The Emperor of Lies (43 page)

And the people in the audience who recognise the classic Purim story are now shouting indignantly:
What sort of rabbi is that?

Out with the false rabbi!

And so the rabbi is thrown out, the poisonous smoke clears, the scene changes and the real Purim play can begin:

Esther has married the Persian king Ahasveros and the king’s servant Haman is skulking in the wings, concocting evil plots against the Jewish people. For the king’s servant Haman, Jakub uses one of Zajtman’s old glove puppets, which he has dressed as a
politsay
with a cap and tall boots, and a Sonder armband. A deep shiver runs through the audience as they catch sight of Haman dressed in a police uniform, and here and there, people begin to shout agitatedly and clatter their tin soup mugs.

But now Mordechai comes on stage to save the day, and of course, it is the Hungry Rabbi of Włodawa again, only in a different guise. And once more the Rabbi has his sack with him. And again, the sack is full of
vundermitl
.
Come, come . . . !
says Mordechai.
If you stick your heads in the sack, you will get bread galore. And I shall take you to the land of Israel . . . !
And, as if to show them who he really is behind all his disguises, Mordechai has one hand raised in the gesture of blessing that the Chairman uses when he marries the bridal couples of the ghetto.

And:
Chaim, Chaim!
cry the onlookers, who recognised their Chairman from the very start. And the air is filled with billowing
vundermitl
.

And the great Haman falls on his back, choked by all the dreadful smoke.

And the scales fall from the Persian king Ahasveros’s eyes. He recognises Haman for the instrument of the Devil that he is, praises Mordechai for his cunning and swears eternal loyalty to the Jewish people ever after. But the audience still only has eyes for the disguised Chairman with his sack and his
vundermitl
. They stamp their feet, clatter their soup mugs and shout by turns:

Chaim, Chaim!

Give us bread!

Chaim, Chaim!

Give us bread!

*

The following day: a Friday.

It would soon have been the Sabbath, if the authorities had not banned all keeping of the Sabbath in the ghetto.

Instead, a mist has swept in over the ghetto, and all that can be seen of the buildings are their footings, rotting in the mud. Samuel Wajsberg has got right to the entrance of the carpentry works before he sees the policemen forming a human chain in front of the factory gates. An officer stands in front of the row, flicking through the identity documents of the workers as they arrive.

Once their documents have been checked, the workers are told to line up in the yard, and then a kind of inventory begins.

Sonder men walk to and fro among the planing machinery and crosscut timber saws, counting loads of timber and noting them down. Samuel stands next to Jakub. Jakub shifts a little uneasily, but shows no other sign of anything being wrong.

The mist lifts a little. A pale, watery light finds its way through the clouds, lending the factory roof a dull, rigid gleam, like quicksilver. It is so quiet that you can hear the sound of melting snow dripping and running from the underside of the roof, down into the muddy yard.

All of a sudden, a quick exchange of words rattles from inside the office and a Mr Kutner is escorted out by stiff police guards. Samuel Wajsberg said afterwards that he knew hardly anything about this Kutner – other than that he was employed in the section of Serwański’s carpentry workshop that made door lintels and window frames. The chain of policemen has taken a few steps forward as if to quash any attempt by the other workers to protest against the arrest. But no one protests, and after a while the employees are urged to get back to their work.

A short distance from the workbench where Samuel is feeding wood into the big planing machine, a small cluster of workers has formed. They are talking among themselves and pointing in his direction. To judge by the snippets he can hear, they are talking not about him but about Jakub and the theatre troupe’s performance the day before.

He hears them wondering where Jakub could have got hold of all the cloth and material for his puppets when wood and fabric remnants are so scarce in the ghetto.

Samuel then asks the police guard for permission to leave the plane for a moment, and goes out into the yard to look for Jakub. The mist has burnt away now. The sun glares down on all the timber lying sawn and naked, resin oozing from the cut surfaces.

But no Jakub.

Samuel concludes he must be out with his barrow again, and his heart contracts inside his chest. He waits for five minutes, but to no avail, so then he goes back to his place at the planing machine.

