The calm after the storm. Thomas wearily surveyed the haunted avenue - not quite believing what had come to pass over the last hour. So much had changed. Events had overtaken him. He shivered and felt faint. Feint. Although it was only a flesh wound he had lost a considerable amount of blood, much of which saturated his right trouser leg. The lonely looking soldier removed his belt and improvised a tourniquet. Using his empty rifle as a makeshift crutch Thomas limped back to his billet, waving off concern and questions from the soldiers who he encountered along the way.
When Thomas eventually returned to his unit he quietly woke Oscar Hummel. He spoke to his loyal Private for around half an hour, after which he entrusted a large collection of papers to his friend. Most of the papers consisted of the writings that Adam Duritz had given to him for safekeeping, but the last sheet the Corporal handed over was a letter from Thomas addressed to his wife. He informed his confidant that he had committed a crime and that he would soon be arrested.
Despite Thomas' protestations about there being "no need" Oscar Hummel insisted upon bandaging his friend's leg before he left him. Too tired to argue he acceded to his friend's kind offer. Oscar also tried to badger his Corporal into seeing the medic but Thomas replied that he would do so in the morning. He just wanted to sleep. Shortly afterwards Oscar reluctantly left his Corporal. He was scared for his friend. There was an unnerving detached manner to his speech and looks. Knowing it to be against his friend's wishes the Private still decided to send for a medic. In the interim though Thomas drank a couple of large measures of brandy from a bottle that he kept for special occasions and, with an expression of unnatural torment upon his face, he shot himself in the head. He strangely blew out the candle in the room beforehand, as though Thomas could have only committed the act in the dark.
The wound in his arm had barely begun to heal before Duritz involved himself in the resistance. At first he was recruited into the intelligence arm of the underground group (which soon after merged itself with the larger ZOB - Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa. The Jewish Fighting Force). Duritz helped target certain Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto who were wealthy and able to make a donation, voluntarily or not, to the group. Working in the reconnaissance and expropriation arm for the resistance also allowed Adam to keep an eye on Kolya. The youth was recruited by Michal as a "sniffer". One day, within the first week of Adam and Kolya joining the youthful band, Michal took his new recruits on an expropriation raid. They all broke into the apartment of a member of the Jewish Council. Whilst Michal held the elderly man and his daughter at gunpoint Adam and Kolya searched the flat for valuables. Just when it appeared that the man had little wealth to give Kolya was suddenly struck by an idea and searched the candle which was burning on the dining table. Embedded in the wax Kolya found half a dozen diamonds. From that day onwards Michal considered the boy lucky and took Kolya with him on all of his missions.
One evening, shortly after this event, Duritz took Kolya to one side. He told him how much he had loved his sister. How he had once wronged her - and how he could never wholly forgive himself. But that Jessica had eventually forgiven him - and told him that she loved him. Adam also confessed to the boy how he had promised his sister before she died that he would take care of him. Duritz however asked Kolya if he could be relieved of this duty. He would be better off sticking to Michal; Michal would do the right thing by Kolya and see him through the war. Adam could not reveal that it was difficult to be around the boy as Kolya reminded him too much of Jessica.
Soon after Duritz became a sniper for the ZOB. He worked alone, volunteering to take on dangerous missions. A funereal Adam kept himself to himself; he was a man possessed. In his own words all he did was "eat, sleep and kill Germans". Shortly before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943 Duritz was in a ZOB hideout with a handful of other members of the resistance. The safe house had been compromised however and the basement sanctuary of the building was attacked by a unit of SS soldiers. It all happened very fast. The ZOB sentry posted on the entrance to the basement was killed immediately. Duritz ordered the five remaining members of the cell to retreat. Whilst Duritz fired up the stairs at the soldiers the five other people in the room attempted to shift the stove in the corner, which concealed an escape route out of the basement. Just when the iron stove had finally been shifted enough though for the resistance fighters to make their exit an ominous sound bounced upon the staircase. A grenade entered the room. There was a moment's pause. Witnesses testified to there being a strange smile upon Duritz's face as he dived upon the missile, allowing for the rest of the group in the room to escape.
During and after the Uprising Kolya Rubenstein did indeed stick to Michal Grajek. They escaped through the sewers when the Germans finally took back the ghetto. They subsequently lived out the rest of the war hidden by a Polish friend of Michal's in a barn in the countryside. After the war, after his attempts to locate his parents, Kolya Rubenstein studied to become a schoolteacher. He passed away - a parent and grandfather - at the age of seventy-five.
End note.
Firstly, I would like to thank Matthew Lynn and everyone at Endeavour Press for publishing this book. I started writing Warsaw whilst working in a bookshop, many years ago. The following people provided encouragement and support whilst I worked as a bookseller and tried to be a budding writer all those years ago: Patrick Bishop, Saul David, Henry Porter and Andrew Roberts. I would also like to thank Annabel Merullo for her encouragement and advice once I had finished writing a half decent draft of the manuscript.
