The Fires of Lilliput

by Michael Martin

  “Nehmen Sie dem Glowny diesen Mann,” the officer said to the corporal as he showed Jakub into the car. Jakub hesitated until the soldier smiled.

  The corporal let Jakub out at Glowny Station and after he drove away, Jakub walked a mile to the Lutheran cemetery, which bordered the Jewish cemetery on the Aryan side. At the gate, he passed a chapel and a little way in he saw a stone mausoleum with a granite angel sculpted over the entrance. Men with rifles emerged from the trees.

  “What’s your business?” one said.

  “I have a message for Captain Wojskowy,” Jakub said. “From Moryc.”

  “Moryc sent you? What message? How did you get here?”

  “The fighters on Muranowski need food and ammunition,” Jakub said. “Moryc is injured.”

  The men looked at one another then pushed Jakub toward the mausoleum. He ducked in and saw other men sitting on the dirt floor and on crypts of stone and marble. Squat, malformed candles cast scattered shadows on the walls. The men passed around a bottle and threw their heads back when they drank. The men from outside stood.

  “This man has a message from Moryc.”

  “Moryc?” said another man who was sitting in a far corner.

  They pushed Jakub. “Tell.”

  “The rabbi asked me to come,” Jakub said. “Moryc is wounded.”

  The man from the corner stood and came into the light. This was Captain Wojskowy.

  “Wounded?” Wojskowy said. “How badly?”

  “I don’t know,” Jakub said. “My message is that his fighters on Muranowski need ammunition and food.”

  Wojskowy turned to the other men. He looked at Jakub. “How did you get out?”

  “The rabbi.”

  “Figures.”

  Wojskowy motioned toward the other men. Jakub sat. They passed him the bottle. “This is my brother Waclaw and these are my sons,” Wojskowy said. “Zbigniew, Roman,” he pointed. “I am Henryk Wojskowy.”

  They extended their hands. When Jakub reached out to Roman, the young man gasped.

  “What is that?” Roman saw the wound in Jakub’s wrist. “Did they do that?”

  “No,” Jakub said and he drank from the bottle. “It’s an old injury.”

  Waclaw took Jakub’s hand and slipped the sleeve above his wrist. “It looks new,” Waclaw said. “You know Rabbi but you’re not a Jew, are you?”

  Jakub shook his head. “Catholic, like you.”

  “From here?” Wojskowy asked. “How come I don’t know you?”

  “Not from here,” Jakub said. “From Marienburg.”

  “Marienburg,” Waclaw said. “You know the castle?”

  “Yes,” Jakub said.

  “It’s a good Catholic place,” Wojskowy said. He took a drink. “I’ve known Moryc a long time. He’s a good fellow.”

  “Why are you here?” Roman asked. “You’d be better off in Marienburg.”

  “The rabbi hired me,” Jakub said, and he drank a little more.

  “For what?”

  “They call this the Jerusalem of the Dead,” Wojskowy interrupted.

  Jakub looked at him.

  “Here, Lutherans; next door, Catholics; a little ways away, Muslims; on the other side, Jews,” Wojskowy said.

  “They’re all dead and they still can’t get along,” Waclaw said.

  “Why the rabbi hires you?” Roman asked again. He frowned at his father.

  “Maybe it’s not our business,” Uncle Waclaw said.

  “For this,” Jakub said.

  “To bring a message?” Roman asked. “Rabbi hired a messenger all the way from Marienburg.” The men laughed.

  “Other things too,” Jakub said.

  “What other things?” Wojskowy asked. “What could be so important that a man must be brought from Marienburg?”

  “The rabbi hired me to cheat death,” Jakub said.

  Waclaw grabbed the bottle from Wojskowy.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Wojskowy considered Jakub’s face above the flames. He took back the bottle from his son. “No more drink,” he said.

  Twenty One

  Maundy Thursday

  22 April 1943

  Wojskowy and his men left the cemetery around 2 a.m. Jakub forgot the rabbi’s admonition

  against returning to the ghetto. He wanted to come with them.

  “You’re in no condition to cheat death now,” Wojskowy said.

  Jakub gripped the side of the mausoleum entrance. “I can stand,” he said. “And walk.” He stumbled and Wojskowy grabbed him.

