The Fires of Lilliput

by Michael Martin

  But his was in truth a partial victory with ten times the casualties he claimed. Stroop’s war took twenty eight days when Himmler demanded three. The Nazi Blitzkrieg that conquered Poland had taken only two days longer. Resistance fighters continued to attack the occupiers for a year, in isolated pockets, all over the ghetto.

  “ALLE GLEICH! ALLE GLEICH!”

  Shosha opened her eyes the morning of May 17.

  “Die kleine schweine Verfluchen Jude! Alle gleich, alle gleich, banditen Jude! Kaput!”

  The voices came from the street somewhere. Shosha pushed herself up. She leaned on her hands. The darkness in the cellar was complete so she sat and stared into it and listened to the rhythmic breathing of sleeping men in the cool air. She flinched and caught her breath when she heard a match strike and before she could speak the flame lit a candle and she saw the rabbi’s face.

  “We have to get the fuck out of here,” he whispered.

  Her stomach seized and she did the first thing that came to her mind—she tore her skirt and wrapped her hair with shaky hands. She grasped the end of the skirt near her ankles and tore it down the middle, back and front, and tied the sides into loose-fitting pants around each leg. She leaned over Jakub and shook him awake. She crawled to her mother and kissed her forehead and stroked her cheek. The other men were rousing.

  “Mama—time to get up.”

  Rebekah opened her eyes. “What? What is it?”

  “Time to go.”

  “Scout,” someone whispered.

  Shosha helped her mother and held a small metal cup half full of water to her lips.

  “Hey—Scout!”

  Shosha felt a hand on her arm. “We need a scout,” the fighter named Wladislaw—Vladi—said to her. “Aren’t you a scout?”

  “Not for a long time,” Shosha said.

  “Once a scout, always a scout.”

  “That’s not a woman’s job,” said another man. “There’s plenty of us.”

  “Rabbi,” Shosha said, “can you help mama?” To Vladi: “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go up—tell us what you see.”

  Shosha stood.

  “I’ll go with you,” Jakub said. He walked behind her, stooping.

  “Whew—you stink,” Shosha said. “I hope they don’t smell you.”

  They pushed open the cellar door. Through holes in the walls above the floor, they saw a line of naked men, captured resistance fighters. They saw a soldier pull a clothed man by his hair from a bunker.

  “Jetzt! Gehen Sie!”

  The soldier threw him forward and kicked him. The man stumbled.

  “They’re going to shoot them,” Shosha said. “Then they’ll be here.”

  Jakub watched the clothed man struggle to his feet. “I count three,” he said.

  “Soldiers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Streifen! Streifen!”

  With unsteady hands, the clothed man unbuttoned his shirt. The soldier slapped the man’s hands and tore the shirt open.

  “Stay here,” Shosha said.

  She ducked into the cellar. Jakub watched the man strip.

  “Here.” Shosha pushed up an old bolt-action rifle and bullets. “It’s loaded,” she said.

  He took the rifle and tried to aim it. “I can’t get a good shot,” Jakub said.

  “Try anyway.”

  He slid the rifle on the floor and slipped out of the cellar. Shosha hovered beneath the cellar door.

  “Can you do it through the holes?”

  “Maybe,” Jakub said. He crawled toward a wall. He tried lining the sight through one of the holes, but both barrel and scope wouldn’t fit.

  “Too small,” he said.

  “Try the window.”

  Jakub crawled over and peaked through smoke-scarred glass. He rubbed away soot and dirt and could see the soldiers. “It’s good,” he said. He lined up the sight and aimed.

  “Can you kill them?” Shosha asked.

  “Shhhh.”

  Shosha watched the soldier push the last naked fighter into the line.

  “There's three,” she whispered. “Can you kill three at once?”

  “Shut up, please.”

