Nocturne

by Diane Armstrong

  As soon as night fell, and the Germans had left the Ghetto, Elzunia picked up a torch and crept outside. The sky was the colour of bruised strawberries and the street was eerily lit by flames that leapt up and crackled all around her. She darted into a doorway, stumbled along the passageway that had been tunnelled out to connect the bunkers, and felt her way in the dark until she reached her mother’s bunker. Something was jammed against the entrance and she couldn’t get inside. She called out softly but there was no reply. Picking up a beam of fallen timber, she pushed with all her might until the door gave way and she fell inside.

  She shone her torch around the bunker and her knees gave way. When she looked down, she saw she was standing in a pool of thickening blood and the floor was covered with bodies and parts of arms and legs. Grenades. She heard herself moaning as she ran frantically around the bunker, looking at the faces. In the far corner she found her mother, curled up as though asleep. Elzunia almost sobbed with relief. Thank God, she was only sleeping. She tapped her shoulder. ‘Mama! Wake up! We’ve got to get out of here.’ She tugged her arm, surprised at how heavy it was. Then she shook her, harder this time. ‘Get up, Mama!’ she heard herself shouting. She tried to raise her up but collapsed on the floor, panting. ‘Mama! You have to get up! Get up!’ Her panic-stricken voice made her scalp prickle. Exhausted, she sank to the floor and her sobbing filled the bunker and echoed against the walls. She held her mother’s stiff hand and kissed her dead face. Cradling her mother’s thin body in her arms, Elzunia thought about the happy days that would never come again, and the life that they would never share. Time had run out. The misunderstandings and conflicts would never be resolved, and the future would not bring her mother peace nor restore her husband. And Elzunia would never have the chance to live up to her mother’s expectations, or get to really know her. She looked at her mother’s stiffening face and saw a stranger. Forcing herself to remember the woman she had once been, Elzunia saw her sitting erect at the piano, filling their apartment with music that they had all thought would go on forever, and she cried for her mother, for herself, and for all the wasted lives and missed opportunities. Her hand brushed against something hard and, through her tears, she saw that it was her mother’s amber brooch. Tenderly she unpinned it and placed it deep into the pocket of her skirt.

  She didn’t know how long she had sat without moving, cradling her mother while tears flowed down her face, but suddenly she leapt to her feet. Gittel! Where was Gittel? Swallowing hard, she forced herself to walk very slowly among the bodies strewn all over the bunker, but there was no sign of the little girl. What could have happened to her? Was she hiding somewhere? Had she run away? Had someone smuggled her out of the Ghetto at the last moment? She had to believe that Gittel was still alive. It was the only thing she had left to cling on to.

  The sun had already risen in the red sky and the light had begun to dawn when she returned to her bunker. As she made her way to her corner, she avoided her comrades’ eyes, and they didn’t comment on her swollen eyes and frozen expression. She didn’t stir when they heard the rumble of tanks outside. Their weapons were almost used up and there was nothing to hope for except a quick end. Suddenly, Edek rushed out and planted himself in front of a tank. Elzunia rose and saw a Lilliputian with nothing but a grenade in his hand confronting a giant. She closed her eyes.

  ‘Throw it, for God’s sake. Throw it, before they see you,’ she whispered over and over. ‘Oh God, why doesn’t he throw it?’ But the pin was stuck and he couldn’t release it. ‘This can’t happen, I can’t let this happen.’ The words were still echoing in her head as she inched out of the bunker and flattened herself against the wall. As though in a dream, she hurled her grenade at the tank with more force than she thought she had. It lurched and exploded.

  ‘Run, Edek, quick, run!’ she shouted. He turned and she saw his cheeky grin but at that instant a shot rang out and Edek fell, clutching his leg. The second tank moved forward. Biting her hand until it bled, Elzunia watched in horror as it rolled over her friend’s body.

