Chaim thought he saw a bit of the old bulldog Bruno surface for a moment, ready to tell Papa that he was not Papa’s boy.
But Sophie broke in quickly. “Is that a promise?”
“On my honor,” Papa said, the grin gone, and his face now serious with what he’d just pledged. Then, to lighten things up, he added, “Who can beat me at durak?” But before Gittel could answer, he suddenly broke into a horrible spasm of coughing, which did nothing for the modest good mood at all.
* * *
• • •
Two mornings later, after having her pills, Mrs. Norenberg came out of the bedroom fully dressed, hair brushed, even her makeup applied, though somewhat haphazardly.
She seemed a little distracted, which—Chaim thought—might actually be a change for the good. At least she wasn’t shouting at them or calling them names.
She roamed about the kitchen touching the teapot, the table, the stove.
Eventually, Mrs. Norenberg wandered over to one of the windows. The sun was shining brilliantly, and she said in a muzzy voice, “Oh, look—look! It’s daylight.”
Forgetting, I suppose, thought Chaim uncharitably, that she’s just gotten out of bed and dressed for breakfast.
Mama went over to her and led her away, whispering, “Not at the window, Dominika. The Germans are good shots.”
There was a sudden knock on the door, and Mrs. Norenberg turned toward the sound. Everyone else was still sitting at the table, breakfast finished but the dishes not yet cleared.
Mrs. Norenberg skipped—actually skipped—toward the door like a child at play.
Chaim cried out, “The peephole!” in warning, and Papa leaped up, but they were both too late.
By the time Papa and Chaim, Mama, and Gittel in that order had reached the door, Mrs. Norenberg had already flung it open, shouting her husband’s name.
The man at the door with his hat in his hands wasn’t Dr. Norenberg. In fact, Chaim had never seen him before. He had a long, unhappy face, almost horselike, with sunken eyes and dark hair so sparse, you could count the spots on his scalp. He took off his hat and wiped his shoes on their threadbare carpet, which simply further loosened what threads were left.
At least, Chaim thought, he’s not a soldier with a gun.
“Ah, Fajner,” Papa said. “I expect you have news.”
“It’s not good news, Avram,” the man said, his voice as long as his face.
“It never is,” Mama said.
“You have news?” Mrs. Norenberg pounced upon the one word she thought was meant for her.
“The resettlements continue.” Fajner’s voice was low as if in mourning. “We have tried to reason with the Germans, but as always, they are unreasonable. They say they are sending another thousand Łódź Jews off on the twelfth . . . to God knows where.”
“God knows where my husband is?” Mrs. Norenberg said. “That’s good news.”
Fajner looked at Papa, who shrugged as if to say, Ignore her—she’s crazy. And drugged. And she never made much sense before either.
Papa led Fajner to the table, saying as they walked, “I thought such transportations had already been denied by official circles.”
When the grown-ups sat down, Chaim stood and offered his chair to Fajner and then remained, standing behind Mama’s chair. Even without a bath every other day her hair smelled like roses. He wondered how she managed.
Once seated, Papa closed his eyes, and he began to cough again. This time, it sounded like a death rattle to Chaim, or at least as he imagined one.
“Avram, that was all just a rumor,” Fajner said in his funereal voice, handing Papa a small paper sack. “Here, for your cough. The best I could do.”
Chaim wondered if he could use the paper for writing after Papa was done with it. Often he did, if Mama didn’t need the bag.
Fajner was still speaking. “Someone wanted that rumor about the transports to be true, and suddenly everyone was repeating it as if it was true. What do we have for comfort except dreams, which is just another word for lies?”
Papa nodded his head, and Chaim shifted uncomfortably behind Mama, whose shoulders stiffened at what Fajner said. Chaim understood. They didn’t need more bad news.
But Fajner appeared to enjoy being the bad news delivery man. “There are more resettlements planned for the fifteenth,” he said. “Fifteen hundred people to go is what we’ve been told.”
“But that makes twenty-five hundred!” Mama said, surprised into a response. “Surely that can’t be right.”
Fajner repeated, “It’s what we’ve been told.”
Suddenly, Chaim realized that Fajner must be one of the Jewish council members.
“We’re trying to stop the rumors,” Fajner continued.
“People need hope, need dreams,” Mama said.
The two men ignored her, continuing their conversation in low, intense voices, saying things Papa never spoke of at home before. Chaim wondered why this time was different.
If anything, Fajner’s voice became lower, his face sadder. “I’ve come especially to bring you warning, as I promised, Avram. For the kindnesses you’ve shown me and my family in the past. With your cough so bad, they are scheduling you and the family for one of the next transports. There’s no convincing them otherwise . . .” After a short, dark pause, he continued. “I’ve talked to every single member, reminded them of all you’ve done for the council, for the people, you and your wife. But you know you made some enemies the year you were on the council. Always advising them to tell the people the truth, as if such dark ‘truths’ would do anything more than stir the people up. Invite insurrection when we had no weapons. When our only hope of escape was—as it has always been—to lie low, do what the Nazis advise. Try to feed our people. Outlast the war. I’m afraid your enemies are in the majority now. They will not protect you anymore, and I can’t help anymore either, or my own family will be at risk.” It was a long speech, and clearly his mouth was dry, because he licked his lips often.
