by Gwen Edelman
He shook his head. Why are we fighting? It was so long ago. Lilka spread a roll with black jam. Not to me, she said. It’s as near to me as last week.
Come and sit on my lap, he said. Nothing is the way it was. Let me tickle you and whisper in your ear. Don’t be so silly, she said and poured out more coffee. He grinned. Come on, darling. Don’t be shy. She shook her head. You’re crazy. He laughed. This is what you used to do. Pretend to be a shy virgin. You did it on purpose because you knew how it excited me. Did it? she asked. I remember times when I wasn’t a shy virgin at all. She lifted her neck seductively. Or have you forgotten that? He stared at her. Your mother had that same gesture. Don’t talk to me, said Lilka.
The snow had piled up on the windowsill, obscuring the bottom part of the window. Look at that, said Lilka. Soon we’ll be snowed in entirely. Good, he replied. Then we won’t have to tramp the streets of Warsaw like homeless Jews. Why homeless Jews? she asked in surprise. Aren’t we? he asked.
Jascha stood up from the breakfast table, stubbed out his cigarette and began to strip off his clothes. Lilka looked at him in astonishment. Have you gone insane? she asked. He dropped his clothes on the carpet and went into the bathroom. I’m taking a hot bath, he announced. In lieu of a trip to the ghetto.
He turned on the taps all the way. A narrow stream of rusty water issued forth. What is this? he cried. Do they call this trickle running water? He placed his open palm beneath the faucet. And it’s lukewarm, he reported. Come in, darling, he said. All is forgiven. She stood in the doorway. This is Poland now, she said. Everything was better before the war. Then we had hot water. Not in the ghetto, he said. I’m not talking about the ghetto, she said. I’m talking about before.
The taps snorted and choked and pressed out hot water in spurts. But soon steam rose up from the water and he turned to her with a smile. Get in, he said. Before it changes its mind. Let us steam ourselves like in a Russian bathhouse. Let us switch each other with birch branches and talk about Eternity.
He lay stretched out in the old veined marble tub, his broad shoulders resting against the stone, the water up to his neck. He closed his eyes. Ah, how delicious. I could stay in here forever. Come in, darling. Get yourself clean. The steam rose up off the water. Jascha, she said, your hair is getting all curly with the steam. She reached down a hand to touch his hair. I remember your dark curls, she said softly. That was long ago, he replied.
She sat down on the edge of the tub and lit a cigarette. I remember your dark eyes. How handsome you were in your high leather boots. When I first saw you, I thought you were a Jewish policeman. In the ghetto, they were the only Jews with boots like that. And you were as cocky as they were. But you weren’t wearing their special yellow armband. Only a blue and white one with a star. Like the rest of us. He’s an informer, I thought. Whatever he is, it isn’t good. He laughed now. What was good, in your opinion? A scholar who would soon be dead? A lawyer when nothing was any longer legal? He shook his head. What a silly girl.
One morning, he said, I was walking down Karmelicka, on my way to see the Accountant. It had snowed during the night. Already the snow on the ground had been stamped down by passersby, by carts, by rickshaws. Along the road men in long dark coats, with rags tied around their shoes and armbands on their sleeves, were shoveling snow, their faces blue with cold. What else was new? This was not what caught my eye.
What caught my eye was a procession walking two abreast down the crowded street. Girls dressed in immaculate pink and white striped uniforms. Nurses-in-training with white aprons and navy blue woolen capes with red linings. And on their heads starched white caps. Freshly scrubbed, well fed. Nothing looked that clean in the ghetto. They looked like angels in the midst of all that filth. Like a vision. I was in love with them all.
But it was you I had my eye on. What a walk you had. The way you moved. I have to have her, I said to myself. I walked alongside you until at last you turned to look at me. I got a shock. At first I thought there must be some mistake: those bright blue eyes, that flaxen hair, those high cheekbones. What a beauty you were. This girl is Polish, I said to myself, she “looks good” as we said Back There. What is she doing in here? But then you turned toward me. And I saw the expression in your eyes. I knew right away. I could always tell.
