One was a tall thin man of indeterminate age; he could have been one of the elderly to whom the Guild were doing so much obvious ‘good’ in inviting them to their supper, or he could have been a middle-aged relation of one of the ladies; he had a face so long and thin that the skin seemed stretched over it, and the bones almost shone through at their high points beneath the eyes and around the jaws and chin. He had thick, iron-grey hair and a neatly clipped, grey moustache that looked as though it had been stuck on as an afterthought, and deep eyes hidden behind thick-lensed glasses that made him seem quite inaccessible. He had eaten sparingly and was now sitting with his head inclined towards his neighbour, the last of the table’s complement, a round-faced and very eager little woman who was talking busily at him. She had hair of an unlikely red, beautifully arranged in waves and curls, and was wearing what were obviously very expensive clothes. The diamond brooch on her collar was just that, diamonds and not an imitation, and her make-up had the smooth perfection that came only from application by an expert. She could have been thirty-five in a good light, but her neck, plump as she was, gave her away. About fifty or so, Abner estimated, and watched as she stopped for a breath, giving the thin man beside her a chance to speak.
His voice was louder than hers, and Abner could hear clearly what he said above the underlying rumble of conversation and dish clatter that filled the big room, and he found his ears straining in their direction as he realised just what they were talking about.
‘She always said all she wanted was to get her hands on him, make him suffer the way he should,’ he was saying. ‘God rest her poor soul in peace. I told her it didn’t help, that sort of feeling. Revenge, what good does it do you? I was in Israel when they executed Eichmann. Did it make me feel any better? I thought it would, but it didn’t. The memory was still there — that don’t go away so easy.’
‘She told me, after, what he did to them.’ The red haired woman shook her head. ‘All those years and she never forgot.’
‘How could she forget? The child — you saw what the child was like. It took me all the time there was to persuade her to let me arrange a decent place for him. In the home he’s better off than he ever was with her. Especially now. She did her best, but how could she do all that was needed? She was ailing herself — I never thought she’d last so long, to tell you the truth.’
‘It was hating him kept her alive,’ the red haired woman said and sighed. ‘I tried to get her to explain to me what it was that she found out, but would she say? Maybe she couldn’t say. Her speech was gone, to tell the truth. You know how it is with these stroke people.’
‘It was a blessing she went when she did,’ the man said. ‘Ala va shalom.’
‘I have to agree.’ The red head shook dolefully. ‘Bad enough she suffered in the camps the way she did. To carry such a load of anger as well — terrible.’
‘You can understand it. She knew who he was, remember? Said to me that one day she’d be able to prove it, bring him down with a crash like a tree. That was what she said. Like a great big evil tree. A funny way to put it, I thought. Trees, evil? It don’t make sense.’
‘She didn’t make much sense at all the last few months,’ the woman said. ‘One way and another. She told me she knew who he was too, but I said to her, so what if you do? What good will it do you to start a great fuss? Get your name all over the papers. Will it make your David, bless him, a different person? Will it make any difference at all? And those were bad times. Maybe he wasn’t so wicked as she thought.’
‘Not so wicked?’ The thin man seemed to rear up as he turned his blank pebble lenses on his companion. ‘He sold seventeen people for a bag of apples, for God’s sake! How can you call that not so bad?’
‘He was sixteen years old,’ the woman said. ‘Wasn’t he? Sixteen years old. A child himself.’
‘A man.’ The pebble glasses glinted again. ‘A man. Listen, did she ever tell you who he was?’
The woman shook her head. ‘Tell me? Did she tell you? Sure she didn’t. It was the biggest thing she had in her life, that she knew and no one else did. Well, maybe the others that’d been with her.’
Cyril Etting was sitting on the other side of the tall thin man, and Abner, who had been listening as hard as he could, moving his eyes from one to the other to follow the conversation as though he were at a tennis match, suddenly caught his eye. The old man was grinning, leaning back in his chair and grinning sardonically.
‘Told you, Abner, didn’t I? There’s stuff here for you. Eh, Sam?’ he said gruffly and nudged his neighbour who turned sharply and glared at him. His eyes shone hugely behind his lenses now, and gave him an ominous air.
