Warsaw Requiem

by Bodie Thoene

  He did not make a move to sit up even when the clatter of the meal tray sounded outside in the corridor. The steel trap slid back, and the bread and porridge were shoved through. The black water that passed as coffee was already cold. The mush was cold as well. It would not matter if Karl ate now or waited awhile. He dared not disturb the small drama being played out above him.

  Lady Sparrow leaped from her perch and flew toward the nest. With a flurry, she brushed her children firmly, urging them up. Pushing them toward the edge. Then just as abruptly the big male rushed toward the nest, pushing his mate aside. She resumed her place on the window ledge while he took over. He was much rougher with his children. Today they would fly. He would not accept excuses. If they did not fly, then they would go hungry. They might die. No exceptions. He beat the inside of the nest with his wings. The down lining flew up and floated down to land on Karl’s bed. Welcome to the real world.

  All four young birds beat their wings frantically. The big male shoved them one after another from the nest. And one after another, they flew clumsily to where their mother sat beside the bread crumbs on the ledge.

  Karl wanted to cheer! This was the first time he had seen them all at once. But he lay very still as the young birds were lectured and then directed to fly back to their little home. The largest of the young sparrows spread his wings and flapped, raising himself off the ledge a few inches. Then, his father’s stern feathers at his back, he leaped up into space and hovered a moment, sand down, and then with his father at his side, he weaved back to the nitch in the bricks.

  His three siblings followed after, each with a different degree of skill. All of them made it home and only then were they fed. By this event, Karl marked the end of summer. The end of a sermon that God had been whispering in his ear for months.

  When the door to his cell crashed open, revealing the grim faces of the prison warden and four armed SS guards. Karl was not surprised.

  The sparrows watched silently from their nest.

  “Prisoner Ibsen,” said the warden, “your stay here with us is at an end, I’m afraid.”

  Karl managed to stand. His clothes hung in tattered rags from his thin frame.

  “He will need a bath. Mein Gott! This one stinks! Come on, pig! Out of your filth!”

  Karl did not look up at the family of sparrows as he tottered from the cell. He did not want to reveal their hiding place to these men. The butt of a rifle would easily crush the nest and the sparrows. Such men would take pleasure in destroying in a moment the miracle that had come to Karl in his cell. He wanted to look over his shoulder. He wanted to whisper good-bye. And thanks. But he did not.

  The rifle urged him hard from this nest. The door slammed shut behind Karl, and the family of sparrows was safe.

  “Where are you taking me?” Karl asked. His voice was strong and untroubled.

  An SS guard sneered. “The Führer has arranged a little party for you at the border.”

  Silence,” ordered the warden. Then, “For now, Prisoner Ibsen, a shower. Clean clothes. A meal perhaps?”

  Karl did not need further explanation. Was this not the kindness offered a condemned man? Maybe this was the day when Karl Ibsen would finally be nudged from the nest. No longer bound by earth, he hoped that soon, like the young sparrow, he would fly.

  ***

  From high atop the fifteen-story platform of Warsaw’s Prudential building, Orde broadcast the scene of imminent war by shortwave to Belgium and then to London. In the morning sunlight, anti-aircraft batteries were clearly visible. Like the nests of storks, machine guns perched among the red brick chimneys of buildings overlooking the main highways.

  A cloud of dust rose up like smoke from a convoy of antiquated military vehicles. Private automobiles, commandeered in the last week by the Polish Army, were blanketed with soldiers on hoods and roofs and trunks and running boards.

  From the high perspective, it looked more like an army in retreat than an army moving forward to face the massive German Wehrmacht.

  As the military traffic rolled out from Warsaw in creeping black columns, thousands of people struggled against the tide as they oozed into Warsaw from the threatened battlefields of western Poland. On the other side of the city, thousands more were leaving Warsaw on highways headed east.

  Every road and rutted lane was crammed with human flotsam drifting from the shipwreck of failed politics. There seemed to be no beginning of the mass—and no end.

