It’s a tricky matter. To Halinka’s left Aronek is sitting sulking, his arms crossed tightly across his chest as if no one will ever be able to prise them apart and find out what’s going on inside his heart, his face shut down into an expression of anger and bitterness.
‘I put the chocolate in my drawer. It was a little bar, a present’ – Halinka colours a little – ‘from Erwin. I didn’t want to eat it straight away. I wanted to keep it because it was special. And I thought it was safe in the drawer, of course, until it was time to share it. But I went to look at it yesterday and it was gone. And Sara says she saw Aronek closing my drawer. He went off holding his arms over his jumper in a funny way.’
‘Is that true, Sara?’ asks Chaya. Black hair, deep brown eyes and a serious face, she’s the judge for the day’s court.
Sara nods, eyes wide with the gravity of what she has to report.
‘What do you have to say?’ Chaya asks Aronek.
Aronek folds his arms tighter, glares at Chaya. ‘What does she want keeping the stupid chocolate in her drawer anyway? What good is that?’
There’s a little gasp from the children assembled around the court table. It’s more or less an admission. Erwin starts up, fists clenched, but Misha by his side gently pulls him down into his seat.
‘Let the court finish,’ he whispers to the furious boy. Misha knows that the chocolate will have come in from the Aryan side on one of Erwin’s trips over the wall. And he knows that this is no ordinary chocolate bar, it’s a small rectangle representing how much Erwin cares for Halinka, and the risks he will take for her.
There’s a defeated sigh from Korczak a few feet away. He’s put so much time and love into helping Aronek trust the other children and begin to make friendships, play with them like a normal child. Aronek has even stopped the spectacular cursing.
And he has become especially devoted to his big brother Abrasha.
So why this sudden stealing?
‘Do you have nothing to say in your defence? No explanation for why you ate Halinka’s chocolate?’
‘I didn’t eat it.’ Aronek scowls back.
‘So where is it?’
‘How should I know? I sold it.’
Another outraged gasp.
‘And are you sorry about it?’
Aronek shakes his head, eyes still on his boots.
‘So where is the money?
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where? What did you buy with it?’
‘That’s my business.’
‘Do you have nothing to say in your defence?’ Chaya looks troubled. ‘Stealing is a serious offence. If you have three serious offences, you can be asked to leave the home.’
‘I didn’t ask to come here in the first place. I can go any time.’
A sigh from Korczak again. Aronek does come and go, although he’s too young to be out on the streets at barely nine. A few days ago the child went missing for a whole day. What has he been up to? There are some children who have been so badly affected by the neglect and harshness of the streets that they never manage to recover. It’s rare, and its heart-breaking, but sometimes it happens.
Szymonek is standing. ‘Chaya, I think Aronek might have taken something else?’
‘Are you sure, Szymonek?’
‘He opened Abrasha’s drawer this morning. Very fast, then shut it again. Maybe he took something else.’
Aronek’s face is bright red. He stares at the floor as if it has just insulted him. Arms locked.
The court confers. ‘This court thinks Pan Doctor and Abrasha should go down and look in the drawer.’
The cupboard is on the floor below. It’s a while before they hear footsteps coming back up the stairs. Abrasha bursts in holding up a small square envelope, a big grin.
‘It’s a new string for my violin. The one I couldn’t replace when it snapped. Did you put it there, Aronek?’
Aronek looks caught out, guilty, accused of being soft and girlish. And it proves he was the thief, sold the chocolate to buy the string.
And where did he manage to find the string when Misha has already scoured the ghetto for one? That explains where Aronek went last week. He made a trip over the wall to buy it.
He shrugs. ‘So?’
The court confers excitedly. Aronek glares at them. Finally they have a verdict.
Chaya reads it out. ‘This court declares that since it was for a kind reason, and since Aronek has not been here very long and he probably did not know that he could have talked to Pan Doctor about how to get the string in an honest way, then this court will issue a warning this time, and order Aronek to replace Halinka’s chocolate when he can one day in the future.’
