In the cool moonlight that streamed into their room, Bronia saw her husband’s furrowed brow and a steely glint shone in her eyes. ‘They’re not going to get us. We’re going to survive. The war can’t go on forever. The Germans aren’t as invincible as they want us to believe.’ For months now, illicit shortwave broadcasts from England had spoken of a general called Montgomery whose tanks had defeated Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein. More recently, people whispered about the huge losses of Hitler’s Sixth Army at Stalingrad. If those stories were true, how much longer could Hitler go on? All they had to do was keep going. One day the war would end.
Calmed by Bronia’s optimism, Henek decided that the best way of dealing with the rumours would be to give a big party. At the same time it would be a good opportunity to widen their social circle. Poring over the guest list, they decided to include some new people and considered inviting the postmistress as well, but since most of their friends didn’t like her, they decided against it. It was a decision they were later to regret.
Vodka flowed freely, the sound of laughter and clinking glasses resounded through the house, and the guests devoured the herring canapes, jam doughnuts, pierogi filled with potato, and the cheese and poppy-seed cakes that my mother and Mrs Bogdanowa had spent several days preparing. Relaxed after a few glasses of vodka, Henek entertained the guests with his party piece, a mime of a bachelor trying to sew a button onto his shirt. His sharply observed movements came from personal experience, and he stretched his arm wide with an imaginary thread longer than his arm as he tangled the cotton, missed the holes, broke the cotton and then ended up staring in amazement at his hand. He’d sewn the button onto his finger instead! The guests laughed until tears rolled down their cheeks.
By now Henek had an admiring circle around him and, encouraged by the success of his mimic, he told one of his favourite stories. ‘It happened at a party just like this,’ he began. ‘Marysia, the hostess, called her husband Wojtek out to the kitchen, and she was very upset. It was only midnight, the party was in full swing, but they’d run out of caviar to put on their canapes. Wojtek said, “Don’t worry, there’s some buckshot in the shed, we’ll sprinkle it on the canapes. They’re so drunk, they’ll never know the difference.” As you can see, they were both pretty sozzled as well, so she did what he said, and the guests caroused till dawn. Next morning, Marysia remembered what she’d done and panicked. Eating buckshot was dangerous, the guests might have dropped dead by now. With great trepidation she started ringing their friends. “Are you and Maciek all right?” she asked her neighbour. “We’re fine,” the woman replied. “Are you sure?” Marysia persisted. “Quite sure,” said her friend, “but you know, something really strange happened this morning. When Maciek bent over to put on his slippers, he shot the cat!”’ A roar of laughter exploded in the room.
‘Ah, Dr Boguslawski, nobody tells jokes like you!’ said Father Soszynski, his puckish face crinkled with laughter.
Despite the atmosphere of bonhomie, Henek noticed that some of the men had their heads close together and were whispering in low, intense voices, but whenever he approached them, they fell silent. He had the feeling that they were talking about him. One of the men, Stanislaw Lewicki, was the leader of the local cell of the underground. Although their activities were supposed to be secret, the villagers often discussed them amongst themselves but they never discussed them with Henek. They visited his home, drank his cherry vodka and laughed at his jokes, but they didn’t trust him. No matter what he did, he was always the outsider.
As he circulated among his guests, offering them marinated mushrooms, herrings in sour cream and pickled cucumbers, Henek overheard Izio saying something scathing about Polish patriotism. ‘Don’t worry, we still have plenty of caviar! We don’t have to serve any buckshot yet!’ he quipped and tried to distract their attention with an anecdote about bottling cherry vodka. He’d have to speak to Izio yet again about his provocative remarks.
But before he had time to speak to him next morning, the first patient had already arrived. It was the postmistress. Bristling with indignation, she pointed at Izio who was sitting at his work table pretending to be making a crown. ‘What is that man doing here?’ she demanded in a tone sharp enough to shave the beard off a man’s face. Henek pretended to take her question literally. ‘Mr Jozek came from Warsaw to help me. We’re lucky to have him, he’s a first-class technician.’ The woman didn’t say any more about Izio but from her scowl my father could see that he hadn’t heard the last of it. When she inquired about last night’s party with a tight little smile, he understood why she was angry. Making an enemy of the most malicious gossip in town hadn’t been a smart move.