How insistent you were, she said now. Where did you get that flaxen hair, darling? you asked me. I was appalled. Is this the way young men in the ghetto behave now? I asked you. No manners at all. You shrugged. The Germans have confiscated our etiquette books, you said. Have you forgotten where you are? I didn’t want to have anything to do with you, said Lilka. What a liar, he said.
He dipped the washcloth in the water. Where did you get that flaxen hair? Jewish mothers buy flaxen hair like that in the marketplace for their dark-haired daughters. No one wanted our dark stubborn curls. They couldn’t wait to get rid of them . . . That’s what you said Back There, said Lilka. And then what did I say? he asked now. You said that you wanted me for your own. He nodded. At least she remembers something.
When you walked away, said Lilka, Magda said to me: that’s Jascha Krasniewski. He’s one of the biggest smugglers in the ghetto. He has a thousand girlfriends. A slight exaggeration, he said. He smiled. But not by much.
I thought about you all the time, he said. I wanted to lie down in your flaxen hair. I wanted to take you to bed right away. I wanted you to belong to me completely. What didn’t I want? The Accountant saw the state I was in and told me to be careful. He told me that mooning around on the job could be disastrous. Jascha reached out a wet hand to her. You were madly in love with me. I wasn’t, she replied. You’re soaking me, she cried. He grinned. What a terrible liar you are. She smiled slowly and dried her hand on the towel. Maybe I am.
She pulled the puckered paper wrapper from a bar of dark green soap and handed it to him. He held it up to his nose and closed his eyes. Pine, he said. He inhaled again. It smells of the Praga forest. Do you know how much this was worth Back Then? 50 groszy. Later it was worth more. In January of ’41 a piece of soap was 80 groszy. In October of ’41 it was 1 zloty 60. And by February of ’42 only doctors, midwives, dentists, hospitals, and the prison had the right to it. I still remember every price on the black market, he said. Ask me the day, the year, the merchandise, and I’ll tell you. What we would have given, she said, for a hot bath.
Do you remember that miserable ersatz fat they tried to peddle as soap? he asked. The lather was useless. And afterward a sticky paste stuck to your skin. I brought in real soap. With real lather. With my soap you could really get clean. She pressed a towel to her moist face. What did it matter? she asked. The stench followed you everywhere. The whole place stank to high heaven. The ghetto was a giant dunghill. What was another unwashed body? Those who could afford to pay for real soap were the lucky ones, he said. They felt human. Not like those stinking beggars who hadn’t washed in months. He spat. Jascha, she said. How can you be like that?
He slid under the water and came up snorting, blowing out water and slicking back his hair. Water dripped from his cheeks and eyelids. Why should I go back to the ghetto? Do I not know every street, every gate, every blackened building like the back of my hand? There are twenty-three gates and I know every one of them. Every open drain, every sewer, every tunnel that leads to The Other Side. I know which buildings are riddled with holes and passageways like Swiss cheese. I know where they have drilled through the walls of an apartment on Our Side to one on The Other Side. Do I not know where they have loosened the bricks in the Wall? So we can remove them once the guards have been paid off?
Do I not know every Jewish policeman, every guard and his schedule. Until, that is, they brought in the Ukrainians and I had to start all over again. Do I not know where the rubber tube leads from a window on The Other Side to a window on Our Side for milk to run through and collect in buckets on the other end? Do I not know every inch of the cemeter
y? Where the hearses once returned from the cemetery stuffed with black-market merchandise, until there were too many dead and they had to throw them into pits. My darling, I know the ghetto like the back of my hand. I was, you might say, a master topographer. You had to be in those days. Without that I would have been another corpse on Pinkiert’s wagon. He took up the dripping washcloth and handed it to her. Go back? What for? He put a finger to his forehead. The entire ghetto is in here.
He laid his head back against the marble rim of the tub. We took our orders from the Accountant. King of the Smugglers. In the ghetto only Gancwajch and his Thirteen who were in the pocket of the Gestapo did more smuggling business. In a small basement room where the walls breathed out moisture and rot, the Accountant sat behind a shabby desk, lifted from a deserted Jewish apartment. The top of his desk was nearly empty. There were only boxes of smuggled cigarettes which he smoked one after the other, and a small creased photo of his twin girls who were six.
