Death in Twilight

by Jason Fields

  Once Aaron had explained and assured the man that he had Blaustein’s approval, the clerk proved he hadn’t spent all of his time among the files in vain. He quickly returned with a short stack of paper. In the stack was exactly what Aaron had asked for.

  Aaron thanked the clerk. The man bowed his head slightly and slumped back to a desk somewhere to gather more dust. Aaron took the files into the police lounge, grabbed himself a cup of the worst imaginable “tea,” and sat down to read.

  All the paperwork in the stack had Berson’s name on it, or at least in it, but it wasn’t immediately clear who had written what or what was signed by whom. After a little poking, Aaron felt sure he’d identified which reports were in Berson’s hand and which he had merely signed on to.

  Aaron slid his hand into his coat and tried to remove the note of betrayal from his pocket nonchalantly. Two officers were in the room with him, and they were eyeing the man drinking their tea.

  Aaron opened the note and held it next to a report that had been filled out by Berson. He sighed. There was no doubt. Berson’s clear, schoolboy hand was nothing like the scribbles on the torn scrap of paper.

  Whether Berson had spoken German or not, he wasn’t the author of the note. That left Berson the messenger or Berson the interceptor in Aaron’s scenario.

  So, which was it?

  How big a step would it be for Berson to go from professional collaborator to outright traitor?

  It was more pleasant to believe that Berson had somehow found the note and prevented it from ever reaching its intended destination. Perhaps he’d confronted the author, and the author killed him to keep it quiet.

  Maybe.

  Better to focus on what facts were available and gather what more he could. Aaron turned his attention back to the files in front of him. He decided to look through them all in order to rule out any other potential motives behind the young policeman’s death. He took another sip of the now-cold unspeakable “tea” and dug in.

  The files started back at the very beginning of the ghetto. Apparently, Berson had been an early volunteer. Aaron wondered why he’d been so quick join the force, but found no clue in the files. Nearly all the reports revolved around broken-up brawls and arrests for petty theft.

  One told the abbreviated story of a 14-year-old thief who had broken into the home of a neighbor looking for anything he would be able to sell. What had happened to the boy after his detention was nowhere to be found in the report. There was no prison inside the ghetto, just temporary holding cells. He must have been turned over to the authorities beyond the walls.

  Another report showcased a domestic dispute, a husband who had beaten his wife badly. The attack was attributed to a missing tidbit of gristle that the woman had apparently taken to feed a cat. The husband had been hauled off and given a chance to cool down before being sent back home with a warning. He was hardly likely to seek revenge against one of the men who had briefly detained him.

  A third case was more interesting. The crime had been political. A man had stood on a street corner and railed against both the Judenrat and the Nazis. It wasn’t anything that every person in the ghetto hadn’t said, but most people were smart enough to say it more quietly. The incident wasn’t something that could be ignored, especially as there had been a number of Germans in hearing distance. Their statements were noted in the file. Though it appeared that the man had been drunk during his rant, he had been handed over to the Gestapo for punishment.

  Whatever the justice of the case, a man taken away by the Gestapo would make an unlikely suspect in a homicide that occurred months later.

  It was an hour and a second cup of tea later that Aaron finished going through all the files. There seemed to be nothing that would help to solve the mystery of the murder, only a listing of human tragedy and villainy. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, which depressed him a little. Even in the midst of a larger tragedy, people were always happy to make things just that little bit worse.

  As Aaron stood up, he saw that there was no one left in the room with him and that he’d stamped out several cigarette butts on the floor with little regard for whoever would have to clean it. He felt no interest in picking them up.

  Instead, he dropped the files off on a convenient desk and walked out into the main hall, which he found empty. Some rules remained immutable, office hours among them. The stench of the absent crowd, unfortunately, lingered.

  He’d wanted to stop for a minute and talk with his father, but Aaron knew the man as a slave to the clock. If business hours were over, he was gone.

