Warsaw

by Richard Foreman

  17.

  Luckily, Thomas Abendroth freed himself from any duties that late afternoon so he was not particularly torn in his decision to remain waiting for Duritz outside of his building. Besides that the Corporal was naturally inclined to stay out of the heavy rain. Thomas glanced at the two bodies, mother and pre-teen daughter, strewn upon the opposite curb. A half an hour previous the pair had been dragged out from their building by a trio of drunken Ukrainian soldiers. Had they raped them or were they just about to? Such were the fraught cries of the mother and piercing screams of the child though that all the soldiers wanted to do in the end was silence them. Both were shot in the chest whilst the Corporal debated whether to intervene or not. It struck Thomas how much blood must be contained in the human body for still he saw a strong scarlet channel of rain run along the street and down into the black drain.

  Before the soldier had a chance to grow too maudlin (imbuing himself with feelings of self-loathing, contempt for others, lachrymose sadness, impotence) a sodden Adam returned to his building. He had just come from having spoken to the vendor who Kolya was supposed to have delivered to. Words were exchanged and the man was not happy, but it seemed that he wouldn't punish Kolya over the episode.

  From the moment that he laid eyes upon his friend Thomas knew that there was something wrong. Adam looked drained, as if somebody had just died. After drying himself off and silently making some weak coffee (Thomas politely declined a cup in order to preserve his friend's stores) the soldier learned of the events of the afternoon.

  "If the come, they come," Duritz shrugged, unnaturally inexpressive considering that he would wake to certain death the following morning - if indeed the diabolical policeman was not already mustering a small force to take Duritz away.

  "You can't really think that, be that indifferent to life?"

  "Why not, life has been that indifferent to me,” the philosophy student replied, a smile forming and then disappearing on his lips in a telling moment. Fear - primal to the point of seeming to be its own animal, like jealousy - could be traced in his anxious heart and tormented features. Sometimes Duritz was indeed possessed by a brooding will-to-death, or at least a Socratic irony and indifference towards his fate. Equally so though - as if indeed it might have even depended upon the weather or his diet - abstract philosophy proved too brittle a shield. He would cower before Death like a trembling child, or sinful old man. His body too - with his hands fiddling with the rim of his cup and his knee jerking up and down - betrayed the youth's frantic state of being.

  "You do know it's not safe here anymore Adam? This policeman will easily find you."

  "I know." The room filled itself with silence, like smoke. Finally Thomas spoke, his tone charged with would-be purposefulness.

  "I like to think I've helped you Adam - and that I have not just done so merely out of pity for you, or conceit. I like to think I haven't just done so either to feel good about myself, ease my conscience. Although we both could probably argue otherwise. But I've never asked you for anything before, until now. I'd like you to trust me."

  "I could not make a leap of faith for the Almighty; surely it would take a leap of faith on your part to believe I could do so for you?" Duritz replied, a thin, fractured smile lining his pale face. Nevertheless he braved looking his friend in the eye and a flicker of gratitude and hope could be discerned in his expression.

  "That we'd both miss your sarcasm is reason enough for you to trust me. So too do you really want to give that vicious cretin the satisfaction of knocking on this door and finding you?"

  "What can I do? Where can I go? I fear that, even if there are positions to fill, I wouldn't be allowed to enlist in the Wehrmacht. I'm too short," Duritz dryly, unsmilingly, remarked.

  "I know someone that might take you in," Thomas reassuringly replied, grinning in wonder at the student's mordant wit.