  Jakub saw his chance through the sight when one soldier stepped behind another. He fired and glass shattered and the bullet went through the heart of the first soldier. It hit the second soldier in the arm and he stumbled. Jakub cocked the rifle and fired again. The bullet went through the soldier's shoulder and he hit dirt and didn’t move. Some of the Jewish fighters dropped to the ground. The third soldier took cover behind the fighters who stood. He looked up, across the street, around.

  “Möchten mich, Judeschwein schießen?” the soldier shouted. “Möchten mich schießen?”

  “Only one more,” Jakub said.

  “Can’t you get him? Can’t you shoot?”

  “Hush.” Jakub aimed but he couldn’t shoot the soldier without shooting a fighter. Then one by one, the fighters who stood lowered themselves and stretched across the ground.

  “Stehen Sie oben!” The soldier aimed his pistol at the head of a fighter. “Bleiben Sie Stellung!”

  “Schießen Sie mich!” the fighter said. “Schießen Sie mich! Warum sollte ich mich interessieren?”

  A gunshot echoed and the German slumped. The fighters peered up. They waited for more shots. One man stood on shaky feet. He ran to his clothes. He raised his fist. The others watched him and stood. Jakub kept his eyes on them.

  “Did you get him?” Shosha asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  THEY MOVED OVER HOLES, CRATERS, embers, and bodies buried in rubble. The rabbi and Jakub helped Rebekah. She was the only one among them who ate this morning and her strength was a little improved. Shosha, Vladi and another fighter scouted ahead. Two men from another bunker joined them and stayed at the rear. Burning beams and timbers crashed nearby and roofs wheezed and groaned or slammed to the ground. It sounded like thunder, clapping around the ghetto. Smoke was everywhere and heavy. They had to pause many times to get a breath. The rabbi stopped them near a burned-out church.

  “Here,” he said. He pointed to an area that, in all the debris, looked artificially covered. The wood was not burned; the stones not scorched or hot. Jakub pulled the cover away to a tunnel.

  “How did you know this was here?” Rebekah asked. The rabbi seemed surprised. Rebekah didn’t talk much anymore.

  “They planned these tunnels months ago,” the rabbi said. “There are a few around.”

  Shosha lowered herself after the first fighter. “Oh! Cover your noses.”

  The nine refugees moved through a narrow passage.

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” a fighter asked.

  “They told me it was here,” the rabbi said. “I don’t know any more than that.”

  A ways farther and Rebekah stopped.

  “Go ahead,” the rabbi told them. “She needs rest.”

  “We’re not leaving you,” Shosha said. “We’ll wait.”

  “We can’t wait,” said a fighter at the rear.

  “We wait,” Shosha yelled back.

  In a few minutes, they went a little farther and saw light. It came through a small, square opening. They heard fire smoldering on the other side. Vladi tried to pull himself up to reach the opening but the bricks around it were too hot to touch.

  “This can’t be it,” the rabbi said. “Keep going.”

  They crawled farther in darkness.

  “There’s a hole here, in the wall,” Vladi said. “Do we go straight or through?”

  “One person through,” the rabbi said.

  “I’ll go,” Jakub said. Jakub slipped himself head first into the hole.

  “You’ll feel built up walls,” the rabbi said. “It will be obvious if it’s right.”

  Jakub could only crawl and he pushed himself snakelike with his hands, elbows, and toes. He only went a few feet before he felt wood
en reinforcements. The slender tunnel emptied into an antechamber. At its mouth, Jakub felt something hanging in the darkness. “A ladder,” he called back. “This must be it.”

  “Go up it,” the rabbi called back. His voice didn’t travel in the narrow passage. “Tell him to go up it,” he said to Vladi. “Then tell him at the top to say the word ‘Hannibal’ loudly.”

  When Jakub did this, a round wooden door opened.

  “Mordechai?” a man’s voice asked softly.

  Jakub relayed the question. It traveled person by person, back to the rabbi.

  “Yes,” the rabbi said. “Mordechai.” The word traveled back.

  “Yes,” Jakub said. “Mordechai.”

  Two hands reached down and took hold of Jakub’s forearms. He swayed unsteadily on the rope ladder but the hands helped pull him up.

