Another Green World

by Richard Grant

  As they walked by, the long-faced man patted a stone. It was squarish, half a meter to a side, crusted with mustard-colored lichen. “These were cut for the Teutonic Knights,” he said. “They rounded up Slavs to do the work, in exchange for their families' lives. A big man, some aristo, built a keep out here, but he could not defend it. So it was empty for a long while and the local headmen carried off what they could. The ruins lay under all this puszcza—jungle, I think?— until a Hungarian artillery officer rode by. He saw these big rocks and thought, Why don't we hide some guns in here? The Russian hordes, you see”— pointing into the trees—” were expected to come swarming through the Moravian Gap up there, making for Prague. It didn't happen like that, but still, the Austrian engineers rebuilt the place. And now it belongs to the AK.”

  A tidy summary, Martina thought, of centuries of bloody warfare. Of which the outcome remained in doubt. “Don't the Germans know you're here?” she said.

  “They bombed us, once or twice, when they still had petrol for their aircraft. And they send their thugs out—though not so much these days, with the problems they've got. We can see them coming, we've pre-sighted mortars to cover the approaches. As for the bombs, they don't do much, only shift a few rocks around. It was a ruin to start with.”

  They turned a corner, then another. The place was built like a maze, each twist providing a new sight line for defensive gunners. At last they entered a sort of courtyard, at one end of which stood a concrete blockhouse the size of a very heavily built two-car garage. A doorway was cut into this, and through it stepped a man in formal military garb, complete with gold epaulets. In a curt voice he gave what sounded like an order.

  The long-faced man saluted, then turned around. “Captain Borojsza will speak to the leaders, one at a time.”

  Grabsteen stepped forward. Martina cleared her throat.

  But the Pole pointed to Petra. “First, you.”

  Petra hesitated, giving Martina a look that blended resentment and resignation. This is all your fault—but what does it matter? Then she allowed herself to be led into the blockhouse. Martina surveyed the courtyard, trying to gauge whether she and her comrades were guests or prisoners here. Is that what Captain Borojsza was about to determine? They had not been asked to give up their weapons—that was good. But overlooking the courtyard were sentries in pillboxes built into the walls—you could just see their heads, sometimes the tip of a weapon. Not so good.

  After several minutes, from the blockhouse, came a woman's sharp cry, an outburst of pain. Not good at all.

  It was another half-hour before Petra emerged. One side of her face was puffy, and a stream of blood ran down from her temple. Yet she didn't appear to be in pain, and a worm of doubt tickled at Martina—perhaps it was a little too obvious. A scream, a trickle of blood. Between us Poles, let's put one over on the Yanks, what do you say?

  The uniformed man stepped smartly through the door. He barked out a question, two syllables.

  Petra pointed to Grabsteen. Two syllables in reply. That one.

  The long-faced man said, “Now you, please.”

  * * *

  By the time Martina's turn came around, Captain Borojsza was in a benevolent mood. He sat behind a map table made of heavy wood that looked like a relic of the Franz-Josef regime. The blockhouse was lit by tiny windows high in the wall and a brace of tallow-burning lamps mounted in such a way that Martina's face was illuminated while his remained in shadow. On the table, Grabsteen's canvas bag lay with its seam sliced open, a considerable pile of Swiss-denominated currency spilling out. The captain pointed a sausage-shaped finger at Martina and said something in jovial-sounding Polish. He looked like a man who would be fat if only he could get enough to eat.

  “So you truly are Americans,” the long-faced man translated, mumbling from a stool drawn close to Martina's. “American Jews.”

  “What if we are?” Good manners, she judged, would be wasted on this brute.

  Her attitude did not appear to trouble Captain Borojsza. He spoke at some length, his manner philosophical.

  “The captain says, This is not something we expected, that the Jews should return. We were planning for the Bolsheviks. Yes, and perhaps the British— we have gotten ourselves in their debt, they never forget such things. But the Jews? We thought they were done for. And on top of that, Jews from America? A most curious thing. Yet there must be a reason. What can it be?”

  Martina sat there, stony-faced. “Well? Has he figured it out?”