‘Eh, what?’ he said.
‘You see my friend over there?’ Cyril said, not taking his eyes from Abner’s face. ‘He makes telly programmes.’
There was a sudden little frisson of excitement around the table as they turned to stare at Abner and he frowned, furious with Cyril. This was all he needed!
‘He’s doing research,’ Cyril went on, still staring owlishly at Abner. ‘All about the bad years, you know?’
‘The bad years?’ Sam said, and took off his glasses to polish them. His naked eyes peered helplessly at Abner, small pallid eyes, weak and watery. No menace there at all now.
‘The camp years,’ Cyril said. ‘And the after years, the DP years. The bad years! What else could it be?’
Sam put on his glasses, and with them his air of importance and strength.
‘Telly films about that? Who needs ’em? What good do they do? They give the anti-semites something to feel good about, and make a lot of our own people cry. I’ve seen ’em crying, when they thought all they was going to get was a bit of entertainment, a laugh or two. What do you telly people think you’re doing?’ He glared accusingly at Abner. ‘People buy TV sets and licences because they want entertainment. And what do you give them? Holocaust pictures! A fire on your Holocaust pictures! Who needs ’em?’
Abner took a sharp little breath in through his nose. ‘Television isn’t just an entertainment medium, sir’ he began and Cyril said with an odd air of malice, ‘Call him Sam. He’s Sam Hersh.’
‘Mr Hersh,’ Abner said after a moment. ‘As I said, television is used for a lot of things. Teaching and informing and — ’
‘And upsetting.’ The thin man stood up and his height seemed to dwindle; he wasn’t as tall as he’d seemed when he was sitting down. ‘Who needs it? Me, I got better things to do.’ And he went away, moving across the room towards the corner where a gaggle of the Guild ladies were busily arguing over something.
‘What sort of television is yours then?’ the red-haired woman demanded and then with a sudden, very sweet smile leaned forwards and held out one plump hand. It was barricaded in rings and when Abner took it, it felt like a toy. ‘My name’s Singer, Mrs Doris Singer. I’m the past Chairman of the Guild. Just a guest tonight, you understand. It’s a pleasure to have you here, Mr-er …’
‘Wiseman,’ said Cyril and beamed proprietorially at Abner. ‘My friend, Abner Wiseman. We eat together.’
‘With Cyril, you can’t get closer than that,’ Abner said, with a sudden need to be sharp, and Cyril stared at him and then laughed.
‘You got something there, Abner, believe me. A full belly’s a full belly. Don’t knock it. So tell me, Doris — I can call you Doris?’ Mrs Singer inclined her head graciously. ‘So tell me, who was this you was talking about? I was listening, you understand.’
He showed no compunction at his admission and Mrs Singer tried to look disapproving but then shrugged.
‘Oh, it’s no secret,’ she said. ‘One of our Friendship Club members. Mrs Lippner, Libby Lippner. Died a couple of days ago. The lavoyah was yesterday. They’re sitting a week’s shivah, but I was at the lavoyah and — ’
‘Lavoyah?’ said Abner, struggling a little with the word. He knew he knew it but it refused to identify itself in his memory.
‘You’re not a Yidd
isher fella?’ Mrs Singer said with sudden suspicion.
‘Of course he is! Look at him! But he’s an American. From where do they know?’ Cyril said. ‘Lavoyah, Abner. Funeral — what else?’
Abner nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I was just a bit — I got the impression she — this lady, rest her soul — I got the impression she’d had a bad time in the war?’
Mrs Singer leaned forwards, rested her round elbows on the table and shook her head dolefully at Abner, clearly all set to enjoy herself greatly and equally no longer interested in being told what sort of television programmes he made. The old women on the other side of the table had stopped paying any attention to them and were again sitting, heads together, gossiping, and the three businessmen, equally bored, had got up and wandered off to smoke cigars in the corner, ignoring the NO SMOKING signs everywhere. There were just the three of them talking, knotted into a tight little group, and Cyril was nodding a little drowsily in the warmth, Abner noticed. Not surprising after eating as much as he had.
