by Sue Gee
‘Where’s Jerzy?’
‘He’s gone across the river, with Andrzej, I think. He said he might not be back until this evening.’
‘Oh.’ Anna looked at her photograph again, and put down the card. Who was Anna Kurowska? If she were stopped in the street, what could anyone tell from that face – was she a victim, or someone to be reckoned with? Teresa looked frail in her photograph: covertly, Anna scanned the features. What could anyone tell from Teresa’s face? She was fair, or at least mousey; there was nothing in her features to indicate that she might be Jewish. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t.
‘Teresa …’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry – this sounds ridiculous …’ Anna tried a casual laugh; it sounded horribly false. ‘I can’t remember your surname,’ she said, and felt herself blushing. ‘I mean, before you married Tata.’
‘My surname? It was Pawlik,’ said Teresa. ‘Why?’
She didn’t sound in the least suspicious. Pawlik – well, that sounded perfectly Polish. But probably some Jewish names did, they couldn’t all be called Kaufman, or Jakobson, could they?
‘Anna?’
‘Yes? I remember now, of course I do, I wonder why I forgot?’
‘I wonder why you want to remember,’ Teresa said slowly, and Anna felt her cheeks burn. She picked at a loose thread on the tablecloth, as Jerzy had done that time when Pani Jawicz came. The silence in the room was suddenly horrible, unending. She couldn’t look up, she could feel Teresa watching her, and her throat tightened with fear and embarrassment. She does know what I’m thinking, she thought miserably. How can I look her in the face?
Then the front door of the apartment banged suddenly open, and they both jumped as Jerzy came panting down the corridor and into the kitchen. He saw the cards on the table, and swept them on to the floor.
‘What the hell are those?’
‘Jerzy!’ Thankfully, Anna bent down to pick them up again, praying that her blush would fade before she emerged from beneath the table.
‘What’s happened?’ Teresa was asking him. ‘You look dreadful – sit down, I’ll make you some tea.’
Jerzy sank into a chair, and Anna scrambled to her feet. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
He had covered his face with his hands; she pulled them away.
‘Tell me!’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘there’s a lot of building going on, across the river.’
Anna looked at him stupidly. ‘Building?’
‘A wall,’ said Jerzy. ‘A long wall, I should say a good ten feet high, enclosing what they are calling a Jewish Residential District. That is to say – a ghetto.’
Anna sat down so quickly that she dropped the cards again. By the stove, Teresa was standing absolutely still.
‘Go on,’ she said quietly. ‘Where is it?’
Jerzy drew a long breath. ‘I don’t know exactly how far it runs,’ he said shakily, ‘but I don’t think it’s very long, and it’s on the border of the Jewish quarter, anyway. Part of it isn’t far from Stare Miasto. Andrzej and I were walking through, and we just found ourselves looking at it … Do you know what was really horrible? The point is that the Jews are building it themselves, we saw a whole long line of them, wearing their blue stars, being ordered about by a gang of Nazi pigs – they were standing over them with guns, yelling at them to hurry up … Ugh. There were great rolls of barbed wire all along the top, where it was finished, and I should think they must have been another foot high. I’ve never seen anything so … so …’ He covered his face again.
Teresa came over, and put her arm round him. This time, he did not shrug it off, but Anna could not look at her. If she’s a Jew, she thought frantically, her heart pounding, if she is secretly a Jew, masking herself, the Polish wife of a good Polish doctor … if she’s found out … oh God, oh God, what will they do to us all?
‘Do you know what else I heard?’ Jerzy went on; he ran his hands through his hair, and Teresa sat down beside him. ‘Andrzej has an uncle, he’s an old boy, but he seems to be in the know, perhaps he’s attached to a resistance group, anyway – he told Andrzej that they’re just taking people off the streets at random now. Never mind if you’re a Jew – they just pick up anyone they don’t like the look of.’
Teresa was swallowing. ‘Then what?’