Abrasha hardly hears. He’s run to fetch his violin and is already tightening the peg, listening to the note the new string plays, plucking and tuning until the string thrums in harmony with the others. He takes out his bow and, eyes closed, he begins the first notes of ‘Night in a Forest’, and for a brief second his eyes open and rest on Aronek with a soft thankfulness. As the music threads through the room and the children are carried away to a still night among the tall pines, Aronek’s arms unfold, the anger in his face unties – a child’s face again. A boy with short hair and big ears, lost and hopeful.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WARSAW, SEPTEMBER 1941
Back at their room on Leszno Street, Sophia finds a note but no Misha. He’s doing an extra night duty at the orphanage. She sits down on the bed with a thump, disappointed almost to tears. Of course she wants him to help with the boys at the home – it’s essential to all they believe in – but she hates him being away. When he is there, she and Misha have to speak in whispers, every creak and moan from the other couples audible.
Then there’s the rent on this terrible little room, money they need to use for food, for the family, for the children. And Sophia worries more and more about her parents. It gets harder each day to leave them. They seem to have gone into collapse, distant from reality. An accident with the stove has left Sophia’s mother with a burned arm. She worries about Marianek.
She knows what she needs to do. She should move in with her parents and help them care for the little boy. But there simply isn’t room for another couple in the tiny flat at Ogrodowa Street. It’s unthinkable.
No, she can’t bear to go back to being apart.
And she knows that sooner or later, they will have no alternative.
She lies in the dark in their cramped little space and wonders how to begin to talk to Misha about them living separately.
Tears run down the sides of her face as she thinks of saying the words.
The following afternoon Misha comes to eat with them at the flat in Ogrodowa, potatoes with a little margarine and a small portion of herring.
Lutek’s there too, his little son on his lap. Lutek has brought potatoes but only a few. He doesn’t look well, hasn’t had any work for a while. He’s sold his winter coat, he says. He’ll get another when it turns cold.
As Sophia and Misha walk back to the flat on Leszno in the late sunshine, Misha looks across at her with concern.
‘You’ve been very quiet this evening. What is it?’
‘Why don’t we pretend the war never happened, just for a few minutes? We’re walking along the river, and we’re going to stop and buy ice cream, or perhaps we’ll go to the café in the park again, the one with the little dance floor under the trees. The new songs will be playing.’
They walk on in silence, past the same desperate beggars and street hawkers, the same stuffy air and filthy pavements.
It’s not until they get back to their apartment block that Sophia finally stops under the archway and turns to Misha.
‘Darling, we’ve tried and we’ve tried but it’s impossible. We can’t afford this room any more, not when food is so expensive.’ She pauses, not wanting to talk about the shadow of hunger that has settled on their stomachs. ‘And I need to be with my parents to help look after Marianek. I know what
it means. There won’t be room in the flat for both of us, but you’re staying over at the home so much now. And we can still see each other every day.’
Misha closes his eyes and holds her gently against his chest. ‘I know. I was thinking about it too. I should go back and stay with Korczak. They desperately need more help there.’
In an apartment above someone is playing music on a gramophone, an old Warsaw dance tune. She rests her forehead against the warm place in the crook of his neck. She can smell the comforting odour of his skin, a little goaty with no chance to shower. Her hair’s the same, no doubt. They listen to the music for a while. She feels as though she’s breaking apart.
‘I’m not sure I can bear it, Misha, not to be with you every day.’
He brushes his cheek against her hair. ‘It will only be for a while, darling. Till all this ends. It’s the right thing to do.’
They stand holding each other for a long time, Sophia’s tears making a wet patch on his shirt. He rubs the back of his hand across his eyes, and she can feel him moving to take something out of his jacket.
He shows her a picture from his wallet. It’s a photograph of them arm in arm on the steps of the wooden dacha at the last summer camp at Little Rose.
