The Fires of Lilliput

by Michael Martin

  “I can’t,” Jakub said.

  “That’s a stupid question. There’s nothing to explain,” von Kempt said.

  “Leutnant,” Strauss said.

  “Take him back,” Petersdorf said.

  “Now?”

  “Take him back!”

  Von Kempt looked at Strauss.

  “Do it,” Strauss said.

  They opened the door and led Chelzak back to the yard. The heavy air came into the room. Strauss picked up his pipe and lit it and puffed on it as the kapo wiped foam from his face.

  “God it stinks out there,” Strauss said.

  CITY

  Thirty Seven

  Karl Chelzak played his harmonica on the porch.

  “Can you smell it?”

  He jumped. “I didn’t see you,” Karl said to his mother. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  Mia stood with her son and looked across the field, under clouds streaked with moonlight.

  “What could possibly be burning, day and night?”

  “You know what they say,” Karl said. “You’ve heard.”

  “I’ve heard a lot of things. Like your brother is doing fine and coming home. Like they’re just burning rubbish.”

  “They call it rubbish.” Karl put the harmonica to his lips.

  “I miss Jakub,” Mia said. “The rabbi used to write so often.”

  “They were leaving Warsaw,” Karl said. “They’re busy.”

  “I don’t know why he’s stayed so long,” Mia said.

  “Money.”

  “We don’t need money that badly.”

  “Not anymore,” Karl said. “Because of Jakub.”

  “Monsignor Starska says I’m right to be worried. He says we should never have let him go.”

  “He said he’d be home after the family was settled,” Karl said. “Give it time.”

  They heard late spring thunder crash across the sky. “If he isn’t here soon,” Mia said, “I’m going to find him.”

  Karl stopped playing.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You don’t know anything about Warsaw.”

  “I’ve been,” Mia said. “I know it’s different now, but I’ll go back if I have to.”

  “The rabbi said they were leaving. If you go, they won’t be there.”

  “Who’s to say they make it out okay?”

  “They have their ways,” Karl said.

  “And I have mine.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Karl started playing again. Then he stopped. “How do we pay for it?”

  “It would take time to get the money together,” Mia sighed. “The rabbi tells me he sends money in the last letter, but I don’t always get the last letter.”

  “He sends cash. People steal it. What else can he do?”

  Mia thought. “So the getting of the money will be up to us,” she said.

  “It won’t be cheap, mama. It might take a while.”

  Karl started playing again. He felt temporarily relieved.

  MIA CHELZAK RECEIVED A LETTER from the rabbi with American dollars, much favored over devalued zlotys. He was careful—as he was in every letter—not to mention his exact whereabouts. The rabbi explained that Jakub didn’t join the Mordechai family when they crossed the Wisla into Praga.

  “I urged your son to go home,” the rabbi said. “I wanted him to return to his family.”

  But the letter was over a month old. Jakub had been gone seven months, and if he was on his way home, it was five weeks now. He was not on his way home at all, Mia decided.

  “I realize Warsaw, like all of Poland, is in a state of flux. But your son was beheld with some fear,” the rabbi wrote. “Many soldiers knew him by reputation. Jakub was never molested and I suspect he is or will be shortly returning to Marienburg. Jakub Chelzak was a great friend to us and will forever be remembered as a hero of both the Jewish and Polish peoples.”

  Mia flushed when she read the last sentence. She went out the front door to walk and think. Karl came back late from town late and joined his mother on the porch, eating his dinner on a plate. “You never told me how your day went,” he said. He looked at her trembling hands. “What’s wrong?”

  “The rabbi says Jakub is not with them.”

  “Where is he?” Karl said.

  “Coming home.”

  “That’s good news,” Karl said. “He’s on his way?”

  “The rabbi didn’t say. He only said not to worry and that Jakub was a good friend.”

  “See—he’s coming home.”

  “Maybe,” Mia said. She stood and thought. Karl said something else but she didn’t hear him.

