Warsaw Requiem
Page 16
Old dresses! Undergarments! Stockings and worn-out shoes! Papa’s old trousers. Mama’s old dresses. Rachel’s old blouses and three nightgowns flew out across the sidewalk.
This motley collection of faded finery was followed by the real treasure: butter wrapped in wax paper. Sugar in a paper bag. Salt. Pepper. Extra loaves of bread. Extra sugared rolls. Extra this and extra that. A little of everything that amounted to quite a lot of mess there on the busy street corner.
“Oh! You terrible monster!” Rachel wailed as the crooked wheel spun around happily in the air. “Now look what you’ve done!”
She stooped and jerked the wagon into a lopsided upright position. It had emptied all of its burden, and before she could stop it, it rolled away, off the curb.
Rachel sat back on her heels as the wagon splintered to a noisy death under the wheels of a taxi. The cab squealed to a stop, and a great commotion arose as men and women appeared to see what had happened.
Rachel covered her face with her hands. Arms lifted her to her feet. Hands brushed her off, and familiar voices mingled with unfamiliar ones in a hundred different explanations of how the daughter of the good Rabbi Lubetkin—God forbid—almost was killed by the taxi that roared around the corner like a wild bull looking for someone innocent to mow down. And of course she was running away from her unhappy home because she could not stand the strain any longer of caring for . . .
No! No! No! She was on a mission of mercy, poor child! Taking items of charity to the soup kitchen when —God forbid—she was almost crushed beneath the wheels of this . . . But, the Eternal be praised! Jumping back just in time, she was snatched from the jaws of a horrible death!
The crowd looked ready to lynch the poor taxi driver.
Rachel was crying by this time. Her tears made matters much worse. Someone suggested that she be taken to a hospital to be checked in case anything was damaged.
“Please,” Rachel said quietly, “the wagon just broke loose. It is nothing. I was taking this to the soup kitchen at the shul, and the wagon broke away. Nothing. Just . . . I am fine.”
The babble of excited voices drowned out their feeble voice. Rachel looked up in search of a reasonable face. Among the crowd of friends and strangers who now blocked traffic, Rachel saw the wry smile of the red-haired young man in the camel-hair coat. He was behind a three-deep line of neighbor woman. His head and shoulders towered above their excitedly bobbing heads. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, as if to say, Who would believe this?
He inched his way forward. “I saw it,” he said to Rachel through the ruckus. “I’m afraid the wagon is done for, but we may yet save the cargo.” He passed her a still-folded nightgown.
“They never listen!” Rachel said, looking down to where someone stood squarely in the middle of the butter. Yellow ooze was squishing out over the toes of scuffed shoes.
The red-haired boy fought his way down to rescue sacks of bread and buns and mismatched shoes. These he passed up to Rachel, who accepted them with a newfound composure as her crisis continued to be discussed by everyone at the same time.
An unbroken bag of sugar was retrieved. Matching shoes were found, rolled socks, shirts, and dresses retrieved. Rachel’s arms were full. She could carry nothing more. And then the young man rose to his feet. His arms were full as well.
“I was taking it to the soup kitchen,” Rachel explained.
“Old shoes make good soup, I am told, if properly seasoned.” The young man nudged past her and then began his escape through the press.
Rachel followed. No one noticed that the victim was leaving. Like the broken wagon, the butter and a few additional items were abandoned, left as evidence to the near tragedy.
On the other side of the square, Rachel and this young man with the rebellious red hair could see that the mob had grown to two hundred. The two walked quickly toward the soup kitchen at the end of the block.
“Rachel!” cried Herr Bilenki as he hurried past in the opposite direction. “What! What has happened over there, child, do you know?”
“Somebody—God forbid—is dead,” Rachel replied as she kept on walking.
10
On the Beach
The crates were packed and ready for transport to the freighter in Tel Aviv. Orde was expecting the porters. Instead the door opened, and a junior officer passed him a cable from London.
