The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (14 page)

But even after Esther, David, Abigail, Jeremias, Adam, Zach, Chana, Joshua and a few other little ones, smuggling the children never got any easier. I still woke up on the day of a planned mission as if heavy stones were sewn into my stomach. In fact each time it got harder. So far I had been lucky, but when would my luck run out?

One day, although I had no child with me then, I was particularly dreading my time with the rats – I had felt nauseous all day – some of the beets we’d eaten had been mouldy and Mama reckoned they’d given me a stomach ache. It had become a regular joke for the rats to get me drunk and then order me to perform another show in that state. That night, just after I stepped off the small stage, one of the soldiers thrust a huge glass of bitter liquid into my hands.

‘
Los, mach schon, schnell, runter damit
, drink it down,’ he growled.

‘I can’t, not today, please,’ I pleaded.

He smacked my head hard and for a moment I lost my balance.

‘
Lass ihn in Ruhe, Mann!
’ I heard Max’s voice. ‘
Komm, gib mir das Glass
.’

Max took the glass out of my hand and pushed me though the crowd towards the back of the room.

‘
Ah, der Judenfreund! Willst ihn mit ins Bett nehmen?
’ A red-faced soldier sneered at Max, but Max refused to look at him. He took me to the storeroom in which I usually waited for my performances.

‘Wait here till I call you.’ Why would he do this? I didn’t trust Max, but was grateful for the gesture.

Only Ellie’s gentle praise and her embrace stopped me shaking after such a night. But how strange and tragic that my first romance was mixed up with such horror. So much terror and fear, for my life, for all our lives, and yet here stood my first love in the middle of the ghetto.

At night one dream plagued me over and over again in my fitful sleep: I stood in the black shadow of the wall, about to hand over a tiny child, when a dark, icy hand reached down from above, snatched my precious load and disappeared into the dark with a high-pitched screech. All I could hear was the child’s screams and then laughter; blood-curdling, diabolical laughter. I’d wake up drenched in sweat, longing for Ellie.

And so my double life continued. Max had become more chatty with each visit, telling me about his son and his home town, but I didn’t take the bait, hardly listened. What did I care about his life?

During the rest of the week I went to the orphanage, the hospital, put on shows for the lines at the soup kitchens or on street corners. Ellie and the puppets and the children prevented my despair from taking over and I was grateful. Months passed with this fragile routine. Then at the height of summer, the evil shadow that had hung over us unleashed its full force.

T
he last time Max accompanied me to the barracks was in July 1942. I had just finished my puppet show to a beer-fuelled audience when a fat officer with pasty skin grabbed me from behind. His sausage fingers dug into me, both hands holding me by my coat, turning me, then yanking me squarely in front of his enormous body. The uniform didn’t flatter him and only the thick leather belt kept his barrel belly from spilling over. When he opened his mouth, the foul stench made me gag.

‘
Setz dich
, sit next to me, boy.’ His voice was rough and sharp, leaving no doubt that this was an order and not an invitation. He took off his cap and put it on his lap, the SS runes and silver skull glinting in the dull light. Gathering my coat as closely around me as I could, I sat down next to one of Hitler’s elite. I had no child with me that evening, which was a wild stroke of luck, considering what would follow.

‘
Hier Bursche
, drink.’ I gulped the beer down, disgusted by the officer’s hideous mass next to me.

‘Enjoy, my boy,’ he whispered, leaning over me. I retched at the rancid smell of his sweat. ‘Move and I’ll cut your throat,’ his voice hissed in my ear. I sat paralysed as if there were a deadly spider in my lap. Inside I was screaming. He put his hand on my thigh and slowly moved it farther up towards my crotch while a new performance, a woman singing raunchy cabaret songs, began in front of us. It was dark in the audience and no one seemed to notice. I felt sick to the core and wanted nothing but to run, crawl into bed and listen to my mother’s breathing, or lie safe in Ellie’s arms.

Time dragged, then stopped completely. When he finally took his hand off me I felt dirty and so ashamed. Once I got back to our apartment, although I had longed for Ellie, I pushed her away. I didn’t want to cry, didn’t want her to know. Not then, or ever.