  “Where’s the letter?” he said.

  She went into the house. She returned and handed Karl the letter.

  “It had money in it,” she said.

  “That’s good.” Karl read the letter. “But it’s from a month ago, mama.”

  “I know.” Mia went toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Karl asked.

  “I’ve decided,” she said.

  “Decided what?”

  “I’m going to Warsaw.”

  Karl went to her. “That’s crazy.”

  “I’m going.”

  Karl grabbed her arm. “You’re not going to Warsaw.”

  “I am. Your brother may need me and how would I know?” Mia pulled away and opened the door.

  Karl grabbed her again. “I’ll go,” he said. “If anyone goes, I’m the one should go.”

  “I’m not letting both my boys go,” Mia said. “What if you’re both killed?”

  Karl looked at his mother. “We won’t both be killed.”

  Mia took Karl’s hand. “I don’t want to think what life would be like.”

  Karl kissed his mother’s head. “It’s much better if I go. I’m strong and I can fight.”

  “You wouldn’t be going to fight. Don’t say that.” She pulled her son close. “Why did we let Jakub go in the first place?” Mia said. “To help a bunch of Jews.”

  “The woman died, mama. Remember. He didn’t help much.”

  “Poor girl. She sounded like a real fighter.”

  “Like us, mama.”

  “They kill the real fighters,” Mia said.

  “Not us,” Karl said. “They won’t kill us.” He looked at the field, dry and white. “How much money was with the letter?”

  “I didn’t count it,” Mia said. She went back into the house and returned with an envelope she handed to Karl. He pulled out a wad of currency.

  “There should be enough here,” he said. “With what we have.”

  “Your brother left me to make this money, and now you use it to leave me, too.”

  Karl looked at his mother, then bent and kissed her forehead.

  WITH MONEY SAVED AND HELP FROM FRIENDS, the Chelzaks decided Karl would leave for Warsaw in late November to find his brother, before winter.

  “I have friends there,” Monsignor Starska told Karl and Mia. “They can get you into the city.” Mia hugged the priest and he squirmed. “That’s not necessary,” he said. “You won’t have any trouble finding people who want to help. They all know of Jakub.”

  Karl spent an hour consoling his mother and promising her he would return with his brother. He left for Warsaw on the back of a wagon filled with hay. After three days on wagons, horses, a bicycle, and his own feet, Karl saw the city under a thin cloud of smoke that turned the sun orange. Monsignor Starska’s friends lived in the Aryan section but knew about the rabbi. They found it hard to believe he had escaped “that, over there,” on the other side of the wall. There was nothing left of the Jewish quarter.

  “Jakub was there?” Karl asked one of the Monsignor’s friends.

  “If he was with the Mordechais. They lived there for years.”

  “We heard they went across the river, to Praga,” Karl said. He showed around some of the letters.r />
  “It’s a wonder,” people on the Aryan side said. “But anyone rich enough might have made it there. It’s possible, what you say. But we have not seen your brother.”

  Karl got a job working for a family who owned a store on the southern outskirts of the city. He sent his mother enough money to hire help some days. Men needed work around Marienburg, especially gypsies and Red Army deserters who wandered in from the Eastern Front.

  Karl also wrote to Mia. He described Warsaw and how the people were coping. He told her they were kind to him, once they found out he was not a Jew nor a German. He said he had enough to eat most days and learned to avoid the soldiers. He never mentioned the ghetto, nor how it looked over the wall. He wrote that he asked every person he met about Jakub, and that many people had heard of him. People told him they would spread the word, keep their eyes open, and pray. He was planning a trip to Praga, he explained to his mother, after the Red Army made it safe. The Red Army, everyone said, was very close now.

  Thirty Eight

  The rabbi sat on the edge of a bed holding Rebekah Mordechai. Shosha was gone over a month now. They had heard twice from her that she made it back to Warsaw and was staying with members of the Underground. She said it was not safe for her to cross to Praga and that she couldn’t communicate well or often.