They walk home together, father and son.

Samuel asks Jakub whether, after the performance, he was ordered to answer questions about wood going missing. Jakub shakes his head. But he walks on in silence, his head bowed. And he is not carrying the sack of puppets thrown casually over one shoulder as usual, but has it tucked between his legs, almost as if he were ashamed of it.

The next morning, Samuel is called in to see the factory manager.

The last time Samuel dared to cross the threshold of Serwański’s office was when he pleaded for a job for Jakub. On that occasion, he had said he was proud of Jakub, of his skills with hammer and chisel. He had undoubtedly inherited it from his uncle, the well-known puppet-maker Fabian Zajtman.

Neither of them recalls that conversation now.

Serwański clears his throat and proceeds to tell Samuel that he is going to set the exact situation before him. Mr Kutner, whom the Sonder has just taken into custody, is one of his best workers, a very capable engineer, whom he
cannot contemplate losing
under any circumstances.

That leaves the problem of young Mr Jakub and the ‘embarrassment’ his Purim play has caused the other carpentry workers, and if Mr Wajsberg could consider an exchange; if his son Jakub could take Engineer Kutner’s place?

You must try to understand, Mr Wajsberg
, he says, and looks at Samuel as if he really does expect him to understand,
that the authorities are demanding that I make forty strong and healthy workers available for the Labour Reserve in the Central Jail. How can I do without forty men with the hectic production schedule we have now? I don’t know what else I can do.

There is an ache in Samuel Wajsberg’s lung, round the imprint of the boot that once kicked him. He does not know what to say.

But I have already lost one child, Mr Serwański.

(You simply cannot say such things.)

But Serwański has an answer even for what is unspoken:

If you don’t send your son, you will have to take Kutner’s place
yourself, Mr Wajsberg. And besides, you also have that problem with your lung.

Mr Serwański is smiling now; the difficult part is over. He explains that papers will be arriving. There will be no need for any ‘bothersome dismissal’ of Mr Wajsberg. What is more, working conditions in Częstochowa, where the authorities say the workers are to be sent, are supposed to be quite tolerable. And the war will soon be over, at any rate. And then they will all be reunited again, the whole family. Mr Wajsberg can also console himself with the fact that he is not alone. Worker exchanges like these happen all the time.

*

When Chaim was taken from them on one of those hateful
szpera
days, something changed for ever inside Hala.

Jakub’s brother Chaim had been more loved and cherished than most other children, and Hala had always known she had a special bond with him. She alone had been able to get through to that intractable, quiet strength of will which she knew to be hiding behind his seemingly dull and lifeless eyes; and that connection between mother and son was not broken when Chaim was taken from them. On the contrary, it grew even stronger. Every day, Hala believed she knew exactly where her youngest son was, what he was doing and what he was thinking. She could shape her body and soul around his as effortlessly as some people put on a pair of socks or a glove.

But Hala was also a woman of a practical disposition.

The remaining child must be fed, even if there was scarcely any food to be had.

She went to work at the Central Laundry every day, ate her daily
resortka
together with the other women. When new consignments of rations were announced, she would jostle in queues for hours to get what little extra was on offer, a bag of beets perhaps, or half a kilo of
botwinki
they could use for making soup.

But all that time there was also this other world, where she lived with Chaim:

She would sometimes cry when she was thinking about him, and when the crying was at its most intense, it turned into a consuming pain in her breast. Then he would appear to her again. First his eyes, the unwavering grey gaze. From that gaze, his whole, miraculous body would then materialise. The broad, taut neck; the shoulders, already as square as a man’s on a boy of only six; the shoulder blades as straight and sharp as knife blades. Hala touched the boy’s strong, slender body and the moist, soft folds in the armpits, crotch and backs of the knees that were like a part of her own body.

His
body, she soon realised, had never really left hers.

