by Bodie Thoene
This warning clanged in Lucy’s head like the bell of the tram. The long tram car slid across the face of Warsaw mile after mile as Lucy stared at the city and listened to the unfamiliar language of the Polish passengers. Their tongues cracked against their palates in greeting and in discussion of the terrible reports that were splashed across the front pages of undecipherable newspapers.
The world of the Poles was strange enough to Lucy. Could the Jewish district possibly be more unfamiliar and frightening than this? She saw sandbag barricades and taped windows everywhere, yet downtown Warsaw was bustling with activity. Admiring women scanned shopwindows. Lucy supposed that they could understand what the signs said and what the prices meant. The marquees of theaters displayed names that Lucy could not pronounce with letters turned oddly this way and that like the Russian alphabet.
Could it be that the Führer had not been lying when he said that Poland was near to being Russian in politics and culture? Is that why the German people feared and hated the Poles so desperately?
Lucy did not see people she needed to fear. She saw women holding the hands of their children as they walked down the streets. She saw ordinary shoppers passing in and out of the revolving doors of department stores. She saw men in uniform sitting in the parks beside pretty girls, an organ grinder with a monkey on a leash, a blind beggar standing beside a lamppost.
Ordinary people, except when they opened their mouths and gibberish flowed out in an incomprehensible torrent. Maybe that was the only different between ordinary people here and anywhere.
An airplane passed overhead. All heads pivoted upward. Hands shielded against the sun. Anxious eyes wondered, and then a man in the uniform of an ordinary soldier announced, “Polski!”
People smiled and sighed with relief. These people were also afraid. And Lucy pitted them because they had not seen anything yet. They had not even imagined what they were about to see. There would be no mistaking it when the German aircraft swooped down on Warsaw. No one would look up. Everyone would be too busy running for cover.
Wolf had told Lucy what the bombing was like in Spain. He said that when Warsaw had its turn, the Luftwaffe would be one hundred times more powerful.
She looked at the slip of paper with the address on it. She held it lightly between her fingers. Lucy knew that when the German bombers came to Warsaw, she would stand unmoving in the street. She would look up into the sky and welcome whatever fell on her.
There were only these little questions to clear up. She wanted to know that all was well with the baby. And then it did not matter any longer. She would not cause her own death, but she would not run from it either. She did not think that welcoming death was a sin.
Wolf had reminded her of how little she was worth. That knowledge made living seem of little importance. And she prayed that perhaps there was some tiny attic room reserved for her in God’s mansion.
She patted her pocket where she still carried the little green book with all the details of life as a parlor maid. She would never see the freedom of England or America. She would never hold her baby again, she knew. But she would be content to wait on tables and sweep up crumbs in heaven. This was the mercy Lucy Strasburg asked for.
***
The rumble of thousands of horses’ hooves against the packed soil of the parade ground drowned out all conversation. Orde stood on the platform among dozens of other Western journalists to observe what was supposed to be a display of Polish prowess.
Dutiful to his newly acquired vocation, Orde snapped photographs with the cumbersome news camera and took copious notes as to the state of readiness of the Polish Legion. To his right, Jacob Kalner watched with the wide-eyed admiration of one who could not conceive that so many troops could not stand up against the German divisions. On Orde’s left, Alfie, the new Elisha, gazed over the scene with a strange smile on his lips, as if searching for legions of fiery angels. Sadly, he did not see them among the Poles.
At the front of the platform, Edward Smigly-Rydz, inspector general of the Polish Army, stood at attention. He had acquired the nickname of Smigly, meaning “nimble,” as a young man fighting the Russian Bolsheviks in 1920. After an hour of conversation with the general, Orde had decided that he was more arrogant and shortsighted than nimble. The strength of the opposing German panzer divisions would require more than nimble cockiness to be defeated.
The endless sea of Polish cavalry spread out before the platform was crowned with old-style French helmets. Their weapons were lances, sabers, and rifles of the vintage of the last war.