I set out to write Warsaw as nineteenth century novel set during WWII. If I have succeeded in my brief then thanks should go to the likes of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov for furnishing me with a certain amount of inspiration and direction. In regards to furnishing me with information, I can recommend the following books as further reading. Ordinary Men, by Christopher Browning. The Third Reich, by Michael Burleigh. The Holocaust, by Martin Gilbert. Part of the purpose of a book should be to interest the reader enough to make him/her want to read another book. I hope that Warsaw has been able to achieve this small goal. To quote Aldous Huxley, “The proper study of mankind is books.”
As well researched as some of Warsaw may be please also recognise that it is a work of fiction and there will be some, both deliberate and unwitting, errors in historical accuracy.
This book meant a lot to me throughout my time writing it. It still means a lot to me now, for both artistic and personal reasons. Should you have enjoyed Warsaw (although I’m not sure that enjoyed is altogether the right word) and wish to get in touch then I would like to hear from you. I can be reached via [email protected]
Richard Foreman.
If you enjoyed this book, try A Hero of Our Time by Richard Foreman, also published by Endeavour Press.
Chapter One
Captain Robert Fischer sat with his back to the window of course so that the afternoon sun shone with spite into the eyes of all his appointments. The jaundiced beams, like metal scraping upon glass, screeched into the listless aspect presently of one Jakob Levin. A bovine, ursine-faced Wehrmacht Private was also present in the musty room. The guard was ornamental, but yet also deemed essential.
"You are Jakob Levin, or rather 1556321?" the officer issued, following his statement up with a weary sigh which seemed part affected, part sincere.
"Yes Herr Captain."
"You were a teacher I see?" the handsome officer then lazily inquired, as if already bored by the interview.
"I am a teacher, yes Herr Captain," Jakob replied, nodding his head and squinting in the light of the mustard sun.
"You were a teacher. Now you are, unfortunately, mine," Fischer exclaimed, raising his eyebrows and pursing his pink lips as he did so. If the directive, worded as a request, had come down from anyone less senior in rank then Robert might have fought or bribed his way out of the burden of nurse-maiding the prisoner. It was an inconvenience to say the least for the bachelor, who valued both his priv
acy and life of leisure. But the Wehrmacht officer had acceded to the order.
"Yes Herr Captain, I was an English Professor," Jakob calmly stated whilst vigorously fighting off the compulsion to scratch his lice-infested scalp.
Although an English tutor and translator of David Hume, Jakob Levin had learned to relegate the importance of quibbling over semantics, especially if winning the argument meant receiving a rifle-butt in between the shoulder blades by an ignorant Nazi (if ignorance is malevolence, as well as bliss). Jakob often remembered, with mixed feelings as to the value of their teachings, how the Rabbis and Elders would drill into their flock in the camp that 'All that matters is survival, neither dwell on the past or dream about the future. Concentrate on surviving the morning, then the afternoon, then the night.' Rebellion or resignation brought one the same fate, Jakob concluded.
"But as misfortunate as you are Jakob, some might judge you lucky. As inferior as you are our glorious state still considers you to be an essential worker," the Captain remarked, his tone laced with a harlequined irony – as well as a more obtuse mocking spirit. When the officer pronounced these last two words, he couldn't help but survey the reaction upon the old man's face. Robert Fischer was surprised at its lack of response. How it had made the German half-smile in the past when they had responded to him as if he were an angel, the voice of an angel, when he had delivered those words, particularly of late. But this Jakob Levin had reacted with indifference, perhaps too much indifference. Robert did not doubt the stories of veterans on the Front suffering from a warped form of shell shock, oblivious to the tumult of bullets scorching and zipping around their ears. Could this sallow-faced Jew here be similarly desensitised to despair and hope? Certainly, in theory, the once philosophical German held his life as but a word.
"Should you have had a conversation with any friends or family, or your wife, just previous to your transfer here then it was, unfortunately, your last."
Still the former lauded academic remained stone-faced. But he was Jewish, 'too furtive to be dumb' the propaganda asserted. The prisoner was receptive, if inexpressive.
"There is but one more grief-filled existence to that of being a widow Jakob – that of being a widow who still believes she could be a wife," the officer intoned, privately impressed with the swiftness and originality of the cruel remark.
Jakob retained his squinting, almost gormless, composure to the Captain's slight interest and annoyance. The fish did not appear to be biting. But it was only a matter of time, or method, before Robert would pull out the right lure from his box. It was a game to the Captain to uncover and then squeeze someone's weak spot. Even Achilles had his heel, Robert posed to himself, whilst at the same time believing in his own invulnerability.
"If you haven't already been told, you are to remain now in this house, albeit in my basement. There you will work, eat and sleep. I have been instructed from on high to employ you as a translator. I am to be sent various works of English Literature, mainly poetry I gather, and you are to translate them in to German."
Robert wondered if this brittle, gummy remnant of a man, still dressed in his threadbare camp uniform, also knew of the project by the Ministry Of Propaganda entitled 'Death of the Author', to Germanise Europe's finest works of literature and art? Robert was intrigued because he too had shown a similar outward resignation to the crime that the Jew here exemplified. When asked some weeks ago as to how Robert knew he had gold in his soul, the officer had dryly replied, "Because gold my dear, does not react to anything."
