Nocturne

by Diane Armstrong

  Twenty-Six

  It was snowing and large white flakes settled on the rooftops and fluttered to the ground, concealing the grey misery beneath. Standing at the window that faced Lech’s room, Elzunia thought of the carefree winters of her childhood. When snow drifts settled onto the slopes in the park, her father would drag the shiny pinewood toboggan to the top and jump on behind her. After she’d given the magic word, they’d slide down, whooping with delight as the slushy snow sprayed around them. As usual, whenever she thought of her father, she uttered a quiet moan and closed her eyes to shut out memories that led nowhere and questions that had no answers.

  Gittel had crept up beside her and was tracing patterns on the window with her finger as her breath steamed up the glass. She was bundled up in every scrap of clothing she possessed but kept jumping from one foot to the other to get warm. They had broken all the furniture they could spare for firewood, and Elzunia looked around desperately to see what else they could put into the tiled stove in the corner where her mother sat slumped in a chair.

  Lusia looked up. ‘I’m thinking of volunteering for the next transport.’

  Elzunia stared at her mother. ‘Have you gone mad? How can you even think of such a thing?’

  ‘Everyone’s been talking about it at the factory. Apparently Toebbens are going to open factories in other towns, and they need workers to move there. They’re offering volunteers three kilos of bread and some jam. Why would they waste bread on people they were going to kill?’

  Elzunia wanted to shake her. For the past few months she had been running around the Ghetto streets early in the morning, distributing leaflets that warned people not to believe these promises. And her own mother had been duped.

  She tried to control her temper. ‘Mama, this is just bait to get people to volunteer.’ Her voice rose. ‘After all that’s happened, and all the things Stefan and I have told you, how come you still don’t get it?’

  Elzunia wished Stefan was there. Mama always took more notice of him than of her. But ever since he’d resigned from the police force, he had become morose, and spent most of his time with his pals who like him had also quit. But she had another reason for wishing her brother was there to back her up. She glanced nervously at her mother, wondering how to break the news.

  Lusia looked down at her hands. ‘It’s all right for you young people; you still have some energy left, but I’m worn out with this constant tension. Will they come for me today or tomorrow; will this be the day they search the cupboard and find Gittel? I can’t take it any more.’

  Elzunia took a long look at her mother and softened her tone. ‘Mama, don’t let them fool you. Try to hold on a little longer.’

  ‘Hold on? For what? For my husband to rescue me? For my so-called friends to help me? For the Germans to stop killing us? For the war to end? I’ve been holding on for nearly three years and it feels like three hundred. How much longer should I wait?’

  ‘Just be patient,’ Elzunia said. ‘We’re going to fight back.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m going to move in with my group this evening.’

  Her mother’s eyes widened with shock. ‘So you’re moving out? You won’t be living here with us any more? Why?’

  ‘We’re all going to stay in one bunker so we’ll be ready when the commander gives the order for the Uprising to begin.’

  Lusia made an irritated gesture. ‘Don’t talk nonsense. All this talk about commanders and uprisings. What are you going to fight with — slingshots? Even David only had to face one Goliath, not an entire army.’

  ‘So this is your solution, is it? Presenting yourself at the Umschlagplatz to save them the trouble of coming to get you?’

  Tears began to run down Lusia’s thin cheeks. ‘Please try to understand. I’m not strong like you. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘And what about Gittel?’ Elzunia shouted. ‘Have you asked her if she’s had enough? Don’t you think she’s entitled to live longer than five years? Do you want her to end up in a gas chamber?’

  Hearing her name mentioned, Gittel ran over to Lusia and nestled in her lap. ‘You shouldn’t shout at Mama,’ she said, stroking Lusia’s face. ‘See, you’re making her cry.’

  ‘Not everyone believes those stories about Treblinka,’ Lusia argued. ‘Why would the Germans kill off hundreds of thousands of people who can work for them? They need labourers and factory workers. It doesn’t make sense.’