  She was slumped against the wall in the corner of the bunker, her face in her hands. Their miracle was over and the end was coming. She’d never get out of there alive and she no longer cared. What was the point of staying alive when the best and noblest souls had died? She thought of her mother, of Lech and Edek, of Itzak and Rahela, and those brave young insurgents, all killed. She paced up and down the bunker, sobbing, muttering to herself, and wondering whether she was losing her mind. How much grief and loss could one person endure? Dying would be much easier than staying alive when everyone you loved was gone. She was seventeen but she had lived through a thousand years of stress and sorrow.

  Overhead, she could hear salvos of gunfire and closed her eyes. Soon it would all be over. Then she heard Madame Ramona’s voice saying, ‘You will have three lives.’ In her first life, she’d been a Catholic girl living an indulged existence with a father she hero-worshipped. In the second, she had become a Jewish activist, fighting for her life in the Ghetto. Maybe the clairvoyant was right and she’d have a third incarnation. Curiosity overcame despair. What would her third life hold?

  Somehow she had to find a way out because the heat in the bunker was scorching and sucked up all the air. She tried to remember the network of passageways and tunnels that ran underneath the buildings, but most of the bunkers had been burnt out and the passageways linking them had collapsed. Only a few minutes earlier, she’d been prepared to give up but now she felt a spirit of defiance stirring. She hadn’t gone through so much to surrender now. If she did, who would be left to tell what had happened here? Who would keep the memory of her mother, Lech, Edek, and all the others alive? If she died, they’d all die with her. Perhaps that was why she had been spared when so many had perished. To describe the indescribable. And what about Gittel? Perhaps she was hiding somewhere, waiting for Elzunia to find her. She had to search for her.

  Inside the dark passageway, she gritted her teeth, pushed her hair inside her scout’s cap and tucked her skirt into her underpants. Her heart in her mouth, she inched along, holding her hands in front of her to feel for any obstacles. At times she crawled on her hands and knees over craters left by exploded shells and across piles of broken masonry and charred bricks. From the scorching heat, she knew that the buildings above her were ablaze and could collapse on top of her at any moment.

  Occasionally a piece of burning timber would crash in front of her and she would leap out of the way just in time. Sometimes she felt something soft underfoot and gagged when she saw she was treading on dead bodies. She whispered an apology. Sometimes she heard skittering underfoot and a rat’s smooth fur brushed against her legs.

  As she rested in the dark passage, too exhausted to move, she became aware that she was leaning against something that was too soft to be stone or masonry. She turned and ran her hands along its length. At the end of the soft surface, she came to something that felt like polished wood. She climbed on top of it and felt something that resembled a couch. Either she was hallucinating or these were pieces of furniture.

  As she groped around in the dark, she wondered whether she’d come to the secret entrance on the Aryan side of town, through which she had led the airman into the Ghetto. She started heaving and pushing the old sofa, tables and cupboards away from the entrance, until a chink of light speared the darkness, making her blink. From here, it was impossible to see what was going on above street level or who was lurking in the shadows or patrolling the block, waiting to catch the Jews who’d escaped the flames. She waited, her ear pressed to the roof of the passageway and shrank back each time she felt the vibration of passing trucks or heard footsteps and snatches of conversation.

  When she could no longer hear anything, she climbed onto the table, and reached up. She could feel something hard, and pushed it with all her strength. It was an iron grille covered with leaves and branches, and after a few attempts she managed to raise it. She hoisted herself up with hands th
at shook so much she could hardly support herself. Her heart drumming in her ears, she scrambled to her feet and looked around to make sure no one had seen her. With her blackened face, tangled hair and blistered hands, it would be easy to tell that she had emerged from the inferno on the other side of the wall.

  The bright spring day was drawing to a close and the curfew hour was approaching. Elzunia stood up, straightened her skirt, and tried to brush off the dirt and cinders that clung to her. In the murky half-light, the sky glowed a fierce red from the flames that burned a short distance away. The Ghetto had held out for almost six weeks but all that was left of it now was rubble and ashes. She murmured a few Hail Marys and some half-remembered snippets of the Kaddish prayer, took one last look at the dying Ghetto, and hurried away in the shadows as smoke billowed over the silent city.