Rhythmically and nonchalantly, as if reciting a shopping list, the Captain further informed the prisoner of his brief.
"If you refuse to do what has been requested of you, you will be shot. If your work proves unsatisfactory you will be shot. And (and here Robert looked straight into, almost behind, his appointment's aspect) if you bore me you will be shot."
Jakob raised a black, wiry eyebrow. The absurdism, horror and aphasia of the grotesque times outside were compounded by a statement at which the ageing Jew did not know whether to smile or be sick from. If Jakob could have perhaps seen the playful glint in the Captain's expression through the abrasive light, then he might have shared a wry smile.
"Do you understand Jakob? Then congratulations, you have got the job. Do you have any questions? If you want to know whether you can see your wife or not, you can't. Besides, absence makes the heart grow fonder does it not? And if you want to know when you start then I can tell you. There's no time like the present. Christian, would you please escort our guest to his quarters," the officer remarked, as if suddenly wanting to be rid of his charge.
"Yes sir. Heil Hitler!" the rough-voiced Private ejaculated whilst saluting. As he did so Jakob could not fail to notice how the soldier owned a stump, where his right hand should have been. His rifle was ornamental also.
"Yes, quite," Robert Fischer glibly replied, not even bothering to look up at the guard as he prodded the Jew out of the door with the barrel of his unloaded Karabiner Kar 98K.
Pinkish-grey clouds smeared themselves across the sky outside. Robert Fischer felt a slight draught, rather than the massaging rays of the sun, upon the back of his neck. More than one commentator had called the thirty-five year old 'devilishly handsome'. His cropped hair was light-brown, though it would grow fairer, like a child's, in the summer months. Robert was just short of six foot, broad shouldered and strong-jawed. His blue eyes could at once prove striking, but then prove unreadable but they were always engaging. The officer's sun-kissed complexion had harvested the good life and his mouth could express either a sensuousness or sarcasm at the curl of a lip, depending on what mood possessed the changeable Captain, or rather which mood Robert chose to possess. Such were his piratical good looks that Robert Fischer could have been one of the town's most famous, or infamous, womanisers even without the added attraction of his princely personal fortune.
Yet the officer's body of late had increasingly become a temple in ruins. His face was still symmetrical, but had grown a little rounder, plumper. He was a thirty-five year old who suffered from shortness of breath and but for the skill of his tailor Robert would have had a more pronounced stomach for all the world to see. His hair too this summer would recede as well as grow fair. But the retiring officer had no need to be fit for military duty. He was but a Captain in name who had purchased a promotion to Superfluous Man. Bribes and favours cemented his privileged position and freedom from active duties. Often he fancied that he could be a real officer, whatever that meant, fighting at the Front; he might have wished it now as he drew the curtains on another withering day and poured himself a large Napoleon brandy. But yet the mock-officer would have whisked his self off to battle not out of a love for his country, which he loved but scarcely recognised nowadays, but for the simple reason that it would be just something to do. Robert Wilhelm Fischer was a coward only in the respect of him not being a hero.
Brandy after brandy was absorbed until oblivion hung over the horizon like the setting sun. It was an hour or so before the party. Nobody expected him to be sober for the occasion so the least Robert could do was be accommodating and live up to his social circle's predictable expectations. Strauss waltzed in the background upon a gramophone as Robert killed time by carving sketches of faces and trees into his already scarred desk with his letter knife. I say his knife, but the initials "A.S" were engraved into the silver handle. The knife belonged in truth to a Doctor Abraham Solomon. Robert had converted his surgery into a reposeful study when he had acquired the house a couple of years ago. Was he nothing but a common thief? Robert gently rubbed the initials under his thumb and told himself that all he felt was an engraved piece of silver; to feel anything else involved too much idle, discomforting conceit for the officer. It represented nothing.
"Am I to cut myself with this knife and wash the guilt from my hands in blood like some melodramatic twit? Or am I to use this letter opener to open some letters?" the officer drunkenly, drolly posed. Robert briefly, wryly
half-smiled to himself also as he opened some mail. There was a letter from his young cousin on the Eastern Front. Unable to get past the first paragraph, without experiencing either a slight awkwardness or an enervating torpor, Robert tossed the correspondence aside and drained the remaining warming elixir from the bottle.
"Ah, Napoleon Brandy. One of the few things French, along with Balzac and their natural inferiority towards us of course, that I can tolerate. I wonder if in fifty years time there will be such a tonic as Hitlerian Brandy? I warrant it would be dark, dense, with a bitter and strangely fruity taste. The plebs would doubtless drink them selves stupid with it also. Drown them selves. Did you even invade Russia on the same day as the Corsican? Did History not tell you something? History tells us that history repeats itself. Now for that remark Robert you should reproach yourself. I do believe that statement had the air of a conclusion. "I hold the world as but the world, a stage where every man must play a part, and mine is a sad one" the half-soused officer muttered to himself, chuckling a little after he did so – but sorrowful.
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