  Orde spotted the massive traffic jams at the Warsaw aerodrome and at various rail terminals throughout the city. Even as he spoke, he scanned the horizon for the way he would take out of Warsaw in order to lead his little group to safety. His broadcast was an unspoken plea that somehow the passports be sent. He was certain that Murphy was listening in London.

  33

  The Pain of Not Being Good Enough

  Lori knew what the Warsaw broadcast meant before Murphy explained it to her. Stalin and Hitler had a signed a mutual nonagression pact. Hitler had annexed Danzig.

  Poland had not yet officially declared war, but it was coming. Why should anyone try to raise her hopes? There was going to be a war, and Jacob was still in Warsaw with Alfie!

  In England, a general mobilization had been announced. Soldiers home on leave had been called back to ships and army bases. Tonight London was to be in complete blackout in anticipation of German bombing.

  All of this was reality, yet still the precious passports of Alfie and Jacob had not been sent to them in Warsaw! Why?

  Three passports were laid out on the bed of their Savoy Hotel room—one for Jacob, one for Alfie, one for the Jewish girl named Rachel.

  Lori held them in trembling hands. “I will go to Warsaw myself if you are afraid,” she challenged Murphy angrily.

  “Fear has nothing to do with it.” Elisa tried to calm her. “In the first place, it is practically impossible to get a flight to Warsaw.”

  “Can you honestly think it will be easier when the war begins?” Lori asked. “Or are you hoping this will all go away? Look! Three of them—three passports to get them out! And here we are waiting for dozens more that might not come until the whole of Warsaw is up in smoke! And these three will go up in smoke with it when we might have saved them!”

  “We were hoping more would come, Lori,” Murphy said gently. ”There are passports in process. One for Lucy Strasburg, others for kids your age, and younger, trapped in Warsaw. There will not be a second chance to get them out. When I take the passports to them, there may not be another opportunity to go back with the documents that arrive a day or two later in the mail!”

  “In a day or two, maybe it will be too late for these. Then what about Jacob? What about Alfie?” She was pleading. “Go now,” she begged. “I know there is no time left!” She pulled back the curtains and looked down at the sandbagged buildings all along the Strand. Shopwindows were boarded up. Helmeted members of the Home Guard talked together on the street corner outside the theater. Taxi drivers at the curbs covered their headlamps with black cloth.

  “What more proof do you need? The government has announced that every English citizen should come out of Poland,” Lori cried distractedly. “Look at these!” She held up the passports. “These make Jacob a British subject! And the same for Alfie. But if England goes to war with Germany, then they and their passports are no longer neutral, are they? Then the Nazis can march right in and arrest them for being British, just the same as they arrest someone for being a Jew or a German Christian like my father!”

  She ran her hands through her hair and paced back and forth in front of the window. “Tomorrow, Elisa, you are playing a concert to remember my father in a Nazi prison. And Churchill is speaking. The bells will ring, and everyone will remember what could have been done to stop Hitler! Please . . . I don’t want to sit there and have to remember that there was a change to get Jacob out of Poland! I don’t want to think about him running through Warsaw streets while German bombers—”

  S
uddenly she grew silent and sank down beside Elisa on the bed. Elisa wrapped her arms around Lori as she finished her tirade with tears of frustration.

  Murphy leaned against the mantel of the fireplace and rubbed his hands nervously across his lips. The girl had a point. She had several points. He could not argue with even one of them.

  ***

  The twelve men in the back of the transport truck from Nameless camp had no idea where they were being taken. The truck’s canvas flap was tied shut securely, and the prisoners were told that even to loosen the fabric to get some air in the stifling interior meant severe punishment for all the occupants.

  The one positive result of this demand for a cloak of concealment was the opportunity it provided for the men to talk. They shared names, stories, and the crimes against the state that had brought them to this place. This discussion soon turned to speculation about the mysterious exercise. Some claimed that they were going to be exchanged for German spies who had been captured by the Poles. Others said flatly that they were going to be executed. Neither argument made much sense; either release or execution could have been accomplished without all the secrecy.