  Part II

  Twenty-Nine

  The gaunt man muttering to himself as he strode along the streets of London, revisiting an internal scenario invisible to others, aroused sympathetic glances from passersby. They took him for one of the unfortunate souls unhinged by the Blitz, who bolted for the shelters jabbering that Hitler was coming whenever they heard the wail of a siren or saw planes darkening the sky.

  There were so many ways that war could reshape the landscape of your mind, Adam Czartoryski thought as he rushed on, looking neither right nor left. As a student in London many years ago, he had delighted in its regal buildings and imposing monuments, but now they were merely a blur against the scenes inside his restless mind. He walked along the Thames Embankment, enveloped by the chilly mist that rose from the river, which he considered the dullest waterway in Europe. He was already on the other side of Westminster Bridge before he’d even realised he’d crossed it.

  ‘Cor, you want to watch where you’re goin’, guv,’ the cockney hawker shouted, as Adam walked into his barrow and sent potatoes and carrots tumbling to the ground.

  Ever since he’d read in The Express the previous morning that an uprising had broken out in the Warsaw Ghetto, he’d been consumed by visions of carnage and destruction, of doomed fighters crushed by tanks and blood streaming down the streets that had haunted him since his visit six months earlier.

  He thought about the feisty girl with the elfin face who had guided him around the Ghetto. He wondered whether she was fighting with the insurgents. They didn’t have a hope. They were inexperienced street fighters, armed only with defiance and homemade weapons, against tanks, artillery, and an army determined to wipe them off the face of the earth. And yet they’d found the strength to confront the Nazis.

  They’ve shown us the way, he mused. For years we’ve talked about honour and resistance, but they’ve actually done it. His thoughts returned to Elzunia. Their paths had crossed twice and each time one of them had saved the other’s life. He didn’t believe in fate — that was a simple person’s way of interpreting life with the benefit of hindsight. But he couldn’t find any rational explanation for these coincidences.

  There was something appealing about the girl, and, at a different time and in a different world, he would have liked to spend time with her and show her that there was more to life than violence and persecution. He saw himself as her mentor, teaching her about the ways of the world, escorting her to balls and theatres, and watching her blossom into a woman.

  As he turned the corner, the Gothic towers and spires of the Houses of Parliament came into view and his fury was rekindled. Ensconced in this bastion of democracy, English politicians planned their strategy and issued their orders, impervious to the suffering of the country that had been their first and staunchest ally. As an idealistic young diplomat, he’d had visions of making the world a better place, but the cynicism of realpolitik made him want to vomit.

  It was a cheerless April morning, and he hunched his shoulders against the rain and turned up his collar against the penetrating chill. The weather had been like this ever since he’d arrived four months before, and its greyness reflected his state of mind as he knocked on one office door after another, repeating the same story to people who tried to conceal their incredulity behind a screen of politeness.

  Of the members of the Polish government-in-exile he had already briefed about the situation in Poland, he’d been most impressed by the Commander-in-Chief, Wladyslaw Sikorski, whose vision for Europe included the formation of a United Nations organisation to thwart and counterbalance the ambitions of power-hungry dictators. When the time was right, he told Adam, the Home Army would rise up against the invaders and liberate Poland. Adam left his office hoping that one day this statesman would become the head of a democratic Poland.

  After meeting the Polish representatives, Adam started doing the rounds of English ministers, secretaries and undersecretaries, whose doors, like their ears, were reluctant to open to him. He was consumed by his mission to convey the situation in Poland, and in particular to give them an eyewitness account of the Warsaw Ghetto so that they’d realise they had to act fast to save the remaining Jews. They were unfailingly courteous and attentive but the almost imperceptible change of light in their eyes signalled disbelief, and the way they averted their gaze while making avowals of support indicated that his mission had little chance of succeeding.

  From his student days, he knew that for the English there was a clear distinction between making a diplomatic request and being persistent. By raising his voice and insisting that it was inhumane for the British to stand by and watch while millions of civilians were being butchered in an Allied country, he feared he’d overstepped that line.

