The Emperor of Lies (53 page)

They had been told the authorities would send a car to take them to the station, but still no car had turned up. While everyone in Miarki Street including Miss Fuchs and her brother sat there on the furniture they had carried out, Staszek climbed up into the cherry tree, in the crown of which Mr Tausendgeld had hidden Princess Helena’s money the day before the Palace fell. Now Helena Rumkowska is insisting the money be brought down again. Uncle Józef has propped a ladder against the tree trunk, but even the top rung of the ladder is not high enough for him to be able to reach into the crown itself. The only person who could reach that far into the huge tree was Mr Tausendgeld with his by then legendary right arm; and having been roundly scolded for his incompetence, Józef Rumkowski has returned to the ghetto to find a pole or a fishing net or some other long, thin object, so the money can be retrieved before they leave. But while they are waiting, who should climb up into the cherry tree if not Princess Helena’s own
líbling
, her
Stasiek
, her
Stasiulek
? He climbs like a child, his grazed, red-raw knees sticking out and his thighs clamped tight around the trunk, and is soon aware of the delightful friction of his member against the rough bark.

In the very top of the crown of the cherry tree, beneath the leafy patchwork, dangle the bags of Reichsmarks hung there by Mr Tausendgeld. The bags look the same as his face once did, as if they have been sewn together both from top to bottom and from edge to edge. When Staszek squeezes one of the bags, he can feel something moving in there like a chewing jaw. Way below, under the blotches of leaf where the sweet fruit hung, everything they have brought from their homes in Miarki and Okopowa Street stands waiting for transport. Beds and dining tables, chaises longues and chests of drawers; the Chairman’s ‘private’ escritoire, and Princess Helena’s
credence
(but without its glassware and sets of china – Józef Rumkowski has had to pack those) and her birdcages, those she still has, full of chattering winged creatures shuffling around and clinging on to basketwork sides and cage roofs.

Beyond the canopy of leaves, the ghetto spreads away. Clusters of low buildings and wooden shacks, with the occasional taller building sticking up like a crooked tooth. If Staszek reaches out his hand, he can grab the whole ghetto and turn it round in a single movement. He spreads his fingers wide, and in the middle of the ghetto – in the middle of his own palm – his father stands waiting.

The father, too, is waiting for the promised transport.

It was promised for three o’clock at Bałuty Square, and it is now
past
three, and Rumkowski has long since lost patience and gone out onto the square to keep a lookout for the vehicle. As at his Miarki Street home, the furniture and filing cabinets that he has previously selected as absolutely indispensable have been brought out. This is the last transport. He is alone in the row of barrack offices. Not even the employees of the German ghetto administration are still there.

He is alone, and the sky above him is so wide and desolate that he feels he could plunge down into it, as if into a well.

Several times in recent nights, he has been dreaming of plunging into the sky like that, and every time he has then found himself lying in an open place like this. It is dark, and all around in the darkness were the remains of human bodies, chopped to pieces. Black birds come out of the darkness to settle on the corpses. Sometimes they come so close that he can hear the rustle of their soft wings against the stitches in his face, still painful. And as he lies there shackled to the ground in this holy place, they come to cut him up too, and take him to pieces. And he understands at that moment that if he has been captive, it has never been because he was shut in, mankind is by nature shut in; nor because it has been dark around him, it is always dark around us; but because in this way he has been continually separated from what was rightly his.

The insight had brought him relief, a moment of growing clarity in the darkness that was still turbulent with the wingbeats of the great birds.

Lord, of what have you pieced me together –

that I may not recognise myself even in my own image?

Just as he thinks this, the transport arrives. It is the big carriage, the hearse that was once built to deal more efficiently with transporting the dead, with no fewer than thirty-six different compartments and sections on a single chassis (most of them
sliding, like desk drawers or oven shelves). It is not Meir Klamm up on the box, however, but Amtsleiter Biebow;
and he sees at that instant how huge the hearse is; its roof is taller than any one of the collapsing buildings around the square.

Are you coming or not? The very last transport will be leaving shortly . . . !
calls Biebow from up on the box, and the men he has with him from the clean-up commando have already started loading chairs, desks and cabinets. While up in the tree, the great cherry tree where the gifts of money to the Eldest of the Jews hang like big, black fruits, the Child windmills its arms to signal to all those waiting below:

OUR TRANSPORT . . . !