‘Did she have a bad time? So tell me, who had a good time?’ Mrs Singer went on. ‘Unless they were lucky and lived here in England or like you, in America.’
Abner blinked. ‘Er — I was born in 1956, Mrs Singer. Well after the war.’
She peered at him and then smiled apologetically. ‘Of course you were. You get to my age, you begin to forget. For my part, I was just a child at the time myself, a baby. I don’t even remember VE day. I was told about it, but I was just a baby.’
There was a little silence and then Abner said tentatively, ‘This friend of yours, the one who died — she was in the camps?’
‘She wasn’t a friend, you understand.’ Mrs Singer looked a little uneasy. ‘A member of our Friendship Club is all. But we’d looked after her a long time. She was old — getting on for eighty.’ She sighed then, gustily. ‘Amazing. All that she went through and then to live to such a good age. Amazing. If it hadn’t been for the stroke, she’d be alive still.’
Abner’s lips quirked. If it hadn’t been for the fact her heart stopped beating, she’d still be here, he thought absurdly and then said, ‘What happened to her in the war? She had a particularly bad time, did she?’
Mrs Singer looked at him a little worriedly and then at Cyril, who was now frankly asleep, his chin resting comfortably on his chest, and his breath coming in regular little gusts that made a thick soughing sound. Around them the room still buzzed with chatter, and Mrs Singer threw a comprehensive glance around and then gave herself up to the luxury of an attentive audience.
‘Libby Lippner,’ she said, with a portentous air, ‘was one of the Jews of Cracow.’
Abner looked puzzled. ‘There were a lot of Jews in Cracow,’ he ventured, after a moment.
‘Ah, yes — but only seventeen of them got that special label. Some people called them the “Rats”, complimentary you understand, nothing nasty, but all the same, the “Rats of Cracow”. Seventeen of them there were. In the end. A few more to begin with, but there were losses. It’s understandable, losses.’
‘Yes,’ Abner said, picking his way carefully, needing to hear more, scared of showing any reaction that might stem the flow of talk. ‘Of course. Er — why Rats?’
She opened her eyes wide. ‘Because of the sewers, of course! What else should they call them? They called themselves that. At first — ’
‘Ah!’ Some light was beginning to dawn. ‘They hid in sewers?’
‘Then you have heard of them!’ she said triumphantly.
‘Er — not directly. It’s just that — there were other people who hid in sewer systems that I’ve heard of. In Lvov — ’
She nodded vigorously. ‘Of course! That was where it all started! They hid in the sewers in Lvov and they did well there! Lots of them got away — lots got caught, of course, but more got away. Came out all pale they did, eyes gone white, couldn’t look at the sun. There was babies in the Cracow ones, you know. Born in the sewers they were, and never saw daylight, and when they came to get them they cried more with fear of the light and the sun than of the Gestapo.’
‘And this lady, Mrs Lippner, she was one of them?’
Mrs Singer nodded. ‘She was one of them. The one who had a baby first. There were three babies born there. That was why they let them in the group. Because they were pregnant and they said the Germans treated pregnant women worst of all. So they took her and her cousin, Leah, and her next door neighbour, Mina — I never knew her other name, Libby never said — and a few others, and they went underground. Can you imagine? Down into the sewers with just a few bits and pieces.’
Abner tried to imagine and couldn’t. ‘How did they live there? I mean, I’ve never been in a sewer. I supposed it to be all waterways, but clearly it isn’t.’
Doris Springer shrugged. ‘I never asked her that. I suppose there were places that were dry. She told me, they had to sleep on the concrete, only she’d managed to wrap a blanket round herself so she had something to lie on.’
She stopped then and her eyes seemed to go blank as she stared back at her memory. ‘She told me it was warm,’ she said then, unexpectedly. ‘Even in winter, it was warm. Damp and dark, she said, but never really freezing. That surprised me.’
‘Yes,’ Abner said. ‘It does sound odd.’
There was a little silence and then he tried again. ‘Did — did she tell you how they managed for food?’