Throughout the prancing troop were horses as white and glowing as neon signs on Piccadilly. For any man to ride a white horse into battle was certain suicide. Only a blind enemy could miss such a target. Such animals were meals on legs for the buzzards that now swooped low over Poland.
This display of tens of thousands of horses caused the Polish general to glow with pride. “You can see,” he told Orde, “our cavalry is adapted for rapid movements over the Polish plain.”
Orde knew that the plain was the flattest country of its size in all of Europe. This level vastness made Poland the least defensible of any nation on the Continent. Feeding horses would be a nightmarish logistical problem on the field. There was only one hope for Polish victory that Orde could see, although he did not express his pessimism aloud. The world must pray for an early rain to clog the dirt roads and turn the fields into mires that would suck down the German might. In such a case, horses might have some advantage against three thousand heavy German tanks. Otherwise . . .
The Polish Army had six hundred light six-ton tanks, built on the English Vickers’ design. These tin cans had been effective against the rifles of the Arabs in Palestine, Orde recalled. But crude land mines had taken out a number of the tanks easily even when wielded by primitive bands hiding among the rocks. Orde looked at Jacob’s face beaming with envy. He would love to be a tank commander in such a force!
Orde shuddered involuntarily. He saw before him images of charred men in charred machines, of dead and bloated horses being scraped from the roads like so much manure from the floor of a barn.
Behind the tanks came horse-drawn light and medium artillery of the same manufacture as the world war.
The Polish general looked on proudly, his cruel face twisted into a perverse smile. Was he remembering, perhaps, how these same units swept across a portion of Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement last year? Was he under the illusion that Hitler’s forces would simply lie down and roll over? General Smigly-Rydz had played the role of a scavenger when Czechoslovakia had been dismembered. Now, perhaps, the brutality of that action would come back in Poland. The general was more interested in nationhood than democracy. He was anti-Semitic; perhaps he was a man of courage, yet Orde had sensed great darkness in this man’s soul.
Herr Hitler had been quite happy to send photographs of his weapons and troops out from the Reich for publication. He gloated in the fact that his army and air force were the most modern in the world. Had this Polish general not seen those photographs? Could he not hear the trembling of earth and sky as German divisions moved into place on three sides of the Polish border?
When war came to this place—and Orde did not doubt that inevitable occurrence—the Poles would be forced to fight a retreating action to hold back the Nazis from Prussia in the north, Czechoslovakia in the south, and Germany in the west. If they could cling to their plain until Britain and France arrived, then perhaps the rains would bring General Mud to their rescue.
The Reich surrounded all sides of Poland except one. Soviet Russia towered like a bear at their eastern back door. Here was one small reason to hope. England had sent an emissary to Moscow to attempt to form an alliance, a nonaggression pact that would guarantee that Russia would not tolerate any German aggression against Poland. That alone might cause the German Führer to rethink the million troops poised at Poland’s front door. The horses of Poland’s cavalry might be nothing to slice through, but did Hi
tler wish to face three hundred Russian divisions on the other side?
The crack of rifles and the boom of field guns announced that this glorious display of might had come to an end. Men stood at attention as the Polish national anthem was played.
Tears stood in the eyes of general and troops alike. But as Orde listened respectfully, to him the anthem sounded like a requiem that resounded over the spires of Warsaw in the distance.
***
Lucy noted a perceptible change in the dress and language of the tram passengers at the edge of the Jewish district. Frau Berson had been correct in saying that this large, sprawling expanse of Warsaw was like stepping into a different world.
In the showcase windows of the shops, none of the latest Paris fashions were displayed. Hat makers displayed the newest Jewish headgear, which in fact had not changed in style for several hundred years. Marquees were written in Yiddish or in Hebrew, depending on the nature of the shop. The world of floral print dresses and pin-striped suits had vanished. Here were long severe dresses on the women; caftans of black that reached well below the knees of the men.
Lucy saw old men, white-bearded and stoop-shouldered, conversing animatedly with young men who dressed exactly the same. The only difference was the white hair and wrinkled skin.