  Elzunia took a deep breath. Something had become scrambled in her mother’s head, or else she was deliberately blotting out reality. Either way, there was no point trying to convince her that logic had nothing to do with it. From the Underground papers, Elzunia knew that a fierce battle was raging in a Russian city called Stalingrad and that it could prove the turning point of the war, but instead of focusing all their efforts on defeating the Russians, it seemed the Germans were still making the murder of Jews their priority.

  ‘As soon as the Uprising begins, in case I don’t have time to come and warn you, make sure you and Gittel go straight to the big bunker on Muranowska Street. You’ll be safer there.’

  Lusia’s bewildered expression made her stomach churn. She had to find some way of stopping her mother from carrying out her suicidal plan.

  There was only one person she could call on.

  As soon as he saw the white handkerchief fluttering from a stick poking out from Elzunia’s window, Lech dashed through the labyrinth of cellars, stairs and courtyards he’d discovered, which linked the Aryan side with the Ghetto. Perhaps she’d changed her mind after all and was going to come and stay with him.

  She was already waiting, pulling her blue woollen cap more tightly around her face. The January frost was more severe than usual and an icy wind blew across the street, buffeting bits of paper and leaflets from the OJF into the air. Teeth chattering, Lech and Elzunia crept into a nearby cellar.

  ‘I need to ask a big favour,’ Elzunia began, and his heart pounded in his ears. ‘I have to find a way of getting my mother out of the Ghetto before she does something crazy.’ Now that she’d said it, the words shocked her with their bluntness. ‘Could you ask around and see if you know anyone who’d let a room to your aunt from the country?’

  ‘But what about the little girl?’ he asked, playing for time.

  ‘Edek said a group of Catholic women have been trying to smuggle Jewish children out of the Ghetto. One of them took his youngest brother, but taking boys is risky because it’s too easy to prove they’re Jewish. He’s going to try and contact them and ask them to take Gittel.’

  As they stood talking in the cellar, Elzunia shivered and pulled up the collar of her coat. She was looking at him with those navy-blue eyes. Ultramarine, that was the colour. Art had been the only subject he liked at school, and he remembered that strange name in his paintbox.

  ‘When this is over,’ he mumbled, ‘will you be my girl?’

  ‘Your girl?’

  His scalp was on fire. Expressing emotions was like treading barefoot over razor blades. He swallowed. ‘You know. Girlfriend. That sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ve always thought of you as a good friend,’ she said carefully. She didn’t tell him that there was only one man on earth whose girl she wanted to be, and even on this freezing day, she could still feel the imprint of his warm lips on her hand.

  ‘Well, friends can get married, can’t they?’ He passed his large hands through his tousled fair hair in frustration, and his usually cheerful face looked downcast.

  She touched his sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, Lech, I shouldn’t have asked you about my mother. I’ll have to figure out something else.’

  He shuffled and looked down at his feet. If only he could help her. But he lived so close to the Ghetto that the minute he took a stranger in people would guess the truth. Claiming Lusia was his aunt wouldn’t fool anyone. Still, everyone was hard-up these days; perhaps someone would be prepared to hide a Jew for money. He wondered if Elzunia and her mother had a
ny cash or valuables. People reckoned that all the Jews had gold and silver stashed away under the floorboards. The trouble was, he couldn’t even think of anyone to approach because these days you didn’t know who to trust. You could end up with someone like Bolek, or himself, the way he used to be — he forced himself to admit this uncomfortable fact — someone who would take her money one day and turn her over to the Gestapo the next.

  ‘I’ll ask around and see what I can do,’ he said. If he could convince her of his love, perhaps she’d agree to be his girl.

  After he had gone, Elzunia rushed up the stairs and started searching the abandoned building, apartment by apartment, looking for bottles and light globes to make explosives for the Uprising. Since the last deportation, many buildings had become empty and as she opened each door she felt the hair on the back of her neck lift away from the skin. The ghosts of the departed residents seemed to hover in the air around her, watching her with accusing eyes. She forced herself to check every apartment, room by room, then fled, spooked by the sound of her own footsteps.

