by Andrew Gross
“You didn’t abandon us, Nathan. Father pushed you to go.”
“If I had been there I would have never let them go out into the square. I knew ways to get around. Mr. Loracyk’s apartment led out onto the rooftop of the house next door. It was an easy jump. We could have sneaked across it and then gotten out in the next building onto Cimilianska Street.”
“And then what? Run from basement to basement like criminals until someone turned us in? They would never have gone, Nathan. You know that. In the end, everyone in the ghetto was sent somewhere. Their fate would have been no different.” She tried to brush the sadness off his face. “They only looked at you with pride, big brother. They always loved you and had the highest hopes for you. That was our only hope in the end. That whatever would happen to us, at least you had made it. You would survive. And now look…” Tears edged into her eyes. “You’re here … in this camp. The same as all of us. What was the point?”
“The point is that we are both going to make it out, Leisa.” He took her hand. “You and I. You will see.”
“Just like Chaim was coming to save me?” She pushed up on an elbow. “I went to him, Nathan. Just like you asked me to. I had nowhere else to turn. And do you know where he was? On a slab. In the morgue, at Gestapo headquarters. To be tossed into a mass grave. Things happen, Nathan, things even you can’t control. It’s time to let Mama and Papa go.
“But enough of that. I have something to show you,” she said, her face lighting up. “I think you’ll like it.” She took her shoe and slipped off a crack in the fake heel. She took out a small, tightly folded scrap of paper and gently unfolded it. “It hasn’t left me since the day you left. I’ve hidden it, even in here. Do you remember, we promised each other…”
He stared at it.
It was her half of the Mozart concerto for clarinet she’d torn in two on the fire balcony the night before he left.
“Of course I remember,” he said, and took it into his hands.
“The Mozart A-major. We were never supposed to be without it until…”
“Until we saw each other again.” He looked at her contritely. “Leisa, it’s been a long road, moving to America, and then thinking you were gone. I’m afraid I—”
“Nathan, I know.” She put her hand on his cheek. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. I understand…”
“I’m afraid that’s why I had to hide it very carefully myself,” he said with a widening grin, reaching into the lining of his uniform and coming out with a similarly folded square, which, when opened, became the matching half.
“You are a devil, Nathan!” Leisa crowed ecstatically.
“I’ve never been without it for a day myself. It’s been my lucky charm. I just never ever thought we’d ever be able to do this again.”
They put the torn halves on the cot and fit them together until they formed a seamless match.
Leisa’s eyes grew liquid with joy.
“I can hear it in my head. La-la, la-la-la, la-la…” Blum sang, waving his hand as if conducting. “I can see Master Bernheimer himself as if he were here now.”
“Yes. Mr. Baggypants.” Leisa giggled too. “He always looked like a rumpled character straight out of a Tolstoy novel. I can see him too.”
“I bet he’s dead now,” Blum surmised.
“Yes. I heard he was among the first to be taken.” Leisa nodded. “Most everyone we knew is dead now.”
He clasped her hand. “But, sister, tomorrow you will wake up, and it will all have been like a dream. This place. All that was bad. All left behind. We’ll be in England.
“England?” She blinked at him incredulously. “How?”
“I told you. There is a plane. It will land nearby. Tonight. I’m going to get us on one of the overnight work details. You will pretend to be a boy. I know it doesn’t seem so easy, but it will be night and the line will be crowded. It will work. At oh thirty hours there will be an attack by local partisans. That will provide the cover for our escape. If all goes well, they will take us to the plane.”
Her eyes expanded with awe. “How are you part of all this, Nathan? You’re a soldier now?”
“Yes. After a year in school, I enlisted in the U.S. Army. They sent me back here on a mission. I’m here to take out an important scientist who is needed for the war effort.”
“A scientist…?”
“The truth is, I don’t even know what he does. Only that it’s all extremely vital to the war effort. You won’t believe this, Leisa, but the mission was approved by the President of the United States himself.”
“Roosevelt?”
“Yes.” Blum nodded.
“You’ve met him?’
“No. But I spoke with him on the phone. From London. He wished me luck.”
“The president called you? And what did you say?”
“I told him that I was honored. But that I didn’t need any luck…” He picked up his half of the sheet music. “As long as I had my good luck charm from my little sister.”
“Oh, stop. I’m sure that’s exactly what you said…” Leisa rolled her eyes. With her shaved head and sunken features she reminded Blum of the little girl he had always remembered. “You are very brave, Nathan. Mother and Father, they would be so proud of you. Imagine, the president…”
“Yes, she would probably have baked him an almond cake and sent it to the White House.”
“And Papa would ask what size hat he wore and send him one. Perhaps a very nice bowler.”
“I think he prefers fedoras. Or maybe a Panama in the summer. I’ve seen that in the newsreels.”
“Whichever, it must be firm and resistant, Papa would say,” Leisa said, mimicking her father’s deep voice.
“But never stiff,” Blum added.
“No, no. At all costs, never stiff.”
The prisoner across from them stirred, his eyes glazed, and then turned the other way.
“And what if it all doesn’t, Nathan…?” Leisa’s eyes dimmed with worry. “Doesn’t go so well?”