  He was mulling over the insuperable national differences in communication as he headed to Whitehall for his next appointment. The light was fading and although it was only mid-afternoon it already seemed like evening. It began to drizzle and soon he was coated with a layer of chilly dampness. Inside the draughty building, Adam shivered as he waited to be ushered into the office of a minister who had finally found the time to grant him an interview.

  The rain had stopped and the light slanting through the window high on the wall cast a gleam on Sir Ewart Lynn’s silver hair. As he motioned for Adam to sit on a straight-backed wooden chair facing him, Sir Ewart continued to suck on a pipe that had discoloured the edge of his neatly clipped moustache. Looking at the impeccably tailored suit with a waistcoat and a tie as understated as his Cambridge manner, Adam thought that he epitomised the stereotypical image of the English gentleman.

  ‘Mr Czartoryski, we understand and sympathise with your passionate concern for your gallant and oppressed country.’

  Sir Ewart’s manner was urbane and his eyes brimmed with disarming candour, but, from his inflection and his frequent need to adjust his tie, Adam could tell that Sir Ewart didn’t regard being passionate as an admirable quality.

  There was a deferential knock on the door and a little man bustling with self-importance entered and murmured something. Sir Ewart replaced his pipe in the marble ashtray, pushed back his chair and excused himself.

  Adam tapped his shoe on the parquet floor. This was turning out to be another frustrating day. He had just come from an unsatisfactory meeting with Szmuel Zygielbojm, whose manner he had found extremely irritating. A Polish Jew who had escaped from Warsaw, he now represented the Bund political party in the Polish government-in-exile. While Adam described what he’d seen in the Ghetto, Zygielbojm had become so agitated that he paced up and down like a tiger in a circus cage. At one stage, he even spoke of killing himself as a gesture of protest to awaken the conscience of the world to the carnage taking place in the Warsaw Ghetto. He sounded so melodramatic that Adam couldn’t wait to get away.

  Back in his office, Sir Ewart apologised for keeping Adam waiting and reached for his pipe again. ‘We hold our staunch ally Poland in the highest esteem, and it distresses us to see her suffer but unfortunately our resources are stretched to the limit,’ he said in a pained voice. ‘We must put all our efforts into defeating Germany. The Red Army in Stalingrad has shown us the way
. We must defeat Rommel in North Africa, and then turn our attention to Europe. Only when we have defeated Hitler will Poland and the rest of Europe be free from tyranny.’

  Pausing, he tapped his pipe and, as he struck a match, his patrician face glowed in the flame. He sucked on the pipe thoughtfully, filling the office with the aromatic smell. Leaning forward, he said in a confidential voice, ‘You’re a pilot, are you not, Mr Czartoryski? Many of your countrymen are flying with the RAF, you know, and the gallant chaps are making an invaluable contribution to our war effort. We are immensely grateful to them and, after the Battle of Britain, we owe them a debt we can never repay.’

  Adam left Sir Ewart’s office with a hollow feeling in his stomach, like a starving man who asked for coins but was fobbed off with advice on budgeting. Chilled and dejected, with a roaring headache, he walked past the liveried doorman of The Connaught Hotel, slid into a leather banquette and ordered tea, which arrived in an ornate silver pot along with a jug of milk that he pushed away. As he sipped the black tea, he reflected on Sir Ewart’s parting words. When he had returned to Poland after the disaster in Slovakia almost two years before, convinced that his work in the Underground was over, he had considered the possibility of going to England and joining the RAF like thousands of Polish flyers, some of whom flew in the Polish Kosciuszko squadron with their own emblem painted on the fuselage. He was fed up with the cynicism of politics and the chicanery of politicians. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Slapping a few shillings down on the table, he walked out of the restaurant with a lighter step.

  The paper boy on the corner was shouting, ‘Paper, paper, read all about it, Rommel’s getting his just deserts in the desert!’ A sudden gust of wind almost blew Adam’s hat off and sent sheets of newspaper flying along the street. One page fluttered around and came to rest against his shoe and, as he bent down to remove it, a headline caught his eye. Szmuel Zygielbojm had committed suicide.