The Book of Aron

by Jim Shepard

  “Our director shouts and therefore is in command,” he told her.

  “He was upsetting everyone,” she said.

  “I’m the son of a madman,” he said. “To this day the thought is a torment to me.”

  The next morning the main hall looked like a battlefield, but by five that evening the performers had pulled themselves together and gotten into costume.

  The audience filled the room and even with the windows open it was so hot that everyone fanned themselves with programs. It smelled of the night before.

  Korczak welcomed the guests and told them that an author from India would speak through the mouths of Jewish children in a Polish ghetto. The lights went out and whispers and sounds came from behind the curtain and the kids in the front rows pushed and shoved. The play once it started seemed made for the smaller ones. Abrasha played a sick boy not allowed to leave his room. In the lights his one big eyebrow made him look angry. He had conversations with his doctor and his mother and his stepfather and a watchman on the street and with the mayor and with a fakir and with a flower girl. Then somebody named the Royal Physician came dressed all in white and Abrasha told everyone that he no longer felt any pain and when the boy playing his stepfather asked why they were putting out the lights in his room and opening the curtains and how the starlight would help, Gieńa stepped forward as the flower girl and held out her hands and said, “Be quiet, unbeliever.” And it was as if the entire audience had decided to listen. The kid next to me who’d begun to itch himself stopped.

  The physician said Abrasha was asleep and Gieńa asked when he would awake and the physician said as soon as the king came to call him from this world. And she asked if he would whisper a word from her into Abrasha’s ear and when he asked her what he should say she said, before all the lights went out, to tell him she had not forgotten him.

  Everyone said they were very moved by the play. An old woman in a Chinaman’s hat told Korczak that he was a genius and could work miracles in a rat hole. He told her that must have been why the others had all been given the palaces.

  FOUR DAYS LATER THERE WAS NOISE ON THE STREET early in the morning and in the kitchen Madame Stefa congratulated Korczak on his birthday and handed him a cup of something she’d cooked, and then gave a cry when through the window she saw the lines of blue police and Lithuanians and Ukrainians in black with brown leather collars. Boris had taught me the uniforms. A boy who carried messages from the hospital came in gasping and panting. He said the children there were being evacuated to the Umschlagplatz and apparently getting dumped next to the tracks in their hospital gowns. Korczak got some money from a hiding place behind the stove and ran out the door while the boy was still talking.

  I ran after him. Where would I go if he disappeared? I collided with a group running by and a man with a valise knocked me down. Everyone was running out of the courtyard of the building next door and those in the back were being whipped and trying to push forward. We were carried down the street like a river and collected in a blockade. I couldn’t see if Korczak was with us. We were pulled into lines of four and shoved onto our haunches in the street. One of the Lithuanians demonstrated and clubbed anybody who didn’t obey on the head. We crouched there while more and more people joined us, everyone wailing and calling to friends and relatives in the crowd. They were shouting, “Where are my children? Tell them I’m leaving.” Or that they had a sewing machine or worked at Többens’s. The yellow police took the sides of the column and the Lithuanians the back and they stood everyone up and got us moving again.

  I worked over to the closest yellow policeman and everyone was shouting at him at once, giving him their names, asking if there was anything he could do, asking him to tell their wives or sons or husbands where they were. He shouted for them all to shut up and when I got close enough to ask if he knew Lejkin he hit me in the face with his stick.

  A little girl helped me up and was crying that they had to send her home so she could take care of her younger sister. I asked why she was telling me and a woman took her hand and pulled her away. People were fished from the mob or jumped into doorways or dropped down cellar stairs when the policemen were distracted or willing to look the other way.

  A blue policeman dragged a girl into the crowd from an apartment we passed and I stepped through the door before he slammed it shut. The girl called “Mr. Policeman!” and then disappeared. The inner entry doors were locked but I held the outer ones together with my arm through the handles. I held them tight until everything had passed by and the street got quiet.