  Clutching the bulbs she had found, she hurried to Nowolipie Street and ran up three flights of stairs without stopping. In contrast to the spectral silence in the rest of the building, it was a relief to enter the attic, which buzzed with activity. This was the OJF’s munitions factory, and, as soon as she entered, the pungent smell of chemicals made her eyes water. In the far corner, two older girls were filling bottles with a mixture of kerosene, petrol and sulphuric acid. They were making incendiary anti-tank explosives. After carefully corking them, they took a strip of paper soaked in an explosive solution and glued it to the outside so that when the bottle was thrown and the glass shattered, the two substances would produce a violent explosion. When they saw Elzunia placing her three bulbs on the table, their faces lit up.

  ‘That’s great,’ said the girl with the mass of dark curls. It was Itzak’s wife, Rahela. Only two days before, Rahela had earned their admiration by smuggling two Brownings and three pistols into the Ghetto. ‘We’ve run out of bottles, but your bulbs will make three more explosives,’ she said, giving Elzunia a hug.

  Elzunia blushed with pleasure. Knowing that she was contributing to the coming fight energised her and the comradeship of the group gave her a sense of belonging. By now, most of them had lost their parents and grandparents, and they had become each other’s family.

  Working together for a common cause gave them strength. Resisting the Germans was all that mattered. Whether they lived or died no longer seemed important. They were living together in a bunker under an abandoned building, so that they’d be ready for action the moment the order was given.

  By now the Ghetto was honeycombed with subterranean bunkers. Elzunia had heard that the largest ones, which could accommodate hundreds of civilians, had water and electricity connected. The fighters like Elzunia lived in groups of ten in small bunkers hollowed out in the cellars of abandoned buildings. Her bunker had benches around the sides, a few thin mattresses on the earth floor, and a dugout toilet, but the companionship made up for the discomfort. Every evening, they talked late into the night, dreaming and planning a glorious future that they hoped for but didn’t dare to believe in.

  By day they made weapons and attended training sessions to learn guerrilla tactics; by night they knocked out walls and dug passages to connect adjoining buildings through the cellars and attics, so that when the Uprising began they’d be able to contact each other without having to go outside. In the dead of night, when it was forbidden to move around the Ghetto, they blackened their faces and crept around the silent buildings, dismantling taps, unplugging telephones, and removing pipes and basins to install them in the larger underground bunkers.

  ‘Who’d have thought we’d end up building a subterranean Ghetto!’ Rahela joked. She kept up everyone’s spirits, and it seemed to Elzunia that if Itzak was the brains of their movement, Rahela was its heart.

  ‘I see us as the first link in a chain of freedom that might include the rest of Poland, perhaps even the rest of Europe,’ Itzak had said during one of their discussion sessions. ‘We’re the descendants of the fighters of Masada,’ he continued. ‘They defied the Roman army and chose to die rather than be captured. But you have to realise that our path will lead to death. Like the heroes of Masada two thousand years ago, we won’t live to see the effect of what we did, but history will never forgive us if we fail to make a stand. I think we all agree that if we do nothing we are lost. All we can do is save our souls and our honour. That way, at least people will respect our memory.’

  His words vibrated inside Elzunia like violin strings playing a stirring melody. She saw their resistance as a musical composition being created note by note, and swelling towards its inevitable conclusion. She had never heard of Masada, but the story of the Jewish rebels fired her imagination. That was what Adam had meant when he spoke of the power of individuals. She, too, had made her choice. She didn’t expect to survive, but surviving wasn’t the most important thing. How you lived, and what you were prepared to die for — that’s what mattered.

  ‘It’s odd, isn’t it, that the old people, who’ve lived most of their lives, are so desperate to keep living at all costs, while us young ones, who’ve hardly lived at all, don’t care about dying,’ Edek mused.

  He was sitting at the end of a small table, inserting thin aluminium pipes into tubes with his nimble fingers, and filling the space in between with nails, iron filings and explosives to make launchers. At fourteen, he was one of the youngest in the group but he had overcome the objections of the leaders to be allowed to join. ‘When the Germans shoot at me, they won’t stop to ask how old I am, so I reckon I’m as entitled to fight for our honour as the rest of you,’ he had argued.