  “Sober up,” Wojskowy said.

  Wojskowy took eighteen men, including his sons and brother, and rendezvoused with an underground supply station on the Aryan side. They entered the ghetto through a tunnel that went from the cellar of 6 Muranowska Street on the Aryan side to Moryc Zydowski’s position, the cellar of 7 Muranowska Street, behind the ghetto wall. They carried supplies in their hands and on their backs.

  “Henryk.” Zydowski limped over to his friend on makeshift crutches and hugged him. “What angel has sent you?”

  “A drunk one.”

  Wojskowy turned to Waclaw. “Have them unload everything and stack it there. What do you need topside?” he asked Moryc.

  “Food—desperately. Bullets and incendiaries, desperately.”

  Wojskowy motioned to his men, who headed up to the street through a door that opened onto the first floor of an empty row house.

  “My men are scattered along Nalewki, and some on this street,” Moryc said. “But we can signal them for chow once it’s ready.”

  “They beating you up, are they?” Waclaw asked.

  “Pounding us,” Moryc said. He limped over and rested against the cellar’s cold rock wall. “I feel like such a limp dick,” he said.

  “Where’d they hit you?” Roman asked. He set a box down.

  “Left leg. I was bleeding like a mother fucker but they tied me up pretty good.”

  “We’ll get you out,” Wojskowy said.

  “I can’t leave,” Moryc said.

  “After we’re finished,” Wojskowy said. “You can leave then, right?”

  “Finished? When might that be?”

  “Biggy—we’re finishing right?”

  Zbigniew, who rarely spoke for a speech impediment, nodded his head.

  “Cocky fuck,” Moryc said to Wojskowy. “How come I wasn’t born Catholic? You need a multi-syllabic faith to survive in this world.”

  “A what?” Wojskowy said.

  “Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic, Christian, Muslim. Jew. You can’t tell?”

  “Convert,” Wojskowy said. “I could pull some strings.”

  “Ahhh.” Moryc waved his hand. “Pius is a chicken shit.”

  “Keep saying that and they’ll never let you in.”

  Three men carried in a wounded fighter from the street.

  “There’s a hospital on the other side,” Moryc said.

  “How far?”

  “It’s walk-able.”

  “Okay—we need four men on evacuations,” Wojskowy said. “Roman, Biggy—I want you with me. Mosze and Kosta—get two more men to carry the wounded through the tunnel.”

  “What about a stretcher?” Roman asked.

  “How much wood is outside?” Wojskowy gently slapped his son’s head. “I haven’t taught you how to use this?”

  “We have hammer and nails,” Moryc said. He pointed. “In that crate.”

  Roman and Waclaw went topside to the empty house and dragged down scrap lumber from the debris. Zbigniew nailed together a makeshift stretcher from two-by-fours and long flat planks. The first team of four men loaded the wounded fighter and entered the tunnel. Waclaw went up to the street. Roman finished the second stretcher.

  “Here.” Wojskowy motioned to his son. They picked up the stretcher and set it next to Zydowski.

  “You cocksuckers,” Moryc said. “I told you I’m not going.”

  “When I tell
you, hit him over the head,” Wojskowy said to Roman.

  “You hit me and I’ll shoot you,” Moryc said. He raised his shotgun a little.

  “All right,” Wojskowy said. “We need more wood.” Roman and Zbigniew went back up to the empty house.

  “Calling the Pope a chicken shit,” Wojskowy said. “My Pope.”

  “He is a chicken shit.”

  “He gets courage and we get more dead Jews,” Wojskowy said.

  “Bullshit,” Moryc said. “He could call up the fires of hell on all our enemies.”

  “Which would singe your delicate little toes.” Wojskowy gently kicked Zydowski’s good foot.

  “That’s my bad leg, you cruel fuck.”

  “I thought it was this one.” Wojskowy raised his foot as though to kick Zydowski again but an explosion outside toppled him. Dust and rocks broke loose from the cellar wall. Roman ran down from the street.

  “Biggy’s hurt,” Roman said.

  “Shit,” Wojskowy said.

  “Waclaw’s with him.” Both men headed topside.

  “Be careful,” Moryc yelled.