  I cracked the door open and saw a shoe on its side in the street. My cheek was numb. My arm holding the door was shaking. I heard banging metal and opened the door wider.

  A German down the block was hammering the bolt of his rifle with the butt of his bayonet. I could see eyeglasses on the cobblestones near him. Nearer to me a girl lay on her back.

  I shut the door but could still hear her cries. The building around me was silent. When I finally looked out the doors again she was dead and the street was empty except for her and her eyeglasses. Even the shoe was gone. The sun hurt my eyes.

  The next street over I could follow the trail of suitcases and scattered hats. Window shutters swung squeaking. One banged against a wall. Feathers still floated around from torn-up bedding.

  I started back to the orphanage and two looters passed carrying a clothes wringer. On Twarda a German was poking a pile of clothes with a long stick and I hid and waited for him to leave. On Sienna the Ukrainians sat with their backs to the ghetto wall, tired and drinking with their shirts open. I got into the orphanage through the courtyard.

  The kids were all in the middle of the upstairs room with the blackout paper still up on the windows. Everyone was together on the floor. Madame Stefa hugged me but Korczak stayed with his arms around Mietek and another little girl who was asleep. Madame Stefa told me to clean my face.

  Some kids were whispering but most were listening. There was shouting and whistles and boots running by outside. Every so often someone got up to use the chamber pot.

  We stayed like for that a day and a night. There was no dinner. No one lit any lamps. Once it got late Korczak stood up and weaved through the tangle of sleepers and lifted a corner of the blackout paper on one of the windows. He stood over Madame Stefa, who was asleep with her head back and mouth open, and raised a finger to his lips when he saw me looking. We watched each other until the sun came up and it was like the city outside was gone except for the occasional shot or voice calling in the darkness.

  AFTER THAT KORCZAK WENT OUT EVERY DAY AND never let anyone else go with him. When he returned he told whoever wanted to listen what was happening as far as he could tell. The smallest kids held the hands of older ones, proud to have been included.

  He said members of the Jewish Council had been arrested and their families held hostage. He said a proclamation had appeared announcing that all of the Jews would be resettled outside of Warsaw and only a few workers were to remain exempt and also that those who reported voluntarily would receive three kilos of bread and one of jam. He told Madame Stefa that only the Germans would have chosen to begin this on Tisha B’Av and when a kid asked why he explained that Tisha B’Av was a fast day commemorating Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon’s destruction of the First Temple and the Roman emperor Titus’s destruction of the Second. He said they were going block by block and doors that were locked or bolted were broken down and the streets emptied one day were being revisited on the next to catch those hiding in places already searched.

  He told of how he’d saved an old student by pulling her from a Jewish policeman and shouting that he’d saved the policeman’s daughter that afternoon and so the policeman had let them go, but that he hadn’t saved the policeman’s daughter, not that the man could have ever known for sure.

  He said he’d been thrown onto one of the roundup wagons and then a block later had been recognized by another yellow policeman who’d helped him down
and warned him not to play the hero or it would get everyone killed. If they had to give up an arm or a leg to save the body, so be it. And if the Jews helped out, wouldn’t that mean fewer casualties and less brutality?

  Was this how they were all supposed to ride off into the unknown, Madame Stefa asked, with no fresh clothes, no bundles, not even a piece of bread?

  So many kids were crying that Korczak said the policeman had assured him that the orphanage was so famous that the Germans would never touch it. Everyone else was running about frantically trying to get work papers and men who’d been captains of industry were now overjoyed to sweep a factory yard and everybody said the brushmakers’ workshops were the best, because they were controlled by the Army, or that Többens’s workshop on Prosta Street was, because he was Göring’s brother-in law, so everyone wanted the green pass from Többens. But no one knew what worked and what didn’t and what seemed secure one day was a soap bubble the next. He said that while he’d been trapped on the wagon a German had told a woman whose papers featured all the proper seals and signatures that she was an imbecile and the best document that she could hope to find was a cellar.