A reprieve from his disgrace, perhaps? Or word that he had been posted back to England to help sort out the problems of Palestine?
He tore open the envelope and scanned the brief paragraph. His hopes fell as quickly as they had risen. It was a telegram from John Murphy and the TENS office in London.
Captain Orde
Regret to hear of your posting back to England and subsequent decision to retire Stop TENS currently in need of correspondent in Poland Stop
Both writing and radio broadcasts required Stop Hopeful you will apply for position Stop
Sincerely John Murphy
Bureau Chief TENS London
Reply Requested
The offer was kind, but Orde read it with a growing sense of despair. It was not at all the way he had envisioned spending the rest of his life. A journalist? No. Samuel Orde was a soldier from the ground up. The TENS proposal was one that he might think about on the trip back to England, but it was at the bottom of his list.
He folded the cable and stuck it in the pocket of his coat. Another knock sounded on the door.
“Yes?”
Hobbs poked his head in. “The messenger is still here, sar. Will y’ be sendin’ a reply?”
Orde answered with a curt nod and then scrawled out his message to Murphy on a torn sheet of notepaper: Thanks for consideration. Will contact you in London. It would be several weeks before he reached London, and Orde hoped the position would be filled by then so he would not have to even consider it.
There was much he needed to think about, to pray about. He had deceived himself into thinking that the Almighty had chosen him to help the cause of a Jewish homeland. And Orde had rather liked picturing himself in the role of a new Moses.
The thought of his arrogance made him wince. “That’s the truth of it, old boy,” he told his reflection in the mirror. So here he was—not a Moses at all, but an Englishman punished by his own people because of that desire.
The knife of that reality cut deep into his heart. To work as a journalist meant reporting the history that other men made. Always before, Orde had considered himself a man who could make history happen.
That much of his life had come to an end, and now he had no personal life, no life at all to fill the void.
“Journalist,” he muttered, clearly remembering something he had said before about members of the press: “Those who can, do. Those who can do nothing else, write what others have done.”
He wondered what sort of bloke this American John Murphy would be to work for. Probably insufferably arrogant and crude like most Yanks.
There was time enough to consider the proposal. Orde determined that he would discuss it with Winston Churchill when he got back to England. It was Winston, after all, whose infernal meddling had gotten him the assignment of Middle East correspondent.
Somehow Orde connected his own stories with this dismissal. Had he not been so vigorous in his reporting, he would not have drawn attention to himself and . . . No use thinking of that now. It was too late. There was no reprieve, it seemed. He was going back to London no matter what.
***
The din of spoons against tin bowls was deafening.
Peter Wallich smoothed out the torn scrap of paper on the long trestle table in the community soup kitchen.
“Here it is, you see.” He tapped it with his finger and ignored his bowl even though Rachel knew he must be very hungry. It seemed as through the fragment of yellow paper held all the hope for nourishment that Peter desired. The blue ink was water-stained, leaving only a portion of the address legible. “Niska Street,” Peter said unhappily. “You
see, that is all I have to go on.”
Rachel frowned. “Niska is a very long street. It would be difficult these days to wander up and down, knocking on the door of every flat to ask if someone had a relative in Vienna.”
Peter moved his face closer to the paper as he attempted to decipher the water-smeared ink. “This could be an A or an O. And this maybe an M or an N. The last three letters are SKI. That is one certain thing.”
Rachel looked up at him doubtfully. Poor boy. Did he know that practically everyone in Warsaw had a relative with a last name ending in SKI? This was of little use, if any, in helping Peter Wallich locate the family he was searching for in Warsaw. Niska Street ran for miles. Thousands of mail slots were labeled with names ending with the only three legible letters in the name on the paper. “All the way from Vienna you have come for this,” she murmured, her words lost beneath the clamor of the crowded dining room. She glanced around at the gaunt faces of the diners. So far these tragic people had come, only to end up here!
