Nocturne

by Diane Armstrong

  As the truck revved up and sped away, the man who had carried him gave a short laugh. ‘They’ve certainly rearranged your face, Eagle. Even your mother wouldn’t recognise you. Come to think of it, that’s not such a bad thing in our line of work!’

  Adam opened his mouth to ask how they had known where he was, and how they’d managed to get him out, but his head lolled towards his chest and he fainted.

  Eleven

  One bleak November day in 1940, after Elzunia and her mother and brother had been inside the Ghetto for six months, their worst fears were realised. The Ghetto was closed and they were shut off from the rest of the world. It became an island of despair in the centre of the city. Only the slave labourers who worked in German factories or workshops were permitted to leave.

  ‘There’s no hope now,’ Lusia lamented when they heard the news they’d all been dreading. ‘How will your father manage to get us out, now that we’re locked up in here?’ Her voice dropped to a whisper as though she didn’t want to hear her own voice. ‘But what if …?’

  The longing for her father was a dull ache that never left Elzunia. Without the hope of seeing him again, she didn’t think she could face the rest of her life. Sometimes she dreamed he was standing in the doorway, and she would wake up with a strangled sob of joy in her throat. At night, when she curled up on the bed she shared with her mother, she prayed fervently to the Virgin Mary to keep him safe.

  Although only work groups were permitted to leave the Ghetto during the day, the doctor for whom she worked had convinced the German authorities that her help was essential in treating all the patients at the clinic, and her nursing permit hadn’t been cancelled. As weeks passed, consumed by the yearning for her father, Elzunia concocted a plan. She couldn’t see him but at least she could see their old apartment. On her way to the clinic, she would go there to reassure herself that her home was still there, waiting for them to return. And although she couldn’t bring herself to articulate such an irrational thought, at the back of her mind was the fantasy that she would find her father waiting for her.

  Sitting by the window of the tram as it clanged along the rails outside the Ghetto, Elzunia shivered. Fine snow was falling but melted as soon as it landed on the collars and hats of the people hurrying by, hunched against the cold. The flakes turned to slush that lay in brown puddles on the pavements.

  Elzunia kept her eyes fixed on the street in an attempt to appear nonchalant. Jews were forbidden to ride in the ordinary trams, but having slipped off her armband she was spared the humiliation of riding in those hideous yellow trams with the Star of David on the sides and the sign at the front that said Nur für Juden. As long as no one recognised her, she’d be safe. The trick was to look confident and avoid the Polish blackmailers who hung around the tram stops like hyenas ready to swoop on their prey. For a reward of a few zloty, some vodka or a packet of cigarettes, these szmalcowniks hunted for Jews. First they took all their money, and then they turned them over to the Gestapo. War brought out the worst in people, Elzunia thought bitterly as the tram squealed to a halt and more passengers got in. Instead of pulling together against their common enemy, they exploited and denounced their fellow countrymen.

  Two Germans who were sprawled on the seat in the front of the compartment chatted in loud, confident voices about their posting. Warsaw was surprisingly pleasant, one of them pronounced, and, as for the girls, they were sehr shon — very pretty — but tended to be rather standoffish. His companion was surprised to find so many Jews here, but, after all, that’s why they’d come, nicht war? To cleanse the country of this pestilence. He said he sometimes felt sorry for the stick-thin children wandering around the Ghetto, but his companion corrected his misguided sympathy. ‘The Führer knows what he’s doing,’ he stated. ‘Think about Jews the way you would about cockroaches.’

  Finally the tram slowed down near the familiar stop, but she forced herself to stay in her seat until it lurched to a halt. She didn’t want to arouse suspicion by her eagerness to alight.

  Fixing a smile on her lips, she sauntered along Marszalkowska Street as though she hadn’t a care in the world. You never knew who was hanging around watching for any sign of fear or uncertainty. As she approached the kiosk on the corner, she started counting. If she got to ten by the time she reached the newspaper stand, it meant he’d be there. She quickened her step to give chance a helping hand.