“What do you mean?”
“Tonight. What if your plane doesn’t arrive? What if the Germans find us? What if the guards notice that I am not a man? You should leave me here. You know the kind of risk you are bringing on yourself and this man to get me out and take me along with you?”
“Then it will all have been worth it, my little sis. Coming back here. Finding you. No matter what fate has in store. I have never felt such joy as the moment I followed the sound of that clarinet and saw that it was you.” He took his half of the torn music sheet and refolded it. “You and me, we are whole once again. I would never leave you here. No matter the risk. Or the outcome. Not again.”
She leaned across and hugged him a long time.
“But anyway, this is all nonsense,” Blum said, patting her on the back with affection. “Because we are going to make it. Soon we’ll be putting these two halves back together in America. And you’ll be playing your clarinet at Carnegie Hall.”
“And you’ll be with me?” She pulled away and looked at him. He saw that she’d been crying.
“Of course. Right on stage. Next to you.” He wiped a tear off her cheek. “Still trying to learn my scales.”
That made her laugh.
“But now you must pretend to sleep. There are a few things to attend to. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe here. For the time being, you hold onto these.” He handed her the two folded music sheets. “We are a whole again. That’s all that matters. We’ve only a few more hours here.”
“Okay.” She wedged the music sheets back in her shoe.
“And so as not to surprise you, there is someone else who is coming out with us tonight. He’s a boy, the professor’s nephew. He’s a very smart lad. He’s only a year or two younger than you.”
“There are four of us then?” Her tone carried a measure of worry.
“Yes.” Perhaps something on his face conveyed that the same concerns were running through his mind too. “But do not worry. We
’re going to make it, Leisa.” He squeezed her hand tightly. “God wants us to. How else would I have gotten this far?”
“I’m not sure God is watching,” Leisa said. “If he was, this place wouldn’t exist.”
“Well, then one way or another I’ll get you out. How’s that?” Blum winked at her.
“Yes, you, my brave brother. Now, that’s something I can believe in.” Leisa smiled, throwing her arms around his neck once more.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Josef Wrarinski looked around the dark room and knew his time had come. Low-pitched groans emanated from the small, closed row of cells behind him. Instruments were hung on the walls, instruments, Josef knew, whose only purpose was to inflict pain. His hands were bound behind him. Two officers stood in front of him: one the camp commandant, with a handsome but falsely sympathetic face; the other a balding colonel with impatient but purposeful eyes who wore the markings of an intelligence officer.
A beefy sergeant with fat lips and short, thick hands stood off to the side, his uniform jacket unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled, as if waiting to be called.
If he was here, Josef said to himself, they clearly knew.
He could delay things, he figured. He could deny everything; declare his innocence until he was hoarse. He could get down on his knees and sing Die Holzhackerbaum, “The Happy Lumberjack,” and hoist a fucking beer with them. But it would all be for nothing. He had chosen this path, and now he must walk it. Josef knew he would never leave here on his feet.
He would never see his family again.
“Herr Wrarinski, welcome to Block Eleven,” the commandant said with a deliberate and falsely accommodating smile. “By all means look around, take in a whiff. I think you understand the kind of place this is and what goes on in here.”
Josef didn’t reply.
“So let us not waste time or play around. Time is short for us. I’ll tell you why you’re here. First, let’s not pretend you are simply a baker, any more than as the Lagerkommandant of this camp, I am running a fancy spa for the fanciful rich. Two days ago, someone made their way into this camp. We believe he flew in on a plane and that a group of partisans, you among them, picked him up and placed him the next day on a work detail inside this camp. Colonel Franke, here, who as you can see is from the intelligence corps in Warsaw, believes this man’s mission here is to extract someone from inside the camp. We believe their escape is set for tonight so, as you see, this doesn’t give us the time for the usual cat-and-mouse questioning. Am I understood? So the question I put to you, Herr Wrarinski, if you ever hope to walk out of here again, is, who is this man? And how is he set to leave tonight?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Josef shrugged. As a lieutenant in the Armia Krajowa, he was prepared to take whatever they had to give. They’d all sworn they were. He knew the risk long ago, and now he must face it.
“And that is your response?” the commandant asked.
“My only response, since I don’t know the answer to what you’re looking for.” The partisan nodded.
“Well, that is a shame.” The intelligence colonel stood up with a sigh, unbuttoning his sleeves. “Because it means, either you or your cousin, Herr Macak, who is still our guest in the cell behind you, is a liar. Because he has specifically told us it was you who came to him and placed this person on his work team the other day. Cousins…” He shrugged, slowly rolling his cuffs. “Who can figure out precisely where their competing loyalties lie? But since we are short of time, we will have to assume you both are lying. Now, we can go about it in several ways, finding out who is telling the truth and dealing with the other. I can ask Sergeant Dormutter here to apply his skills, and I am told, he is a very stubborn and persuasive questioneer.”
Josef glanced at the sergeant, who was smirking against the wall.
