murderer, but thought not.
“I can’t imagine anyone would want to kill him for any personal reason. He was a very reserved person. Very devout,” the rabbi said. “But he could smile sweetly, too. He was a good young man and would have been a good father, I think.”
Aaron nodded. Among the Haredim, it was the duty of every man to marry young and father many children.
“Did you ever speak with him outside of services, perhaps about personal things?”
“Sometimes, yes,” the rabbi said. “He was deeply concerned about how to perform his job as a Jew. Was he, at root, helping the Nazis or helping his people?”
“I can imagine that was quite a conflict,” Aaron said, shaking his head in sympathy.
“It’s not a Jew’s duty to stand against civil authority,” the rabbi said. “It’s his duty to listen to his God.”
Aaron could hardly have disagreed more, but he couldn’t see how saying so would help him with the rabbi.
“I worked hard to help him see the good he was able to do in his position, and that without order, people here would be far worse off than they are, even now,” the rabbi said.
“Was there anything in particular that bothered him?” Aaron asked.
“He felt ashamed of the privileges he was given for his work, the extra food rations. He hated having to turn men who seemed to have good hearts over to the Germans.”
The rabbi paused and shook his head.
“He did, though?” Aaron asked.
“It was his job,” the rabbi said, as if the explanation was a good one.
“And, of course,” he continued, “Lev hated the names he was called. It’s a hard thing to
be hated by your own people.”
“I’m sure it can’t be easy,” said Aaron, thinking of his present assignment and the scorn he’d sometimes suffered as an officer in the Polish police.
“It was not. And Lev was a sensitive person. I’m sure if there had been a job open as a clerk, he would have taken it.
“Still,” the rabbi shrugged, “I told him, above all else, even the Laws, God values life. Like the rest of us, Lev had to eat.”
Aaron nodded sympathetically again.
“Did you give him any other advice?” he asked.
“Well, I suggested he could share his extra rations with others in need, if he was concerned. We work together among our community, doing our best to make sure everyone is taken care of.” The man paused. “I told him to bring whatever extra he had here, and I would help him distribute it.”
“And that helped ease his conscience?” Aaron asked, lifting one eyebrow.
“Well, with the amount of food he brought, I have no doubt it must have.”
“How much did he bring?” Aaron asked. “The police don’t get that much more in rations than the rest of us, do they?”
“I certainly don’t know any specifics as to what his work entitled him to, but I have no doubt that what he gave to our community was above and beyond that,” the rabbi said, raising a hand to show some large amount.
“Were you at all worried about where he might be getting that extra?”
“I assumed, Mr. Kaminski, that he came by the food much the way you come by your own living.”
The rabbi sighed and looked back down. When he spoke again, his voice was softer than Aaron had heard it.
“We were certainly in no position to turn it away, wherever it came from,” he said. “It is hard to bear God’s judgment.”
“Is that how you see this?” Aaron asked, meaning the war, the ghetto, the death all around them.
“Nothing happens without God’s hand,” Rabbi Levinsohn said with certainty. “Our people have been drifting away from God, becoming no different from the goyim. They have forgotten our unique covenant with the Lord.”