  Balancing the need for a speedy departure with that of trying to carry as many of Duritz's possessions as possible (books, rations, clothes, a few stolen valuables, a few pictures - one of them being a lovingly composed, but poorly executed, portrait of Anna Weil) the two men left the apartment. Welcomingly the rain abated, although a grey canopy of clouds moodily smeared the sky and darkened the ghetto - auguring a further shower. The streets were relatively empty save for the odd waif and stray but still Duritz nervously darted his head from side to side to ensure that no one was taking an interest in him. Soon the police and soldiers would be out enforcing curfew and rounding up stragglers for tomorrow's transportations. The only slight suspicion that the pair could have aroused was due to the fact that a German appeared to be carrying a Jew's possessions. Usually the nearest zhids were requisitioned for such duties. Not wishing to take too much of an interest in this fact though, for fear of joining the Jewish youth who looked to be being marched to his death, most people kept out of the way of the soldier and his prisoner.

  Thomas was confident that Jessica would be kind enough to take Adam in - especially when he would explain that it would only be for a night or two. Still he was keen to rehearse his arguments over in his head before he confronted her with the proposition. He would reveal Adam as the long-suffering but good-hearted friend who he visited in the ghetto, how the authorities were after him because Adam had saved a boy from being beaten to death by a policeman - that he had nowhere else to go, that he would consider it a favour and would be in Jessica's debt. But that he would understand also if she didn't want to take him in.

  Duritz was preoccupied with his thoughts as he trudged behind Thomas through the cancerous architecture of the ghetto. The fetor of a collapsed rugby scrum of corpses and a couple of gun shots hammering out on the other side of a tenement building distracted him not.

  The air was swamped with damp. Cold blobs of rain began to fall. For a second or two Duritz believed that Thomas was merely taking shelter from the oncoming storm in the building's doorway but then he realised that they had reached their destination. Dread and something else, peculiar, churned over in his innards and strangled any ability to speak. Like a trap door opening upon a set of gallows the rain suddenly, dramatically, crashed down. The boisterous rain slapped down upon the street to create a metallic sound.

  With Adam being already distraught looking Thomas noticed not the distress in Duritz's face as they ascended the rickety stairs. Such were the dizzying thoughts scrambling around like a hamster on a wheel inside his head that the memory eluded Duritz of the Rubenstein's exact floor and apartment - yet he strangely, sublimely, felt himself being led there, like a hand drawn to the flame.

  "It's just at the top of these stairs," Thomas unassumingly remarked. Even the athletic Corporal betrayed a certain breathlessness and relief in his voice that they had reached their destination. Carrying only slightly less than the German, but yet several stone lighter than the soldier, Duritz understandably appeared exhausted. But for different reasons the sallow Jew looked like death warmed up.

  Three quick knocks in succession was the signal which meant that it was Thomas at the door. As special as those three glorious raps upon the damp wood were they had become far from rare of late with Thomas even visiting Jessica twice in one day over the last week or so - yet the sound could still occasionally alter and animate the girl's mood to some degree. The shiny blackness of the storm outside served to magnify and highlight Jessica's reflection as she briefly checked how she looked in the room’s sole window pane. She would be grateful for the company and distraction, having suffered the duress of seeing Kolya come home this afternoon. He had explained how he had been robbed by a policeman - and then been saved by a stranger coming along. But then, after refusing to be fussed over by an overly mothering sister, Kolya had gone to bed.

  "I'll get it," Jessica hastily said as Kolya motioned to answer the door, coming out behind the curtain from their parent's old bedroom.

  In the interim between Thomas knocking and Jessica coming to the door a supernatural chill possessed Duritz to the point of
making him shiver. Part of him just wanted to bolt - should he never even see Thomas again, no matter. His hands and brow were dripping with sweat and all the blood in his body seemed to flood his organs to leave him with a febrile, waxy complexion. His mouth was dry as sand-paper and, for the life of him, he could not swallow. During this time he also made sure to shuffle away from the doorway, thus making sure that whoever answered - and Duritz still held out a slither of hope that it wasn't Jessica's apartment or floor - would not see him at the instant of unlocking the door.

  Was it the fact of her still being hauntingly beautiful for him, or was Duritz frozen to the spot for a different reason? Sheepish, he bowed his head and awaited his judgement as - at first having only eyes for the soldier as she opened the warped door - Jessica coldly recognised the ex-policeman.

