There was another essential aspect of our survival, in addition to our sense of hope and our sense of order and routine: a sense of humor. My father had a great sense of humor. My mother, too. We were always laughing at this or that occurence, like the time my father was nearly hanged by the ghetto commander Grzymek and was admonished for leaving the gallows without his clothes. There was nothing to do but laugh, and very often this was how we made sense of the madness all around. We tried to find the humor in the simple accomplishment of remaining alive.
Once, I was sitting on the chamber pot, off in the shadows of the Palace, listening to the grown-ups argue about something or other. Always, the grown-ups were arguing, in a good-natured sort of way. Sometimes they seemed to argue just to hear themselves talk, to take up one side merely to contradict the other. I was a big philosopher when I sat on the chamber pot. I liked to sit and think and listen. The others would sit and go efficiently about their business, but I would remain on the chamber pot for the longest time, sitting and thinking and still somehow participating in the conversation in the main part of the Palace. I did not like to be left out, I suppose. Pawel used to have my mother help him when he had to go to the bathroom, but I was old enough that I could go by myself, and this privilege made me feel like a grown-up.
There was only the illusion of privacy. The adults and I were not so far away from each other, only three or four meters. Whatever the discussion was, I would put in my two cents, and on this one occasion it seemed the adults were bickering without letup. I was only seven, but I had heard enough, so from my philosophical seat on the chamber pot I said loudly enough for the others to hear, “You can never agree on anything. It is no wonder the Germans want to kill us all!”
It was a brazen thing to say, and darkly funny, especially coming from the lips of a child. It took the grown-ups by surprise, and right away they stopped their arguing and considered the precocious child in their midst, off in the shadows on the chamber pot. It even took me by surprise, that I should be so dismissive, so sarcastic, so bold in putting my elders in their place. To make a joke from our endlessly dire predicament, it was a very sophisticated thing. My father told me later that even the sour Chaskiel Orenbach was shocked into a smile over my remark. It was only a slight smile, this was true, and if you blinked, you might have missed it; but it was a smile just the same.
There was another time when I turned my sense of humor into mischief. The victim was Chaskiel Orenbach, and here again I was able to coax a smile from this cheerless man, only this time it took a while longer. Orenbach and Korsarz were quarreling over some small matter or other. It was nothing unusual for these two to quarrel, only it happened on a day that Korsarz was meant to cut everyone’s hair. Orenbach would not let the Pirate anywhere near him with a sharp pair of scissors, so I volunteered to cut Chaskiel’s hair instead, and he warily agreed.
I put on a small show for my parents and the other adults. No one in our group was particularly fond of Chaskiel, except perhaps for Genia Weinberg, who also had a sour disposition. I knew that my audience would play along with me and hold back their laughter, and sure enough they did.
I said to Chaskiel, “You point with your finger where you would like me to cut.”
He did as I asked, but I did not exactly follow his instructions. I let him hold the mirror only in the front, and in the back I kept guiding his finger farther up his neck toward the top of his head, cutting steps into his hair as we went along. The others were watching and trying to keep from laughing. Weinbergova, too, was trying not to smile. Chaskiel did not suspect that I was sabotaging his haircut. Who would suspect a child of such a thing? But that is just what I was doing. Each time he moved his finger a little bit higher, I followed with cuts that made a series of steps at the back of his head.
As I was working the scissors, I was singing a popular Russian folk song. The chorus was, “Schavischa, schavischa.” Higher and higher. The others could see this was the punch line to the bad haircut I was giving Orenbach. As I inched higher and higher on his head, as he moved his finger higher and higher, I sang the words higher and higher in accompaniment.
Finally, when I was nearly finished with my mischief, the others could not hold their amusement any longer. They burst into laughter. Weinbergova, too. Poor Chaskiel’s hair was cut into several tiers, like a wedding cake. It looked ridiculous! And so funny! We were all howling—quietly howling, I should note, because of course we could not make so much noise as to be heard aboveground, and probably the effort to stifle our laughter made us laugh even more. I felt bad for Chaskiel, that he was the object of such derision, but not so bad that I regretted what I had just done.
It took a moment for Chaskiel Orenbach to realize that he had been made a fool by a little girl, and when he finally did he thrust the mirror into the air behind his head to see for himself what I had done. Oh, he was so angry! If he could have stormed off and stamped his feet, he would have certainly done so, but there was no place to go and he could not stand to stamp his feet. The others were all laughing and telling him to relax, that his hair would grow back, that it was just a joke, but he did not think it was funny.
For days he would not talk to me. The others quietly congratulated me for putting on such a show, for putting Chaskiel in his place, but Chaskiel himself was not amused. This put me in a difficult position each night because when we were sleeping my place was between my father and Chaskiel. I hated to be so close to that man, but what could I do? These were the arrangements Socha had made for us. I had to lean close to my father and pretend Chaskiel was not there. And now with Chaskiel still so angry at me, I leaned closer still.