Sophia stares into the picture. There they are, smiling like people who know it will always be summer and the future theirs, white clothes dazzling in the full sun. Sophia is still a teenager with plump, rounded cheeks. She’s standing one step up so she is level with Misha. He’s holding her arm as though he’s won a prize. Two years ago.
An older Misha with hollows around his eyes now takes out his ink pen and carefully writes on the back: ‘Darling Sophia, let us believe that we will be together again one day soon, and as happy as we were that day at Little Rose.’
They don’t sleep all night, holding each other, talking in whispers until the dawn arrives.
In the morning, Misha has to leave early, some urgent errand for Frydman. Later, he’ll make the arrangements to move back in with the children at the orphanage.
Sophia needs to pack up their few things ready to move in at Ogrodowa, a matter of moments, but she sits on the bed looking at the young couple in the picture confidently linking arms in the sunshine. Her eyes prickle with tears, as if the sunlight in the picture is too bright to bear.
Time in the ghetto is going backwards, unmarrying them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WARSAW, SEPTEMBER 1941
Pan Doctor, can you do my laces up?’ Szymonek, the youngest in the home, is standing in front of Korczak with his boot flapping open.
‘I can do better, my son. I can teach you how to do your own laces. It’s never too soon to learn how to do things for yourself.’ He puts down the hessian bag. ‘This goes over there. Now you try. Again. You have it. Well done.’
Szymonek goes away proudly looking at his feet.
Stefa has asked if Korczak can get something with oil in it today. She might as well ask for a few packets of gold. It’s possible he can get a little sausage, however. He sets off to see if the sausage promised in the Judenrat note has come in at the shop.
The woman behind the counter is yelling at a man. ‘So the lard’s a bit off. If you don’t like it, then why don’t you leave? I’ve got plenty of other customers waiting.’
‘Madam, what sort of shop is this?’ the man replies. He’s thin and studious, wearing an old coat. ‘You’d cheat a customer out of his money?’
She waves the ghetto note in her hand as though it’s something distasteful and sighs with her whole body. ‘He thinks it’s a shop. This is not a shop, and you are not a customer. I don’t sell anything, and you don’t pay me since these scraps of paper they call money in here are worthless. Why would I cheat you when I never make a profit?’
When Korczak reaches the head of the queue, he watches his small section of sausage being weighed out.
‘It’s so expensive, are you sure it’s not made of human flesh?’ he jokes.
She looks at him flatly. ‘How should I know? I wasn’t there when it was made.’ All humour leached away.
He stows the stub of salami in his canvas sack and heads for the Jewish Council building to see the head, his old friend Adam Czerniakow.
Korczak climbs the stairs to Czerniakow’s office to deliver an invitation to the home’s Yom Kippur celebration. Czerniakow’s fleshy face is haggard, a man being slowly crushed by the responsibility of his postion as intermediary between the ghetto and the Gestapo.
‘Still no armband then,’ says Czerniakow, not raising his eyes from the ledger he’s reading. He takes the glasses from his long nose and rubs his heavy jowls. Statesmanlike, always in an immaculate suit, Czerniakow never smiles. Behind his glasses, however, his tired eyes are kind and humorous.
Korczak sinks into the chair opposite and stretches out his old boots. His fingers tap on the armrests, still showing the faint nicotine stains of the beloved cigarettes he used to smoke. No question of wasting money on smokes in here, but his fingers still search for the comfort of those little paper sticks.
‘I don’t understand. Why is it that everyone here hurries off when they see me coming along the corridor these days?’
‘What can you expect, Korczak? You’re breaking their hearts. Everyone dreads seeing you. Whatever we give you, it’s never enough. No wonder they run off.’
‘Is it so much, a couple of sacks of potatoes, for my children? And I’m not always asking for something. In fact, the reason I dropped in is to give you something. This.’ He places an invitation for a concert at the home in front of Czerniakow.