Fifty years later, Uncle Izio still seems oblivious of the anxiety his presence caused my parents. His melancholy face brightens as he recalls life in the country, where he staked up tomato plants, planted cucumbers and brewed cherry vodka. He even learned to pickle pork. ‘The peasants used to pay us with poultry, butter and cheese, but one day someone gave us half a pig. Naturally I had no idea how to pickle it but since my false papers said I was a farmer’s son, I couldn’t ask too many questions. So I asked my landlady, “How much saltpetre do you use?” and when she said one spoon, I replied, “So do I!”’
As he describes life in Piszczac, I close my eyes and once again breathe in the poignant scent of lilac which wafted in through the window on warm spring nights. In late summer, our house swirled with the spirituous almond smell of morello cherry vodka which my father and Uncle Izio used to brew. My mouth puckers at the memory of ducks roasting to crisp brown perfection, and of big pale pickled cucumbers stored in the cellar beside big wooden barrels of cabbage and small tart apples. I remember picking blueberries and mushrooms in the dewy woods.
Mushrooms grew abundantly in the woods around Piszczac and on damp autumn mornings the peasants filled their woven straw baskets and sold them in the marketplace. Bronia marinated them with bay leaves, fried them with eggs and thickened them with barley to make my favourite soup. Shortly after eating this soup one day, Izio blanched, staggered to a chair and clutched his belly. ‘I’m going to die,’ he groaned. They put off calling the doctor as long as possible, but when his cramps became so agonising that he couldn’t straighten up, there was no choice.
My father held his breath while Dr Forycki bent over to prod his brother’s abdomen. ‘Pull up your shirt,’ the doctor said. Henek and Bronia exchanged taut glances. Any second now the doctor would see that Izio had been circumcised. Izio managed to pull up his shirt without letting go of his trousers and Dr Forycki continued his examination without asking him to lower his trousers. ‘It will pass,’ he said. ‘It’s food poisoning from the mushrooms.’ Izio never touched mushrooms again.
While my parents were trying to cope with the problems that Izio’s presence created, my mother’s sister Mania suddenly arrived on their doorstep. My father couldn’t conceal his shock at seeing her there, and when my mother confessed that she’d given Mania their address, he stared at her as though she’d lost her mind. ‘You might as well have placed an advertisement in the newspaper!’ he shouted. But Bronia stood her ground. ‘I had to tell her in case she was desperate for somewhere to go.’
Mania certainly was desperate when she arrived in Piszczac. She’d been blackmailed several times and everything she owned had gone in paying off extortionists. She had no money left and nowhere to go. Bronia, who had begun to look at people through the villagers’ eyes, thought that Mania talked too much and was too sure of herself, and that the saucy tilt of her hat was a dead giveaway because most Jewish women pulled the brim down to the side à la Dietrich.
Aunty Mania used to love telling me about one incident that took place during her stay with us. Looking at me fondly with her lopsided smile, she said, ‘I was supposed to be a friend of your mother’s called Wanda Morawska. They warned me not to make too much fuss of you because we weren’t supposed to be related, but after I’d been there for a few days
I noticed you watching me with your big blue eyes. Then you came over and whispered in my ear, “Pani Wanda, can I call you Aunty?”’
Although I’d recognised her, I knew that I mustn’t reveal that she was my aunty. Thinking about that four-year-old child, wary beyond her years, I can understand why for most of my life I’ve held my feelings inside, kept my thoughts to myself and been slow to trust others.
Mania didn’t stay with us for very long. According to my mother, she left as soon as the villagers started gossiping that Mrs Morawska was Jewish. Before she left, my mother gave her most of our bed linen and a treasured gold bracelet she’d received from their mother, so that Mania would have something to sell.
Not long after her departure, Henek was bending over a patient, telling her an amusing anecdote from his student days, when he looked up to see Bronia’s agitated face peering at him through the screen. Putting down the drill, he went over to her. ‘Izio will have to leave Piszczac straightaway,’ she gasped.