‘Then they throw you into Pawiak prison – the ghetto wall’s going to run near there, too, I think. Or they send you to a camp, some horrible kind of labour camp. Or death camp? He says there are death camps …’
‘Shut up,’ said Anna. ‘Stop it. I don’t want to hear any more.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jerzy. ‘Do you know what else? They’re shooting men in broad daylight, out on the street, blindfold, shot in the back. Andrzej’s uncle saw it happen, he saw it himself, last week. He says that when there’s too many, they just take them out of the city, to the Palmiry Forest, and do it there. He says it’s like an execution ground.’
‘Stop it!’ Anna put her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it!’
‘Yes,’ said Teresa, as white as a sheet. ‘That’s enough now. I know you’re very upset, but … that’s enough. We must – we must be thankful that we are safe. We have nothing to be afraid of; so long as we are careful, and sensible, we shall be all right.’ She was speaking very slowly, deliberately, as if to reassure herself as much as them. ‘Now –’ she got up, and took the boiling kettle off the stove. ‘Let’s have tea, and try to calm down.’
That night, Anna lay rigidly in bed, listening as every creak in the floorboards, every dripping tap or flapping piece of cardboard at the broken windows was magnified and hideously transformed into the sound of SS men creeping into the apartment, kicking open the door, grabbing them, shoving them down the stairs with a gun at their backs, and out into the dark. Jew-hunters. Pole-haters. This was not some terrible revenge, this was something which could happen to anyone, now; you need have done nothing.
But perhaps it could happen particularly to them.
Across the room, Jerzy, too, lay absolutely still. She didn’t dare to light the candle, it was too wasteful to light them after you’d gone to bed. But … was he asleep?
‘Jerzy?’ she whispered.
‘Yes?’
Oh, thank God. She pushed back the bedclothes, and crept over.
‘I’m so frightened.’ She reached for his hand.
‘You mustn’t be. I’m sorry – I just had to tell you.’
‘I know.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, no longer afraid. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. You won’t ever leave us, will you?’
‘Leave you? No, of course not. Why should I?’
‘I mean – you’ll be careful?’
‘Yes.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Do you want to come into bed for a bit?’
‘Yes.’ She slid in beside him. ‘Oh, that’s better.’ She thought of Teresa, alone in the big double bed at the other end of the-corridor. It must be awful for her. And if she was afraid, she mustn’t show it, must she? Because she was the grown-up, and also because –
‘Jerzy?’
‘What?’
‘Do you … do you think … suppose Teresa’s a Jew?’
There was a long, shocked silence.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he whispered. ‘I never thought of that.’
In early November, Anna went across the river with Jerzy and Teresa for the first time since the occupation began, to visit Wiktoria. Many of the tram lines were still unrepaired, but a line across the bridge was working; when a crowded tram drew up Anna made to get in at the front, but Jerzy and Teresa pulled her back. ‘Look – the front is for Germans only.’
‘What?’ She looked up and saw soldiers and German civilians seated near the driver. Teresa and Jerzy hustled her in the queue along to the doors at the back, and they had to squeeze in among a press of people up against the windows; more forced their way in, and then the doors were closed and the tram began to move. Anna found herself remembering the
airless, frightening train journey from Wilno, with Tata. She craned her neck to see beyond the barrier dividing the tram, saw the Germans, with plenty of room to move, smoking and talking as they crossed the Vistula, grey in November light. One soldier was standing with his back to the window, watching the crowd of Poles behind the barrier, his hand resting on the rifle slung across his chest. He was quite young, ordinary-looking beneath his cap; she saw him feel her watching him, and his eyes found hers. He looked at her indifferently, then turned to a soldier next to him, mouthed something, and they both looked at her, and laughed. Anna’s face burned, and her knees trembled; she looked away, filled with anger and some kind of humiliation, although she wasn’t sure what they meant.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Jerzy.
‘Nothing. Nothing.’ If she told him, he’d only get angry, and what could he do? When·they got off, and began the walk to Wiktoria’s apartment in Hoza, they found the streets thick with people, although there was little traffic except for the trams and buses and a few improvised rickshaws. No one was permitted to own their own transport any more – not even a bicycle. On a corner of Marszałkowska, Anna noticed that the street sign had been changed to Marschalstrasse, and she felt for a moment so disoriented that she reached for Jerzy’s arm.
