Leah stayed on Mama’s lap, frightened, her hand gripping Mama’s blouse the whole time. Her eyes watched everyone walking past with their lanterns and matches and candles and blankets, calling to one another, their noise penetrating her sensitive ears. Leah doesn’t like loud noises. Mama said it had something to do with an ear infection she had when she was a baby. Leah didn’t like leaving the house at all. She was scared of going to school. She wanted routine, and she wanted silence. It was like dark clouds were always following her. We were nothing alike then. It is different now, of course. Today we share the same fears.
Mama was displeased with me for being too boisterous, for interrupting other people and chasing my friends around the basement. She accused me of not acting my age, of not listening. She told me constantly to calm down. I liked the sound of the bombs more than the sound of Mama’s cross voice. But I didn’t know the truth. I couldn’t see what was ahead. How could anyone have foreseen that life would be altered to such a state that our time together in the basement would seem like a fond memory compared with the suffering that was to come?
When the skies eventually grew quiet, Papa went out to survey the streets. When he came back, he told us that there were no casualties or damage in the immediate streets, though other parts of the city had been destroyed, and he heard that some people had been killed. He said there was a crater the size of a creek in one part. Papa had not gone to the front to fight for Poland because he ran a successful furniture business.
We slept in the basement that night because we weren’t sure if the planes would return. I remember Leah being restless and keeping me awake before she eventually burrowed into Papa like a badger to sleep. And at one point, in the dim artificial light, Papa looked across at me and reached out his hand, which didn’t feel right. His hands, which were always so warm and firm, were cold and trembled slightly. But now I understand that he knew more than he told. Perhaps Mama did, too. They could see what was going to happen.
When we emerged from the basement the next morning, the city was ceilinged in smoke that smelled of burning metal. Papa said it was the smell of war.
Then when the German soldiers came, the city seemed to divide between German Poles and Jewish Poles. A month passed, and then the telephone services were canceled, followed by the mail service. Papa and Mama would listen to the radio broadcast from London to learn the truth, and that is when we heard that England had declared war on Germany and that France and Australia were also participating. Mama’s face grew paler every day, and she stopped wearing makeup. I used to smile at the soldiers, and they would smile at me until Mama told me to stop. She said they were not our friends; they were burning pokers, prodding us into poverty. (At this part of my story, I look at the doctor. His eyes are fixed on a point above my shoulder, but I know he is listening. I can tell when someone has lost interest. Their eyes begin to roam.)
I was not frightened at first. Many of us in the city thought that perhaps things would go on the same as they had. But things changed drastically. We stopped attending school because teachers were not turning up, and there was no money for books anyway. And then came the shortage of food.
Mama and I began fighting more. She was becoming annoying. She did not want me out of her sight. I hated the sound of her voice. Like the buzzing insects in the reeds beside the lake, she did not ever stop. When she said I could no longer go out on my own, I ran away to my friend Marta’s house. It was dark when my papa came to take me home. He was not angry, even though I was having pancakes with cream and sugar because Marta’s papa was a German Pole, and he had not lost as many privileges. At the time, I didn’t recognize that fact. I still did not fully understand the difference between Marta and me. I was immature. I refused to believe that anything could affect me. I liked the drama, in a way, and believed that eventually things would go back to normal.
With the schools closed, Marta and I received lessons from Marta’s mother at her home. But after a while, Papa said that I should not spend so much time away.
Just before all this happened, I had auditioned for a play at a theater that had recently opened. I was to play the part of Rastilla, a fairy who transforms a poverty-stricken town into paradise. But after the bombings, the theater was abandoned, and that is when I first began to resent the changes: because I wanted the part of Rastilla so badly, and it had suddenly been taken away from me. I began to focus more on the circumstances surrounding me, the things that were causing me grief. And, perhaps because I grew up almost overnight, I began to see the effect all this was having not just on me but also on my family and others like us.
After this, the paper stopped being published, and we received only Nazi news . . . (I falter. We have heard that the term Nazi is considered disrespectful by some Germans who command the title of Socialist only, but he makes no gesture to suggest he finds this offensive.) . . . about how wonderful Germany was and how mighty was its army, how the Jews must not take over the country, that Germany must not let them. And that is when I first felt fear. Up until that moment when Papa read from the paper, it seemed that these things were happening to someone else.
Mama was a Jew, not Papa—but that didn’t matter. He did not have to sew a yellow star on his shirt, but he did so in support of Mama.
Then one day Papa came home and did not remove his hat as he stepped through the doorway. I knew straight away that this was a bad sign, that something was wrong. He said that the shop had been seized. I asked lots of questions, and Mama told me to keep quiet, to not rush at Papa. He said that he was no longer allowed to buy supplies for the store. A Jew was not allowed to pay for things. He said that Poles would be placed there to run the store instead.
Mama said, “What do you mean, Poles?”