  Moryc listened to the gunfire and blasts from the street. “Limp dick, limp dick, limp dick,” he said to himself.

  Waclaw, Roman and his father carried Zbigniew into the cellar. He was unconscious.

  “Put him over here. Over here.”

  They laid him on the stretcher. Moryc took a knife from his belt and started cutting away the bloody cloth from Biggy’s thigh.

  “Is he hurt bad?” Roman asked.

  “He’s bleeding like I was,” Moryc said. “Maybe an artery.” Wojskowy stood pale and still. Moryc handed his knife to Roman. “Light some scraps and heat this,” Moryc said. “Over there—where the smoke will vent.” He looked at Wojskowy. “What’s it like up there?”

  “Terrible,” said a man coming in from the street. Two other fighters followed him. Dirt and mud covered their clothes and boots. “You have food?”

  Zydowski nodded toward the open crates. The men unwrapped old newspapers that covered potatoes, radishes, sausage and bread, and ate without thinking. Roman held the knife over a small fire.

  “What’s happened to him?” one of the fighters said.

  “Shot,” Moryc said.

  “He took shrapnel,” Wojskowy said. “Hurry with that fucking knife. What are you going to do with it?”

  “Stop the bleeding,” Moryc said. Roman handed him the hot knife. Moryc touched Zbigniew’s leg and his whole body jerked and he awoke and screamed.

  Wojskowy knelt next to his injured son and took his hand and wrapped his arm around him and kissed his head. “It’ll be all right,” he whispered.

  “Drink.” Moryc threw his head toward a whiskey bottle. Wojskowy took it to his son’s lips. Moryc handed Roman a piece of burlap. “Into his mouth,” Moryc said. Roman stuffed it into his brother’s mouth. “Bite down,” Moryc said.

  Wojskowy nodded to Zydowski, who cut away the shredded flesh between Biggy’s screams while wiping blood with another piece of burlap.

  “We can get him to the hospital if we can stop the bleeding.” Zydowski saw the thin cut in Zbigniew’s artery and a metal shard. “I forgot to ask,” Moryc said. “How is Wiktoria?”

  Wojskowy considered. “Dry,” he said.

  “Come on.”

  “Been like that for years.”

  “Then I need to teach you a few things,” Moryc said. “A few techniques.”

  “You?” Wojskowy said.

  “I need Roman to heat some water on that fire,” Moryc said. “And I need a man to wash his hands in hot water and hold this artery.”

  “I’ll do it,” Wojskowy said.

  “No—you’re his father,” Moryc said. “Waclaw—wash up then come here.”

  Waclaw scrubbed his hands in the bowl of hot water and knelt next to Zydowski, who moved Waclaw’s fingers toward the artery. Wojskowy watched Waclaw squeeze his fingers in the damaged thigh until the bleeding stopped. Zbigniew passed out. Zydowski removed the metal shard.

  “Jesus,” Wojskowy said.

  “Don’t look,” Moryc said. He looked at Zbigniew. “He’ll be in a lot of pain when he wakes up.”

  “We brought morphine,” Wojskowy said.

  “Good. I’ve drained ours,” Moryc said. “The hospital has morphine.” He wrapped the leg with a makeshift tourniquet. Mosze and Kosta and the two other men came back from the tunnel.

  “Give him some morphine then load him,” Moryc said. “You know how to inject?”

  Wojskowy nodded. He took the morphine from a back pack and injected it into Zbigniew’s arm. They lifted the stretcher and Wojskowy kissed his unconscious son. “Be careful,” he said. Mosze and Waclaw left with the stretcher through the tunnel.

  “I’m going up,” Wojskowy said.

  “I don’t have to tell you,” Moryc said. “Be careful.”

  On their way to the street, Wojskowy and Roman passed two other men coming into the cellar.

  THE RAIN FELL SLOWLY AT FIRST, PATTERING through artillery fire. A chill stilled the air. Moryc pulled a blanket around his waist and shoulders and watched two men eating and they exchanged small talk. Voices outside sometimes rose above the rain—a scream nearby or a hollered command a little way off. The men in the cellar heard the “whoosh” of a flamethrower and fire crashing against windows and heat cracking wooden frames set in brick. They heard thunder, too. The two men who had been eating each took a slug of water.