  As she stood under the black branches of the lime tree outside their gate, she became lost in a daydream. Any moment now her father would walk out of that doorway and scoop her up in his arms and she’d realise that the past nine months had been a bad dream from which she had just awakened.

  She was about to walk into the building when Pani Stasia, the caretaker’s wife, opened the main door and clanged down an iron bucket with a resentful air, splashing dirty water all over the floor. As soon as she went back inside, muttering to herself, Elzunia crept past the caretaker’s apartment and ran up the stairs, stroking the polished maple banister like an old friend. She pressed her ear against the door of her old apartment. For a moment she imagined she heard voices but knew that her longing had conjured up these sounds. Elzunia peered over the railing to make sure Pani Stasia was gone, and had just started going down the stairs when the caretaker’s door opened and she was standing there, surveying her with unfriendly eyes.

  ‘If you’re looking for your father, Miss Elzunia, you’ve missed him.’

  Elzunia stared at her. Had the woman gone soft in the head? It was about six months since her father had been taken away. But, before she could reply, the woman said, ‘He dropped in here last week but only stayed a minute. Must have been in a hurry.’ There was a mocking gleam in her eyes.

  ‘I think you’ve made a mistake,’ Elzunia said through dry lips.

  ‘Your parents lived here for twenty years. Do you think I wouldn’t recognise him?’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Nice young lady with him, too.’

  Elzunia felt as though every bone in her body had come loose.

  ‘Did he say anything, or leave a forwarding address?’ she whispered.

  Pani Stasia shook her head. ‘He rushed out like the devil was chasing him with a pitchfork. Probably hoped I hadn’t seen him.’

  She stood there with arms akimbo as she stared pointedly at Elzunia’s arm, as though looking for the armband. Elzunia knew she had to get away immediately.

  Out in the street, she swayed on her feet. She longed to believe that the woman was lying but something in her tone made Elzunia sense she had been telling the truth. What could it mean? Joy that her father was still alive alternated with anger. How come he hadn’t even contacted them, or got a message to them? And that young lady the caretaker mentioned — who was she and what was he doing with her?

  If only she could see him and find out what was going on. Although they were living in the same city, they might just as well have been on different planets. For a moment, she contemplated going to the home of her parents’ former friends who lived several streets away to ask whether they’d seen him, but she was already late for the clinic, and, in any case, she couldn’t risk wandering around the town any longer, in case she was spotted.

  She couldn’t wait to tell her mother what she’d heard, but upon visualising Lusia’s distraught reaction, she changed her mind. It would be a heavy burden to carry alone but she preferred that to coping with her mother’s hysteria. As she hurried to the clinic, she felt like crying with disappointment and frustration.

  A few patients were already sitting in the tiny waiting room when she rushed in out of breath, hoping that Dr Borowski hadn’t noticed she was late. A diabetic patient had come to have the dressing changed on her ulcerated leg, a chain smoker was coughing his lungs out, and a young mother was comforting her son whose arm was in a sling. As Elzunia busied herself preparing bandages and laying out the instruments, the old doctor came in and looked at her over his rimless glasses. ‘You look worse than the patients,’ he growled. She tried t
o talk but her chest began to heave and tears splashed down her white nurse’s apron. He drew her swiftly into his office. ‘Have to be careful. Walls have ears,’ he warned, and inclined his head towards Bozena, the other trainee nurse, who was pretending to bustle about while eavesdropping on their conversation. ‘You’d better have a vitamin injection. You’re as white as a ghost.’

  As he drew up the liquid, he murmured, ‘Be strong. Our time will come.’

  Although the old doctor knew she lived in the Ghetto, he never alluded to the subject. She wondered what lay behind his enigmatic comment, but before she could ask what he meant, he propelled her out of the office and said loudly for Bozena’s benefit, ‘I don’t want to have to tell you again. Kindly sterilise the instruments on the tray as soon as you come in, and lay out the bandages so I don’t have to wait.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a smirk on the other girl’s face.

  Bozena made no secret of having a German boyfriend, whose opinions she often parroted. ‘Gunther reckons the Jews are to blame for this war,’ she told Elzunia while they were dressing the leg of the diabetic patient.