Like rows of blackbirds on a wire, men crowded onto the tram. Women came along as well, but they sat in the back of the vehicle with their youngsters. Men and women alike stared at Lucy. What are you doing here? their looks asked. The tram moved slowly from stop to stop, and still Lucy did not get off. Two women looked at her curiously and then whispered behind their hands. Maybe she is lost? Maybe she is blind? Maybe . . . who can say? Very strange, nu?
Lucy had not imagined how different it could be. The neat rows of Hebrew letters on street signs and shopwindows looked like little hands raised up in prayer. Words inscribed in that strange alphabet seemed like tongues of fire painted in a line.
Yet here too women stood chattering on street corners while their children ran around their legs or balanced to walk the curb. Delivery boys carried packages to doorsteps. Huge dray horses pulled wagon loads of cheese, vegetables, and ice through the streets.
A paper boy stood on the corner hocking his publications. The headlines, in large type, proclaimed only the word that Lucy recognized: NAZI!
Men—young and old—clustered around whoever had purchased a paper. They waved their arms and argued loudly. They gestured toward the east and then toward the west. Black eyebrows arched upwards in concern.
What could these separate people possibly have in common with the world of the Poles that surrounded them?
Then Lucy saw it. The drone of a single airplane passed overhead. All faces peered skyward with ominous expectation. Hands shielded eyes from the glare, and then someone sighed and said, “Polski.”
So that was it. Fear was the common bond between Jew and Gentile Pole. But one thing was missing in the way that fear was dealt with. In Catholic Warsaw, everyone carried the obligatory gas masks. But here, as Niska Street grew ever more narrow and ever more crowded, there were no gas masks to be seen.
Mothers pushing baby carriages had no gas masks. Old men and young delivery boys carried no gas masks. Small, serious-faced scholars carried no gas masks.
Could it be that Jews did not believe in such a precaution? If that was the case, Lucy decided, they were foolish. Everyone knew about the mustard gas that had been used in the last war. Everyday Frau Berson had talked of blistered skin and blind men and seared lungs. Just thinking of what Hitler might do with the gas made the old woman tremble. She had gone out on the first day the Polish government had issued them to all civilians, and after hours in long lines, she had returned with two. Lucy carried hers in a little cardboard box slung over her shoulder. Everyone in Gentile Warsaw had one. Lucy had seen them everywhere outside the borders of this district.
She frowned and looked at her own case; it must have been an obvious curiosity to the plump old woman sitting across from her.
“Polski?” the blue-eyed Jewess asked quietly. She was questioning Lucy’s presence on the train.
“Nein,” Lucy answered, surprised by the human voice addressing her.
“I see you are of German heritage,” the old woman said with a twinge of sarcasm. Her eyes lingered on Lucy’s gas-mask container. Other heads swiveled to look at Lucy.
“Ja, Deutsch,” Lucy replied quietly.
“And you are wondering about our gas masks?” The woman’s voice was heavily accented, but her German words were well chosen.
Again, a hesitant nod from Lucy.
The eyebrows of the woman rose slightly as though she knew some joke but was not sure if she should tell it. Then she told. “There are no gas masks for Jews, you see. Jews in Warsaw have no protection from the gas if the Führer should decide to use such a weapon against Poland.” A shrug. “You see?”
The tram bell clanged loudly. This was Lucy’s stop. She was grateful for the interruption. She inched through the other passengers, and as she stepped onto the sidewalk, she slipped her own gas mask into the large paper lunch sack Frau Berson had sent with her.
She looked unusual enough on this street, she reasoned. She did not want to flaunt that difference. No protection for the Jews of Warsaw!
She shuddered and lowered her eyes so she would not have to look into the faces that turned toward her and wondered. She took the scrap of notepaper from her pocket and looked at it again, although she knew the number well. 2334 Niska Street, Apartment 3A. The name above the address was RUDOLF DORBRANSKY.
Lucy studied the row of mailboxes in the lobby of the gloomy building. Most had names above the numbers. Apartment 3A had an empty place behind the little glass window.
