The Fires of Lilliput

by Michael Martin

  Christien lay down his rifle. “You see that?” he asked Mosze.

  “Pistol.”

  “He can’t get us from there,” Antek said.

  Christien picked up his rifle and refocused. The Nightingale was still standing, pointing and screaming. She started to walk, toward the edge of the platform where Georg hid.

  “Stupid girl,” Mosze said. “He has a gun.”

  “I’m going to take him out before he can use it,” Christien said. He watched the singer and the platform. “Stay away stupid girl, stay away,” Christien said. “Let me get a shot, get a shot, get a shot.” The rifle fired and kicked and the bullet burst through the wood on the platform. The Nightingale ducked and dropped and didn’t move.

  “Well?” Antek said.

  “I think I got him,” Christien said.

  “I don’t see anything,” Mosze said. He scanned the edges of the platform.

  “He was under where the bullet hit,” Christien said. “I know I got him.”

  “What about the Nightingale?”

  “She’s staying down. She’s okay. I didn’t hit her.”

  Antek was the first to hear footsteps on the street. Many footsteps, in hard shoes, running. He stood and grabbed Christien by the shoulder. With their rifles the snipers ran down the stairway and didn’t hear the last gunshot from the Umschlagplatz. The bullet came from the dark below the platform. It killed the Nightingale and she laid open-eyed and bleeding.

  The other prisoners had gathered their clothes and fled and the platz was deserted until after the sun rose, clear and bright in a cloudless morning sky. Near the street, skinny dogs lapped at blood congealing around Mendel’s neck and sniffed another body that lay closer to the platform in a wider pool of blood from an artery in the thigh that had trickled for hours but now only dripped. The man had tried to crawl away. He lay face down and his fingers had stiffened around a pistol. A soldier rolled him over later and saw the face of Karl Georg and feeling spooked, pressed the eyelids and drew them shut.

  ANTEK HAD BEEN IN THE STREETS FOR DAYS but finally returned one night late. The rabbi was in the bunker and still awake. He asked Antek about Jakub Chelzak from Marienburg.

  “I have family near there,” Antek said. “Everyone knows about him.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Same as the others,” Antek said. “Sick people come to him.”

  “What kind of sick people?”

  “Any kind.”

  “Jews?”

  “Why not? Jews get sick too.”

  “I don’t mean that,” the rabbi said. “This man is Catholic. Are his gifts reserved for Christians, or are they Christian wishful thinking?”

  Antek lit a cigarette. “You’re making too much of it,” he said. “Sick is sick.”

  “We can’t afford a wild goose hunt,” the rabbi said.

  “Who can’t afford?” Antek said. “You or Leia?”

  THE RABBI DIDN’T SLEEP. HE THOUGHT and prayed during the night. Leiozia’s hoarse retching carried in the tunnels and shook the women out of their sleep. Her face was gray, her eyes dull. She slept most days. She ate almost nothing.

  “L-rd,” he said. “Why do you present such difficulty? How can I know what to do?” Rabbi Gimelman stared at the darkness. Why was he even considering this? He was struck by the way the thing was presented—by strangers stacking boxes in a tunnel. As the men were talking, he felt an intuition. That was all. But that was all sometimes one had. Who could say, his father used to tell him, that feelings weren’t answers to prayers?

  Marienburg was in the Zulawy region, fertile lowlands at the mouth of the Wisla not far from where it emptied into the Baltic Sea. Trains went there from Aryan Warsaw. Glowny Station, Antek told him, had a late express with no stops until Marienburg, then north to Gdansk. It left at 2:17 in the morning. But what was he thinking? What a choice. Walk in harm’s way to find a Christian myth based on the grassroots sentiments of a few scruffy Jews. Or not. Leiozia probably dies with the first option. Leiozia certainly dies with the second. Ridiculous. They needed him here. Shosha, Rebekah—the other men, the other women. Lev.

  Lev.

  The light of even the faintest hopeful glimmer attracted Lev Mordechai like a moth. It was one reason the two men had been friends like brothers.

  “I’m an impractical pragmatist,” Lev had once told him. “You’re a pragmatic dreamer.”