“I understand,” Papa said.
“Well, I don’t!” Mama told him. “Since when is telling the truth to the powers that rule wrong? Since—”
Papa shook his head. “My darling wife, a man has to look after his own family,” he said softly, reaching for her hand. “As I am doing now with mine.”
Fajner delivered his final blow in a voice that forgot its funereal oration. Now—he spoke like a friend. “You’ll be getting the wedding invitation in days. I don’t know if it is for the first lot or the fifteenth. I will try my best to give you the later date so you have more time.”
“Wedding invitation?” Sophie whispered.
Mama whispered back, “It’s code for the notice to be on the resettlement train.”
Papa nodded. “I understand, Fajner. We’re are grateful to have a few days’ warning.”
“You have the names I gave you?”
Papa nodded. “And all of us here in this room”—he suddenly looked around the table—“we will all forget this visit, this conversation. It’s a matter of life and . . .” He didn’t say the other word.
Almost everyone nodded, even Bruno. But Mrs. Norenberg wasn’t listening, for she was off at the window again, and no one went over to move her away.
Papa stood and led Fajner back to the door. “Walk carefully out there.”
“I always do,” Fajner replied. “What you asked for? In the paper bag.”
The door closed behind him, and Papa leaned his back against it.
There was an immediate bubble of attempted conversations, but one voice stood out.
“If you leave,” Bruno said, “can we have the apartment to ourselves?” He looked strangely triumphant.
“And what will you live on, child?” Mama asked. “Who will find the zlotys to purchase your mother’s pills? Who will cook? Who will do
the washing up?”
Bruno answered with a sly grin, “We will make do.”
“You mean I would have to make do,” Sophie told him. “You would read your comics, and Mutti would go silently mad at the window. And if Father never . . .” She couldn’t seem to go any further with that thought.
“You will be on the transport with us,” Gittel said. “That’s how it goes.”
When Bruno glared at her, Papa added, his voice low with concern, but relentless as well, “Gittel’s right, you know. Your father has been arrested as a criminal. Possibly is already transported. You’re new here, with no one on the council to speak up on your behalf. They will see your family as a liability. No one old enough or skilled enough to work. And should they ever hear one of your mother’s tirades, her . . . weakness . . . you will be first ones on the next train.”
“But . . . but you could speak up for us!” Bruno said.
Chaim leaned forward so that he was almost touching Bruno with his head and spat three words at Bruno’s face. “Why should we?” He spent those words as if they were gold coins. But he knew they weren’t enough. “What have . . . have . . . have . . . you . . .” He needed to take a deep breath, waiting out the stutter, before he could finish the sentence. But Bruno was already too shocked to protest.
Finally Chaim’s last four words came out in a rush, clear as could be: “Done to help us?”
“Who would listen?” Papa said. “They have already put my name on the list. Any influence I ever had has been taken from me.”
Bruno looked at the floor, but his lips moved as if he were cursing the entire family.
Papa broke into the boys’ confrontation. “First, hear my plan.”
Everyone was suddenly silent.
“I’ve known for some time that this day would come,” Papa said. “And with your help—”
“And God’s,” Mama put in. It was an old argument between them.
“And God’s,” Papa said, which was when Chaim understood how desperate things had become.
“What plan, Papa?” Gittel asked.
“For all of us to escape to one of the larger forests outside of Łódź, and from there to meet with the partisans, and from there . . .” Papa sat down heavily at the table. He untwisted the paper sack and took out a hard candy, Fajner’s farewell present. He popped it into his mouth as if it were a magic pill, then stuffed the paper bag and its contents into his pants pocket.
“Avram, why not just let the Nazis resettle us?” Mama asked.
He sighed heavily. “Are you comfortable in a coffin, woman?” Papa drew in a shallow breath. “For that’s the only place the Nazis would have us lay our heads.”
“How can you say . . .” Mama’s voice drifted off.
“I have kept the worst of it from you for as long as I could,” Papa said. “But you, my darling wife, and you children, and Mrs. Norenberg must know this: These last resettlements have not gone to another city, not even one less comfortable than this. They have gone straight into hell.”
“How do you know this?”
“We’ve been in touch with a few who escaped such places. Some prison guards who actually have consciences. A train driver horrified by what he saw at his destination. Doctors at other hospitals who have been made to perform despicable acts to save their bodies, though not their souls. We have tried to send messages through the partisans to the presidents of France and America, to the king and queen of Britain, to the rulers of the Soviet Union, any head of state who will listen.”
“And what did they say?” Sophie asked, so quietly it was almost as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
“They say nothing,” Papa said. “They do nothing. They are ghosts.” He stifled another cough. “Or we are ghosts to them.”
Chaim felt his stomach turn over. He glanced at Gittel, who had a look of horror on her face, one hand twisting her long braid, as if too shocked to signal to him.
Sophie had put her head in her hands. Even Bruno, no longer bulldoggish, seemed deep in thought.