  ‘Then you should be grateful to them,’ Elzunia said sweetly. ‘Thanks to the war, you’ve found such a clever boyfriend.’ Although she still thought of herself as Catholic and prayed to the Blessed Virgin, people like Bozena made her feel an affinity with Jews.

  Back inside the Ghetto, the misery hit Elzunia with new force. Winter was harsher there, and homeless people shivered in the cold. She could never become accustomed to the sight of the emaciated women sitting on the footpaths with dull-eyed children beside them, hands outstretched for a coin or a piece of bread. A man whose cheekbones seemed to protrude through his skin sat propped against the wall, too weak to move. He’d probably be dead soon and would lie there until Pinkiert’s black funeral cart took him away in the morning, along with the others who had been released from their suffering during the night. She pushed her way through crowded streets that had become chaotic bazaars. Those who had anything to sell had set up a small trestle, a stool, or simply laid out on the ground whatever they could spare so you could hardly pass by without treading on worn shoes, mended socks, threadbare sheets, or books with bent covers. One woman was trying to sell her little girl’s underpants so that she could buy the child a piece of bread.

  A tiny girl in a torn sweater and woollen stockings with big holes was standing by herself, singing a sentimental ditty called ‘Almonds and Raisins’ as she swayed from side to side. Every now and then the words sounded garbled, and whenever the child couldn’t remember the next line she chanted, ‘I’m hungry. Can you give me something to eat?’ over and over in a sing-song voice without losing the rhythm. Occasionally someone would put a coin or a piece of bread into her grubby little hand but most people hurried past without listening. There were too many homeless people and too many hungry children; everyone was overwhelmed and preoccupied with their own misery.

  The little girl’s impish face and her ingenious way of interpolating her requests into the song touched Elzunia and she knelt down to talk to her. Her name was Gittel and she was three, although Elzunia would have taken her for a two-year-old. Gittel didn’t know what her other name was but she lived down that alleyway with her mama, who was very sick.

  Whether by chance or cunning, Gittel had positioned herself beside a café whose patrons, the Ghetto’s few affluent residents, occasionally dropped a coin in her hand as they went in or out. Whenever the door swung open, bright music poured out into the sad street and the aroma of hot food wafted into the air.

  Seized by sudden fury, Elzunia picked up the child and pushed open the door. Immediately, a waiter was at her side. ‘Sorry, miss, children aren’t allowed in here.’

  ‘But children are allowed to die of hunger outside, right?’ she retorted.

  Spreading his hands in an exasperated gesture, he told her to wait while he went in search of the owner. She looked around and felt like Alice after she had fallen down the rabbit hole and found herself in a magical world. The café was lined with gold-embossed wallpaper and illuminated by lamps on wall sconces. Through the fug of cigar and cigarette smoke, Elzunia saw that the tables were so close together that the waiters had to squeeze past. A man at a table beside her plunged his knife and fork into his chicken kiev, and the butter spurted in a greasy arc and landed on her blouse. At another table, diners were pulling black Italian grapes as large as plums off luxuriant bunches arranged on a platter. She had had no idea that such a profusion of food existed in the Ghetto nor that there were people who could still afford it.

  In the far corner, on a raised platform, a man with a sallow face and hollow cheeks sat at a piano, his long slim fingers trilling a Chopin mazurka, but no one seemed to be listening. She had seen the man in photographs before and recognised him as Wladyslaw Szpilman, the pianist who used to play on Warsaw radio before the war. Elzunia had an impulse to go up to him and tell him it wasn’t fair that he was reduced to playing in this club to survive, but there was a cocoon of remoteness around him that discouraged her from approaching him.

  By now, some of the patrons had noticed the teenage girl holding the ragged child’s hand, and had begun to fidget as though their chairs had suddenly become hard.

  The owner waddled towards Elzunia and placed his plump hand on her arm. ‘Young lady, I must ask you to leave,’ he said smoothly. ‘You’re disturbing everyone.’ He pointed to a small door on the left. ‘Go to the kitchen. The cook will give you some food.’