  The rabbi couldn’t help much. He had lost most of his contacts on the left bank, central Warsaw. The suburb had become isolated from the city as Soviet forces closed around it. Rebekah often felt nauseous and a chill nagged her, though the days were warm and muggy now and the air hung in a fog off the Wisla, which stood almost still.

  “She’ll die and her death will be for nothing,” Rebekah said.

  “You can’t say that,” the rabbi said. He brought his hand to her cheek.

  “Just like Lev,” Rebekah said. “Just like her father.”

  The rabbi was silent.

  “I don’t want my baby to die,” Rebekah said.

  “She won’t.”

  “My Lev is dead and for what? Things are only worse now.” Her voice trembled. “I hope,” Rebekah said. “I look at the door every day. I look up and down the street. I wake at night and open my eyes. I feel around beside me.”

  The rabbi drew her face toward his chest.

  “He’s not coming back,” she said. “If he’s not dead, he’ll die in a camp.”

  “He won’t,” the rabbi said.

  Rebekah took a deep, distressed breath.

  “You don’t know,” she said. “You can’t be sure. It’s what’s so awful about war.”

  “He won’t die in a camp,” the rabbi said. He paused. With her head against his chest, Rebekah could hear his breathing. She looked at the window, at the hazy light outside. She thought about what he said and the way he said it. Then she looked at him.

  “How do you know?” She moved. “How?”

  “Lev won’t die in a camp,” the rabbi said.

  The tone of his voice struck Rebekah. “You sound sure.” The rabbi went to stand but Rebekah held him. “How do you know?” she said.

  He hesitated.

  “Tell me.”

  “We were by the river,” the rabbi said.

  “Oh G-d.”

  He stared out the window. “I heard yelling. Lev was marking a map. There was a small group of us. Nobody thought about it.”

  “About it? About what?”

  “There was yelling all the time,” the rabbi said. “Somebody was always yelling something. This time, something about we’re all dead anyway. I heard a loud pop, like a rifle. I woke in an infirmary.”

  “Soldiers? A soldier killed Lev?”

  “Not their soldier.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Some kid,” the rabbi said. “Just a kid.”

  Rebekah was shaking. “What?” she said. Her voice sounded like it was falling apart.

  The rabbi took her wrist.

  “Lev pushed me out of the way,” the rabbi said.

  “Of what?” Rebekah breathed fast and light. She moved. “Why didn’t you…why dint you….” She gathered herself. She brought herself together. She breathed and she stood. “Why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you tell us. You son, you, you—Why didn’t you tell us? Why?” She cried and stood and breathed, fast and shallow.

  “He talked about you all the time,” the rabbi said. “He told me all about you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rebekah said. “Shosha, Leia, me?”

  For a long time, it seemed, the rabbi sat and stared. Then, his lips parted.

  “I couldn’t,” he said. “I couldn’t.” He waited while she cried in little, exhausted gasps. “You needed him alive.”

  CONSPIRATORS TRIED TO ASSASSINATE HITLER with a bomb on July 20, 1944. But a heavy oak table protected him, and he was only wounded. Fear of reprisals spread across Europe and an ominous quiet settled on Warsaw. Shutters were battened, doors and gates chained, streets emptied. The attempt on Hitler’s life portended. One word dominated the Underground papers and notes and whispers that carried news around Warsaw’s central district—UPRISING. The word flew from face to face, followed feet up steps, entered houses and sallied from room to room, upstairs and down, from the lowest basement to the highest attic perch. Aryan Warsaw would follow Jewish Warsaw and fight.

  Insurgents—ragged and ready—sprouted everywhere. They were civilians in regular clothes and the only way you could tell their allegiance was to see the armband each fastened around his or her sleeve. These warriors wore helmets and hats, railway and tram caps and caps with school insignia. Shopkeepers, street sweepers and bus drivers carried machine guns and knives and bullet-laden belts that sagged with hand grenades. Men took up positions in attics, near windows, at the entrances to basements and underground hideaways. Women organized first aid stations. To one basement laundry, they brought cots and tables, medicines, and bandages. They hung a sign on the door: First Aid. They lined the walls with stretchers. Three nurses—ages 17, 18 and 23—stood ready.

