Nocturne

by Diane Armstrong

  As she walked towards the oldest boy, whom the others called Toughie, he tossed back a lock of fair hair and stuck out his chin, looking at her defiantly.

  ‘I’d like to buy one of those cigarettes.’ She pointed to the individual ones spread out in a row on his tray.

  He gave her a knowing look. ‘Your favourite brand, is it, miss?’

  Ignoring the sarcasm, she whispered, ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  The others had moved closer and were looking at her suspiciously.

  ‘Who’s the nosy dame?’ one of them muttered. ‘Why’s she hanging around and asking questions?’ He turned to Elzunia and waved his arm as if to shoo her away. ‘Clear off! Beat it!’

  Elzunia realised that they suspected her of being a szmalcownik. She was offended that they thought she was snooping around to blackmail them, but their reaction told her what she wanted to know.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not spying on you,’ she began, and hesitated. She was trying to figure out a way of letting them know that she was one of them. Perhaps they had seen Gittel or knew something about her. If she could win their confidence, she might be able to ask them if they knew where the little girl was. But before she could speak, she saw two SS officers striding across the square, and the boys rushed towards them, holding out their cigarettes.

  Seeing the SS men, Elzunia was shocked. Distracted by the cigarette sellers, she had forgotten the risk she was taking, wandering around without any documents. It was getting late, and she had to do her chores before Granny returned. She wanted to run but forced herself to slow down, so as not to attract attention. Although her heart was pounding, she held her head high and tried to look confident. Several times she weaved in and out of side streets to avoid Germans who were patrolling the streets.

  As she walked, she thought about the feisty young entrepreneurs who managed to make a living on the streets of Warsaw, dodging local extortionists, SS officers, Gestapo, Polish policemen, and Hungarian auxiliaries who had been co-opted into the German militia. She supposed that they were homeless orphans who were desperate enough to earn a living in this dangerous way.

  Back home, she almost collided at the gate with the young woman in the beret and trenchcoat she had seen the previous week. She had the same small basket over her arm and Elzunia noticed that it was covered with a fringed white cloth, like Little Red Riding Hood about to take her grandmother some food.

  ‘I’m Marta,’ the woman said. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you before.’

  ‘I haven’t been here long,’ Elzunia said. ‘I’m Granny Koszykowa’s niece. I ran away from Bialystok because my stepfather was bashing me and …’

  Marta was watching her attentively. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘That’s very interesting, but I wouldn’t volunteer so much information all at once if I were you.’

  Before Elzunia could reply, Marta gave her a friendly wave and hurried off.

  Upstairs, Elzunia turned the conversation over in her mind, upset that Marta had seen through her story and had known she was lying. Was she giving her a warning or just well-meant advice?

  That night, while Granny snored softly in her bed, Elzunia was washing herself over the wobbly sink in the corner of the kitchen that served as a bathroom when she heard the scrabbling noise in the ceiling again. This time she’d find out what it was. She picked up the broom, climbed up on a stool, pushed aside the manhole in the ceiling and poked her head inside.

  At first she couldn’t see anything but after a few moments, when she became accustomed to the dark, she saw something gleaming and held her breath. She was looking into the terrified eyes of a tiny boy wrapped in a mangy fur jacket.

  Thirty-Five

  ‘So now you know!’

  Startled, Elzunia almost fell off the stool. Behind her, in a loose flannel nightgown, her sparse hair pulled into a skimpy pigtail at the back, Granny Koszykowa stood clasping and unclasping her gnarled hands. The old woman hobbled to the table and sat down heavily on a chair, while Elzunia chewed her thumbnail, bracing herself for rebukes and accusations.

  ‘I suppose you had to find out sooner or later.’ Granny held up a warning finger. ‘I’ll tell you why he’s here, but don’t breathe a word to any of the neighbours.’

  For the past year, Granny had been working in the kitchen of the German soldiers’ home. Each day, while walking across the Square of the Three Crosses, she had noticed growing numbers of cheeky cigarette sellers accosting passersby. With the Germans burning and razing the Ghetto to the ground, she realised they must be Jewish orphans who’d managed to escape.

  ‘I felt sorry for those kids so sometimes I bought the odd packet of cigarettes from them, and traded it for food in the soldiers’ home,’ she said.