  Soon the atmosphere was so suffocatingly hot that even the will to speculate about their destination or fate required too great an effort. At last all discussion ground to a halt, while the truck continued to grind onward.

  In a final effort at conversation, one of the prisoners asked, “Does anyone know what the date is?”

  Karl consulted his memory of the scratches on his cell wall. “Near the end of August. I think it is the thirty-first.”

  ***

  Orde’s Zionist Youth brigade was out in force—but, then, so was all of Jewish Warsaw. Orde stood on the brick wall in the center of the square dispatching orders to the various corners with Peter Wallich’s troops as messengers.

  “Take Jacob and Elisa and three others and deliver this load of lumber,” Orde directed Peter. “You and your men stay and aid the residents in boarding up their ground-floor windows.”

  “At once, Hayedid,” agreed Peter, and he gave a snappy salute.

  Three men and a woman appeared in the square behind Orde and arranged a group of chairs and music stands. “Is this where you want us?” one called out.

  “Quite right,” returned Orde. “Please remember to keep it light and cheerful.” A few moments later the sounds of a string quartet mingled with the hammering and sawing noises of Muranow Square.

  Orde watched a group of men filling pillowcases with earth from the flower beds. A fine layer of dust settled on their black hats and in their beards. It coated their faces with a pallor that reminded Orde of corpses. But the eyes of these men were lively, interested, and pleased to be doing something in defense of their homes.

  The Hayedid stepped down off the wall and approached an aged rabbi whose frame was nearly bent in two by the weight of his years even before he started filling sandbags. “Rabbi,” said Orde respectfully, “it is not necessary for you to do this labor. There are plenty of younger men.”

  “So,” replied the rabbi, “where is it written that a man becomes too old to work with his hands?”

  “Ah, but, Rabbi,” countered Orde, “I have other important duties for you. Soil we have in adequate supply and laborers also, but we will soon experience a shortage of pillowcases. Will you please take personal charge of collecting more?’

  The string quartet soared into a breezy composition, a waltz-tempo piece that Orde could not name. He went over to the Community Center, where the women of Muranow Square were preparing to feed the workers. From the doorway the delicious smell of freshly baked bread mingled with the aroma of potato soup.

  Orde spotted Lucy standing with Rachel Lubetkin, stacking bowls next to the cauldrons of soup. He thought how fine Lucy looked, even dressed in a plain blue skirt and white blouse, with her hair pulled back under a scarf. She felt his approving glance and looked up, then smiled shyly and looked away again.

  A voice at Orde’s elbow caused him to turn. “Excuse me, Hayedid,” said a young man named Avriel. The scholarly looking youth wore round spectacles and had prematurely thinning hair. “You are wanted at the barricade.”

  At the main street leading out of Muranow Square, Orde found a Polish Army staff car. Its exhaust was churning out a foul clod of bluish smoke, but at Orde’s appearance, the engine was shut off and a pear-shaped man in the uniform of a brigadier general appeared.

  “Captain Orde,” said the officer. “I am General Wojoski.”

  “I am not military,” corrected Orde. “I am a correspondent with TENS news service, and today I am here helping my friends.”

  The general waved off Orde’s protest. “We know who you are really, Captain Orde, and it is about your help that I have come. We could use your expertise in planning the defenses of Warsaw proper. Not,” he added hastily, “that they will be necessary. Strictly as a precautionary measure.”

  Those nearest the barricade stopped shoveling and hammering to listen to Orde’s reply, but it came without any hesitation. “I am sorry, General, but as you can see, we have more than enough to keep busy with here. However,” added Orde thoughtfully, ”I wonder if you could look into something for us? It seems that by an unfortunate oversight there have been no gas masks distributed in this Quarter.”

  The general swelled up slightly as if about to respond to the thinly veiled accusation, then abruptly changed his mind. “I’ll see what I can find out,” he said gruffly and returned to his car.

  “Bravo, Captain,” said Avriel. From the center of the square, the string quartet continued to play.