  AT NIGHT WE STAYED QUIET AND LISTENED FOR THE patrols. We could hear muffled sounds of people coming out of their hiding places for water and food. When someone cried or called out down below the windows we weren’t allowed to look.

  Almost no one was sleeping. Korczak and Madame Stefa talked on the third floor when it was very late. Sometimes I listened from the stairs and sometimes I didn’t. Their voices were so low I couldn’t hear everything. He told her the shooting on Ogrodowa Street had gone on all day to accommodate those who hadn’t been at home earlier. She asked how he knew that and he asked how anyone knew anything. He said if people had survived they’d probably been hiding whenever something happened.

  He said children had walked to the Umschlagplatz in order to travel with their families. The lucky ones left behind were stealing from empty homes since it couldn’t be stealing if there were no longer any owners. He said that the Ukrainians at the end of the day reminded him of farmers at the end of a harvest.

  THE NEXT DAY HE CAME BACK SO UPSET HE WOULDN’T let anyone see him until Madame Stefa talked to him alone. Outside we heard the horns of police vans and whistles and the sound of people running.

  He told her he’d gone all the way to the Umschlagplatz to find Esterka and got past the Ukrainians and Germans and Jewish police and found her and had tried to bring her to the hospital. At the gate he asked a blue policeman if he could help his assistant who was vital to his orphanage and the Pole said he knew very well that he couldn’t and while another Pole and a Jewish policeman dragged Esterka away Korczak stood there and let it happen and thanked the Pole for his kind words. This was what it had come to, Korczak said: he’d now been trained to be thankful for even that.

  Kids tried to get by me on the stairs and asked what Korczak and Madame Stefa were talking about up there but I said I didn’t know. I couldn’t hear what else they said. Finally I heard him tell her they had responsibilities downstairs and to remember that if Miss Esterka didn’t return she’d assist others in the meantime, just as she had made herself so useful here.

  THE NEXT MORNING A RUNNER FROM THE JUDENRAT told him about Czerniaków’s suicide. His secretary had found him dead in his office chair. Czerniaków had written notes to his wife and to the Judenrat. The runner showed the Judenrat note to Korczak, who read it and refolded it and handed it back, and the runner left.

  When Madame Stefa heard they stood facing each other, their foreheads touching.

  The rest of the morning other staff members gave what orders needed to be given. Korczak and Madame Stefa sat at the kitchen table over a single cold glass of tea. “The easy way out,” she finally said.

  “He gave up a visa to Palestine to serve his community,” he answered.

  Neither of them left the kitchen when Zygmuś told me there were two boys outside who wanted to see me and when I opened the front door a crack Boris pulled me out and another boy shut the door behind me. I was so scared I couldn’t hear what Boris was saying at first and finally the other boy slapped me and got my attention. He asked if I knew the interior of the Żelazna Street house, the one the Germans had set up, and asked me to describe its rooms and then seemed satisfied when I did. He asked how often I went there and at what times of day and whether the Germans guarded the doors. He said they needed me to let them know from the inside when it was a good time to pay a visit and I asked who they were and he said his group and when I asked who was in his group he told me it was none of my fucking business.

  Boris still had me by the shirtfront and I said why should I do anything for them and Boris said because if I didn’t he would kill me and I said then he should just go ahead and kill me. They stared at me for a while until the other boy asked what I wanted and I had to think. Then I told him I wanted Korczak saved. And Madame Stefa too, if that’s what Korczak wanted. Boris snorted. The other boy thought about it and then said yes, he could arrange for this if I gave him what he wanted and that I’d be hearing from him soon. Then they left.

  That night Gieńa’s older brother Samuel visited before curfew and she threw herself on him and the kids gathered around and stared. Madame Stefa and Korczak watched with their arms folded. Gieńa’s brother told her he had to talk to Korczak and Madame Stefa and she waited with her friends in the main room while he sat with them in the kitchen. The glass was still where they’d left it, though someone had drunk the tea. I sat in the hall by the doorway.