  Maybe we’ll talk again, once the case is finished, Aaron thought.

  The front door was locked when Aaron tried it. He knocked to get the attention of the guard outside. When he walked out, he saw there was still a little daylight left.

  Offices closed early enough for workers to make it home before the curfew. Judging by the angle of the sun, Aaron would again have to hurry to reach the building where he was expecting his shipment and another chance to see his wife.

  Chapter 13

  The street vendors packed hurriedly, pedestrians knocked into them and each other, unheeding. All were hurrying home. If they made it safely, they would close their doors behind them, hoping to keep out the night and the Nazis. The Jewish District’s curfew was descending on buyers and sellers; thieves and beggars; whores and their pimps; the religious and those who cursed God. All equally, except for the Jewish Police, whose purpose was to enforce the curfew on the rest.

  Another hungry day was passing into oblivion.

  Some people had been able to find warmth and food while the sun was up.

  Some had been able to bathe, though nearly all in cold water.

  Some had found loved ones that they had believed lost forever.

  Others, that day, had lost loved ones to disease, hunger or overwork. Many of the new ghosts had marched off for the “shops” — small factories set up by German businessmen to help supply the war effort — at first light, but dusk brought them no closer to home. Families and friends would keep watch behind shut doors that the fallen would never pass through again.

  Bureaucracy or fate — those who lived in the ghetto learned that there was no difference.

  Aaron joined the crowd, walking back to the building where he had spent the previous night, feeling the weight of the evening to come. Every day, there was risk. Every night was darkened by it, but tonight’s plan was enough to rip a man’s stomach apart.

  Tonight, Aaron’s little crew would be giving Jews the tools to make choices that had been stolen from them in a flurry of years. With a very few exceptions, Jews hadn’t fought the Nazis as 1933 had become ‘34 and ‘35, eventually reaching the untenable present. Families had resisted alone or not resisted at all. They had trusted to common sense and the good will of the neighbors who knew them so well — whom they had grown up with. They trusted the government and the law, which the Jewish community had been a part of, and which it had obeyed.

  They had never learned to trust the gun.

  Aaron wasn’t alone in feeling the time had come — had probably come and gone — to say no and to use lead for exclamation marks. Tonight’s shipment had been ordered by men who were in such deep despair that they planned a fight they had no thought of winning. They knew the eventual outcome would be the same whether they fought or not.

  So, now a leap from bread to bullets, supplying death instead of life. Aaron had agreed, but what he’d agreed to scared him. He knew the punishment for smuggling an apple was death. He suspected that the penalty for smuggling guns would be the same. Still the whole thing seemed more somber and dangerous.

  Every step on the leaden street was harder to take, but Aaron’s feet followed one after the other until his destination was nearly in sight. When he finally lifted his eyes from his boots and saw the door ahead, he also caught a reflection flashing past a window. The shape he’d seen had been small and dun colored and was gone almost before he percei
ved it.

  Instead of turning suddenly, Aaron found one of a hundred stoops and crouched down over his shoelaces. He stayed there for a little while, making the motions of retying while slowly surveying the street.

  A bundle in a doorway caught his eye. He pretended to finish what he was doing and walked in that direction. The bundle decided to run, but its timing was off. Though it darted valiantly, Aaron was too close and his arms were too long. The scrap of cloth was caught and transformed itself into a child.

  It was the same girl who had stolen his food that morning in the undertakers’ district. She weighed little more than her improvised clothing.

  “What are you doing here?” Aaron said, his face inches from hers.

  She didn’t reply. Her face appeared a solid, wooden mask of fear. Her body, as he held it, was as stiff as a plank.

  Intimidation seemed unlikely to get him what he wanted, so Aaron adjusted his tactics. He put the girl down on the stoop. He kept an arm gently resting on her shoulder to keep her in place when she inevitably decided to run again. He spoke gently to her, hoping to bring to mind the man who had rewarded rather than punished her earlier attempt at theft.