Again that emphatic nod. ‘Sure she did! It was the first thing I asked her when she told me what happened to her. How did you get to eat, I asked? And she said there was men in the group. Men and boys, you understand. Seven of them were men, six were women, and four were children. Under ten, that is. The men, some of them were children by my reckoning, but by theirs, they were men. Sixteen, seventeen, no more — ’
‘And what did they do, these men? These boys?’
‘Food finders,’ Doris Springer said. ‘They used to get out, Libby said, using a different manhole each night, and out they’d go and they’d wander around the city, seeing what they could find. There wasn’t a lot to be had, anywhere, believe you me, she said. But these men, they found a turnip here, a bit of fish there — sometimes a couple of candles for light and a bit of fuel. Then they could cook it. A bundle of wood and a bit of fish and a turnip and a potato, she said, you get wonderful soup. You know what she told me? She’d had the best sense of them all, because she’d filled her pockets with salt and pepper when they went under the sewers. That night, she wrapped herself in a blanket, she put on six pairs of knickers, she put on two dresses and in all her pockets, salt and pepper. She’d had sense that one, hey? She said to me, she thought — we’ll be all right. We’ll find food. We’ll cook and when the stinking Germans are gone, we’ll come out. A few days, weeks maybe, she said, that was what she thought.’
‘How long was it?’ Abner asked and she looked at him blankly, and then shrugged.
‘Till the Germans went away? Never, as far as she was concerned. She had her baby, and so did the others and then it must have been when her baby was about six months old, thin and hungry and she herself, like a stick, still breast feeding and she had no breasts left, like bags of skin, you should forgive the expression, that was what she told me. Empty bags of skin.’
Again there was a little silence broken only by the sound of Cyril’s contented breathing, which made an obbligato to the steady rumble of sound from the rest of the room. ‘Bags of skin,’ Doris repeated, and then without any self-consciousness reached in her bag for a handkerchief and blew her nose.
‘What happened when the baby was six months old?’ Abner asked quietly and she looked at him and said, ‘Hmm?’
‘What happened when Libby’s baby was six months old?’
Her eyes slid away from him. ‘They got caught.’
‘Caught —?’
‘The Germans came down and got ’em out, didn’t they? Sent ’em all to Auschwitz. Every one of them.’ She shook her head, almost in wonderment. ‘And she and her
baby — they lived, would you believe? There were others, she said, came through as well, but to me it was a miracle. She told me, herself and her David lived through all those months starving in the sewers and then in Auschwitz and lived to get out and be sent to England. It was amazing.’
‘And she lived to be almost eighty?’ Abner said. ‘That’s what’s so incredible. After so much.’
‘Her son, of course, the baby. He didn’t do so well.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He’s in a home, nebbech. Sam got him into a home. It was the best thing for him, poor devil. She tried, you know? Libby, she tried to make him right, took him to doctors, got money from us, from the Board of Guardians, from all the funds for the Victims of the Holocaust. Oh, he saw so many doctors! But what can they do? He was marked for life by being a rat in sewers. How could it be otherwise? He takes fits, you understand, and when he’s not having fits, he’s not — ’ She made a face and shook her head. ‘It’s not nice to talk about. Don’t ask.’
‘He must be quite old now,’ Abner said.
She shrugged. ‘Forty-five or so, I suppose. It was all in the Forties, you understand, this happened. Around ’forty-one or two — who knows? Libby had forgotten dates. She never forgot some things, but she forgot dates.’
‘Tell me about the man with the apples,’ Abner said then, and leaned forwards. ‘The man you said was a boy.’
‘Just sixteen he was, Libby told me,’ she said after a moment. ‘Oh, but she hated him!’
‘Tell me what he did,’ Abner said, and his voice was insistent now. ‘Tell me what he did.’
‘It was like Sam said.’ She looked at him sharply from beneath her brows. ‘Do you think it was so terrible? It wasn’t right, but a starving boy of sixteen, offered a bag of apples. Probably they never even said they’d do the people any harm — they used to be like that, the Germans. They could put on the charm, you know? The boy, what must it have been like to him? Offered a bag of apples, in the winter-time? Wouldn’t you do something bad for such a prize, when you were starving?’
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