  When darkness fell on July’s last day, artillery throttled the air. Bullets broke plaster and windows and pitted bricks with pocks. The sky was so clear you could see the constellations. Underground fighters evaded searchlights single file, rushing tight against walls along empty streets to storm arms depots for more weapons.

  Skyward cannons shook the nearby fields of Mokotow next morning. Recoiling gunstocks jarred Shosha Mordechai, who stood near a window a few streets from the field. Reunited with the AK, she was a guest at the home of Stazek Pszenny, a Roman Catholic cousin of Jozef Pszenny, aka “Chwacki,” the AK captain who led the failed effort to blast through the Jewish ghetto wall at Bonifraterska Street with a land mine.

  Shosha could not get word of her whereabouts to her mother and the rabbi, and she could not use the most important means of communication—rumor. Rumors about Jews often reached gendarmes, so she kept quiet.

  Karl Chelzak stood on a balcony a few blocks away and saw people in houses, standing at windows and pointing toward the sky. Planes passed between the clouds.

  “Let’s go—time to go.”

  Karl and a few others went down to a basement. Numbered doors lined a long, narrow brick corridor. People sat on suitcases and chairs and boxes and trunks.

  “Chelzak! You should have stayed in Marienburg.”

  Karl made good money in Warsaw, good compared to selling produce back home, but now he was a bona fide fighter. He realized that finding his brother in a city this size would be difficult, and he thought his chances improved if he joined the revolt. All he heard about Jakub was what a hero he had been to the Underground and that he was last seen alive.

  “Jakub could be anywhere. Warsaw is a big place,” Karl wrote his mother. “It seems even bigger now.”

  A mix of hopeful rumor and vague despair circulated in catacombs beneath streets and buildings. A few facts trickled in, but generally, the central district was cut off from hard news. Radios were few, telephones
were down, and newspapers were local. Real news came from London or the U.S., often in papers with outdated stories people updated with their own retellings. Reading last week that the Red Army was twenty miles from Praga today became: “The Reds are in Praga!”

  “Hear that. The Germans should give up.”

  “Our fighters already have Stare Miasto.”

  Rooftop lookouts climbed down to say the planes were gone. People left basements. They heard shooting, but not as bad. The streets were empty but adults came into their yards and children played, with sticks and what they could find. Karl joined a group of men who gathered with “news.”

  “Are the Russians here yet?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Our fighters have the city. Scouts are reporting our red and white banner flying over Town Hall.”

  “The Russians have Praga.”

  “Hey Chelzak—the rabbi’s over there.”

  “What?” Karl said.

  “The rabbi who was with your brother—he’s in Praga with a family.”

  “I heard that, but how can I find them?”

  “I don’t know. You can’t get there now. We’ll have to keep our ears open.”

  Karl shook for the rest of the day and with shaking hands wrote his mother the night of August 2. He couldn’t sleep. He finally collapsed around four in the morning. He woke at dawn to planes circling high. Some men were outside sharing binoculars.

  “Reds. Told you they’re here.”

  “Those are Krauts.”

  An old woman came up from a cellar.

  “It doesn’t matter whose planes those are,” she said. “Each of them is here to bomb Warsaw. The Germans will bomb the Poles. The Brits will bomb the Germans. The Reds will bomb everyone. Get in here and keep the doors shut.”

  In the basement, they heard shots, hollow like kettledrums up and down the street. The basement walls shook. Someone at a dirty window cried, “Tanks!” Karl and others gathered at the window and saw steel treads breaking across brick pavers.

  “They look like Soviets.”

  “Here?” said a woman with a child in her arms. Her face was long and tired and she had heavy bags under her eyes. The child grabbed her neck and pressed his body against her. “Finally?”