  “Up we go,” said one of them. When they opened the door Moryc felt cold air. He heard the weather and the fighting a little louder. He stared at the fire, vented to an old flue where a coal furnace once stood. The rain fell in sheets when three men entered with mud on their shoes and pants and grime on their faces. Moryc didn’t recognize them. Two of the men wore sodden woolen hats.

  “Eats!” one of them said. The man spoke Polish but Moryc thought the word sounded funny. The men tore off hunks of hard bread and wrapped it around sausage. They were not starving, Moryc thought, like other men who rushed the food and stuffed it into their mouths without thinking to make a sandwich. Two of the men turned and Moryc saw their faces in the light from the fire. They wore side arms and one had a knife.

  “Manna!” one of the men said. “You know about manna?” he asked Moryc. He slid down with his back against the rock wall and stretched his legs and crossed them. “Bread from Heaven,” the man said. He rested against the wall. “But this is not Heaven.”

  The other men ate and watched.

  “You injured?”

  “No,” Moryc said. He knew the men were fighters from somewhere else now because all the men here knew he was injured. “Resting,” he said.

  The man against the wall smiled and moved his hand toward his sidearm. Moryc watched the man’s hand and pulled the blanket back from the shotgun by his left leg. The man saw the shotgun. He pulled a flask from the inside pocket of his coat.

  “I saw a war in Warsaw,” the man said. He drank. “To it, I was sent.” He passed the flask to Moryc. “In the darkness, in the light, to fight with all my might.”

  Moryc took a swig from the flask.

  “I never knew my enemy,” the man said. “Only heard his name. Have you heard this?”

  “No,” Moryc said, hearing an accent he had not heard before.

  “From the politicians, who thought it all a game,” said one of the other men. He took off his hat. “It’s a song, I think. Or a poem.”

  “On the battlefield, where we played, I finally saw mine enemy,” said the man against the wall. “How does it end?”

  “I don’t know,” the other man said.

  “You have children?” the man against the wall asked Moryc.

  “Yes,” Moryc said. “Two.”

  “Did they get out?”

  “No,” Moryc said.

  “Are they alive?”

  “No,” Moryc lied.

  The man against the wall swigged his vodka again. “Russian,”
he said. “Good stuff.” They listened to the rain. “Sounds like a Banshee,” he said.

  “Sounds like my wife,” said the third man.

  “Did she get out?” Moryc asked. The man against the wall frowned at his married companion and slowly shook his head.

  “No,” the married man stammered. “She didn’t get out.”

  Moryc placed his hand on his shotgun. The second man turned to the food. He unsnapped his sidearm. They heard rain pelting streets and metal roofs and wind moaning as it blew across chimneys and holes made by shells.

  “It’s nice in here,” said the man against the wall. “When you going up?”

  “Soon,” Moryc said.

  “When the others come back?”

  “Before that,” Moryc said.

  “They not coming back for a while?”

  “They’ll be back to eat,” Moryc said. “There wasn’t food before. Now there is.”

  The man against the wall turned and nodded to his two companions. Moryc leaned forward and pulled the shotgun onto his lap.

  “You a good aim?”

  “Don’t have to be,” Moryc said.

  The man against the wall raised himself to his feet and motioned to the others. Moryc lifted the shotgun.

  “We should go now,” the man said.

  They turned for the dark exit and each man heard a cock.

  “Leave your weapons.”

  They stopped and the man who had been against the wall turned and saw Moryc aiming the shotgun.

  “We’ll be killed without them,” the man said.

  “You’ll be killed with them,” Moryc said.

  The men hesitated. Moryc looked through the gun-sight. “You’re in a good line,” Moryc said. “One shot here, three shot there.”

  The third man unsnapped his sidearm and drew it.

  “Throw it down,” Moryc said.

  The men tossed their pistols in the dirt.

  “And the knife,” Moryc said.

  The third man drew his knife and threw it down with the pistols.

  “Get out,” Moryc said.

  “You going to shoot us?”

  “Then I’d have to drag you out of the doorway,” Moryc said.

  The men turned and Moryc heard them open the cellar door and walk on the wood floors in the empty rooms overhead. He heard their voices and then he heard nothing.