‘Where are we?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It isn’t – it isn’t Warsaw any more.’
‘I know.’
It wasn’t just that the street names had been changed: there seemed to be hardly any Polish shops now. All the old signs had been taken down or painted over with new, German names. There was a kawiarnia on a corner where Tata used to take her and Jerzy sometimes, for a treat – coffee and cream cakes, it was one of her favourite places. Now, she saw the words Nur für Deutsche painted across the glass. For Germans Only, and there they were, women in expensive hats and furs, sitting at the little tables inside, lifting their coffee cups, lifting the cakes on silver forks. And now she and Jerzy couldn’t go there any more, and anyway, Tata –
‘Anna!’
Teresa was a little ahead, turning to wait for her. ‘Come on, darling, don’t stand and stare.’
‘Don’t call me that!’ Anna snapped, and bit her lip.
Teresa said nothing. She just turned away, and walked slowly on.
Jerzy pulled a face. ‘What did you have to do that for?’
Anna’s cheeks were burning. ‘I hate it. I hate it. Look at it all.’
Swastikas blew in the autumn wind. Nur für Deutsche was everywhere – above restaurants, kawiarnias, all the good shops. There was a butcher whose windows were hung with strings of fat sausages, and duck; Anna watched two large German women coming out with their baskets piled high, standing complacently beneath the sign, gossiping. Where were the Poles supposed to shop? What were they supposed to buy, with their pitiful ration cards? There seemed to be cafés everywhere, far more than there used to be – it must be a comparatively easy way to earn a living, now, but to stand and serve Them all day long – ugh. They passed a street leading down to a children’s playground – that, too, was only for German children, now.
Jerzy was muttering at her, but looking straight ahead. ‘I’ll show you something in a minute. See the notices?’
‘See them?’
The walls were plastered with them. Many were headed Bekanntmachung! Warning! and followed by lists of ‘strictly forbidden’activities. The phrase ‘on penalty of death’seemed to be everywhere. It was no longer possible to travel, anywhere in Poland, without German cards to be carried, German offices to report to. It was strictly forbidden to own building materials without declaring it. There was a terse announcement, half-covered by more recent posters, that on 23 October last year Marian Branowski and Wiktor Sikorski, both of Warsaw, had been executed for the possession of hand grenades and explosives. There were notices about which police department ran which district of the city, about the risk of infectious diseases, and especially of typhoid, ‘carried by the Jews’.
Anna looked at Teresa, still ahead, and felt tears pricking behind her eyes. Why had she been so horrible? She saw a German patrol, standing on the next corner, armed, watching the movement on the street, and she felt in her pocket for her identity card. Her knees were trembling again.
Jerzy was nudging her, still looking straight ahead.
‘Look.’
‘What?’
‘Sssh! There.’ With the slightest gesture he indicated another poster, across the street, another warning: any dealers in weapons whose activities were not known to the police would be regarded as saboteurs, and ‘treated with the greatest severity’. At the bottom, scrawled in black paint, she saw the rough outline of two letters, PW, joined to form a kind of anchor:
‘See it?’ Jerzy asked under his breath. ‘The anchor?’
‘Yes,’ Anna whispered. Whispering on a crowded street, in broad daylight! ‘What –’
‘Polska Walcząca,’ he said, his lips scarcely moving. ‘Fighting Poland. Now come on, quick, for God’s sake stop looking at it.’
They hurried to catch up with Teresa, trying to ignore the stony faces of the next patrol, as if it were nothing to walk past them, and nothing that they should be there.
Anna slipped her arm through Teresa’s. ‘I’m sorry.’
Teresa’s face was expressionless. ‘It’s all right.’ Two bright spots of colour burned on her cheeks.
‘No it isn’t. I’m really sorry.’
‘Let’s just forget about it, we’re almost there.’