  As time went on, the cigarette trade in the square had flourished, and more youngsters joined them.

  ‘I couldn’t believe how young some of them were, like Zbyszek here.’ Granny inclined her head towards the loft. ‘He’s only seven.’

  Elzunia looked up and saw a little face with a mop of tousled hair peering through the open manhole.

  ‘It warmed my old heart to see the way the older ones took the younger ones under their wing and shared everything with them. They say war brings out the worst in people, but those kids made me feel there’s hope for us yet.’ Granny’s eyes grew moist, and, pulling out a large handkerchief she’d stuffed into her sleeve, she trumpeted into it.

  ‘But the Square of the Three Crosses swarms with Germans, so why on earth aren’t those kids picked up?’ Elzunia asked.

  ‘I wondered about that too at first. But I don’t think it would occur to the Germans that Jewish kids would have the nerve to run around the city and do business with them. Anyway, the Germans want cigarettes and don’t care who sells them. They probably think they’re just ordinary Polish kids.’

  ‘But how come the Polish cigarette sellers don’t dob them in?’ Elzunia asked.

  ‘They’d like to get rid of the competition, but they don’t know for sure whether they’re Jewish or not, and besides, what they’re all doing is illegal, so they don’t want to draw the attention of the Gestapo to themselves. Whenever the Polish boys start bullying and threatening them, Toughie and the older boys soon show them who’s boss. They’ve learned to use their fists and protect themselves.’

  Elzunia nodded. From what she’d observed, Toughie and his gang could be very forceful. ‘You were going to tell me about Zbyszek,’ she said.

  For the next few minutes, Granny told her how Zbyszek had come to be in her loft.

  Because it was so easy to find out whether boys were Jewish, the older boys had tied Zbyszek’s trousers with a piece of cord and fastened them with safety pins instead of elastic to make it harder to pull them down, but he clung to the moth-eaten fur because it used to belong to his mama. They’d drummed into him that he had to stay close to them, never mention his parents or the Ghetto, and, if anyone asked, he was to say that his father had died in Siberia and his mother had died of pneumonia. They kept telling him to stay close to them, but Zbyszek was a bit of a dreamer and kept wandering away.

  One day, while he was dawdling around the square, picking up scraps of coloured paper and small pebbles, two Catholic kids gave him a caramel. Thrilled with his new friends, Zbyszek told them a secret. His real name was Srulek.

  As soon as he realised he’d given away his Jewish name, he bolted, weaving in and out of the crowd until they lost sight of him. But when he told the other boys what he’d done, they were aghast, and, as soon as they saw Granny the following morning, they rushed over and begged her to take him before the Catholic kids or the Germans came looking for him, and for them as well.

  ‘I’ve helped them out in the past when some of them were in trouble and had nowhere to go,’ Granny said. ‘It’s warm up in the loft and quite safe, as long as they don’t make a noise. I can’t leave them down here. You know what little boys are like — they’d run around, m
ake a noise, and the other tenants would soon know I was hiding Jewish children.

  ‘So I brought Zbyszek here but that little monkey just can’t keep still. That was the day before you arrived. I just tap the ceiling to let him know food’s ready and I slide it in through the manhole.’

  They heard sniffling above them. ‘It’s not fair. I don’t want to stay here on my own. I want to sell matches and be with the other kids,’ Zbyszek wailed. ‘I promise I’ll never talk to strangers again. Not even if they give me two caramels.’

  Elzunia looked at Granny. ‘You’re taking a terrible risk, having both of us here, you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry, dearie.’ She chuckled. ‘You only die once and at my age I can’t die young!’

  Then in a serious voice, she added, ‘One day we’ll all have to give an account of ourselves, and I don’t want to say that I turned away little children who needed help. Anyway, my dear mother always taught me that if you see a drowning man, you have to stretch out your hand and pull him out.’

  Elzunia sighed. That’s what her father used to say, but he hadn’t pulled her and her mother and brother out when they were drowning. Although it hurt to think about her father, and she tried to push the painful thoughts away, he was never far from her mind and she wondered how long it would take for the wound to heal. She looked gratefully at Granny and her thoughts turned to Gittel. If only she was still alive; if only she had found a kind soul like Granny to look after her in some warm corner of Warsaw. Perhaps the cigarette sellers knew something. If only she could win their trust.