OUR TRANSPORT’S COMING . . . !

*

Regina is aghast.
I’m not travelling in that thing
, she says, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushing with shame.

But she has to, of course. What choice do they have?

Staszek sits in the rear, leaning back against all the trunks and cases stacked behind the driver’s seat and watching the ghetto disappear into the hot, dry cloud of dust stirred up by the carriage wheels. Empty buildings against a meaningless sky. Streets that are not streets any more, just cleared routes for easier access to tucked-away sheds or outhouses. A coal depot, its security fence ripped down and set on fire; rows of chicken coops with broken bars; a pump with no handle.

The banks of the sewage-oozing ditches are strewn with things people have dropped or abandoned. Everything from kitchen equipment, blankets and mattresses to suitcases that burst open as they hit the ground, disgorging their contents of threadbare clothes and worn-out shoes.

Every so often, they come across files or small knots of people. Most are on their way from the assembly point at the jail, and marching up to five abreast with a local guard about ten metres from each group. The guard yells the occasional order, but the people give no sign of having heard. Only once the big carriage has overtaken the marchers, slowly and with much creaking of its warped wheels, do they stop and stare. From his lofty vantage point, Staszek can see their gaunt faces slipping by without so much as a smile or a hand raised in greeting.

Radogoszcz is jammed with people. People are sitting or standing outside the warehouses in the goods yard with piles of luggage. Irascible German guards move constantly among the waiting crowd, swinging their rifle butts to make anyone sitting down stand up again.

An officer sees their vehicle arriving and shouts an order. The barked command also draws the attention of the station commanders and the goods-yard workers several hundred metres away with their stacks of timber and stocks of metal. A sudden whisper seems to run through the crowd, subdued at first, then rising in volume:

The Praeses is coming . . . ! Praeses . . . ! Praeses . . . !

Staszek sees the faces open wide in amazement as the hearse passes. No one expected to see the Praeses of the ghetto here, and certainly not in a conveyance like that! But he
is
here. Staszek thinks of the document his father once carefully got out to show him, telling him it had been signed by
Bradfisch personally
. He solemnly indicated all the official stamps. This document, he explained, would grant them safe conduct wherever they wished to go.

‘So don’t be afraid, Staszek . . . !’

But Staszek is not afraid. It is the Chairman who is afraid. From the top of his luggage mountain, Staszek can see him repeatedly patting his jacket pocket to check all the documents are still there.

The carriage has stopped at the far end of the track, where the platform would have ended if there had been a platform. In fact there is just a little shed with an overhanging roof where the freight supervisors generally gather when the big goods transports come in. The train is already in, and Dora Fuchs and her brother Bernhard are waiting by one of the open wagon doors, as if unsure about getting on board. An open lorry with a tarpaulin canopy has been driven up to the carriage, and all the party’s luggage is on the ground beside it, including a few of the wooden and cane cages Princess Helena keeps her birds in.

As the Chairman arrives, Princess Helena seems to awake from some kind of trance.
They promised us a transport of our own
, she says accusingly,
and now they insist we get on one of these . . . !

Her husband is standing beside her. He has a look of confusion on his face, as if incapable of collecting his thoughts around a single word. But there is no need for him to say anything. The soldiers on guard suddenly click their heels to a muted
Heil Hitler
as Biebow squeezes to the front of the crowd.

He has both his colleagues with him, Ribbe and Schwind; all three look guiltily amused, as if they were not in a goods yard but at some obscene fairground.

But Biebow’s step and tone are determined.

Biebow
: So it’s time to go, then.

Chairman
: But it was agreed we would have our own transport.

Biebow
: This is the transport.

Chairman
(digging in the inside pocket of his jacket): But it was agreed . . . ?

Biebow
: I don’t know what agreement you are talking about. There is a transport leaving Litzmannstadt now, and this is it.

The Chairman stands there, holding out the letter, with an air at that moment of almost schoolboyish innocence. But when Biebow continues to ignore it, the surprise in the Chairman’s face slowly gives way to dismay. Something is happening in direct contravention of anything he could have conceived. In his awkward and inadequate way, he does what he can to retrieve the situation.

‘If we could at least have our own carriage . . .’ he says, carefully folding the document back up again; and Biebow changes tone, as if on command:
Why yes, of course!
he says, gesturing to the men with him, who in their turn gesture to the soldiers on guard to accompany them into the wagon.