  She pulled her arm away. ‘I’m not a beggar,’ she retorted and stepped onto the raised platform. Szpilman stopped playing and turned his melancholy face towards her. She lifted Gittel up. ‘This child hasn’t seen a piece of meat or a grape in her entire life! What you’re paying here for one meal would save families like hers from starving!’

  The diners at nearby tables looked shocked at her outburst.

  ‘Is it my fault that people are starving?’ a man’s aggrieved voice rang out. ‘Did I shut us up in here? You want to be noble at our expense but there are too many destitute people in here. Even if we give them money today, what will they do tomorrow, eh? We all contribute to the Judenrat for the orphanages and soup kitchens and the taxes the Germans keep raising. Anyway, the Germans will finish us off in the end so why shouldn’t we enjoy ourselves while we can?’

  Elzunia looked around. Among the diners were some of Warsaw’s wealthy Jews who had managed to bring their money and valuables with them. Others were wheelers and dealers and entrepreneurs who had found ways of making money in the Ghetto by smuggling, bribing or providing essential services, like the inventors of the Konnhellerki, the strange-looking horse-drawn trams that had become the only means of transport inside the Ghetto apart from bicycle rickshaws.

  ‘I suppose you all think you’re good people, so how come you don’t care about anyone else?’ Elzunia burst out. ‘What will happen to us if we don’t have compassion for each other?’

  Gittel broke the silence that had fallen over the café. Pointing to a pile of potato latkes on a woman’s plate, she asked in a loud, clear voice, ‘What’s that?’

  The woman piled the potato pancakes onto a serviette and handed them to the little girl. Next she removed the fruit from the basket on her table, took out a banknote from her purse, placed it in the basket and passed it to her companions. The basket was passed from table to table while the bewildered owner looked on.

  Szpilman resumed playing but this time, instead of the lively rhythm of the mazurka, he played a nocturne. The poignant melody filled the café while its patrons swelled with the pleasure of knowing they had risen above their own self-indulgence. As Elzunia watched the pianist’s fingers moving over the keys, she felt that it was the pauses between the notes, rather than the notes themselves, that made her heart ache.

  Elzunia left the café with Gittel, amazed at the commotion she had created. She tied the money in a serviette and hid it inside her blouse. Maddened by hunger, smal
l boys often grabbed packages and devoured the contents before the owner could catch them.

  Gittel skipped happily along the alleyway, chewing a potato pancake as she led Elzunia to her home. ‘I have to keep one for Mama,’ she said, looking hungrily at the last one.

  Elzunia took her hand as they climbed the dark staircase past people sitting on the broken steps and lying on the floor in the hallway, huddled under coats and rugs. Babies cried and children whimpered. The room they entered resembled a gypsy encampment. Several families lived in the unventilated space, surrounded by their bags and bundles. Gittel weaved in and out between them, stepping over their belongings until she reached the far corner of the room.

  ‘Mama,’ she called. ‘I got a latka for you! And the lady said she’ll give you money to buy more!’

  The woman lying with her back to them on a thin pallet didn’t reply. Gittel shook her mother’s bony arm. ‘Wake up, Mama, look what I’ve got!’ she squealed.

  Elzunia walked around to the other side. The woman’s jaw had dropped open and her unseeing eyes were glassy. ‘Jesus Maria!’ she said to herself. She looked around. ‘Does Gittel have any relatives in here?’

  An old woman slumped on the floor looked up. ‘Poor Raizel came from a sztetl near Radom,’ she said, indicating the dead woman and groaning with the effort of straightening her stiff legs. ‘She told me she and Gittel hid in a cornfield while all the other Jews were loaded into trucks and driven to the forest. Later she heard the shots.’

  Gittel was tugging Elzunia’s hand. ‘Why won’t Mama wake up?’ she asked. ‘I want to give her the latka.’

  ‘She’s very tired,’ Elzunia said. ‘Let’s go to my place.’

  With a spring, the little girl jumped up and wrapped her arms tightly around Elzunia’s neck.