After a few days, Chaskiel softened. I caught him one afternoon holding the mirror to the back of his head, inspecting the damage I had done, and he at last allowed himself the smallest of smiles. He saw me looking at him, and he shook his fist at me as in a playful threat. He said, “Krysha!”
Probably this was the first time he spoke my name, and I counted it as a great accomplishment that he did so with apparent good cheer. It told me that beneath the cold exterior of Chaskiel Orenbach’s difficult personality there was a little bit of warmth, and this was an enormous comfort at the time. I was already hardened to the ways of human nature, but I did not need to be so hardened among our closest companions.
Socha went to elaborate lengths to help build for us an underground home. Very quickly, he began bringing ordinary household items for us to go along with our essential supplies. He drew the money from our daily payment to procure these items, so my family considered these purchases a generosity, because whatever the sewer workers did not spend for our upkeep they were entitled to keep for themselves.
Whatever we required, whatever we requested, Socha would endeavor to bring for us. Newspapers, books, paper and pencils, utensils . . . Sabbath candles, even. Every Friday, he would bring a set of candles, and my mother would light them and say the blessings before our evening meal. Socha admired this, he said, that we would keep to our rituals and customs even in such feral conditions. He admired Berestycki with his daily prayers and his tallith and tefillin. He admired that we fasted on Yom Kippur, which came around on our calendar soon enough. He and Wroblewski even celebrated Rosh Hashanah with us, with a special meal prepared by Weinbergova from our meager provisions, because Socha said he wanted to experience what it was to be Jewish, and we could see that this was as meaningful to him as it was to us.
Sometimes Socha would bring us items before we could even ask for them. He knew my father was trying to teach me to read and write, to make productive use of our time underground, so one day he arrived with a book to help me with my letters. Already, he had brought a writing tablet and some pencils for my lessons. The book was about a girl named Ala. On each page there was a different scene with a story for each letter of the alphabet. On the first page there was a picture of the girl and her cat. It said, “Ala has a cat.” Ala ma kota. And that was for the letter “A.”
He was so pleased to be able to bring me this book, and each day he would ask me to sit with him and read so he could check on my progress. We would read by the light of the carbide lamp. This was another big improvement to our daily lives. We had always had the lamp, but we had used it sparingly. Now, every few days Socha would bring us an additional supply of carbide, which came in the form of a grayish white powder. When the powder was finished, we would dump it into a pile at the edge of the Palace. Because we had carbide in abundance, we started to leave the lantern glowing for longer and longer each day. This in turn meant there was more time for reading, more time for studying, more time for social pursuits that we could not take up in darkness. We still passed many long hours in darkness, only not so many as before.
One of our primary activities in the early days of our confinement in the Palace was getting to know our new friends Socha and Wroblewski. Up until now, their visits had been brief, and there had always been some detail of our hiding to discuss. Over time, however, we drew each other into conversation, and in this way we learned a little bit more about the man who had taken us into his protection. In this way, we learned about Socha’s wife, Wanda, a resourceful woman who had never associated with Jewish people. This was what Socha told us. He said with some embarrassment that his wife came from a family of anti-Semites, yet she contributed to our safekeeping in a variety of ways. At first, she did so reluctantly. Later, she recognized her husband’s deep connection to our group and helped more willingly. We learned, for example, that it was Wanda who shopped for most of our food and other supplies, buying in small quantities from different merchants so as not to arouse suspicion. Also, after our housekeeping was well established, Socha would take our laundry home to Wanda, who boiled our clothing in hot water to eliminate the lice and then cleaned and folded our few things.
Often, Wanda would complain that Socha was spending so much time and effort on our behalf. “Go to your Jews!” she would say to him whenever they argued. Idz do twoich zydow! Sometimes she would threaten to report us to the SS or to the Gestapo, and at these times Socha would threaten her in return. He told her that she would be captured and killed by the authorities, while he would be able to escape into the sewer and go into hiding. He tried to present his argument in practical terms. Once, he held a gun to her head to demonstrate his point. He said, “If you tell about this, this will be your fate.” He loved his wife, and he did not mean her harm, but he meant to demonstrate that the Germans would not tolerate her role in our hiding.
Socha himself told us this story. He was very upset by this. He did not like how it made his wife seem, how it made him seem, but he told it just the same. He wanted us to know, my father thought, what was at stake for him and his family by helping us.
We learned about Socha’s young daughter, Stefcia, whom Socha worshipped. She was about ten years old at the time, and I believe it was his fondness for Stefcia that drew Socha to my mother and us children. He spent so much time with me and Pawel because we reminded him of Stefcia, because he imagined how his own child might endure such an ordeal. His heart broke for us because it would have broken for her. This was why he shared his sandwiches with us, why he made those second trips to return with our medicines and remedies, why he took such special care. Once, when it was winter, just after the first snow, Socha brought me a snowball. It was such a perfect snowball. Perfectly round, perfectly smooth. For little Pawel, he brought one as well, and we played with our snowballs until they melted. He knew what it was for a child to miss the first snowfall of the season. He knew the joy such a small gift could bring. And he knew these things because he knew what they would have meant to his Stefcia.