  “Merciful God in Heaven.” A Franciscan friar in a long robe with a triple-knotted rope belt stood and looked at Jakub. “Jakub Chelzak, from Marienburg,” Fr. Fredric continued. He took Jakub’s hand. “How on Earth did you come to be here?”

  “With the rabbi,” Jakub said.

  The rest went through the hole. The rabbi went in front of Rebekah and a fighter went behind. They pushed her when she needed extra strength. Shosha’s head popped up from the antechamber. Jakub and Fr. Fredric bent to help her. “Mama’s next,” she said.

  The seven men and two women entered the small chamber one by one. A crucifix hung above an altar. Statues of St. Francis, St. Peter, St. Michael the Archangel, and St. Jude book-ended a library along the walls. An oversize velvet chair relaxed inconveniently in the center of the room.

  “Father Fredric.” The rabbi shook the priest’s hand and they glanced cheek to cheek. “My thanks—our thanks.”

  “Not at all,” Fredric said. “Father Stan told me about you, how much you’ve helped us in the past.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In Praga—with another group. He’ll take you when he returns.”

  Fr. Fredric led them down another tunnel to a lower chamber with mattresses and blankets, a basin with water, soap, a wash cloth and clothing on a chair in the corner. Vladi set the clothing on the mattresses and the rabbi and Shosha lowered Rebekah into the chair. The rabbi looked at the basin. “Is that steam?” he asked.

  Fr. Fredric opened his hand toward the basin. The rabbi put his hand in and scooped up a little water. “It’s warm,” he said. He held the water up. “Forgive me please, but L-rd in Heaven it’s downright hot.” He opened his fingers and the water trickled through his hair. “Ay-yay-yay.” It went down his forehead, and onto his cheeks. “I haven’t felt anything like that in—I can’t remember how long.” He scooped another palm full of water and again let it trickle through his hair.

  They cleaned with warm water and ate a meal of hard biscuits and coffee. They changed clothes and laid on the mattresses.

  “God stay with you,” Fr. Fredric said to them before they slept, and all but one had as deep and fine a sleep as they had ever had.

  JAKUB AWAKENED WITH INTENSE THROBBING in his ankles shortly after 3 a. m. He sat up on the mattress and looked over the sleeping bodies of the other men. The bunker was pitch black, but he remembered where he lay. Jakub crawled, all he could do when the pain started. He crawled on his elbows and knees around the men and out, along the narrow passage toward the chapel. He envisioned reclining in the chair and letting his hands and feet bleed over the stone floor in private. He would clean the blood with a mop he had seen in the passage.

  Jakub crawled into the chapel and felt around for the chair in the dark. He pulled himself onto it and leaned forward. He pulled off his new socks and pulled back the legs of his new pants. He knew when he felt the four first bruises—three on one leg, one on the other—that tonight he would endure the full compliment of wounds and injuries. Bruises and welts would cover him, an intermittent quality of his stigmata the clerics paid little attention. Nails would pierce his feet. He might—or might not—sweat blood from his forehead, an unusual but painless phenomena Church historians wrongly attributed to a crown of thorns.

  He pried the buttons of his shirt from their holes—a painful task in this condition—and slipped the shirt off. He tucked it behind his head. He stretched his feet out from the chair and laid his hands over the armrests, supporting his forearms there to reduce the throbbing. He lay in darkness repeating the Lord’s Prayer, a habit his mother emphasized hoping it would reduce the pain. He clenched his jaw and uttered a restrained cry then short staccato gasps like a woman in labor. The nails pierced him, first through the side of his left ankle, then the right, in front of the Achilles tendon. He felt the hammer miss and slam his thumb pad. He felt the nail shatter his wrist bones. He passed out before the pain reached its crescendo.

  Jakub awakened ninety-minutes later to a male voice saying a rosary. He opened his eyes but the throbbing had moved to his head and though candles now lit the room, he couldn’t make out the hunched, robed figure that knelt somewhere near his legs. He brought his hand to his forehead and Fr. Fredric looked up from his prayers.