  In the days that followed, Elzunia returned to the Square of the Three Crosses several times and watched the cigarette sellers from a distance. Within a week, she knew their names and nicknames, but, whenever they looked her way, their wary expression warned her not to approach them. One morning she watched a sharp-faced girl of about twelve, whose name was Basia, as she stopped a German official striding towards Jerozolimskie Aleje. Thrusting a pack of cigarettes in his face, she said, ‘Look, American filtertips. Only thirty-five zloty for the lot.’

  He examined the pack with narrowed eyes and handed them back. ‘Thirty-five? I can get them for thirty over there.’ He pointed in the direction of the gangly kid the other cigarette sellers called Giraffe.

  ‘His are cheap because they’re fakes,’ she scoffed. ‘If you want cheap cigarettes, take the Mewy or Egyptians. I’ve got some German Junos as well, but if you want the best, you have to pay for them.’

  Without another word, he whipped out the notes from his bulging leather wallet and pocketed the cigarettes. As the girl skipped away laughing, she caught Elzunia’s eye.

  ‘That was smart work,’ Elzunia said. ‘How long have you been selling cigarettes?’

  But the girl gave her a suspicious look and hurried off. As she disappeared from view, Elzunia felt like screaming with frustration. She admired these youngsters so much, and longed to establish contact with them, but they rebuffed her advances and misconstrued her intentions. She had to find some way of breaking through their mistrust.

  For the next few days, Elzunia kept away from the square. There was no point exposing herself needlessly to the risk of being asked for her papers. But when Granny suggested one morning that she should go with her to the market for bread and cottage cheese, Elzunia jumped at the opportunity. Walking beside the old woman in the warm June sunshine, she felt safer. They were crossing the square when some of the cigarette sellers ran towards their old friend. A moment later they surrounded her, all talking at once, but when they noticed Elzunia, they fell silent and started edging away.

  ‘She’s all right,’ Granny said, pushing Elzunia forward. ‘You can trust her.’ She glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping and lowered her voice. ‘She’s from the same place as you lot.’

  Being Granny’s protégé was Elzunia’s passport to acceptance by the cigarette sellers. ‘I’m looking for a little girl called Gittel,’ she blurted out. ‘She’s five, but very tiny. Curly brown hair.’

  They shook their heads. No one had seen or heard of the child. She thought the older boys might have come across Stefan, but they didn’t know him either.

  Elzunia walked home with a heavy heart. Her last hope was gone.

  From that day on, the cigarette sellers treated her like one of their own, and in between darting around selling their cigarettes, they told her their stories.

  After escaping from the Ghetto, they had wandered around Warsaw trying to find somewhere safe to stay. Many people refused to open the door, while others took one look and threatened to turn them over to the Gestapo.

  Occasionally, someone took pity on them and let them spend the night in a cellar or attic, until a comment from a neighbour shrivelled their kind instincts. In their nightly hunt for a safe place to sleep, the kids sneaked into basements or curled up in doorways, and covered themselves with doormats until dawn when the caretakers shooed them away. Zbyszek had found a warm corner at the gasworks where he huddled on top of a floor vent, until the cleaner had found him and chased him out with a broom.

  ‘When we’re really desperate for something hot to eat, we go to the soup kitchen near the square,’ Giraffe said, ‘but we always have to be on the lookout in case someone recognises us and calls the Gestapo. Sometimes we go and clean up at the public bathhouse, but it’s nerve-racking for us boys because we have to make sure no one sees us naked.’

  Every day Giraffe walked several miles to the allotments where Warsaw residents had small plots of land. The owner, who didn’t know he was Jewish, let him sleep on a pile of straw in the shed in return for digging the vegetable garden. Basia and three of the boys had found cheap lodgings in an attic on the other side of Warsaw.

  ‘Our landlady has guessed we are Jewish and she keeps raising the rent. If we don’t pay, she’ll throw us out and maybe even report us to the Gestapo,’ Basia said, casting her sharp eye around the square for prospective customers.

  On the way home, Elzunia thought how lucky she was that she had a safe place to stay, not like the cigarette sellers who lived in constant danger on the streets, struggling to find a roof over their heads, and scrounging and hustling to survive. But in a way, she envied their camaraderie. At least they had each other. She had no one.