‘Thank you. You know, I still think about your play at the Athenaeum, nearly ten years ago, the insane general stomping around the stage who wanted to burn everything, burn books, burn Jews. The critics panned it for being too gloomy, and now it seems prophetic.’
‘It was all set out in Hitler’s little book if people cared to read it. But Hitler is not the German people, remember. When the German people realize what is being done in their name, they will soon put a stop to it.’
‘You may be right. At least I have some good news, some real cause for hope for the ghetto. We’ve been given permission to open schools in here at last. Six of them.’
Korczak looks over the announcement from Bruhl Palace and hands it back. He doesn’t look impressed. As Czerniakow knows, he’s been running a school in the home under the guise of recreation activities, diaries, lectures, reading library, all along – activities that will pass a Nazi inspection to check that no Jewish minds are being educated.
‘Don’t you see? If we have formal permission to educate our children now, then it means the Nazis must see a future for the ghetto.’ Czerniakow takes off his glasses to clean them with his neat square of handkerchief and fixes Korczak with his haunted eyes. ‘I know that people make up songs about me, about my fat belly, how I work with the Germans, but someone has to try and get the best deal we can for our people in here.’
‘My friend, if you hadn’t accepted the post, they would have simply shot you and gone on to someone else, someone who didn’t care about the fate of the people in here, perhaps.’
‘I try. I try to demand better conditions. Mostly I fail, but all I can do is keep trying.’
He walks over to the bureau and folds a small square of paper from a stack, adds a dose of headache powder and tips it into his mouth, takes a sip from a glass of water. Czerniakow has a constant migraine.
‘I’ll be frank with you, Korczak. I’m not going to pretend that I believe everyone in this prison will survive the war. The death toll from hunger and disease in some of the refugee shelters is unthinkable. Unthinkable. Yesterday I left the doctor with a packet of headache powder and a woman snatched it out of my hand, ate the lot in front of me, desperate for food, starving.’ Czerniakow looks up with hollow eyes. ‘But so long as we can take care of all our children, so long as we can protect our little ones, then we still have hope as a people. And so long as we have
hope, then I’m willing to keep on going to the Bruhl Palace day in, day out, and try and get some concessions for the ghetto, anything to help our people come through this.
‘And listen, I’m going to write a chit for potatoes. Tell them downstairs to let you have two sacks.’
‘Thank you. Thank you, my friend. If you could possibly make it three . . .’
CHAPTER TWENTY
WARSAW, OCTOBER 1941
Misha buries his chin further into his muffler, turns up his collar. The Wola backstreet behind the two grey factories is deserted but he keeps watch in both directions. Standing here on the street corner in Aryan Warsaw, he feels unreal; his skin prickles as if he has stepped down into a forbidden underworld, a ghost out of his time. The gloomy afternoon light is seeded with droplets of fog rendering the buildings indistinct and ghostly. For people who live in the ghetto, Warsaw has become nothing but a legend now, a dream.
If he’s caught, he’ll never return home.
From here he can see Tadeusz and Jadwiga, hurriedly loading sacks of kasha onto the cart that’s waiting just inside the warehouse gate. The horse’s hooves scrape and clop, the beast made nervous by the tense atmosphere. If Misha sees anyone coming, he’s to remove his cap and the brothers will immediately pull down the canvas cover over the buckwheat and melt away inside the warehouse.
Inside, there’s the sound of the false bottom being hammered down, not too well since it will all have to come up again soon. Tadeusz comes out and hands Misha an apple. Short and round-faced, Tadeusz seems little more than a boy. In spite of the cold his face sweats with the effort of loading sacks.
‘Some time we should go for a beer.’
‘We should.’ Misha gives him a wry smile.
The cart covered over with refuse, Misha climbs up behind the horse and clicks to it to move forward, just another Polish workman ambling home through the streets.
The Good Doctor of Warsaw Page 13