  "Jessica, sorry to disturb you, but I have a favour to ask," Thomas opened with and smiled, hesitantly. "A friend of mine is in trouble - the one I've spoken to you about before."

  Jessica appeared to be vaguely listening but, instead of looking at Thomas as he spoke, she glared over the soldier's shoulder at his companion. Absorbed in his own rhetoric and desire to convince Jessica to take Adam in Thomas mistook the blunt expression on her face for general shock and suspicion at the stranger at her door.

  "I promise you, it will only be for a day or so until I sort something out. Adam attacked a policeman who was robbing and beating a boy."

  At this point Duritz finally met Jessica's adamantine gaze, glower. His features were drawn, bloodless. If it had been anyone else but the policeman Jessica might have felt pity for the courageous Jew. But her heart remained untouched by his plight, or his apparent decent act. Jessica barely registered what the German was saying. It was what he had done in the past, to her, rather than what he had become now - to someone else - that mattered. Her lips and smooth jaw were jammed together for fear that if they parted the truth would damn them all. Hate mixed with bewilderment, that Thomas could be friends with the wicked collaborator and not know what he was like. And had he said anything to Thomas? Coincidence overpowered Jessica and left her temporarily paralysed.

  Kolya rightly suspected that it was the German at the door for he had worked out their ridiculously simple coded knock. Although he was begrudgingly grateful for the soldier's help over the past month or so - for the food he bought and work placements he arranged - Kolya was far from wholly trusting of the over friendly German. He sometimes felt the soldier was either leading Jessica on - promising her false hope - or he had an ulterior motive of taking advantage of his sister. His charity could and would only do so much for them. And ultimately he was one of them.

  Kolya had initially positioned himself behind the open door and out of sight of the soldier during his conversation with his sister but upon hearing the story of the Jew's run-in with the policeman his heart momentarily raced and he couldn't help but skirt around the other side of Jessica to see if it was indeed Adam. It was. The boy's sense of coincidence was nearly as strong as his sister's, albeit dramatically different in shade and temper. He swiftly embraced the twist of fate.

  "Adam, it's me."

  Tangled up in the webbing of seeing Jessica again - and second-guessing the outcomes of the encounter - Duritz had forgotten about Kolya. He smiled at the boy, seeing the unaffected delight on his youthful face at encountering him again. A couple of hours had but passed since their encounter, but it had felt like days to Duritz. Kolya however had hardly let five minutes pass without him thinking upon the ex-policeman and their meeting that day.

  "This is the man who saved me and taught Yitzhak Meisel a lesson today Jess. He broke his nose with one punch," the teenager exclaimed with relish. Later that evening he would even replay the brief bout by punching the air - and then play a defeated Yitzhak Meisel staggering backwards and clutching his nose, sobbing like a baby.

  Perplexity and sternness knitted Jessica's once adolescent brow. Thoughts were ungovernable. A potent feeling of powerlessness undercut the stringency of the girl's smouldering nerves and will to truth, justice. Like Duritz she was unable to bring herself to speak, but for different reasons. The pregnant silence desisted however as the icy wind outside billowed and a gust of hail shattered against the window as if a vandal were throwing stone’s up at the glass.

  "I would not ask if I wasn't desperate. He has nowhere else to go this evening. I can vouch for Adam, as can Kolya here it seems," Thomas said, taken back too by the harshness of the storm (though he was not unaware that it could help his suit). The Corporal's brow too was furrowed, but sweetly and imploringly. Could he not see the trauma etched into her face though?

  Jessica shivered. Tears welled in her reddened eyes. She bit her bottom lip as if she were pinching herself, dreaming. Before Jessica could respond Kolya, assertive, practical, answered for his sister.