Only Mrs. Norenberg was smiling. But what she was smiling about, none of them could guess.
Mama’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “Then tell us your plan, my darling. And we will try and make do.”
Gittel Remembers
Mama once said the trouble with a plan is when it goes awry. I remember exactly where we were when she said it, because we were packing to come to the ghetto. Hastily, and without anything resembling a plan. All under the angry eyes of the German guards, who seemed to know only one word: schnell! which clearly meant “hurry!” or “right now!” And there was an unspoken threat behind the word, a tightening of hands around the stocks of their rifles.
Papa had heaved a huge sigh and said in Yiddish that it all would work out if they—meaning the Nazis—just gave us time to make a plan.
Mama had laughed, somewhat wildly, put her hand on his arm, and said that about plans going awry. And something else about time, but I can’t ever quite remember it.
He’d looked at her with such love and answered, “But we don’t even have a plan to go awry . . .” like a little boy whining to his mother. And then he laughed, too.
We couldn’t take our furniture—my bed with the headboard that Papa had carved. Couldn’t take all of Mama’s shoes. Or Chaim’s model airplane collection, except for the one biplane he loved so much. We were allowed only what we could carry.
Papa said, “You’re right, my darling. All we really need to bring with us is each other.” Though I think later he very much regretted having to leave his tools behind.
11
It is always important,” Papa said, as if he were giving a lecture in his old school on how to build a cabinet or make a chair, “to start with a plan. We’ll call this one Plan A.”
Bruno rolled his eyes, but the rest of the family—with the exception of Mrs. Norenberg, now dozing in her chair—listened intently.
“Even if,” Papa added, “you have to fall back on Plan B. Or God help us, Plan C.” He tried to smile, as if to lighten what he was saying, but failed.
“At least this time we have a few days to make the plans,” said Mama.
“And to pack what’s needed,” Gittel added.
“What’s needed,” Papa warned, “is to pack as little as possible.”
“Food,” Bruno suddenly put in. “We shouldn’t leave any here for the mamzers to get.” He looked around eagerly to see who agreed with him and also who’d noticed his use of the Yiddish word. To make sure, he said the word again, this time as if it were a single swear. “Mamzers!”
“We’ll take nothing that could spoil on the trip,” Mama said, as if—Chaim thought—they were merely going on a picnic or a vacation. “The rest we’ll give to the neighbors.”
“Who are not mamzers,” Gittel explained, turning to Bruno, who made a bulldog face at her.
Gittel was having another thought; Chaim knew that faraway look well. She put her hand out to her mother. “Unless, Mama, the neighbors are also to be chosen for the resettlement.”
“Avram!” Mama looked at Papa in alarm.
He refused to be drawn into her concern about the neighbors. “First the plan,” he said. “I have it here in the drawer.” He went to the chest of drawers and gathered up three sheets of paper.
Chaim’s eyes grew wide. Where had Papa gotten so much paper, and how had he hidden it?
“You knew this was coming?” Mama’s voice had gone very quiet.
“I suspected,” he said, suddenly breaking into a terrible fit of coughing. He drew the paper bag from his pocket and pulled out another hard candy.
Gittel stood to get him a glass of water, while Sophie rubbed his back.
At that moment Bruno jumped up, went over to his mother, and put his arms around her as if to remind them all that she wasn’t well either.
> Mrs. Norenberg startled awake. “I am ready,” she said, though it was clear she didn’t know what she was ready for.
When Papa’s coughing eased, he popped the candy into his mouth and then pushed the papers across the table to Mama. His voice was newly hoarse with the latest spasms, so he said simply, “You read it out loud.”
“Your handwriting is atrocious, Avram,” Mama said, but began reading, her voice strong enough so that everyone in the room could hear, but not so loud that any person lurking on the other side of the door might.
“Plan A . . .”
* * *
• • •
After Mama had read through all three sheets, stopping frequently to tsk at Papa’s handwriting, Papa sent them to their rooms to pick out the most important things to take with them. They would each get one knapsack to fill, which they would then have to carry.
“And make sure warm clothing is part of your choices,” Papa called after them.
“It’s May, Papa,” Gittel said.
“It won’t always be May,” he told her, and let that sink in. Then he added, “Also, nights in the forest can be quite cold, even in summer.” But then he relented for a moment. “You can wear double layers and so take more with you. Good shoes, too. No sandals.”
“How long will we be in the forest?” Mama said under her breath, for only Papa to hear. But Chaim heard and noticed that Papa shrugged, whispering back, “As long as it takes.”
* * *
• • •
Chaim took three sweaters out of his closet, all the sweaters he had. Three changes of underwear, three pairs of socks. He liked the number three. It was a comfortable number. Not quite as good as thirteen, though. He didn’t have three good shirts, only two, but then remembered he was already wearing one. How long can “as long as it takes” last? he wondered.
He looked slowly around the room. What else did he want in his knapsack? And did he want to carry a heavy pack for as long as it takes? There was little enough that they’d brought with them from their old house, and even less that they’d collected in the almost two years they’d been in the ghetto. But he snatched up the small biplane, plus a photograph of his grandparents in a wooden frame.