  “He has. It is obvious, the captain says, this is a Bolshevik stunt. All along, they were planning to use the Jews to spread their revolution—just as they used Trotsky in the old days, and now they use Grossmann and Ehrenburg. Because the Jews, with their cleverness, they can convince you of anything. They could sell you your grandmother's old underwear, and make you believe you were buying the wedding gown of the Tsarina! Only the Bolsheviks were not counting on Hitler. They thought, three million Jews in Poland, we have plenty there to work with. But now comes Hitler, and suddenly in Poland are no Jews. Incredible! Now we must start from the beginning, what shall we do? Ah—Jews from America! Millions of them, all Bolsheviks at heart, and loaded with money!” The long-faced man cast an eye at the table, Grabsteen's bag of Swiss francs.

  Captain Borojsza smiled. He spoke briefly, gesturing with one hand.

  “The captain asks if you will join him in a drink. A glass of our fine Polish vodka?”

  Martina did not know what possessed her to say yes. She was spitting mad and felt like having a shot, was probably what it came down to.

  The captain drew a bottle and some glasses from a filing cabinet that seemed to hold many bottles and no files. He spoke while pouring. “Our Polish vodka is much better than the Russian, the captain says. No one is sure why. Vodka is an ordinary thing, and yet there is mystery about it. For example—you make it, as everyone knows, by mixing water with alcohol, at an ideal ratio of three-to-two. But if you mix twelve parts water with eight parts alcohol, you get only nineteen parts vodka. Do you know this? It is unexplained. What happens to the twentieth part?”

  Martina gave the captain what she hoped was an icy stare. Then she tilted her head back and drained the two jiggers of fine Polish vodka from her dirty glass. It tasted like cat piss.

  “It's because of the molecular structure of the two liquids,” she sputtered. Was this true? she wondered. Something she dimly recalled from a hated Chemistry class—or was she just making it up on the spot? Judging by the men's expressions, they couldn't decide either. “The water blends with the alcohol in such a way as to economize on intermolecular space. To be exact, you'd get nineteen-point-one-three parts of this shitty Polish swill.”

  Captain Borojsza listened with narrowed eyes while this was translated. He stared at Martina, then leaned back in his chair and brayed with laughter.

  “The captain says, You see what I mean? These Jews, they are the clever ones.”

  She guessed that in this context, it was not a compliment. “Does the captain want anything else?”

  A quick exchange. “No, the captain says we are finished here. He says now you must go.” The long-faced man paused, glanced at his superior, then added, “He means all of you, out of AK territory. I am to escort you. However, in consideration of this… generous contribution, you will be allowed to remain here for a day, to rest. And you may choose which direction you are expelled in.”

  “That's mighty big of him. What are the choices?”

  The man looked chagrined. “Back to Czechoslovakia. Or the other direction, into the German Reich.”

  That day in the AK compound was the longest the Varianoviks had known. To Martina it felt as though they were becalmed on a flat, gray sea. Nothing moved around them except for the bored, aimless pacing of the sentries on the wall and the rare overflight of a predatory bird, coasting under the clouds in majestic desperation.

  There was to be, evidently, no mingling between the Americans and their gru
dging hosts. You might have thought ordinary human curiosity would draw them together—especially when the Yanks lit up their delicious-smelling cigarettes—but evidently the war had worked a deep change in how these Poles regarded outsiders. Or was it only how they regarded Jews? An unloved people who were supposed—weren't they?— to be dead.

  They took turns dozing through the afternoon. But by the time twilight fell, everyone came fully awake. There was a fraught, menaced feeling in the air, like a hushed woodland once the hunter has set up his blind, the night creatures committed suddenly to stealth. As if by instinct, the Varianoviks drew more closely together, close enough for a quiet murmur to suffice for all of them. Having done so, they found nothing to talk about. They sat dumbly like a family huddled around a dead radio, staring past one another at a world that grew stranger, less Earth-like, from one moment to the next.

  “What the hell are we doing this for?” Stu said suddenly.