No matter. This was the correct address. The number Lucy had given to Alfie so they could write her from England! She looked up the steep stairs, half expecting to see Peter Wallich and his sister appear on the landing above her!
Her mouth was dry with excitement. She hoped there had been time enough for a letter to get here about the baby. She dashed up the steps, using the banister to pull herself upward toward the answer she had come all this way to find. No doubt the letter has come! Peter will know all about the news from England before me! Oh, won’t it be good to see him again!
Lucy was flushed and out of breath as she raised her hand and knocked on the door of Rudolf Dorbransky, Apartment 3A. She could hear the happy squeals of small children through the thin wood door. Had they heard her knock? She raised her hand again, and then the door was opened just a crack. A timid slice of pale face peered out at her. Dark, frightened eyes filled with a freshly revived fear at the sight of her.
“Please, bitte—” Lucy leaned against the door to keep the woman from closing it on her face— “I am looking for—” She held out the address and managed to smile hopefully. She looked over the head of the woman, who glanced at the note and then pushed to close the door on Lucy’s face.
“Not here!” the woman said in poor German.
“Please!” Lucy leaned harder on the door. “Peter!” she called. “Peter Wallich? Peter, it is Lucy! I have come here all the way from Danzig! Peter!”
“Wrong place!” The woman was angry. She pushed hard in an attempt to keep Lucy back.
“Please!” Lucy cried, unbelieving. “You are making a mistake! Ask Peter Wallich who I am! He will know me! Lucy! I am Lucy Strasburg! A friend of Peter and Karin and Marlene Wallich! I was told to meet them here!”
The woman let out a garbled cry for help. Then a large hairy hand pulled the woman aside, and Lucy tumbled forward into the tiny flat.
The faces of two ragged children gaped up at her in terror as a burly man stepped between Lucy and the rest. “You got the wrong place,” he growled. He snatched the address from his thin, trembling wife and thrust it back at Lucy.
“But surely Peter Wallich can vouch for me.”
The man crossed his thick arms. His teeth were clenche
d between his black beard. His eyes smoldered. “No Peter Wallich here. No Rudolf Dorbransky. They move out. Who knows where to.”
He flung his hand up, and Lucy winced as though he had struck her. He had struck her, in a way.
“But this is the address.” Her voice was small and pitiful.
“I’m telling you.” He was warning her as well.
Lucy backed up a step. “But did they come here? Peter? Marlene and Karin?”
The woman took pity. “A woman and a little girl?”
“Yes!” Lucy resisted the urge to grab the woman’s hands. “Where did they go? Did they leave an address?”
“They left,” the man said, “like everyone else. Now this is our place. Get out!”
“But were there letters?” Lucy directed this question to the brow-beaten woman who cringed beneath Lucy’s pleading eyes.
The man stepped to the side, blocking Lucy’s view of his wife. “No letters! We send the letters back! Nobody lives here by these names! Why should we keep letters when these people don’t live here? Probably dead!”
He moved his bulk another step forward. He knew that Lucy was not one of them, and he hated her! He hated her as much as Wolf hated a Jew! Only he was not so cruel. He did not strike her physically. He simply slammed the door on her hopes and clicked the lock and snapped the chain into place.
“Not here,” she muttered as she walked slowly down to the foyer. “How could that be?”
No Rudolf Dorbransky family. No Karin Wallich. No Peter Wallich. No letter from London. No hope.
Where can I go now? Lucy wondered. What options are left to me? She felt faint. She sat down on the bottom step and stared at the checkerboard tiles on the floor of the foyer. She cradled her head in her hands and tried to remember everything Alfie Halder had said to her in those last terrible moments of farewell on the Danzig wharf.
“See you in Warsaw . . . newspaper . . . TENS. See you in Warsaw!”
***
St. Paul’s Cathedral was an immense building. Lori guessed that several churches the size of her father’s church could have fit in it side by side. Probably another half dozen or so could have stacked up to fill the vast dome of the cupola.