Between the outer and the inner world, between life in the ghetto and her dreams of Chaim, a chasm opened up inside Hala. On the other side of that chasm were Samuel and Jakub. From the side where she and Chaim were, Hala called to Jakub and forbade him from going out with his barrow, even though the barrow was all Jakub had; and that expression on Hala’s face that made her look as if she was calling from the far side of a chasm never changed. Every evening, she held Jakub in a vice-like grip while she scrubbed his urchin’s ragged fingernails to get rid of all the dirt.

Having endured four long years of hunger and misery in the ghetto, Hala Wajsberg knew one thing for certain:

never stand out from the crowd

– If Samuel had not attracted the attention of the German guard at the crossing on Zgierska Street that time, he would never have been kicked in the lung and been crippled for life.

– If Adam Rzepin had not been so stubborn and hidden his sick sister during the curfew, the German officer would not have been driven into such a rage and her beloved Chaim would still have been among them.

– And as for this puppet business, she had always maintained, even in Fabian Zajtman’s lifetime, that a Jew should consider graven images beneath his dignity. A good Jew keeps the Sabbath holy, keeps kosher (if he can) and above all, does not play the clown. Nothing but evil can ever come of blasphemy and idolatry.

She sat ladling the thin beetroot soup out of the pot, and all she could see was the thing that deviated from the norm. On the cloth, either side of his soup plate, lay her son’s hands, rubbed raw and dirty after a whole day in the ghetto; and beside her husband’s hands lay the letter from the Resettlement Commission addressed to
Hr Samuel Wajsberg, Gnesenerstrasse 28, Litzmannstadt Getto
. She could see the address clearly written at the head of the letter. How was it possible for such a loathsome document to have wormed its way into their home?

You’re not reporting to any resettlement commission
, was all she said.

Without a single gesture, but with a kind of ringing fury to every syllable, as if the words she was now pronouncing were the first she had uttered for decades:

You’re not going there, whatever you do you’re not going there . . . we’ll have to hide you!

Samuel had not even considered hiding, even though hundreds of men in the same situation as him were already lying low. The Chairman was threatening reprisals. Women who protected their men had their work permits withdrawn. And everyone in the ghetto knew what that meant. No work equals no food.

Even so, Hala did not hesitate for a second. They had taken her most beloved child from her. She was not going to let them have anyone else. She would rather they took her.

Neither of them was eating now. Neither of them dared to meet Hala’s eyes, either. (If they had, they would have noticed a pale line running below her high cheekbones towards the corners of her mouth, a mask cut as tightly as any worn by Fabian Zajtman’s old puppets.)

There was an old storeroom, previously used for coal, attached to the washhouse in Łagiewnicka Street. Nowadays the coal deliveries came, if they came at all, so sporadically that there was never any need for storage. But Hala still had the key. She took it out of her apron pocket, put it down on the table and stood up.

It would be Jakub’s task to take his father there. As for her, she would go and pack his things. She would also pack enough food to see him through. She said nothing about what food, or where it would come from; but neither of them dared to ask.

One of Fabian Zajtman’s favourite stories was the one about a bear tamer, who went from market place to market place with his dancing bear. The bear tamer had no name, but the bear was called Mikrut. And what was special about this bear, the way Fabian Zajtman told it, was that even when they were walking from town to town, Mikrut did not take his paws from his tamer’s shoulders.

They went journeying from place to place, as inseparable as a tandem.

Jakub felt like that tandem, walking through the ghetto with his father. Up and down they went, up and down familiar streets that the curfew had made utterly alien. Not so long ago, thousands of people had been jostling between the sheds and stalls. Now there was nobody here to jostle at all. Nor any light leaking through the cracks between the blackout curtains. From eight o’clock in the evening, there was a complete blackout in the ghetto.

To stop workers from hiding at their places of work, the Chairman had ordered all the factories to shut and lock their doors at the end of the last shift. The coal store of the Łagiewnicka Street laundry, however, was not in the same building as the laundry, but in the cellar of the building opposite. Jakub unlocked the door with the key Hala had given him. The door was rusty and squeaked alarmingly.