“It was so absurd.” Peter slammed his hand down on the paper.
“You should eat,” Rachel urged.
“I was on my way here from Danzig, you see.” He seemed to have lost his appetite. “On the train to Warsaw! Just walking through the corridor, and—you know how trains rock!”
Rachel shrugged. She had never been on a train. But in 1939, could she admit that she had never been on a train? Too childish and provincial. “I see,” she said, using her imagination. Like a tram, only worse.
“So there I was, walking toward the third-class dining car,” Peter continued. “I met this fellow carrying two cups of coffee. Just then the train hit a bad bump. The man fell into me!” He raised his hands and brought them down across the paper to show how the coffee had soaked him and the precious address to his destination. “And here, you see, is the result! The address in my pocket—all my hopes washed away in that moment.”
Rachel sat silently, contemplating the terrible misfortune of Peter Wallich. She looked up to see Frau Sobrinski staring curiously at her from the door of the kitchen. the woman’s eyebrows raised in disapproval. So the rabbi’s daughter is talking to a total stranger of a boy in the soup kitchen! Oy!
Rachel knew the yentas would talk. She did not care. She would go right home and tell her mother and father what had happened to this poor boy who had helped her carry the items for charity to the shul. Maybe Papa would have an idea what to do.
Frau Sobrinski still stared. Rachel smiled and waved, let the smile cool, and then turned away. The look plainly told Frau Sobrinski that she was being a yenta and she should tend her own soup! Very good, Rachel thought. When she glanced up again, the woman had scurried away.
“My father is the rabbi here,” Rachel said to Peter as if that fact explained everything.
Peter looked alarmed. “I am not religious,” he said sternly.
“Yes. I know. Baker Menkes told me you would not eat a meal here for that reason. Is that why you have not touched your soup?”
His expression grew more stern. “Soup is soup when one is hungry.” He met her challenge by taking a bite.
“And a rabbi IS a rabbi when one needs help finding lost friends,” she replied smugly. “So do not be so proud. My father knows everybody. And if he doesn’t know everybody, he knows enough people who do.” She folded her hands primly before her on the table. “So. Do you want help? Of course you do. Then you must tell me everything about your father in Vienna and the man who gave him this address, nu?”
***
It took nearly an hour of explanation about the smashed wagon and spilled cargo before Rachel’s parents allowed her to get on to the really important matters. By that time Papa’s eyes seemed very weary, and Mama was irritable. Mama was often irritable these days from the strain of Papa’s illness and the terrible state of politics.
“But, Mama,” Rachel protested when her mother told her the story could wait until later, “this is what I wanted to tell you! I just had to start with the wagon because that is where I met him.”
“Etta,” Papa wheezed, “we’ll listen.”
“Everyone in Warsaw has a story,” Etta said. “And you need to rest, Aaron.”
Papa raised his hand in gesture that ordered no argument. Rachel had not meant to cause trouble. Now she wished she had waited until morning to tell the whole story.
“It is all right,” Rachel replied. “Really. It can wait.”
“Nonsense.” Papa’s dark brown eyes flashed. “I like a good story.”
“Mama?” Rachel begged her mother’s pardon.
“Your father is bored lying here.” Mama sighed and shook her head. “One of the joys of being a rabbi is listening to everyone’s troubles. As if we do not have enough of our own, Aaron.” She managed a smile as she gently patted his arm. “So tell us the troubles of this red-haired boy who replaced the red wagon.”
Rachel tried to strain out the unimportant parts, like the fact that Peter Wallich was not Orthodox. Not Conservative. Not religious at all. Starting with the spilled coffee, she traced back to the horrible Night of Broken Glass in Vienna and then Peter’s escape to Danzig. By then, Rachel could plainly see that her mother was indeed fascinated and sympathetic as well. Such a story!