“Or I can ask you the question again…” Franke sat on the desk across from Josef and opened a file. “This time pointing out that you also have a wife and two lovely children at home, Karl and Nikolas, correct? Not even teens yet, and I am saddened to think how they would fare if Major Ackermann here picked them up and relocated them here—for argument’s sake, say, tonight. Sadly, many people, women and children among them, I am told, seem not to last a single day.”
Josef looked at the sergeant with the meaty arms and the ready smirk, and the steely-eyed intelligence officer, who now got up, came over to where Josef was sitting, and dropped the file on the chair next to him, so that a photo of Mira and his boys edged out a bit, just far enough for Josef to see.
“Shame”—the colonel shrugged, scratching his brow—“for them to have to pay for your silence.” He sat on the edge of the table and stared, not unsympathetically, Josef thought, but with a resolve that was clearly unmistakable. “Your time is over, Herr Wrarinski,” the German said. “The only question still to answer is, what of your wife and children?”
FIFTY-NINE
Alfred spotted Zinchenko, the Lithuanian kapo who generally organized the overnight work details, weaving through the yard with his ever-present club, as they served the evening meal.
“A word, kapo…?” Alfred went up and got his attention.
“If it’s quick.” The Lithuanian had a hair-trigger temper. Alfred had personally seen him club dozens of men senseless for seemingly nothing more than just the pleasure of it, or more, just because he could. Alfred didn’t even like going up to the man because you couldn’t predict what mood you’d get in return, nonetheless having to barter with him for his fate.
“I was hoping you could arrange for me to be on the tracks detail tonight,” Alfred said, leaning close to him.
“You?” The kapo gave him a sniff of amusement.
“Why not?”
“Why not … Have you ever held a pick or a shovel in your life?” the kapo asked with a smirk. “Look at you, there’s not a scrap of muscle left on those bones, if there was ever.”
“Maybe. But there’s enough to do the work for the extra meal, if you’d indulge me.”
The nightly work detail was formed mainly by kapos going from block to block and rousing from their bunks those who had just come off their own twelve-hour shifts. To keep them from dropping in their tracks, a second bowl of soup was served on a short break after midnight, and then they could generally sleep after breakfast the following day. Still, it wasn’t exactly a plum assignment. The guards on the overnight shift were always grumpy and quick-triggered, and every morning, a few who went out the night before on their own feet came back as crumpled, twisted corpses wheeled in a cart.
“There’s a few bucks in it for you, if you agree. British pounds…” Alfred said, finding a spark in the kapo’s mercantile eyes.
“What do you think I am?” The Lithuanian glowered back at him. “I could put a dent in the back of that overstuffed skull of yours just for asking that.”
“Sorry. I meant nothing of it,” Alfred said. “Just a meal.”
“A meal.” The kapo spat. Then he looked back up. “Pounds, you say…?” Alfred knew it was like putting out the evening garbage under the nose of a kitchen mouse. “Teams are put together seven thirty by the clock tower,” the Lithuanian agreed.
“Thank you, Zinchenko. I’ll be there.”
“And don’t puke out on me, Professor. This isn’t just a meal ticket. You come, you work, same as everyone. Or else.”
“I understand,” Alfred said. “And listen…” He took a step after the kapo as he began walking away. “I also know a couple of others who were looking for the same privilege.”
“Others?”
“One of them is Leo. You know him. He’s the chess champion in camp.”
“Don’t press your luck, old man. Or they may be wheeling you back in a cart, the hell with your meal.”
“I only thought pounds are hard to come by in here … Same price, of course.”
At first, the kapo started to walk away. But the inner workings of his mind were as transparen
t as the slow tick-tick of a cheap watch. “You say sterling, huh…?”
“Brand-new notes. Taken off a new arrival. What other use do I have for them?” Alfred shrugged. “My vices are all behind me.”
“Ten pounds a head.” The kapo rubbed his nose.
“Ten? That’s double the rate in marks.”
“That’s the price. Go through the kitchen trash then if you want more to eat.”
“I could buy the finest dinner in Vilnius for that,” Alfred appealed to the kapo’s Lithuanian place of birth, as if he had fleeced him dry.
“Then by all means, feel free to go to Vilnius. On me.” The kapo began to walk away.
“Okay, okay. What choice do I have? We’ll be there.”
“Wait at the end of the line,” the kapo said with a greedy smile. This night would keep him in vodka for a month. “And come with the cash. I’ll find you there.”
SIXTY
When Martin Franke was a boy in Essen, his father, who was an ironworker in the mills of the Krupp Ironworks, acted as if he only had one son.
Yet there were three.
His father was a sullen, irascible drunkard, and every night after his shift, while his wife sat in the bedroom and made quilts, he drank at the kitchen table until he staggered his way to bed, rarely exchanging words with his children. His particular brand of harshness was not the type designed to inspire his boys to improve their station in life through education or hard work. His intent was simply to belittle them, to remind them of the dark, sweltering furnace that awaited them, where he trudged off to every day, and the scant, scraped-together life that he had handed them and that he had failed to pull himself up from.
Hans, the oldest, was a local football standout in his youth, and their father readily threw his achievements in Martin’s face—Martin never having the same physical stature as his older sibling. At the family table, it was as if Hans was an international star, already a mainstay on the German team, even though he had never gotten farther than the local playing fields.