  "He's all right Jess. He hates the police now as much as you or me. Are these all books?" the boy said with anticipation, walking around his sister and picking up a sack containing the remnants of Duritz's library. For both his decisive part in inviting Duritz into their lives - and the fond way in which the boy took to her tormentor - Jessica would snap at Kolya and take things out on the boy over the next few days.

  As tightly as the cloth sack was bound with string Kolya impetuously broke into it in seconds and ferreted around in the large bag - catching and reading the titles on the spines, which were in various languages.

  "Are you sure it's okay?" Thomas remarked.

  "As, as long it's just for the night," Jessica replied, surrendering. Compelled. Condemned.

  "Thank you," the soldier replied, his grateful smile thawing some of the tension in her features.

  "Will you read to us later?" the teenager excitedly said. Kolya had not read, nor been read to, since his father had been transported.

  "Only if your sister permits it." Not only was this the first time that Duritz had spoken since entering the apartment block, but so too he had dared to address Jessica as if it were their first meeting, acting so formally and fraudulently as though nothing had ever passed between them. Nostrils flared - the girl darted the Duritz a frosty look. Fortunately, busying himself with moving Adam's possessions into the flat, Thomas missed the fleeting, revealing exchange. Kolya too was keen to move his new surrogate older brother into the apartment. Picking up his last bag, carrying what meagre rations he had left (which Adam later gave to Kolya to give to his sister), Duritz squeezed past Jessica - who was still half-blocking the doorway, half-mortified. He tried to smile at her, tentatively, innocently, as if to express that he was guiltless of the coincidence. Duritz genuinely, lamely desired to reduce the fear and anxiety he felt the girl must've been experiencing. It pained him.

  Without a word said, after that all the party were inside, Jessica retreated into her parent's room. She wanted and didn't want Thomas to follow her. He noted her mood but would later put it down to a mixture of awkwardness and exhaustion. At around the same time that evening Jessica would be interrogating herself and fate: What have I done to deserve this? Have I been so wicked? - the girl would ask God, whilst also refuting his existence.

  Thomas apologised for Jessica's behaviour to Duritz. Adam replied however that he could understand her reticence about letting a stranger into her household; he also echoed his friend's sentiments in that Miss Rubenstein looked tired. Kolya boiled some water and made coffee for his guest, using what little sugar they had left. He said that he could have his sister's place and bedding, for she could now sleep in their parent's old room. Feeling a little awkward, that he had made the imposition but now had to abruptly abandon Duritz to the care of others, Thomas explained that he had to get back to his billet. He had already neglected his duties this evening. Although he wished not to disturb Jessica, Thomas still dared to hesitantly put his head around the curtain to check upon her. Awake, with her head buried in - and wrapped around - a pillow Thomas mistook the girl for being asleep and duly left her.

  Sh
ortly after Thomas took his leave however Jessica finally managed to drift into a palliative slumber. But an hour or so later she was woken by the sound of unaffected laughter emanating from Kolya. Vexed and frustrated at who he was laughing so gaily with - as well as from the fact of him waking her up at such a late hour - Jessica rose. Emboldened by her resentment Jessica entered the dimly lit room, directing a black castigating look at a stunned Duritz who noticed her first. Sitting cross-legged upon the floor a large book - the collected works of Shakespeare - lay open upon his lap. Kolya sat upon a small stool opposite him, his back towards the doorway where Jessica appeared.

  "That's enough now Kolya. It's late. Unlike Mister Duritz you have to be up early in the morning. Although I'm sure he would like to be fresh tomorrow as well, seeing as how he will need to find a place to stay.” Maternal in tone to Kolya, Jessica as quick as a flash relished sourly smiling at Duritz as she addressed him and reminded the fugitive of his fate. She also relished the hurt upon the Adam’s face that the barb seemed to cause. Kolya was not pleased. Seeing the proud boy's eyes begin to harden, and sensing that the teenager might defy his sister for either patronising and embarrassing him in front of his friend Duritz attempted to defuse the situation and atmosphere. It was his greatest wish not to cause trouble.