At the weekly market she’d run into Mrs Naimska, the agronomist’s wife. ‘People are saying that the gentleman staying with you has escaped from the Krakow ghetto!’ she’d said. Fighting a wave of nausea, Bronia had retorted, ‘What rubbish! Mr Orny is a Pole and comes from Warsaw. Anyway, as it happens, he isn’t here any more, he left yesterday.’
Henek looked alarmed. ‘But he’s still here!’
‘He has to leave while there’s still time,’ my mother whispered back. ‘It’s market day and they’re all out shopping, so no-one will notice if he slips away to Chotylow and catches the train to Warsaw.’ Henek returned to his patient who was waiting for the end of the anecdote, but my father continued drilling in silence.
CHAPTER 23
Clouds of steam almost hid the slender young woman with the hat turned down at a rakish angle as she clicked along the platform of Warsaw’s Central Station, her slim hips swaying with a deliberately carefree rhythm. Chin tilted high, Mania Schwartz looked neither left nor right, avoiding the narrowed eyes of the men lounging against the wall. One thought pounded in her head. I must get to Misko before they catch him.
Misko had arrived in Warsaw a week earlier and, on his way to the tram, he had sensed that he was being followed. Turning around, he caught his breath as he looked into a face he knew. ‘What are you doing here, Mr Schwartz?’ It was the janitor from Lwow. His eyes slid down Misko’s arm, lingered on the spot where the armband should have been, and stopped at his wrist. ‘I like your watch!’ he said. Without a word, Misko unclasped the watch and handed it over, but the man was still wheedling. ‘I’m a bit short of cash at the moment, could you lend me some?’ With only a few zlotys left, Misko had wired Mania for help.
After leaving Piszczac, Mania had moved to Krakow, but as her false papers described her as single, she was living on her own, and Misko had decided to try his luck in Warsaw by himself. When she received his desperate telegram, Mania was in turmoil as to how to help him. Desperate for cash, she went through her few possessions. Picking out her suede ankle-strap shoes and some of Bronia’s monogrammed bed linen, she headed for the pawnshop and was so relieved when the dealer handed her a wad of zlotys that she didn’t even try to bargain with him. As the train clattered towards Warsaw, she wondered how she and Misko could possibly survive with so little money and nowhere to go.
As she quickened her step past the row of extortionists who staked out the station, she saw one of them tip the brim of his hat off his forehead, stub out his cigarette on the ground and blatantly start following her along the street. With him close on her heels, she didn’t dare ask anyone directions to Nowy Swiat where Misko was staying, for fear of revealing that she was a stranger in town. As she stood at the tram stop, trying to look confident, the man was so close that she could smell the nicotine on his breath. With an insolent expression he looked her over from the tip of her little felt hat to her well-worn but stylish shoes. Suddenly he jabbed her with his elbow. ‘Where are your manners?’ she snapped. ‘Can’t you look where you’re going? How dare you follow me!’ Taken aback by her unexpected attack, he was momentarily lost for words. Just then a tram ground to a halt in front of her and, without a second’s hesitation, she jumped on board. It didn’t matter where it was going as long as she got away from that hyena.
As the tram clanged along Warsaw’s wide streets, it seemed that, like the people, the buildings were sad and grey. Although it was spring, a smoky pall hung over the city and an acrid smell irritated Mania’s nose. The woman beside her was saying to her neighbour, ‘My place faces the ghetto, and a few days ago I saw a Jewess standing on a window ledge, clutching a child with flames all around them. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Suddenly she jumped and I watched them falling through the air.’ From the woman’s shocked expression, Mania could see that she still had the scene before her eyes.
Her companion nodded. ‘They say those Zhideks fought like tigers in there. Who’d have thought they had it in them!’ Then she turned to her small daughter and pulled a scarf over her mouth. ‘Don’t keep your mouth open like that, Jadzia, you’ll be breathing in Jews.’ Mania gritted her teeth and turned away.