  Azar Gimelman left a short note and departed after midnight. To get on the train, he bribed a woman he had given money over the past year. With a mock passport, and simple disguise, leaving the ghetto was not as hard as he had expected. The trip took a few hours over about three hundred kilometers. On this two-day journey, he would be gone a week.

  TOWN

  Twelve

  Gray cold gripped Marienburg, East Prussia in the winter of 1941. It was the only other thing people in the area would say they remembered about that time. The first thing was the situation of Jakub Chelzak, who one afternoon fell prostrate with pierced and bleeding hands. Scratches and punctures sweat blood from his temple and matted his hair into clumped strands that dried stiff in the heat from the coal fire in the stove downstairs. Nails made of flesh, twisted and misshapen, erupted from his wrists.

  “Jakub!”

  Kazimiera—Mia, his mother—ran into her son’s bedroom. “Dear God,” she said. She took him and daubed his face with her apron and looked at his eyes. “What’s happened to you?”

  Jakub reached for her face, and pressed his hand over her cheek. She took his fingers. “Where’s Karl?” he asked.

  “In the village,” Mia said.

  “I can’t move,” Jakub said. “When’s he coming back?”

  “He shouldn’t be long,” Mia said. “But I need to get someone now.”

  “Stay with me,” Jakub said. “Don’t leave.”

  When Jakub’s brother Karl returned, Jakub and his mother were sleeping on the floor under blankets. The bleeding had stopped, but the wounds were visible. A doctor visited the area weekly. When he examined Jakub, the wounds were faint and faded.

  “I don’t know what it is,” the doctor told them. “You lost a lot of blood. You should be dead.”

  Word got around the village and the following Sunday Monsignor Starska stopped Jakub after mass. He took Jakub’s hands and his fingers trembled as he probed the flesh around the faint outlines of the wounds. “Why you?” he said.

  THE CICADAS ENDED THEIR SEVEN-YEAR SILENCE and sang in the spring of the following year. Warmer days brought the poor and infirm and even wealthy patrons to the Chelzak farm, situated in the verdant lower Wisla river valley known as Zulawy Wislane (Wisla Lagoon). The town took its name from Marienburg (now Malbork) Castle, which F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote was “the largest pile of bricks north of the Alps, a magnificent mountain of lore.” It was visible from the Chelzak farm on a clear day.

  On this clear day, Mia stared while a woman presented Jakub with a basket of fruit and her daughter. They were on a porch overlooking the valley. Jakub took the girl, who had a cleft lip, and held her. He spoke to the girl, placed his hand over her lip, and prayed. His body slumped.

  “Enough,” Mia said. The woman looked at her daughter’s lip. She tried to kneel. “I said enough.” Mother Chelzak raised her voice.

  The girl’s mother fixed her whole body on Jakub, who was still. Her daughter slipped back into her arms. Mia came up to them.

  “What should I do if someone offers even a little hope?” the woman said to Mia.

  “I’m—”

  “You’re selfish,” the woman said. “Your son has a great gift. Is it for you to say how he shares it?”

  “Time for you to go,” Mia said.

  Jakub strained to right his neck and refocus his eyes. The woman took the girl, whose lip was not changed, and they stepped down from the porch. Mia returned the woman’s basket. She looked at her son. “Why give these poor souls hope they shouldn’t have?”

  Jakub l
ooked at the ground and ran his hands through his hair. “What am I supposed to do?” he said.

  Mia watched the woman and the girl on the edge of the farm now, turning toward the road. “I’m sorry,” she said. She kissed her son on the forehead. “I love you.” She stretched and stood. She went inside and Jakub heard the door slap against the jamb.

  MEN IN GRAY UNIFORMS TRAVELED IN A BLACK CAR down the narrow road past the Chelzak farm. The words Org.Todt hovered over Reich insignias on each door. Named for Oberführer Fritz Todt, Organisation Todt was the Third Reich’s construction arm. The black car slowed and stopped near workers laying rail near a barren edge of the Chelzak farm. Karl Chelzak pulled weeds in a nearby potato field. He stood and leaned on a rake and rested his back. His hands were cramped. He saw the men, and beyond them, the castle in a low haze. Rustling in the crops startled Karl. He turned and saw a slight man with thin black hair squinting at him through fogged spectacles.

