The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (13 page)

‘I thought you should eat well before you go, so you don’t get too drunk and blurt out something.’ She patted me on the shoulder with a motherly gesture. The explanation calmed me a little. Esther lay fast asleep on a stretcher in the corner, her matted hair sticking out from under the sheets like a furry animal.

‘Does she know what will happen?’ I asked.

‘It’s difficult to explain to such a young girl. But I told her yesterday she would have a long refreshing sleep and when she woke up, there’d be lovely people taking care of her. Mika, she just looked at me the way she looked at you when you first met her, then gave me a little nod. I think she understands everything.’ I remembered that afternoon on the ward well.

‘I’ve given her a sedative. But we need to be careful: it has to last as long as possible, in case something goes wrong, but I can’t give her too much as it would poison her tiny body.’

While I ate, the matron picked up a strange contraption from the cupboard. She had constructed a kind of harness to go around my waist in which Esther could lie, her body tightly curled around me, her head leaning slightly against my chest.

‘You need to hand her over as soon as you can – breathing might become difficult for her under that coat.’

There we go, now I might even smother the little girl. Panic rose in me like a flash. Yes, sometimes the soldiers handed me a jug of beer before my puppet show. This would need to be my excuse. The reason for my exit.

I finished the bread and cheese. I knew it would do me good but I couldn’t taste anything, as if the fear had numbed my taste buds.

‘Come now, we need to get ready.’ The matron tied the contraption in place and we carefully folded the softly breathing girl around me. She weighed so little, was light and soft as a puppy. I slowly buttoned up the coat. Maybe I looked slightly bigger, but with the huge coat I really could get away with it.

I prowled around the matron’s office, practised moving naturally with her: I talked, bent down and spun around without any problem. I only needed to make sure she got enough air.

‘Thank you, Mika, you’re a very brave young man, I knew I could rely on you. Now go, it’s getting late.’ She hugged me stiffly, but I knew it came from the heart.

As usual, I met Max at the gate. I arrived a few minutes early and the guard looked at me strangely – a boy turning up at the gate with a suitcase and wearing a large coat was surely suspicious. I would never have dared to come here alone. Max arrived soon after me.

‘What’s with the suitcase, boy?’

‘A surprise; I made a stage and some props.’

Max smiled broadly. ‘Well, this is good because we have a guest today, straight from Germany, an important
Offizier wird uns mit seiner Präsenz erglücken
!’

I didn’t understand what he was saying, but caught enough to know that someone important would be there. I wanted to run back home, this was crazy; the place would be swarming with soldiers, SS and police.

‘Don’t worry,’ Max said, ‘you’ll be great.’ He smiled. If only he had known.

Esther breathed slowly and regularly, her head leaning warmly against my chest, my heart. Maybe this is how it would feel to be a father? Something warm filled me like sweet tea. No, there was no way back, here was Esther and there was a person on the other side who would risk their life to wait in the shadows for me and the girl.

My stomach tightened and I clutched the prince in my pocket, the soft fur of his coat brushing against my palm. He had fired me up and rightly so – I needed to do my bit, not just wait for whatever terrible thing they had planned for us.

I tried to walk even more upright, breathe deeply, and appear confident. Let them think I was putting on a play in honour of the Herr Offizier.

As we crossed to the other side, Max made small talk.
Important to keep him sweet
, I thought, but the effort put a strain on me and gave me a headache.

‘It was my boy’s birthday on Monday. He’s almost your age. His name is Karl. He wants to be an engineer when he grows up.’ I didn’t want to hear about his son’s plans. We didn’t have the luxury of plans – the best we could hope for was to survive the ghetto and this damned war. Was there any future for us? Neither I nor Max knew that evening that only a few weeks later the Allies would bomb his home town Nuremberg. By then his Karl would have other things on his mind than becoming an engineer.

We reached the barracks. As usual it was packed with soldiers and the stench of sweat and beer together with their rough laughter hit me like a wall. Through the dense smoke I could see they had built a small stage for tonight. What if Esther was still with me when I had to perform up there and they noticed her breathing? Then I remembered that this time I had a little stage and props, perfect to hide behind. Besides, all the puppets were now safely tucked into the outside pockets, so I could keep the coat on and wouldn’t need to open it.