But there was no need for the question. We all knew. Mama only wanted to put the word out there, to highlight the impact it was having. To highlight the fact that Poles were now divided into two: Poles without Jewish blood, and Polish Jews who no longer had the right to call themselves anything but Jews.
From the days when the Germans first arrived in the city—several days after the night in the basement—German national pride had risen among non-Jews. They now saluted and mingled with the soldiers as if they, too, were “the chosen people.” (I explain to the doctor that the phrase was borrowed from someone else, not something that I had come up with.)
We lost friends and neighbors because of this. Papa stormed out of our neighbor’s house after he had the urge to hit Konrad, who’d suggested that the Germans would save the human race—would save the Aryan race—from extinction.
“We will never go back there. We will never again be friends,” he said to Mama, Leah, and me. And I understood. You cannot go back once you learn the truth about people’s feelings. Mama kept telling us that we had to be careful who we spoke to; our own countrymen could not be trusted. (I stop to see if I have said something wrong, but the doctor’s gaze has only shifted to my other shoulder; his expression remains the same. Mama still thinks that I am too trusting. That I speak before I think sometimes. But I do not tell the doctor that Mama said, “It is criminal. Someone will get word to the British and perhaps the Americans that Germany has lost its mind, that they have employed a totalitarian, an anti-Semite, to undo the world.”)
Papa boarded up the shop windows after someone threw a brick in through the glass. I begged him to remove the yellow star from his clothes. But he refused. Another night, Papa came home in a rage after he discovered that his shop had been smashed again and profanity scrawled across the windows in paint. He thought it was Polish anti-Semites, not the soldiers. He grew so angry. He got his gun and stormed off down the road. Mama ran after him, but she could not stop him. She came back crying and fearful.
When he did eventually return, we could smell alcohol on his breath, and he was accompanied by friends, some non-Jews who sympathized and had convinced him that finding the culprits would be impossible. There were too many suspects. This was the fi
rst time I had ever seen my father lose control, pushed beyond his usual high level of tolerance. He collapsed on the couch, and Mama soothed him with her soft voice. She had that effect on most people; she could calm them with her touch. Not that she was always like that. Sometimes Mama needed Papa as much as he needed her. Sometimes the nerves got the better of her, too. They looked after each other. (I hope that one day I will find someone, and we will be like my parents.)
Papa kept working in the shop for a while, stocking the shelves, while Hugo—whom my father had originally employed as a junior clerk—ran the store. (Hugo was Polish, with no bloodlines that said he couldn’t be classed as “suitable for management.”)
Mama put her hand on Papa’s arm then, and suddenly I saw the whole thing as ridiculous. I was angry that Papa was wearing a yellow star when he didn’t have to. That he had given up so much for Mama. I did not realize at the time that he had given it up for his children, also.
We did not observe all the Jewish customs, not like my grandmother, especially when it came to food. I had grown up in a household that celebrated yuletide from my father’s side and Hanukkah from my mother’s. Both these celebrations included candles, food, and gifts. We had twice the celebration. I used to think that we were the luckiest family, with so many celebrations. Those same people who now ignored us had often come to celebrate with us.
I said, “But Papa is not a Jew. It is because of you, Mama, that we have to live like this. That we are considered Jews. That we are all at the bottom of the human pile.”
“Elsi! Don’t ever say that!” said Papa, red with fury. He rushed forward and slapped me across the face. He had never hit me before. Mama stepped toward him to pull him away.
“Victor, stop it!” she yelled. He gripped my arm so hard that tears sprang to my eyes.
“Victor!” cried Mama again. For a brief moment my father became someone I didn’t recognize. His hat had fallen, and his wavy, white hair stood up wildly around his head; his squinting eyes were bloodshot from too many sleepless nights. He hadn’t changed clothes for many days, and he smelled of alcohol and sweat. He released me then with such force that I fell backward, and he walked from the room, his giant frame stooping slightly.
I held my sore face and tears came. Papa and I had been an unbreakable union. When I was little, I would sit on his shoulders and he would gallop like a horse while I squealed with laughter, and we would go to the lake to race each other while swimming. Leah was not yet born then. It took Mama two failed pregnancies before she produced a sibling for me, and I was sorry that my little sister had never experienced what Papa and I had together, and the feeling of freedom and carefree, sunny days.
Mama checked the side of my face. “You poor thing,” she said. She wet a cloth and put it on my cheek and apologized for Papa. She then disappeared to search for him.
It should have been Mama who slapped me for the comment, but she has forgiven everything I have ever said and done.
When Papa came back, he said he was sorry for losing his temper, and we started talking again, and things went back to a new kind of normal, though I knew that war was now taking something else from us. It was taking away simple relationships and twisting them into something complicated. It was splitting our family apart. Leah was always frightened now, clinging to Mama and crying as if she could hear and sense things that none of us could. I started to miss the food that had once been plentiful on our table.
“What can we do about the shop?” I asked.