“His mother and sister were supposed to meet him at the Danziger Hof Hotel in Danzig. They never came! He waited there for some time, hoping for a letter. Each week he went to the hotel and asked if maybe there was a message there for Peter Ruger, which is the name on his false passport. But they never wrote.”
Mama clucked her tongue. So sad. Terrible. A son separated from his mother and sister. “And now he is in Warsaw?”
“With only this clue.” Rachel passed Etta the yellow coffee-stained paper.
“There is nothing anyone can do with this.” Mama passed it to Papa, who held it up to the light.
He shook his head. “Rachel.” He sounded disapproving. “When there is no help, it is more harm than good to give someone hope. We can do nothing with this.”
“But there is more,” Rachel leaned forward. “He remembers things about the man in Vienna who gave his father this address!” She looked very pleased as she paused long enough for the suspense to build.
“Yes?”
“Well? So tell us.”
Rachel nodded. “The man was from Warsaw, but very active against the Nazis in Austria. Like Peter’s father, he tried to stop the Anschluss. He was killed just before Hitler took over Austria.”
Once again Etta and Aaron exchanged looks. Many people were killed during that time. This was not news. “Is there more?” Papa asked, looking very tired indeed.
“Peter remembers something about him—though not his name. If he could remember his name, then Peter would not have such a problem.” She paused. “He came to the Wallichs’ flat always very late at night. Peter says he carried a violin case and wore elegant clothes. Black dinner jacket and a fine overcoat. A musician. Not like the fellows who stand on the street corners and play their fiddles, but a real musician, like the men at the concert hall. And he was Jewish. Dark eyes and black hair. Handsome.”
This description certainly matched no one in the congregation of Aaron Lubetkin. But maybe it was something. How many Jewish violinists had left Warsaw for Vienna and actually made a success in an orchestra there? It was the sort of thing a Jewish mother and father would talk about. My son the concert violinist . . . And then there was the matter of the son being killed. That would have made waves in the community somewhere.
“Good. This is good.” Papa urged Rachel on. “There is more, maybe?”
Rachel nodded curtly. This was the really good part. “Peter saw this man’s photograph in the newspaper. The headlines said he had murdered his mistress—”
At this, Mama looked suddenly disgusted. Rachel was not supposed to know about things like mistresses. That was the sort of terrible thing that happened on the outside.
“Finish,” Papa said grimly.
Well, this was certainly a story for the yentas of the block to talk about. But maybe not the sort of thing Mama was pleased had entered the ears of her daughter.
“It is enough.” Aaron ran his hand across the stubble of his new beard. “It is something.”
***
Hidden in the center of Karl Ibsen’s ration of daily bread was a soft core. Not yet stale. Not yet shrouded with mold. This heart of the bread was the one taste of pleasure that Karl enjoyed each morning.
As always, he bowed his head and offered thanks for the bit of nourishment that kept him tied to this world. Then he glanced up toward the window and muttered something about the value of even one sparrow. And then in a voice his warders would have attributed to the madness of solitary confinement, the prisoner cried, “Whatever you do for the least of these, you have done for me.”
With that, he rose from his knees and divided the precious heart of his bread into three fragments. Three one-inch squares of bread. Turning his water bucket upside down beneath the window, he stepped up on it. Straining every muscle, he reached up to boost the three small crumbs into the window ledge between the bars.
The bucket tipped, and he fell with a clatter onto the filthy floor of his cell. He lay panting on his back for a while, never taking his eyes from the altar where he had laid his offering.
“You said you were hungry and we did not feed you,” he said aloud when he found his breath again. “There is no man close enough for me to feed, Lord. And so I cannot share my bread with a person. But also . . . you said you know even when a sparrow falls. Even . . . a sparrow. So I will feed the sparrow in your name. Will a sparrow do? Will the bread crumbs work? I have nothing else to give. My prayers you have already. But while I am still here in this prison called earth, I will feed the sparrow because you said . . . if I feed the smallest, then I have fed you.”