  ‘It’s not really strange,’ said Cesia, taking off her glasses to wipe off the dust. ‘The old people have got so attached to living that they can’t imagine life going on without them. But we’ve pressed such faint footprints onto the earth, it’s not so hard to tear ourselves away.’ Cesia was a shy girl who wrote poems but rarely spoke, and, embarrassed by her speech, she looked down and continued making Molotov cocktails.

  Jerzy looked up from the grenades he was making. His eyes looked troubled and his high forehead was creased by a frown. ‘I feel terrible saying this, but since my parents have gone I feel freer. They were petrified of something happening to me and I was petrified of something happening to them.’

  He returned to his work without saying another word, but the pensive silence that fell over the group indicated that his words had struck a common chord of guilt as they acknowledged the high price of their emotional liberation.

  Every morning, news of the exploits of their leaders spread throughout the Ghetto and thrilled the young insurgents with their daring. One fighter had shot a collaborator, while another had shot a prominent member of the Jewish police force. The money they extorted from the entrepreneurs bought arms and ammunition from the Polish Underground. Most inspiring were the stories of heroic women like Rahela, who managed to smuggle weapons into the Ghetto under the noses of the guards. Elzunia envied their courage because, despite her brave words, she was terrified whenever she thought of what lay ahead. As she sewed her two precious grenades into her skirt, she knew that her mother had been right. David was about to confront an army of Goliaths.

  Twenty-Seven

  It was the Sunday before the Easter of 1943 and the hurdy-gurdy in Krasinski Gardens ground out jolly tunes as laughing children rode on the carousel. On this pleasant April afternoon, the new buds that swelled on the trees were seen as a symbol of hope. Germany had been defeated in North Africa, the Wehrmacht’s mighty 6th Army had been decimated at Stalingrad, and the Allies had finally landed in the south of Italy. Surely the end couldn’t be far off.

  But behind the gardens, on the other side of the wall, there was an atmosphere of taut alertness. Elzunia and her group were still in their bunker when Jerzy said, ‘There’s been a huge build-up
of German and Ukrainian troops in Warsaw in the past two days. I reckon this is it. They’re going to try and finish us off. But we’ll spring a surprise on them when they come!’

  ‘I just hope we don’t die with any unused weapons in our hands,’ Cesia said quietly.

  Elzunia was tearing the skin around her thumbnail as usual, too tense to take part in their conversation. Edek hadn’t been able to get Gittel out of the Ghetto, and Elzunia wanted to make sure that her mother and Gittel were safely inside their bunker. She was about to run over to their building when Itzak appeared at the entrance, his face taut and stern. ‘I want you all in here,’ he said. ‘This is our last chance to run through everything so you know exactly what to do tomorrow.’

  That evening, as the sun was setting, Elzunia looked fearfully at the crimson sky and in it she saw the blood that would soon be spilt and the fires that were about to blaze.

  Later that night, Elzunia tossed from side to side, too churned up to sleep. She didn’t realise she had finally dropped off until she heard an urgent voice in her ear.

  ‘Quick. Time to go.’

  It was still dark. She had slept fully dressed, and, slipping her two grenades inside the deep pockets of her skirt, she sprang up and ran with her group until they reached their post on the rooftop of the building overlooking the intersection of Mila and Zamenhof Streets. There was no sign of activity in the street below, but the scouts had spotted German and Polish policemen staking out the Ghetto wall, so it was clear the assault would soon begin.

  ‘They want to destroy the Ghetto today to give Hitler a nice birthday present tomorrow,’ Itzak said.

  ‘It’s Seder night this evening,’ Rahela mused. She was patrolling the edge of the parapet, scanning the street below. With her unruly hair pulled into a thick plait, she looked like a schoolgirl. Turning to Elzunia with an encouraging smile, she said, ‘Whatever happens today, we couldn’t have chosen a better time to fight.’