  “Chelzak?” The man removed his specs and wiped them on the tail of his shirt. He put them back on and looked at Karl again. “Karl Chelzak?” He waded like a greenhorn through the tilled soil. Karl saw the man’s long face and sad clothes. A train whistle receded with a melancholy whine.

  “Chelzak,” the man croaked. “Chelzak—you are not permitted to work in this field…” The man stumbled and brushed off his pants. “…between the hours of thirteen hundred and sixteen hundred.”

  Karl bent and pulled a sweet-smelling, flowering weed.

  “Did you hear me, Chelzak?” The man stopped. “I said stop working.”

  “Are you a soldier?” Karl asked the ground.

  “No,” the man said. He walked toward Karl and handed him an Organisation Todt identification card. With a hand that could grasp a watermelon, Karl gripped a large stalk and ripped it out. Black soil rained between them.

  “Why should I stop working?” Karl asked.

  “That’s not for you to ask,” the man said.

  Karl straightened his back. “They’re laying track over there,” he said. “Where to?”

  “I’m not a planner,” the man said. “My orders are for you to stop work. You can finish later.”

  “You’re too small to make me stop work and you don’t have a gun,” Karl said. He bent over and started loading weeds into a satchel.

  “I’m a kapo,” the man said. “We aren’t allowed guns.”

  Kapos were Jew traitors if Karl believed what he heard in town. “You do what they tell you?” Karl asked.

  The man brushed dirt from his hair and shirt. “They kill my family if you don’t leave this field,” the man said.

  “And mine starve if I do,” Karl said. He kept working, then wiped his forehead. He looked at his farmhouse. “Who kills you?”

  “Soldiers,” the kapo said. He took his glasses off.

  Karl reached over and grabbed the satchel. He spat in the dirt. “So you owe me,” Karl said. He slung the satchel over his shoulder. “For saving your family.” He turned and walked toward the farmhouse.

  “I don’t owe you anything,” the kapo yelled after Karl was far enough away.

  MONSIGNOR STARSKA SIPPED WEAK COFFEE in the Chelzak’s downstairs room. The morning was cool. Mrs. Chelzak stepped down the wooden stairs. “All night, Father,” she said. She ran her hands through her disheveled hair, blinked the fatigue from her eyes, and sighed. “Go see him.”

  The priest walked up the stairs. He ducked into a cramped room. Jakub lay in bed with his head propped on a pillow. His eyes were closed. The priest reached down to the bloodied sheets piled on a chair. He touched them, slipped their folds between his fingers. They were brittle and dark. He stood absent-mindedly until he heard voices downstairs.

  “The Bishop,” he overheard Karl say.

  “I don’t care,” Mia said. “I don’t want soldiers in my home.”

  Monsignor Starska looked through the window and saw black cars and deacons. Maximilian Kaller, Bishop of Ermland, stood with soldiers and they were talking. The German Kaller—a staunch anti-Nazi who opposed Hitler’s embrace of mysticism—knew of Archbishop Bertram’s interest in Chelzak and was visiting to see for himself and run interference if necessary. A German nationalist who refused to ruffle the Nazi hierarchy for fear it would disrupt the Church’s enviable status quo, Bertram promoted appeasement. He went so far as to send the Führer congratulatory birthday greetings on behalf of all German Catholics each year.

  “The soldiers can force their way in,” Karl said.

  “Let them try.”

  “They only come to keep order,” Starska said

  “Order?” Mia said. “What’s out of order here?”

  Monsignor Starska crept down the stairs. Mia stood with the front door open.

  “Let them in,” the priest told her. Mia looked at him. “They’ve come to see your son,” he said.

  Mia walked up the stairs. “You let them in,” she said. “But the soldiers stay down here.”

  Monsignor Starska went to the door. “He is ready,” he said to the men. Bishop Kaller stepped into the cottage and Monsignor Starska genuflected and took the prelate’s hand and kissed his ring.

  “God be with you,” said the Bishop and he placed his hand on the priest’s head and walked up the stairs. Two soldiers followed and Karl stepped forward to intervene. Monsignor Starska caught his arm.