Max had been friendlier than ever before that evening. On the way back to the
Wache
, I had noticed a strange expression on his face; was it sadness, awkwardness or even pain? He stopped near the
Wache
, just before the guards could see us. He gave me a bigger than usual rye bread, a piece of cheese and a glass of strawberry jam. Then he looked at me with this strange expression, really looked at me.

‘Mika, I would like one of your puppets. When I get home I want to give it to my boy and tell him about you. He is a bit younger than you. Give me the prince and I’ll give you another loaf of bread.’ For once this sounded more like a request than an order, his voice softer than usual. But it left me cold. His boy could die, for all I cared. My prince? No, the prince belonged to my mother and me, to our family. The prince gave me the courage I needed – I would never let him go.

‘Any other puppet, but not the prince,’ I pleaded.

Max’s face changed as if a shadow had fallen over it. A nerve-racking pause followed.

‘Give me the doctor, then, that is how it started after all.’ His voice had returned to giving orders. So, the doctor would be sacrificed. I pulled the doctor out of my pocket. His glasses were slightly twisted; I took them and bent them back into a nice round shape. Then I handed the doctor over to Max.

A strange sense that we were saying goodbye stirred in my guts.

‘Thank you.’ Max took the puppet and put it in his jacket. The doctor, with his white uniform and golden spectacles, disappeared without a word.

‘Take care, boy; I won’t be coming any more now. Good luck.’ With this he abruptly turned on his heels and strode back to the Aryan side. I stood, stunned and shaken. Was my ordeal over? And if so, what about the children?

I
understood the following day. For when Max asked me about the prince, that was the very night before the deportations started.

I woke on the morning of 22 July 1942 with a headache, as if the Germans were once again rolling their heavy tanks into Warsaw, this time right across my head. I sat up and shook myself. Looking at my outstretched legs under the covers, I remembered last night’s nightmare: the officer’s fleshy hand creeping like a huge spider up my leg. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a few deep breaths. Somebody had once told me that if you are facing a dangerous animal, never show your fear and just keep breathing. As I counted my breaths, listening, I realised what had woken me: our neighbourhood echoed with screams and the rats’ dreaded shouting.

‘
Raus, raus. Alle Juden raus. Schnell, schnell, macht schon.
’ Their orders were followed by a terrible thumping noise. Boots breaking open doors.

I sat without moving, cold to the core. I glanced at Mother; her eyes were open but she didn’t look at me.

‘They’re coming for us, Mika.’ Mama’s jaw trembled and her voice was faint. I knew in that awful moment that I did not want to meet any of the rats in my pyjamas, and I certainly didn’t want to die in bed. We had heard of old and sick people, men and women, mothers with their infants or those too weak to get up, shot right on the spot in the tepid warmth of their own beds.

‘Let’s get up, Mama. Quick! Don’t just lie there. Let’s get everyone together.’

I jumped out of bed as if something had bitten me. Mother said nothing but moved her legs slowly out of bed.

We gathered everyone in the kitchen: Ellie and Cara, the parents with the baby, the twins, Mother and me. The baby, as if she knew what was about to come, screamed her heart out, inconsolable, while the twins sat in the corner, quiet and pale, as if all the mischief had been knocked out of their little bodies.

I moved my chair closer to Ellie. Although we hardly spoke her presence comforted me. I belonged here, right next to her, more than anywhere else.

Mama made tea for everyone. As if it were a final, sacred ritual, she brewed the richest tea we had had since they locked us into the ghetto, adding the last precious tea leaves to her pot. Then, from the farthest corner of one drawer, she took out a small pouch, opened it and let the precious white substance trickle into the liquid, then stirred it gently.

‘We might as well have our last tea sweet and remember the sweetness of life.’

I felt so proud of Mama. We drank the steaming tea in silence, our hands cupped around the precious liquid, waiting for the dreaded sound: screeching tyres, boots, the pounding on our door.

Suddenly I felt something move in my pocket. No more than a mouse’s wiggle, but worrying still. It was the prince, writhing and moving. With a swift gesture he jumped out of the pocket and on to my hand.