‘Ah, there is our little mascot again. Max, you really like that boy, don’t you?’ Ignoring his comrade’s sneering comments, Max ushered me through the main space to a little room at the back.

‘Now that you’re a real performer, I think you need a room to prepare yourself. Relax for a while; somebody will fetch you when it’s your turn. Good luck.’ He lingered for a second as if he wanted to say something else. Then he turned and left.

Stuck in a room where no one was forcing any beer on me, what could I do? Maybe I could steal over to the back exit and, if someone asked, pretend I simply felt sick with nerves, which was not far from the truth.

I opened the door and peeped out. The toilet was back here and no one was watching me. Some soldiers were still putting out more chairs; tonight’s visit had attracted a bigger crowd than usual. Quickly I headed straight for the back door. I made it outside, breathing hard. The moment I looked for the dark shadow by the opposite wall, the door opened.

‘You want a smoke?’ A soldier younger than Max addressed me. I didn’t recognise him.

‘I saw you last week, you’re funny. I like your puppets. I had some myself when I was a boy.’ What was it with these Germans and puppets? Did the puppets bring out their sentimental side? I remembered Grandfather telling me about the German Kasperltheater, the old puppetplay tradition.

‘I think you’re on soon, better get ready.’

I had no choice. I was terrified at the prospect of being so close to the officers with the girl tucked under the coat – my precious, sweet load – but I slid back inside the barracks, rummaged through the suitcase, and for a moment actually thought about the play.

All of a sudden there was a roar of applause. I couldn’t resist and peeped out to have a look.

The soldiers and even the officers had scrambled to their feet, clapping as one, as a man in a black sharply tailored uniform entered. He wore a cap with the SS skull insignia and strutted in with large, stiff steps, while military music blasted from the speakers. Everyone stood up, right arms stretched in a Hitler salute followed by three
Heil Hitler!
s, echoing back and forth between the man and the crowd.

The officer, not particularly tall and probably in his thirties, did not have a face that would stand out in a crowd, he didn’t even have blue eyes, and yet he exuded something that made me shiver. I returned to the little room trembling, as if awaiting my execution. I would die in this Nazi nest.

After what felt like an eternity, someone knocked.

‘Puppet Boy, you’re on next. Five minutes.’

Slowly I took the suitcase and left the room. I stood at the back of the main hall, watching the last minutes of the act before my own: a man in a smart suit and top hat doing a musical number. After moderate applause, the compère for the evening introduced me.

‘And now,
meine Herren, unser Liebling
, the Puppet Boy of the ghetto.’ I cringed but forced my mouth into a broad smile.

I clutched my suitcase and to some applause I set up my new little painted stage in front of the officers, then disappeared behind it. I’d decided on one of the usual Punch and Judy-type shows and was just getting into the swing of it when suddenly Esther stirred. My heart hammered. What if she woke up and cried? My play grew wilder and wilder, and the more I let the puppets scream and fight the more the soldiers laughed. Slowly I sensed Esther’s little body growing still again, slipping back into its sedated sleep.

The play was a success; I scrambled out from behind the set and took a bow. Max came over, pushed me to the edge of the first row, ordered a drink from a buxom waitress and thrust a jug of beer into my hand.

‘
Hier Bursche, fein gemacht
, well done. Now you can relax. Drink slowly.’ It wasn’t usually Max who forced beer on me, but unknowingly he had given me my excuse. I drank half of the beer then, a minute later, I clutched my stomach, bent over and pretended to be about to throw up. The soldiers’ laughter echoed behind me as I ran outside, but no one followed me.

Quickly now.
I scanned the wall, and there I saw it: a shadow, barely visible, a darker patch against the blackness of the wall. I quietly whistled the melody – our secret signal. The reply came immediately. Moving swiftly towards the wall, I made out a slight figure in a long coat – a tall woman. My hands trembled as I unbuttoned my coat, slowly revealing Esther’s wild hair, her tiny body. I unbuckled her and had already taken one of her legs out of the harness when the back door opened and a familiar voice cut through the night.

‘Everything all right there, boy? You were good tonight.’ It was Max.