They turned into Wiktoria’s apartment block and climbed the stairs. At the top, they all, as if bidden by a conductor, let out a great sigh of relief, and then they burst out laughing.
‘But it’s dreadful,’ said Anna shakily, wiping her eyes. ‘Only to feel safe up here. It’s like, it’s like …’
‘It’s like living under occupation,’ Teresa said simply, and rang the doorbell.
Wiktoria opened the door and fell upon them, hurrying them inside. She took their coats, exclaiming, patting Anna’s cheeks.
‘Child, how thin you are!’
‘You too, Aunt,’ said Anna, but although her clothes hung from her, and her face was pinched, Wiktoria’s morale had clearly recovered since the first shock of the occupation.
In the kitchen they found the table laid with brown bread, not black, and a pie which smelt deliciously of bacon; dishes of potatoes, carrots and swede were on the stove; there was a bowl of yellow apples.
‘Hey!’ Jerzy sat down and pulled the breadboard towards him.
‘Jerzy …’ Teresa said mildly, but Wiktoria put a hand on her arm.
‘Let him, let him, poor boy – I made it for you all.’
‘Your contacts must be good ones,’ Teresa said dryly.
Wiktoria smiled. ‘I have excellent friends, now – occasionally it’s possible to stretch the ration book a little. Or even make a new one…’
‘What?’ Jerzy mumbled through a mouthful. ‘Are they forging, now?’
‘Help yourselves,’ said Wiktoria, putting the hot dishes on the table, ‘and don’t ask foolish questions.’
‘But who are your friends, Aunt?’ Anna asked, plunging her fork into the steaming pie.
Wiktoria spread her hands. ‘The peasants are smuggling in fruit and vegetables, sometimes even eggs. It’s getting more dangerous, but so far our exchanges have not been discovered. And I have friends … in one or two shops they can produce a little from under the counter from time to time.’
‘Or forge ration books,’ said Jerzy. ‘Good for you, Aunt, this is the best meal I’ve eaten for months.’
‘I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Teresa, my dear, have some more – you’ve had too many sleepless nights, I can see. You need to eat all you can.’
‘I’ve stopped feeling hungry.’
‘Nonsense.’
They stayed the night with Wiktoria, and next morning she and Teresa went out early together, on a shopping expeditio
n.
‘Come with me,’ said Jerzy, when the door of the apartment had closed.
‘Where?’ Anna was eating her third slice of toast. With homemade beetroot jam – it wasn’t so bad, but the idea of it was extraordinary.
Outside, Hoz·a was still misty and grey, the cracked pavements damp. They hurried, shivering a little, down to the last intersection and turned right, walking until they came again to the broad main thoroughfare of Jerozolimskie Avenue, already crowded. It seemed as if the whole of Poland had come to Warsaw, trying to scratch a living. They crossed over, and a few streets later Jerzy said: ‘Do you want to walk, or wait for a tram?’
‘I don’t want to go in a tram, it makes me too angry. Where are we going?’
‘I’ll show you.’
They walked on and on. After a time, Anna realized that they were approaching the Jewish quarter and, suddenly, that almost everyone in the street, which had become more and more crowded, was moving in the same direction, and that almost all of them were Jews.
In caps and shirtsleeves, or threadbare coats, the men were trundling handcarts, piled with mattresses and chairs. Bearded Hassidic men and rabbis in long gaberdines and dark hats were among the crowd; women in headscarves and cardigans held white-faced children by the hand, and carried bundles. Some of the little boys, each carrying a chair, wore caps and earlocks, many looked simply like some of the Polish children they’d seen in the streets yesterday, but even more undernourished, their clothes patched, holes gaping in their boots and shoes. Everyone wore an armband, white, with a blue star.
They turned into a narrow street. Pressed back on to the pavement, Anna and Jerzy watched the river of Jews move slowly on, through a wooden gate set in a high brick wall mounted with jagged glass and ugly great rolls of barbed wire.
‘This is the place?’ Anna whispered. ‘The ghetto?’
‘Yes.’