  ***

  Only three passports out of dozens. Murphy paced the length of the bedroom and back again. He looked out the French doors to the balcony. Block by block, London was evacuating schoolchildren. Lori was right; tomorrow might be too late.

  Elisa spread the precious passports out on the bed. One each for Jacob, Alfie, and Rachel Lubetkin.

  “Orde will not leave Poland unless they leave with him.” Murphy shrugged. “But that includes Lucy Strasburg, obviously. He’s a good man.” Murphy sat beside her and took her hands in his hands. “I was hoping we could . . . that there would be more passports to smuggle in.”

  Elisa’s face reflected the disappointment. There had just not been enough time. “So close,” she managed. “Oh, Murphy.” She looked at the three new folders. “But these! You’ll have to take them to Warsaw. To wait even one more day will mean that they are lost as well. And Sam Orde lost with them.”

  “It should not be this hard. Just a few more days. I was hoping—”

  Elisa opened her violin case, took the blue silk scarf from the Guarnerius, and removed the violin from its velvet nest. With practiced fingers she found the hidden panel and lifted it. Then, as she had done a dozen times before, she placed the precious passports into their hiding place and sealed it securely once again. Then she replaced Rudy’s violin. “There are still jewels behind the tuning peg that may be useful.”

  Murphy telephoned three airlines. KLM was the only one still with service to Warsaw. “You’ll touch down in Vilnyus, Lithuania, tonight,” explained the agent. “We Dutch are neutral, so, if it is possible to fly through German and Polish air space—” He laughed nervously. “Well, then, we will get you to Warsaw.” There was a long pause. “I assume you will be leaving Warsaw again shortly?’

  “Yes. The next flight. And I will be traveling with companions.”

  “I will have to wire ahead, sir. We cannot guarantee any seats on flights leaving Warsaw unless we wire ahead. If you will stop at the ticket counter before you depart, I should have an answer for you.”

  The agent asked a few mundane questions about the weight of each of the passengers. Murphy guessed at the weight of Rachel from Elisa’s weight. For Orde, Jacob, and Alfie, he placed their weight within a pound or two of his own.

  The agent gave Murphy a stern warning about the luggage allowance. One case per passenger. Mu
rphy signaled Elisa to stop packing. The violin case was all he would be taking on this trip. He rolled up clean socks and underwear and stuffed them into his pockets. He took his overcoat out of the closet and folded one clean shirt into a minute square, which he likewise stuffed into the deep pocket.

  Then he took Elisa’s face in his hands. “I hope this is right. There won’t be a second chance to get in. Not if the war break.”

  Elisa nodded. She laid her head against Murphy’s chest. Could he feel how frightened she was to have him leave today? She did not speak of fear. She did not ask him to wait until more passports arrived, until this whole terrible thing blew over. She knew as he did, that there was no more time.

  “I’ll get Lori,” Elisa said softly. Then she opened the door to the adjoining room. Lori sat beside the open window overlooking the city and the hulk of St. Paul’s.

  “Tonight they are turning off the lights,” Lori said bleakly. “They finally believe us, don’t they, Elisa?” The voice was so small and sad that Elisa almost forgot that Lori was not the tiny girl she had played dolls with in the backyard of the old Wilhelmstrasse mansion.

  “Murphy is going to Warsaw,” Elisa answered—a practical answer that shouted all was not yet lost!

  Silence. Lori stood up. “When?”

  “Today.”

  “Oh, Elisa!” she cried, running to embrace her.

  “He is leaving in an hour. Tonight he lands in Warsaw. If God is willing, Murphy will take them the passports and bring your Jacob back with him on the next plane.”

  “Oh, Elisa!” Lori broke into tears. “I am so afraid. So very afraid! My father is still . . . even if Jacob is free and with me, my mother will not be alone. With the war there will be no more hope for Father. No more . . . all of them. So many. Has God forgotten them, Elisa? And all the children? All the birth certificates we collected. Useless.” Silence. “It is so dark, isn’t it, Elisa?” She was not speaking of the fact that the lights would be blacked out throughout London.