‘People of Gęsia Street, do not despair. I am your prince and I tell you, have courage.’

Everyone stared wide-eyed at the prince on my hand.

‘Don’t be fooled, this may not be the end. We will not be defeated!’

With this the prince disappeared again. Nobody said anything but I could see a small smile on Ellie’s face, enough to warm my heart.

Our little community did stay safe that day. The trucks moved on and by the afternoon it was quiet again. But despite the prince’s fiery words, we lived in continual fear from that day onwards. Over the next few days and weeks the Germans swarmed through the ghetto like a cloud of locusts, at all times of day and night, spreading terror like wildfire.

Strange, but fear actually has a taste: like blood, sharp, iron and bitter. Now, whatever I ate tasted of fear.

I worried about all the children, but Mother did not want me to leave the flat and Ellie had not been allowed out for a long time.

One afternoon I was sitting alone with Mother in our room. She got up, came over to me, held me by my shoulders and looked directly at me.

‘We need to stay together at all costs, Mika. You’re everything I have. We can hide this one out.’ I felt her fear and her fierce love. I couldn’t breathe and shook myself free.

‘What do you mean, hide? There are too many of us.’

And what about the children in the hospital and the orphanage? How could Janusz hide his two hundred charges? As far as I was concerned we were all in the same stinking boat, the same rotten ark. What difference would it make to try and hide?

When I looked at Mother again, it was as if a flame had been extinguished. I understood with a sharp ache that she was thinking only of me and her.

‘I’m sorry, Mama, but there are nine of us. This is our family now. How can we hide without an attic, with no fake walls? And with a baby that could give us away at any moment? Do you want to kill her off first?’

‘I know, dear.’ The defeated look on her face went through my heart. ‘I’m sorry.’

We had run out of options so we simply stayed quiet and waited, listening out for the trucks. There was no other plan. Going out was too dangerous. They could round you up and shoot you any time they saw you on the street. We heard shooting and screams near by. Reports reached us from neighbours: no one was safe, people were being shot for asking a simple question, for hesitating a moment too long, for being too slow or too quick in getting into the trucks. Some were shot for being too old, too young, or just for having a beard.

One early morning our neighbour Johana pounded at our door.

‘They’re taking everyone away. If they find you they’ll shoot you all.’ She spat out the words like bullets.

‘They’ve put up posters; if we come voluntarily they will hand us three loaves of bread and some jam. They say they will resettle us in the East, give us work there. I think we should go.’

We had heard they would either shoot you straight away or herd you to the ‘
Umschlagplatz
’, a dirty square surrounded by wire at the north-western edge of the ghetto from which trains departed towards the East – cattle trains. But what did this mean? Like aching bones that know when bad weather is approaching, I felt that this could be worse than anything we had ever known.

‘No, we stay.’ It was the first time I spoke for all the family. As I held the prince in my pocket, my voice sounded determined and clear. We were staying.

Many others ignored the bad feeling, clinging to the hope of a different, better place, and reported to the
Umschlag
, lured by the promise of bread and jam. Such was the price of our lives now: three loaves of bread and a glass of strawberry jam.

For a week we holed up inside, all nine of us, waiting like trapped animals. Ellie and I spent a lot of time in our workshop – being around her and the puppets kept me from slipping into complete despair. But we were so hungry all the time! We had shared every last bit of bread and now the soups got thinner and thinner.

One evening all of us huddled together around the kitchen table, a single candle casting warped shadows on the walls. Suddenly Ellie’s hand gently touched my arm and her deep voice interrupted the tense silence.

‘Let’s play something, Mika!’ I was not in the mood to present yet another stupid story we had made up. Now that I had put on plays for the Nazis, I couldn’t reach that precious place of joy and innocent fun any more. As if being around the officers had stolen the puppets’ shine, drained them of life and meaning, everything felt stale and false. Still, I fetched the prince from my pocket and he immediately spoke.

‘How about tonight we tell a story together?’ No one answered, but all eyes were on the puppet.

‘A long, long time ago in a faraway place, a boy was born on a stormy April night. When he took his first breath among thunder and lightning, his parents called him Tempest.’ With this I took the prince from my hand and passed him to Ellie.