  They all turned to look at him. He had not spoken loudly—you couldn't, with the AK men out there—yet his words rang out like a cri de coeur.

  “I mean, really.” He stared at his hands as though a moment ago he'd been holding something precious. “Why did we come all this way? What do we think we're going to accomplish, besides getting ourselves killed? All for a damn scrap of paper.”

  His eyes were full of tears—of grief and disappointment, Martina supposed. Tears for their dead comrades, for a million vanished strangers, for the doomed few who remained.

  The Varianoviks waited, as if unsure whose duty it was to answer him. The big Moe's, maybe—Pull yourself together, soldier. Or Tamara's, a gentler touch, stroke his brow and promise that it would all be better in the morning. Instead, after a silence that lasted long enough you couldn't tell whether the two events were connected or not, Harvey Grabsteen—the last person Martina wanted to hear from just now—spoke in a wistful voice.

  “I used to have this old teacher. A German, as it happens—he must've been ninety, but still he could act the clown. And he said once, Boys, there's a thing or two they don't tell you about this Creation business.”

  Oh, shut up, Martina felt like telling him. But she realized dimly that Grabsteen was speaking in his rabbinical capacity, a side of him she'd always found implausible and somewhat unseemly. At this moment, though, his grating, high-pitched voice had a certain heft.

  “This old fellow said, You know, there really were two Creations. The first one, that's when the world was made. But the second one is when the world became real.

  “You know how it starts—fi rst there's only the Word. The Word is the ain sof, the breath of God, it moves over the waters of Eternity, it calls forth Being from the depths, it's like a big cosmic burp. I'm sorry, that's how the old fellow talked—he'd have been much happier if they made him a wedding jester instead of sending him off to study in Vilna. Anyhow. But, he says, the Word alone is not enough. The Word counts for nothing, because already it holds everything within it. All possibility, all time, every makeable form, every thinkable thought, it's all in there already—so, now what? What's the point of it? It's just so much divine indigestion.

  “Here is where the second Creation comes in. Because for the Word to matter, there must be an ear to receive it. Or let's make this sound more theological: the divine generative impulse must have a ground upon which to act. What good is the Seed of the Universe if there's no womb to plant it in? Pardon me, I'm only quoting my old teacher. And so now there must appear—from where, who knows?— a receiver, a vessel of some sort—let's call it the ear—into which the ain sof can be breathed.

  “And now, boys, you've got something. God utters the Word, and the ear says, No need to shout, I can hear you! This is the first tick of time, it's the first instance in which one thing follows another.

  “From there, as you know, it gets colorful. We hear about the Garden and the two trees and the wily serpent and, let's not forget, the naked man and woman. What do you expect, God should tell a boring story? The point is, finally the world is real. It's real to the mind, real to the touch. It's something we can believe in. The Word alone couldn't do this. Even the speaking of the Word wasn't enough. What was needed was the hearing of the Word. The world became real when it became part of a story, our own story.

  “But here's a funny thing. There are parts of this story we know, and parts we don't. We know about the wily serpent, but where was the grinning chimpanzee? What do you hear from the noble stag or the long-suffering camel or the duckling with his Oedipal complex? Okay, there's the Tree of Life and the other one, with the forbidden fruit—but what about the Tree of Stout Lumber or the Tree That Drops Those Damn Seeds All Over My Lawn? You could say, Oh, those things don't matter, they play no role, they're only set dressing. What blasphemy! To think any part of God's creation is not crucial or beautiful or lacking in purpose. No, what's happened is obvious. It's that ear again. The ear has gotten hold of the Word and is shaping it, trimming it, spicing it up. Certain parts are thrown in, others are left out, others still are, let's say, a wee bit overdramatized. But you see, boys, this is the Second Creation. And this is the one that sticks. It's the tune you leave the theater humming.

  “We don't have to make a judgment about this. It's enough to say, the two things are different. Like Hamlet is different from Webster's Dictionary. Sure, God's first draft is comprehensive, it's magnificent, it's perfect. Believe me O Lord, you're the greatest, there's some terrific stuff here— love the scenery! and dandruff, how did you come up with that? But about these myriad beasts… I'm just wondering, do we really need a thousand kinds of ant? What, twenty thousand? Well, you're the boss. But as soon as God leaves the room, it's Get me rewrite.”