  “Bless me,” the priest said. “My last confession was so long ago I can’t remember. Is it important that I remember?”

  Jakub rubbed his head. “Remember what?” he asked.

  “Remember how long ago I last confessed my sins.”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because I know I have offended you and I am sorry.”

  “You haven’t offended me,” Jakub said. “You’ve been as kind as anyone I know.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “Of course it is,” Jakub said. “Look at everything you’ve done.”

  The priest thought for a moment. “That’s only now,” he said. “I’m talking about before.”

  “Before when?” Jakub asked. “We just met.”

  “How can you say that? I’ve known you all my life.”

  Jakub looked at the floor. He tried to stand but the pain was too great in his ankles. The blood was dry on his flesh but wet where it pooled on the floor. The priest must be kneeling in it, he thought.

  “I’m the one who should be apologizing to you,” Jakub said. “I’ve messed up your floor.”

  “The floor?”

  “I meant to clean it.”

  Fr. Fredric stood. “This floor will never be cleaned again,” he said. He walked to the other side of the chair and knelt again, but on one knee. He bowed his head. “Lord, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee. I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the fires of Hell. But most of all because they offend thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.”

  Jakub put his hand on the priest’s wrist.

  “I am asking for penance,” Fr. Fredric said. “Forgiveness.”

  Jakub took a deep breath. “I don’t have that power,” he said.

  The priest looked at him. “Everything is in your power.”

  Jakub looked away.

  “Why won’t you hear my confession?” the priest asked.

  “I’m tired.”

  The priest considered. “Why are you toying with me?”

  “I would be toying with you if I took your confession,” Jakub said.

  “You have the power to loose my sins and you won’t? Why?”

  “I don’t have that power.”

  “Are you saying you're a fraud?”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  The priest stood again. “If you’re not a fraud and you can’t give penance, then you must be the Devil.”

  “I didn’t ask for this,” Jakub said. “I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

  Fr. Fredric bent down and touched his finger to the blood on the floor. He brought it to his lips. “I know blood,” he said. “Only God and the Devil could spill so much of it and live.”

  Jakub looked at St. Jude in the candlelight.

  “I want you out,” the priest said. “Now, tonight.”

 
; “I can’t move,” Jakub said.

  Fr. Fredric grabbed both arms of the chair. “Then I should drag you out of that chair and throw you down that hole.”

  “Get away from me,” Jakub said.

  Fr. Fredric stood up. He looked away. “You’ve tempted and humiliated me,” the priest said. He walked over to the opening in the stone floor and slid back the rug.

  “I told you I didn’t ask for this,” Jakub said.

  “Quiet, Satan. Your voice offends!”

  The priest grasped the handle and pulled back on the round wooden door. He lifted it aside, exposing the hole and the ten-foot drop into the antechamber. Rung by rung he pulled up the rope ladder and set it aside. He walked back to Jakub and seized his leg and pulled. Jakub gripped both sides of the chair. Fr. Fredric muttered as he pulled Jakub and the chair toward the hole.

  “Down to Hell, down to Hell, back where you belong.”

  Jakub tried to kick the priest off, but his feet were in too much pain.

  “Shosha,” he cried. “Shosha!”

  The priest kept pulling.

  “Rabbi!”

  The ruckus awakened several people. Candles and oil lamps cast shadows along the stone walls of the passage. Shosha appeared first at the entrance to the chapel. “What are you doing?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  The priest ignored her.

  “He wants to throw me down that hole,” Jakub said.

  “What?” She grabbed Fr. Fredric’s arm and tried to pull him off. He pushed her back. She stumbled into the rabbi, who steadied her then took hold of the priest.

  “Stop it,” the rabbi said. “Stop it now!”

  Two fighters came in and the four of them held the priest. The rabbi pried Fr. Fredric’s fingers from around Jakub’s legs.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the rabbi said.

  “That.” The priest pointed at Jakub.