Socha believed that the help he extended to us was his greatest mission in life. In the depths of his soul, which he revealed to us during our long conversations, he felt he was called by God to this assignment as an opportunity to repent for his sins. He went to church regularly, more and more as his relationship with us continued. He had been raised as a practicing Catholic, but he had stopped going to church a young man. When he married Wanda, he returned to the church, and now, perhaps inspired by Berestycki’s daily ritual and my mother’s observance of the Sabbath, he attended church even more frequently. When he went, he told us, he prayed for his underground family. He lit candles as an expression of thanksgiving that we were still alive. He recited the Lord’s Prayer, and at the end he would add, “Forgive us our sins, O Lord, for we are rescuing the innocent, the abandoned, and the threatened.”
Socha’s deepening commitment to our plight was going on while he was still collecting money in exchange for our protection. However, the modest means of the other men were soon exhausted, and my father was the only one left with the ability to contribute to our daily payment of 500 zlotys. Following the departure of Weiss and his cronies, there had been some very small contributions from Korsarz and Orenbach, but these dwindled to nothing after only a few weeks. Among the others, there was not even a single grosz, other than the 20-zloty bill that Halina Wind kept hidden safely away, which my father would not accept.
From time to time, I overheard discussions between my mother and father about the high rate of payment, which had been agreed to when it appeared the war would end soon and that there would be others to share the burden. My father took a practical view. He said he did not mind making the entire payment as long as he had the money. He said the money was of no use to us otherwise. He despaired about the valuable gem that had slipped from his boot, which could have supported us for several weeks.
At last he allowed that his money and resources had about run out. He had given away his valuable gold watch and all his other possessions, and he was down to almost his last zloty. This was a great and looming crisis for our group, but my father did not want to trouble the others with this concern. He kept it between him and my mother, just. I discovered it only because my ears were very much attuned to their secrets.
Finally, my father went to Socha with his dilemma. He did this quietly, away from the others, probably in the bend of our L-shaped chamber. Previously, he and Socha had discussed this eventuality in general terms. Socha had always said that our most difficult time would be when we ran out of money. He had an expression for running out of money that my father often repeated: “When you can no longer pay for the last cutlet.”
My father did not want to consider that we were down to our last cutlet, so he presented Socha with a whispered proposition. He told him about our visit from my father’s uncle on the last night of the August action, more than a year earlier. He told him about the secret fortune hidden somewhere in the cellar of an apartment building. He told him the address and a description of the hiding place.
My father said, “My pockets are empty, but there is money and jewelry outside.”
“What if I cannot find this fortune?” Socha asked.
“You will find it,” my father assured him. “You must.”
The next morning, Socha and Wroblewski arrived with an extra few satchels. In these they carried the coins and jewels and silverware and other fine things they had recovered from the inheritance passed to my father by his uncle on the night he was killed. My father was so happy to see these things when Socha handed them over to him. He did not even bother to count the money or to make an inventory. He simply handed the satchels back to Socha and said, “You take it. The money, the jewelry, everything. It is of no use to us here. This is our payment in full.”
Socha would not accept this. He suggested instead that my father keep the valuables and that he continue to parcel them out to the sewer workers at the rate of 500 zlotys per day, as before. My father did not understand Socha’s refusal at first, but then he came up with an explanation. He decided that Socha did not want my father and the others to feel indebted to them and that he did not want to encourage his sewer worker colleagues into thinking they had been fully paid and in this way entertain the notion of quitting the job. Whatever Socha’s thinking, this is what my f
ather did, until after another few weeks this fortune ran out as well. This was when Socha finally revealed his true character. He took my father aside one day and gave him some money. He told my father that he was to return the money to him at the end of each visit, at the agreed-upon rate, and that he did not want Wroblewski and Kowalow to know of this arrangement.
My father was astonished by this turn. It appeared that Socha was returning the money he had already collected and preparing to redistribute his share to Wroblewski and Kowalow, in exchange for their continued cooperation. It was as if Socha himself were now paying for our protection. It was a subtle charade. The reason for this, we learned later, was that the three sewer workers were in some disagreement over our continued care. Socha wanted to keep coming to look after us for as long as it was necessary; he was committed to us, no matter what. Wroblewski, with his daily visits, had also developed a close bond with our group. He was uncertain what our fate should be, but without his share of our daily fee, he could not justify the risk to himself and his family. Kowalow, who by design had no contact with us once we reached the sewer, took a hard view. He wanted to disassociate himself from our group and abandon us to the sewer. Socha told us this after the war. Kowalow allowed that it would be cruel simply to leave us to starve to death and suggested that Socha and Wroblewski put strychnine into our food, which would cause us to asphyxiate.
This was how Socha came to this plan, to quietly deceive his colleagues while continuing to enlist their cooperation. My father was briefly concerned about his complicity in such an arrangement, until Socha pointed out to him that the only one being harmed by the deception was Socha himself. At this, my father could not argue. He could only sigh in relief that we were not down to our last cutlet just yet.
The Girl in the Green Sweater Page 19