His eyes, behind thick lenses, were magnified until they looked like the eyes of a cow. But there was nothing bovine about the expression in them. His gaze was hard and unrelenting. He wrote nothing down. He kept it all in his head. Schedules, prices, personnel. He could remember endless lists of figures. The prices of black-market goods changed every hour in the ghetto and the Accountant forgot nothing. A real Jewish brain, added Jascha.
I must know everything that’s happening at every moment, the Accountant said to me. What’s happening on Our Side, what’s happening on The Other Side. What’s coming in, what’s going out, who’s on guard, where the next roundup will take place. I need contacts and informants everywhere. My payroll, he said, includes every kind of scum. Never mind. I need information however I can get it.
Somewhere up above, he told me, there is an Accountant keeping track of everything that goes on here on Earth. Beside Him I am more insignificant than a mayfly. But in this little quarter of the woods, this appalling little section of the globe, I know everything. Nothing escapes my notice.
The Accountant liked me, said Jascha. And one day, when I had been working for him for three months, he gave me an important assignment.
Jascha turned on the hot water tap. The water’s getting cold, he said. How long are you planning to stay in there? she asked. He lay back. The water covered his chest and lapped at his neck. Forever, he replied.
Jascha closed his eyes. The moon was rising over the darkened streets of the ghetto, he said. Overhead the night sky was sprinkled with stars. As cold and dead as Their eyes. Well well, I thought, the moon will rise as it has risen for thousands of years and turn its glowing face to the ghetto. What does it care what happens here on Earth? We had gone back to a distant century where there was no light at night but the dim light from the small fires set at the sentry posts against the Wall. As the inhabitants packed eight to a room groaned in their sleep, I would be heading for the cemetery. Not in a casket or thrown onto a wagon heaped with corpses. I would be walking there on my own two legs.
I walked through the silent streets, dark as a medieval village. The streets were black with filth and rubbish, the stench was overwhelming. On the sidewalks, covered in sheets of newspaper, lay bodies who would never see the stars again. I barely saw them. I was immune to them by then. There in the shadow of a half ruined building lay a small child caterwauling like a cat for something to eat. I reached into my pocket and threw him a piece of bread. There was no electricity—no light and no heat. And walls all around. I knew my way in the dark. I knew every street, every building, every tunnel, every sewer, every crossing. I walked quickly. I had a rendezvous in the Jewish cemetery.
She took the washcloth from him. Lean forward, she said, and she began to soap his back. You’ll need a haircut soon, it’s curling over your neck. All right, that’s enough, he said and slid down until the water was at his neck and his head rested against the marble rim of the tub.
At the corner of Ge¸sia and Okopowa, Avi and Stasik and Jurek joined me. Jurek was nervous, as always, his head twisting on his thin neck. If they don’t come? he asked. If they change the guards on us? If the trucks aren’t there? Jurek, I said to him, in this world of ours anything can happen. And does. I shouldn’t have agreed to come along, he muttered.
Why? I asked him. Because you risk your life? So what? Even if you do nothing, you risk it. What’s the difference? Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
We passed through the large brick gates of the cemetery. Shards of moonlight fell on the Hebrew lettering of the old stones. The open pits were filled with corpses, waiting for the new arrivals that would surely come. We passed over the uneven ground, careful not to fall in with the rest. And made our way to the Wall we shared with Powa¸zki, the Catholic cemetery. Half the black market operated over that shared Wall.
It was 10:15 at night. We had agreed on a 10:30 delivery. We were smoking and Jurek once again speaks up. What if they don’t come? Stasik says to him: if they don’t, they don’t. What shall we do? Complain to Berlin? He was driving us crazy, that Jurek.
It was 10:40 when we heard a whistle from the Polish cemetery on the other side of the Wall. All the guards had been paid off. But only the ones on that shift. We had half an hour before the guards changed. It took four of us to set up our wooden ramp, leaning it against the ancient wall. We could hear the sound of their ramp going up, the sound of voices. And then we heard a truck door opening and the lowing of cattle. Well, I said, they’re here. And there beneath the light of the moon, twenty-six farting, shitting cows made their way up the Christian ramp and came down the other side on the Jewish ramp. What a deafening noise of hooves. They moaned, they grunted and groaned.