Agitated voices are soon heard from inside, and out come a bunch of elderly men who have apparently been in the wagon all the time. They look at Rumkowski with reproach and then start hauling their trunks and bundles of sheets along the train, heading for wagons further down, into which deportees are swarming by the hundred.

Dora Fuchs vanishes into the wagon to inspect it. She emerges with a look of vague distaste, but shrugs her shoulders. A group of goods-yard workers is ordered by the German guards to load the party’s luggage, and begins to do so. Some SS officers come past. They, too, have that furtive, slightly embarrassed smile on their lips, as if they were watching some kind of fairground attraction.

Staszek is one of the first to climb aboard. The wagon is a standard luggage van, divided in half by a solid partition wall. There is sawdust on the floor.

‘I apologise for the perhaps slightly primitive conditions, but you will be able to change to a more comfortable carriage in due course,’ says Biebow. But he does not raise his head to look them in the eye as he says it. The Chairman, too, has now realised that the promise he was given is worthless. He goes out after Biebow and makes one more attempt to show him the letter signed by Bradfisch. But Biebow will not so much as glance at the document this time, either.

Looking out of the wagon window, Staszek sees a big cluster of workers, all in ragged trousers far too big for them, approaching at a smart pace, driven on by Jewish policemen with their batons raised. At the front of the hurrying group are several of the men previously ejected from the compartment. German guards approach, and with much shouting and waving of arms, a mass of people is squashed in through the door of Rumkowski’s wagon.

Inside, Rumkowski and his brother get to their feet to protest, but before they can take more than a couple of steps they are forced back by the pressure of the crowd. The last ones aboard have to hang on to the backs of those ahead of them to avoid falling back onto the ground, where the Jewish policemen are using hands, elbows and batons to keep them all squashed inside. From the wagon comes a loud clatter as the toilet bucket in the corner is knocked over and kicked aside. Then a reedy voice shouts:

Let me out, let me out . . . !

It is the Chairman, determined to get to the door at any cost. But there are maybe a hundred starving, desperate, screaming, weeping men and women in his way; they could not have let him through, even if they wanted to.

Staszek is still by the window. Outside he can see a couple of goods-yard workers walking along the track. One of them has a shovel, and his eyes are fixed on the ground in front of his feet, as if he is looking for something he has dropped. Behind the man with the shovel, the scenery begins to slip slowly backwards, almost as if it were that – the scenery – and not the wagon starting to move. He turns away, to the darkness and crush of the wagon interior.

Seeing in the Dark

(August 1944–January 1945)

Søren Kierkegaard

A thin sliver of light: that is all he has to go by.

When the sliver of light is gone, it is night. When the sliver of light returns, it is day.

The sliver of light is a luminous top step, floating elusively above the rough angles of the worn steps leading up out of the earth cellar.

Earth cellar may be the wrong name for it. Back in the days when Feldman had his nursery business, he used it as a place for keeping bulbs and seeds and other things that need protection from light and heat. But it is so cramped down here that he feels more as if he has been pushed down a well. He can hardly get his shoulders through the opening. It is impossible to sit or lie down. He has to stand, or slump with his hip or hindquarters pressed against the earth wall. Right at the bottom – there are four steps, each about half a metre in depth – the cellar-well ends in a narrow chamber just over a metre long and about half the height. That is where he opens his bowels. It is so shallow that he has to do this lying on one side with his face towards the shaft and the lower part of his body forced as far into the hole as it will possibly go. His motions are soft and warm and run down the inside of his thigh, and he has nothing to wipe himself with but some dry grass he took down there with him.

And even though it is unbearable, he has to bear it.

From this moment on, you’re dead, Feldman said before he slid across the heavy wooden cover that constitutes the roof of the earth cellar.

Feldman promised to bring him food whenever he could. That is: whenever the clean-up unit he belonged to was sent out to Marysin. It would be easier to slip away then. He might be able to, he might not. Nobody knew. But if he could hit on some excuse for coming to the earth cellar, he would knock three times on the cover. That would be the signal telling Adam there was food waiting outside for him.

Before he left, he handed over what little he could spare:

A bit of bread, two shrivelled onions, a head of cabbage that had already started rotting from the centre.

At least Adam was not cold. A little of the lingering heat of late summer found its way down into the dark, earth shaft, and he knew that even if some length of time passed, the soil would carry on keeping him warm.