  “I have nothing else to give you at the moment, sparrow.” The endearment came without effort. She struck him as exactly that. All fragile bones and nerves and, even while unmoving, eager to be free. “But I may tomorrow. Is that what’s made you follow me? You’re hungry?”

  His soft voice melted her slightly. A tremble rippled through her, but she wasn’t yet able to respond directly to what Aaron said.

  Something told him not to tighten his grip, that to embrace her would be to lose her entirely. Instead he took his hand from her shoulder and took a half step back. If she were going to run, she probably wouldn’t need much more space.

  She didn’t run, though. Her body relaxed a bit further and she remained where she was.

  Aaron pulled out a cigarette and lit it, cupping his hand around the match to keep out the breeze, though it wasn’t strong. His face must have glowed for her in the dim light, and something she saw seemed to reassure her.

  “May I have a bit of your cigarette?” she asked.

  Aaron worked to control his face and keep his voice warm.

  “How old are you, sparrow?”

  “I’m twelve,” she said defensively.

  She looked as if she couldn’t have been more than ten, if that, but Aaron knew himself to be no judge. Yelena and he had no children, and had given thanks for it every day since the war broke out. He had been an only child himself, and hadn’t spent any time with children since he’d been one.

  He did know that many children in the ghetto had their growth stunted by hunger

  He took the cigarette from his mouth and handed it to her, careful that she not burn herself.

  She put the cigarette to her lips, but only puffed at it without drawing the smoke into her lungs. She was aping something she’d seen the adults around her do rather than looking for salvation through nicotine. Aaron smiled at her as a cloud quickly formed around her head.

  “Is there something you’d like me to call you, other than sparrow?”

  “I’m Rebecca, but I think I like Sparrow better.”

  “Sparrow it is.”

  The cigarette would soon be gone, the way she was going at it, and Aaron wasn’t sure he had enough of them to light another for himself so soon.

  They stood companionably while Rebecca finished Aaron’s cigarette, saying nothing. When she was done, she threw it to the ground and clearly enjoyed stomping on it, though her shoes looked so worn, Aaron wouldn’t have been surprised if she burned herself in the process.

  And since she was done, she moved to go. Aaron gently touched her shoulder again, and she halted, though this time she didn’t stiffen as much.

  “So, were you following me all day?” he asked, managing to sound amused, though it wasn’t how he felt.

  She nodded, her face pointing toward the ground.

  “All day?”

  She nodded again.

  “So how was it that I didn’t see you?”

  She wriggled. It might have been a shrug, or it might have meant something else.

  “What was it that you wanted? More food?”

  She nodded again.

  “What happened to what I gave you this morning?”

  This time she clearly shrugged.

  “You can see I don’t have anything else to give you. In fact, you just about took my last cigarette.”

  No response.

  “And that’s the only reason you were following me?”

  A pause and a nod.

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  Aaron decided he didn’t believe her, but he also decided he wasn’t going to start torturing recalcitrant children, either.

  “Well, look. You’ve gotten what I have, and I’ve got important things to do. I don’t like being followed. I’m not sure anyone does, for that matter,” he said. “If I have anything for you tomorrow, I tell you what, I’ll meet you here first thing. Okay? But now, Sparrow, bugger off.”

  No sooner had he said it than she was gone, leaving Aaron with the feeling that he’d missed something. Not that he had the faintest idea what it might have been. He turned on his heel and headed back to the building where he would be spending the night. No more restfully, he supposed, than he had the night before.

  Dov was in the basement, but otherwise Aaron was the first of the crew to arrive. Rather than sit nervously, Aaron thought a twenty-minute nap might help him see the rest of the night through. He opened the room with the cots and tucked himself in, still wearing everything from his hat to his boots. His last conscious thought was for Yelena and the pleasure he anticipated from seeing her in just a few hours.