She’d caught the wrong tram and by the time she reached Misko’s room, it was almost curfew and he was in despair. They were trying to figure out what to do when she remembered that somewhere in her bag was a telephone number she’d been given back in Lwow several months ago. ‘If you ever need help in Warsaw, call me on this number,’ Mr Hening had said.
Each time she asked for Mr Hening, however, the same voice told her that she had the wrong number and hung up. She was about to give up when, on the tenth try, he said, ‘The person you are looking for is staying at the Hotel Polski, on Dluga Street.’
At the entrance to the modest hotel, a Jewish policeman barred her way. ‘Who are you and what do you want?’ When she told him that she was Wanda Morawska, he burst out laughing. ‘You can tell that to the Wojteks and the Wladeks, but you can’t fool me! You’re as Polish as I am!’
She flushed. ‘What does it matter who I am? I just want to see my friend Mr Hening.’
The policeman shrugged and pointed upstairs. ‘He’s on the second floor.’
Mr Hening’s room was full of people, some of whom Mania recognised from Lwow. It was comforting to see familiar faces, and she made her way over to Mr Hening, hoping that he’d be able to help them find somewhere to stay. ‘Have you got plenty of money?’ Mr Hening asked. ‘Because these days without money you can’t do anything.’
With the money he and his family had raised by selling jewellery and valuables, they’d bought Puerto Rican passports. Being citizens of another country, he explained, made them untouchable.
‘How can I get one of those passports?’ she asked.
‘Money, only money,’ he repeated. ‘Without money, nothing can be done.’
Mania’s heart sank. She walked slowly down the wooden staircase and headed down towards the courtyard where guests were sitting around wooden tables sipping coffee and enjoying the spring sunshine. When her eyes had grown accustomed to the light, she found herself looking into the face of a man she recognised from her carefree prewar days. Mr Donner had been the most sought-after dancing partner when she and Bronia used to kick up their heels in the nightclubs on Legionow Street. ‘Well, if it isn’t Miss Bratter!’ he exclaimed. ‘How are things?’
He listened intently as she described her predicament. ‘Without money for a foreign passport, I don’t know what’s going to become of us,’ she sighed.
‘There’s one possibility,’ he said. ‘I know a wealthy man who has helped a lot of people from Lwow. Mr Koenigel is a kind of liaison officer between us few remaining Jews and the Germans. He’s been trying to get us special passports, because it looks as if the Germans won’t touch anyone with foreign citizenship,’ he explained.
Mania’s meeting with Mr Koenigel went better than she expected. It turned out that they had mutual friends, and his confident personality and boom
ing voice gave her hope. When she told him that she had no money, he immediately took out his wallet. She reddened and shook her head. ‘I have enough to live on,’ she explained, ‘but I don’t have enough to buy foreign citizenship.’
‘Why don’t you put your name down on the Palestine list?’ he suggested. ‘Just say that your parents are living there. They won’t ask for proof, but if they do, tell them to speak to Engineer Koenigel. In the meantime, you and your husband should come and stay at the hotel and not budge from here. They’re still scouring Warsaw for Jews who’ve escaped from the ghetto and this is the only safe place in town.’
The Hotel Polski was so overcrowded that many people were already sharing rooms so, along with the other latecomers, Mania and Misko sat on the stairs by day and slept on the hard floor by night. The overcrowding and discomfort didn’t bother them. They were thrilled to have a safe haven, the patronage of an influential man and the prospect of migrating to Palestine.
Several days later, while sitting on the stairs, Mania saw a face that made her heart leap. Now their worries were over. Mr Furstenberg was a wealthy zinc and tin manufacturer whose merchandise her father had sold in Lwow. When war had broken out, the Furstenbergs had fled to Lwow where she and her parents had taken them in. Now that roles were reversed and Mr Furstenberg was staying in a spacious room and eating three meals a day, Mania was certain that he’d want to help them. ‘But people have short memories,’ my aunt tells me. ‘He didn’t lift a finger to help us.’
Mr Engel was in charge of the Palestine list. She’d seen him strutting around the hotel as if he owned it, this big boss from Lodz who traded diamonds for food and favours from the Germans, and charged people a fortune to be included on the list. ‘So what have you got?’ he asked her.
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