Mama suggested that we write to the British newspapers, that we somehow get a message to them. But Papa said that they have too many things to worry about than one family in Poland. (It is only when I suggested stealing some guns that Papa completely returned to normal. He said, “You are always so dramatic, Elsi; what a shame the theater is closed!”)
And shortly after that we came here.
Mama moans from the back room. The doctor is leaning forward in the chair now, his eyes fixed on mine. He has moved only once since I began speaking, and that was to interrupt me to check on Mama. He is interested. I do not believe that he has missed anything I have said.
“Your father—where is he from?”
“From Denmark originally.”
“And where is he now?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “He went to work and never came back.”
CHAPTER FIVE
WILLEM
“Guess what I am about to tell you?”
“That we are leaving this dreadful place today?” says Lena.
We are strolling beside the river, the water murky, reflecting the sky. The city itself seems to pour dullness back into the air. The name Lodz—“boat”—suggests there is an abundance of moving water, yet this name is a contradiction in terms. There is an absence of life and movement here, except what is artificial: the steady flow of cars and trucks ferrying soldiers, prisoners, and laborers.
It is not a good day for walking. The wind has risen, but Lena doesn’t care. She doesn’t wish to be trapped indoors for too long: accustomed to the many walks we took in the Black Forest during our last German summer, before the war.
“Close!”
Lena turns to face me, gripping my hand with hers in anticipation. She looks both tense and hopeful.
“I have been promoted.”
“Thank goodness!” she says, breathing out deeply and dropping her shoulders to amplify her relief. “Does that mean you will leave that horrible ghetto surgery?” She has never seen it, of course—I would never allow this. But I have described it to her many times.
“It will not happen for several months, but we are moving to Berlin.”
“Oh,” she says. “Very well then.” She casts her eyes downward so that I cannot see them, and her voice no longer signals her earlier enthusiasm.
“What is wrong? You sound disappointed, not pleased.”
“It was just that . . . I was hoping our situation would change before the birth.”
“Yes,” I say. “So was I. But you have to trust me. I will be at the hospital beside you. I will not let another doctor touch you, and nothing will happen without my approval, not—” I stop there. I do not want to frighten her.
“Not like your mother, you were going to say. It’s perfectly fine, Willem. I am not fearful of the birth itself. It will not be the same as your mother. I was just hoping for the child to be born in Germany, not Poland . . . and close to my family.”
When I learned at the age of thirteen that my mother had died of puerperal fever several days after my birth, the subject of women was suddenly seen in a new light. Until then, they were part of the human race, just like men but with different working functions. The physical makeup of a woman had never been a question. But this tragedy struck in me a sudden yearning to learn the differences in detail. Women began to fascinate me, not as objects of desire but something enigmatic. The boys who brought to school illicitly purchased photo cards of women draped provocatively across chairs, wearing nothing but a string of pearls and stockinged legs, certainly appealed to my primal nature, but overriding those feelings was more the desire to master the art and science of women. I deemed, by my own assumption and observations, that if they weren’t nurtured on both an emotional and physical level—both states completing the whole—then the human race was potentially doomed.
And the more I learned about women through the course of my studies, the more I realized that my mother did not have to die.
My mother had a rather uneventful, quick birth, considering it was her first. My father—a doctor himself—wasn’t there, hidden away at a laboratory, performing commissioned and highly secretive bacterial trials by a pharmaceutical company. It was a time when there was a race to find an antibacterial agent against infections, especially with the commencement of the first war and the amount of casualties that were expected because of it.
A midwife came and delivered me that night, then bathed my mother and left. My aunt, who had also been present, se
nt a telegram to my father to announce the good news of my birth. My mother then developed a fever, admitted herself to a hospital, and quickly died.
The irony was that my father did not tolerate unhygienic practices and, while working as a supervisor at a hospital, was known to dismiss people who failed to wash their hands, before or after caring for a patient. A further irony was that not only would he have ensured the sterilization of anything that came into contact with his wife and unborn son, which would have protected her from infection, but that the very antibacterial products he was testing at the time would likely have killed the infection and saved her life.
I have only photos to remember her by. Although people have noted we share similar characteristics, and said she was a woman with impeccable moral standards and humility, I do not feel that we are connected. Any feelings of guilt about her death—that I was somehow to blame—came and went early, perhaps from the persistent ideals my father instilled. That it was men who were the ones to be educated and relied upon, and who would pave the way for new life. He taught me not to dwell or attach myself to things from the past that were no longer useful, and that sentimentality was for people who did not want to move forward in this world. I embraced this preaching, as my father represented success and control, traits that were highly sought after for men with professional aspirations.
For much of my early years, I was cared for by my aunt, who was stern as well as fair, various nannies who were instructed to discipline rather than nurture, and a father devoid of emotion and rarely there. I had several friends even though my father did not allow visits outside school. This obviously had an effect, because even in my university years, although I made many good friends, enjoyed class discussions, and visited clubs usually by colleagues’ insistence, socializing was not something I craved. And if it wasn’t for Lena’s temerity, I doubt I would yet be married.
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