  “Mama doesn’t want them,” Karl said.

  “Why?” Starska asked softly. “What does she really know about them?” He poured another cup of coffee from the pot on the round stove. “I like to think what your papa would want,” he said. “He would want you alive and unmolested.”

  “He should have taken his own advice,” Karl said.

  “For his sake and yours,” Starska said. “Once a man joins the resistance, his household falls under permanent suspicion.” He sipped his coffee. “But your brother has kept this household out of trouble.” He stared out the window at a crowd gathering for a chance to see the bishop.

  Mia Chelzak stomped down the stairs. “I can’t stand them,” she said. “They stink—they don’t bathe. Why didn’t you keep them down here?”

  “Shh!” Karl said.

  About a half-hour later, Bishop Kaller and his entourage came downstairs. Monsignor Starska took the prelate’s hand.

  “Thank you for inviting us,” the Bishop said.

  “Oh!” the priest said. He genuflected. “It is a great honor.”

  “Yes,” Kaller said. “It was.”

  Thirteen

  Bishop Kaller advised Archbishop Bertram that he had visited Jakub Chelzak, did not personally witness the stigmata, and could therefore not speak to its authenticity. Though Nazi troops had been using nearby Castle Marienburg for youth training camps, the occupying force appeared unaware of Chelzak or his unusual “gifts,” which suggested they were little more than small-town rumor and field-hand gossip.

  The two Church leaders exchanged more letters, Bertram attempting to portray Chelzak as a mystical presence with preternatural powers, Kaller diplomatically resisting. Even if the stigmata did appear, they could be evidence of a skin disorder, emotional hysteria, psychological injury, or some other natural cause, Kaller explained. He also found no evidence of any healings or otherworldly interventions.

  “Though people of faith do visit Chelzak seeking his intercession on matters of sickness and sin, I have found no one for whom he has done any more than provide common-sense counsel,”

  Kaller wrote the Archbishop.

  “I understand your position, but I still believe the situation warrants further investigation,” Bertram replied. He directed his subordinates to prepare a report for two offices: the Secretariat of State for the Vatican in Rome; and the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Berlin. Bertram understood the Reich’s appetite for propaganda. In Jakub Chelzak, he might have found an appeasing tidbit: a person whose unusual condition would, as Hitler required in Mein Kampf, “appeal to mass emotion” while re
presenting a “single point that could be repeated like a slogan until even the very last man is able to understand.”

  The point: that Jews killed Jesus and Jakub Chelzak was a living reminder of the brutal way they did it.

  EXCERPTS FROM REPORT OF THE ARCHBISHOPRIC of Breslau on the Case of Jakub Chelzak of Marienburg

  I. Introduction

  II. Diocesan Imprimatur

  III. Statement of the Case

  IV. Historical Precedence of the Stigmata: Latter Day Manifestations of the Crucifixion Wounds of Our Lord, Jesus Christ in Persons of Pious Repute

  IV. Historical Precedence of the Stigmata

  A. Earliest Cases

  Perhaps the first reference to a person other than Jesus bearing His crucifixion wounds—stigmata—came from St. Paul, who wrote, “I bear on my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Galatians 6:17.

  When we speak of stigmata, we generally speak of five wounds: nail entry wounds in the palms of each hand or each wrist; nail entry wounds in the feet; and, in select cases, a lance wound through either side of the torso. Only rarely have the marks of the crown of thorns around the forehead and temple been reported, as they have in the case of Jakub Chelzak.

  Following St. Paul, the next recorded case of stigmata occurred with the Italian St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226). St. Francis and his disciples prayed and fasted on Mount Alverno in the Apennines for forty days, after which time Francis had a vision of Jesus Our Lord on the cross, and received the four nail wounds and lanced side.

  Oddly, St. Francis exhibited stigmata a mere two years after authorities arrested a man from Oxford, England for impersonating our Lord by self-inflicting the five wounds.

  Within a century of St. Francis’s death, some twenty cases of stigmata were reported, several unfortunately false. Despite many true and ecumenically verified cases, a general skepticism about stigmatics has persisted that we believe the Church has a duty to either dispel or confirm with each new case.