  A hand woke him by grabbing his shoulder and shaking vigorously. Lech Teitel was attached to the hand. Even after Teitel saw Aaron’s eyes, he didn’t stop his prodding. It was only when Aaron barked at him that he finally eased off.

  “That wasn’t the first time I saw your eyes pop open,” Teitel said. “I just wanted to be sure I had your attention.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Aaron mumbled, bringing his hands up to his face and rubbing it like putty to fill a crack. “Have you been here long?”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  “You ran into trouble?” Aaron asked. What other reason could there be for traveling after curfew?

  “Purely personal. My daughter got sick and it wasn’t easy finding medicine for her,” Teitel said. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. What’s wrong with her?”

  “Just diarrhea. I wouldn’t have been concerned, except it’s been a couple of days.”

  Aaron frowned. Dysentery could be caused by a number of things and was serious and common behind the ghetto’s wall. Sanitary conditions had crumbled due to overcrowding, inadequate sewage lines and uncollected garbage, allowing cholera into people’s homes. Poor nutrition and a lack of medicine made it deadly for many. In fact, the Germans had created the very conditions they had accused Jews of causing, making the ostensible reason for closing the ghetto into a bizarre, circular truth.

  Aaron reached into his pocket and pulled out the box of morphine ampules.

  “You can give her one of these in the morning, if she’s not feeling better,” he said. “It stops you right up.”

  “I’ve always wondered why addicts look like that,” Teitel said with a relieved smile. He nodded gratefully. “I wasn’t able to find much.”

  “Have you seen Boris?” Aaron asked. Along with Dov, he would be doing the heavy lifting.

  “They’re downstairs, waiting,” Teitel said. “Shall we join them?”

  Aaron looked at his watch and saw there was still quite a bit of time before they could expect the shipment. He stood anyway.

  “I’ll follow you down. Let me just stop and use the bathroom,” he said.

  There was only o
ne toilet and shower for the floor and Aaron fumbled toward it in the dark as Teitel made his way to the basement. When he opened the door and found himself alone, Aaron breathed a sigh of thanks. Having grown up in a building much like this one, he had memories of waiting an eternity for a neighbor to finish, sure that his eyes had turned a sickly yellow from the built up piss.

  When he finished, Aaron moved to the sink and turned on the tap, happy to feel a trickle fill his hands. He sprayed his face with it, the cold water transubstantiating into coffee, bringing him back to life, or at least a formidable mockery of it. Then he shivered.

  He wouldn’t show it in front of the others, but he was worried, for himself but mostly for Yelena.

  They’d been talking about smuggling guns into the ghetto for a long time, though they had kept it to themselves, fearing betrayal. Still, Aaron was surprised when Yelena told him that she had made a contact who could supply them. The man had claimed to be part of the Polish underground, fighting the Nazis mostly from the forests, Yelena said. His group’s weapons came from a stash that had been set aside as it became clear — nearly instantly — that the Germans and Russians would quickly overrun the country.

  Aaron had only a matter of days to put together the treasure that would pay for the weapons. Yelena hadn’t told her men anything about the deal. Some of the people she worked with were patriots, but others were far more interested in profiteering. Yelena figured the best way to ensure that everyone kept their mouths shut was to stoke their greed. Aaron’s gold Torah raiment had played its part nicely. It was unlikely the Nazis would match that kind of payout just for unconfirmed information.

  Aaron was more concerned about the other end of the deal — the man who claimed he had the guns, Andrusz.

  He told a good story, but was it true?

  There was no way Aaron could know. He had to rely on what Yelena saw and thought. She lived in a wider world.

  How could a city be cut in such a way? Aaron still couldn’t truly comprehend it. People, meters apart, might as well have been living in separate universes.

  He stood in a building that sat on a darkened “Jewish” street. It was back-to-back with a similar one that faced onto a road where streetlights still burned and people ate their fill at dinner. That building was outside the ghetto solely because of black magic and people’s willingness to believe in it.