  She had just stepped inside Granny’s flat when she heard muted voices coming from the room next door. One was Marta’s, but the deeper one belonged to a man. So Marta had an admirer! Elzunia remembered her mother saying that only cheap girls invited men to their rooms, but she didn’t think Marta was cheap. She was so attractive — no wonder men fell in love with her. Elzunia sighed and thought of that courier from the Underground she knew only as Eagle. If he ever wanted to visit her at night, she wouldn’t hesitate. She strained to hear what they were saying on the other side of the wall, but the voices had dropped to whispers. A moment later she heard muffled sounds, like kissing. The door opened and she heard soft footsteps going down the stairs.

  Elzunia lay on her bed but couldn’t sleep. She was wondering where the cigarette sellers were sleeping that night, and whether Eagle’s mission had been successful. If only the Allies would come to Poland’s rescue so that the war would finally end and life would be more than just a struggle for survival.

  Thirty-Six

  Adam cycled along the winding country lane on a warm July twilight, his hands sticking to the handlebars and his face streaming with sweat. He cursed each time he came to a hill and had to dismount and push, but, engrossed in a newspaper article he’d been reading, he’d missed the truck that had ferried the others to the village pub. Still preoccupied by what he had read, he had to swerve to avoid a small boy in a knitted sleeveless pullover who was meandering in the middle of the road.

  More alert now, Adam bumped along the small stone bridge over the stream, past the old mill, and between the yew and hawthorn hedgerows where dog roses, daisies and campions flashed past like an impressionist’s canvas. Past the hedgerows, small baize
-green fields and market gardens were enclosed by low fences. Everything was neat and pretty here, and made him feel nostalgic for the small chequerboard fields and dark forests of Poland where wolves and bears still roamed.

  Away from the airfield, which hummed with engines and throbbed with adrenalin day and night, life in these villages rolled at a slow pace and there was nothing to indicate that, for the past four years, this country had been fighting a war for its very existence.

  Adam dismounted and wiped his neck and forehead, trying to catch his breath as he leaned the bicycle against the mock Tudor façade of the Red Lion. After pedalling for five miles, he realised that he was even more out of condition than the bike.

  He pushed open the door of the pub. It was crowded and, through the fug of pipe and cigarette smoke, he saw that the buxom waitress was run off her feet, balancing four tankards of beer in each hand as she squeezed past the tables to a large group of villagers in the corner, bawling out a song he recognised as ‘Roses of Picardy’ at the top of their voices.

  Some of Adam’s colleagues were slouching at the bar, downing glasses of scotch as they flirted with the barmaid, whose face was half hidden by a cascade of peroxided waves in the style of Jean Harlow. Romek was hanging over the bar and looking soulfully into the girl’s eyes.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he said. ‘Romek is my name.’

  The girl didn’t bother looking up from the beer she was drawing from the cask. ‘Romeo, more like,’ she retorted. ‘And don’t get your hopes up neither, ’cause my name’s not Juliet.’

  The others slapped their thighs and cheered, glad to see Romek get short shrift for once. They gave Adam a drunken wave and called him over, but he shook his head and kept walking. He didn’t feel like listening to their flirtations, and their high spirits irritated him.

  He sat down at a small round table wedged between the raucous merrymakers and the dartboard where two men with damp semicircles under their arms burst into triumphant cheers whenever one of them scored a bullseye. Adam stared moodily into his whiskey. How much longer was Watson-Smythe going to keep him hanging around? He’d joined the RAF to fly planes, but he was being kept in cold storage. Perhaps this was Watson-Smythe’s way of settling scores. He drained the whiskey and signalled for another. What with his vindictive Group Captain, and the pugnacious Air Vice-Marshal Harris with his obsession to bomb the hell out of Germany, the RAF seemed in a pretty sorry state. In spite of their appalling losses, Harris had pressured the war ministry to let him send an aerial armada to pulverise Germany into submission, so no planes could be spared, and all air drops with supplies for the AK had been stopped. And, to make matters worse, even the Polish Parachute Brigade, which had been created expressly for the purpose of dropping supplies in, was being deployed elsewhere. Too restless to sit still, Adam took out the silver cigarette case, which felt as smooth in the palm of his hand as a lover’s cheek, and lit a Camel filtertip.