‘Yes, fine, I’m just having a pee. I feel a bit sick. Don’t worry, I’ll be back inside in a moment.’ I tried to keep a steady voice but I was shaking all over. Esther stirred and I had to hold her with one hand. Although I was standing between the woman and Max, my coat shielding her to some extent, if Max came any closer it would be the end. For all three of us. Max mumbled something then left.

The rest of the evening passed in a haze. As I handed over Esther to the shadow she briefly opened her big eyes and looked dozily at me. Suddenly the place she had occupied against my chest felt empty: where there had been her warmth and her steady breathing I felt nothing but an exhausted emptiness, as if I had lost a part of myself. I cautiously patted her hair, saying a silent goodbye.

‘Thank you.’ The woman’s voice sounded hoarse. How fear takes even our voice away . . . I slowly moved off, then remembered something. Quickly I stepped back towards the wall and caught the woman just before she slipped farther into the shadows. I pulled out a puppet, one of the twin girls with a dress made from my mother’s old apron. I handed it to the woman.

‘Please give this to Esther when she wakes up.’

‘I will, now go.’

I knew that tomorrow she wouldn’t be Esther any more. Not such a Jewish name. She would be called Margaret or Domenica or Ania, tucked in a clean bed by Christian parents.

I rushed back, opened the back door and entered the other world. The atmosphere was heated, the place so smoky and loud I felt dizzy. The compère had just announced a new musical act. I wanted nothing more than to be home, but one of the soldiers from Max’s group, the stocky one with the bright red face, approached me, thumped my back, and thrust another jug of beer into my hand.

‘Here, boy, drink up.’ For the first time I took it gladly, longing for the beer’s power to help me disappear into a fog of nothingness.

I got back late that night. I don’t remember much, except that the suitcase felt heavy, as if it were filled with stones. Had a child climbed inside without my knowing, hiding in its dark embrace? Walking back with Max by my side I couldn’t stop thinking about Esther, the woman with the hoarse voice who had risked her life, and all the other children still in need of rescue. The hugeness of the task hit me like an avalanche. How could we save all the children? Max noticed me struggling with the suitcase.

‘Come, give it to me, I can carry it.’

‘No.’ My voice was sharp. The handle cut into my palm and the side of the suitcase bumped against my legs, but we Jews could not choose much any more and this was one thing I could refuse. I couldn’t bring myself to trust a German’s random act of kindness, even if he had given us some medicine. Even if he had a boy called Karl. He could still shoot me on the spot if he wanted to.

‘As you wish.’ Max’s voice sounded flat. Only papiermâché scenery was packed in the suitcase, along with the puppets, but it felt as heavy as if all the pain of the ghetto were contained inside.

Ellie was waiting for me in the corridor. I could manage only a thin smile before my legs gave way, but she caught me and gave me the biggest of hugs.

‘I knew you could do it. You’re a hero!’ She squeezed me fiercely. She had been afraid for me. Warmth spread inside me and somehow in her arms, in the middle of the night, I found some tears. We sat together until the morning, wrapped in my pocket-coat in an embrace that neither of us wanted to leave.

The next time I visited the children’s hospital, despite the matron’s broad smile, I felt wretched. What was one child when thousands of little ones still lay three to a bed, shivering under their newspaper blankets?

‘Every life counts, Mika,’ Ellie tried to comfort me. ‘What you’re doing is important, I’d love to do what you do.’ But I wished I could swap with Ellie. She had joined a secret group who forged documents so that more of us could pass back and forth to the Aryan side. Although Ellie put herself forward to go too, the group suggested her limp might draw attention and if she had to disguise herself quickly, her leg might give her away. She fumed for days but in the end she decided to stay with the group.

Over the next few weeks the matron carefully picked out more children for me: they had to be small and thin, not older than three years but not too weak. I didn’t envy her job. Two weeks later I smuggled another child, this time a boy called David.

‘He might stand a chance on the Aryan side with his fair complexion, blond hair and green eyes,’ the matron said. I hoped so.

David kicked under my coat despite the sedative so I needed to hand him over before my performance. I sneaked out the back door. All clear. I whistled. With the answer, I stepped into the shadows, unbuckled the harness and handed over little David. That night the boy disappeared into the strong arms of a man. I rushed back inside and started my puppetry. I had been lucky again.