  Grabsteen paused. What her comrades were thinking Martina could only guess. They were listening, you could say that much—Stu perhaps most intently.

  “We have in the world today”— suddenly, a shift in tone. Crisp, officerly, several shades more grim. “In the world today, we have a man who believes himself a god. He speaks, and the nations tremble. Führer, command us, we shall obey. But such a man requires an audience, an ear to receive the dark Word. Otherwise, how can his terrible plan, his anti-Creation, be carried out? And this, for us, so far, has been a problem. Because we know this man, we know who he is, what he has commanded, what has been done in his name. Yet all of it remains in some sense unreal. Or you might say unrealized, uncomprehended. The millions of dead Jews are like those creatures you never heard about in the Book of Genesis—the nameless ants that Adam crushed under his foot. Were they really there? Maybe yes, maybe no. Who's to say, since they never made it into the final draft? And here, friends, is the importance of our mission.”

  He paused, and again the mood was different. A thunderous silence, like the moments before a storm comes crashing down from Sinai.

  “Until now, we thought none of this terrible story would ever be put in writing. No one could ever open a book and read, And the Devil said, ‘Let there be darkness.’ So the events of our lifetime—which, granted, are hard to believe—will never be fully real for those who come after us. Or so we thought until, a couple of months ago, our comrade Miss Panich received tidings of a certain document. Which, while not penned in the inky finger of Satan himself, is as close as we may ever come. ‘The Führer has ordered me—’ The key word here being ‘me.’ The Führer ordered me, not you, because I am his favorite, der treue Heinrich. Which, in turn, gives us reason to think the document is genuine, that it bears true witness. It is the dark Word, the breath of anti-Creation, made real. And it proves for all time that these were actual people, their lives every bit as real and true as their deaths.”

  He looked around as if expecting to see ghosts among his audience. “Unfortunately, until the paper is in our hands, we won't know what comes next. ‘The Führer has ordered me to wipe out the Jews.’ And then what—is there more? Obliterate their memory? Erase them from the history books? We don't know. Our man in Carpathia has not seen fit
to enlighten us. Like any storyteller, no doubt, he wants to have a hand in the editing. So let us put his name above the credits. Isaac Tadziewski presents. …If we can do that, our mission will have succeeded.”

  Martina saw now that the Varianoviks had been joined by a couple of Poles—good Catholics, probably, whose religious sensibilities might not embrace the more intemperate flights of Grabsteen's midrash. Still, they seemed no worse for it.

  “Well,” said Stu, breaking the silence. “When you put it that way…”

  Laughter. Relief.

  Nightmares to follow.

  When Bloom shook her awake an hour before sunrise, Martina was surprised how deeply she'd slept. For years she had suffered insomnia. Now all it took was a coffin-sized patch of ground and a reasonable assurance that she wouldn't be murdered in her sleep, and she was down for the count.

  Their escort consisted of half a dozen AK men. They were already assembled, anxious to depart. The brigade was given a breakfast of dark, stale, all-but-flavorless bread. Martina thought of one of the briefing papers she'd read, a summary of intelligence reports from “sources in the Polish Underground.” Her image of this Underground was based rather closely, she supposed, on Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper, living heroically in caves alongside noble peasants, blowing up bridges, wiping out whole German formations with Great War–vintage rifles and a bag of hand grenades. And Bergman, for all her wailing histrionics, with never so much as a lipstick smudge or a hair out of place.

  The briefing paper, as she recalled, had detailed Nazi euphemisms for what was happening to the Jews. Deported. Chosen for special action. Sent east. Presently employed draining swamps. And one other that now came to mind: The air has been cleansed. Meaning the smells associated with Jewry— garlic, caraway, peppery chicken broth—would no longer offend sensitive Gentile nostrils.

  She gobbled the tasteless bread anyway, as she had drunk the captain's vodka. Because she felt like it. And to hell with all of them.