  The brother told them he’d heard the orphanage wouldn’t be touched but that he couldn’t be sure and had promised his mother to watch over his sister and that lately his nightmares had convinced him they should be together, given what was happening. But he hardly knew the couple he lived with and worried that his sister would be terrified to be alone all day while he worked.

  He waited but Korczak was silent. Madame Stefa finally said they too believed the orphanage would be safe and that taking children away wasn’t good for the group’s morale, though this was his decision.

  So he talked with his sister and she couldn’t decide but eventually left with him the next morning. But the morning after that he brought her back, because of what she’d heard when she’d been locked alone in his room. He brought her back in time for breakfast and sat her at her place. He wiped his eyes and promised he would visit when he could, and she told him he’d been very helpful and should take care of himself. Then she picked up her spoon and turned away. After he left Madame Stefa asked why Korczak was waiting tables and he told her he liked to keep occupied and by picking up soup bowls and spoons and plates he could see who was sitting next to whom. And who was most alone.

  THAT NIGHT AFTER EVEN KORCZAK HAD FALLEN asleep there was a low rapping at the back door and when I took the lamp over to it and threw the bolt open Boris shoved me back and he and the other boy stepped in and shut the door behind them.

  “How can we help you gentlemen?” Korczak said. He was in his nightshirt and without his glasses.

  “Come into the kitchen,” the other boy said, and took the lamp from me and led us there.

  They sat at the table and we stood in front of them. “Hello again,” I said to Boris.

  “Hello,” Boris said.

  “Yes, it’s nice to be back,” the other boy said. Then he told Korczak that representatives of the youth movements had met and established the Jewish Fighting Organization and had decided their first task was to inform everyone that the deportations were to a camp at Treblinka where everyone was to be gassed. They were already distributing flyers but the flyers were being destroyed by the Judenrat, who viewed them as a German provocation intended as a pretext to shoot everyone.

  “If everyone’s being gassed then how has this information reached you?” Korczak asked.

  One or two who’d escaped from the trains came back to the ghetto every week, the boy told him.

  “And t
hese people are reliable?” Korczak asked. “How did they achieve this feat?” I asked if he wanted me to fetch his glasses and he said no.

  “In my case I managed to tear the barbed wire from the window and wriggle through,” the boy said. When he saw Korczak’s face he added, “I’m not Hercules. Others ahead of me worked at it and ran out of time.”

  They stared at each other. I thought: that’s what I would do. I’d climb over heads if I had to.

  “Others kicked out floorboards or sideboards,” the boy said.

  “While the train was still moving?” I asked, but the boy gave me such a look that I shut up.

  “Are there no guards on the trains?” Korczak asked.

  “There are guards,” the boy said. “Some who get away are shot and some aren’t.”

  Korczak seemed unsurprised by any of this. “And you’re a member of this fighting organization?” he asked.

  The boy said they’d come for two reasons and the first was to help Korczak escape.

  The Polish underground was always offering to help him escape, Korczak told him, but he always said no unless they could take everyone.

  “They want you because you’re the only one they consider a Pole,” the boy said. “But we want to get you out not just because you’re the famous Dr. Korczak. We want you to help spread the word about what’s going on.”

  “Why would anyone listen to me?” Korczak said.

  The boy didn’t answer. “Tell him,” he said to me.

  “Tell me what?” Korczak said. And all three of them looked at me.

  “They’re also here because they want my help,” I told him. “I said if they wanted me to help them they had to do this for me.”

  “Do what for you?” Korczak asked. His expression was so surprised and disappointed that I had to look away.

  “Get you out,” Boris said. He said the Germans were directing their resettlement from an office on Żelazna. He said Lejkin was the Jew in charge and that I had worked as an informer for him and the Gestapo, which meant I could get inside. And since I could get inside, then I could help them attack it when the time came.