What a sight as they stood framed in the moonlight on their way down. Even Jurek smiled. When the first one came off the ramp Stasik slapped her on the rump. Where’s your armband? he growled. Twenty-five cows came over. Then what happens? The twenty-sixth balked. She didn’t want to come into the ghetto. Can you blame her? We could hear them swearing in Polish, calling her every name in the book. She wouldn’t come.
What a clever cow. They shouted at her, they gave her precious sugar, they did everything but climb on her back. At last I gave a whistle. I was afraid the guards would change. Let it be, I called out. You keep her. But remember, you owe us one. They threw a few packets of cigarettes over the Wall. Shalom, Jewish goniffs, they called out with a laugh. Never mind. We had the cows.
Now we tried to load them onto the trucks. One wandered off and almost fell into one of the open pits. Another started to go back up the ramp. Do I look like a cowherd? What chaos. As we prodded them into the truck, these Aryan cows, I thought, just like the Jews, once in the ghetto you won’t get out again. Suddenly I was sorry for them. They too had mothers and fathers, sisters and grandmothers, uncles and aunts.
I rode in back with the cows. Stasik went home. Avi and Jurek sat up front next to the driver. The cows were packed in so tightly they couldn’t move. Well, Aryan cows, I said to them. How does it feel to be in the ghetto? Packed together in trucks. Like sardines. Like Jews. They groaned and mooed, their soft mouths wet with slobber. I gathered they weren’t too happy to be on the Jewish side. The truck slowed, and in their panic they began to push against each other and against me. I felt squeezed in by warm flanks, and I slapped them and pushed them aside.
The truck entered a courtyard where there was a warehouse. The driver got out and knocked four times and the door was rolled up. We drove downhill and soon came to a halt. The back door opened. We were below ground in a large empty warehouse. There were signs of the previous occupants—cow patties, flattened hay, feeding troughs. Here, underground, men in overalls led the cows down one by one from the truck.
Where are their armbands? cried one. We won’t take them without. I looked around me in amazement. I hadn’t seen anything like this before. A small emaciated man with tiny black eyes watched me. We milk so
me of them, we slaughter the rest. Come back tomorrow for some milk. The Accountant has promised a pail of it to a Polish policeman with young children who gives him information.
It was a primitive structure. It looked like a great barn from the previous century. Now it housed twenty-five cows. With relief I took out a cigarette and lit it. Put that out, cried the little man, are you crazy? With all the straw in here and no exit. Do you want twenty-six cows to go up in smoke and me along with them? I put it out and placed it back in my pocket. Twenty-five, I corrected him. The twenty-sixth didn’t want to come. I’m wondering, I said, how the hell I get out of here. The man grinned. Take the stairs, he said and pointed to the back. It was two flights up. When I was back on street level, I had to go through several doors until I was shown a small doorway. I knocked twice and went through to an apartment.
A large woman with swollen legs sat knitting in a rocking chair. She asked my name and holding her knitting in one hand, checked me off on a list. Have you got cigarettes for me? she asked and held out her hand. I gave her a few packs along with what we owed her. How many tonight? she wanted to know. Twenty-five, I told her. The twenty-sixth refused to come into the ghetto. Smart cow, she said. Everyone seemed to share that sentiment. The price of milk will go down tomorrow, she said. It’s always that way. She went back to her knitting. Don’t take Karmelicka Street tonight, she said. They’ve brought in some tourists.
They shot Avi and Jurek on their way home, he said. A lunar moth lives eight days. The average lifespan of a Jew in those days. He lay back and closed his eyes. I’ve forgotten nothing.
Lilka lifted the carefully folded white bath towel. It’s time to get out, she said. You’ve been in there for ages. Are we in such a hurry? he wanted to know. I remember the first time, said Lilka. She touched his wet curls. You said to me: what are you waiting for? Do you think we live forever? Do you think this parade goes on and on? The days in the ghetto are short and the nights shorter. From one moment to the next you can disappear. So you don’t take years to make up your mind. These days a long engagement has lost all meaning, you said. The bride to be could be dead in twenty-four hours. But, said Lilka, I wasn’t sure . . . Ha, replied Jascha, splashing his neck. As though I had to talk you into it.
