The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (7 page)

‘Usually a friend of mine, Ellie, helps me. But today she couldn’t come. I really could do with a little help with the puppets, could you do that?’ Big eyes again and then a faint nod. I gave Hannah the monkey and the princess and she tucked them carefully into her clothes.

I found the right house and rang the bell. Number nine Sienna Street. A head popped out of a window above.

‘We’re here for the puppet show.’

The door opened with a click and we slipped in. A man with a smile like a summer’s day greeted us. I felt a sharp pang in my heart, remembering my Tatus. The man led us into a dimly lit living room where some chairs were laid out, all facing in one direction, ready for our show.

I felt awkward without the usual stage, but I draped the coat over two chairs and told Hannah to hide behind it, together with the princess and the monkey.

The room filled, and the cheerful father who had sent the invitation sat down next to his son, the birthday boy of nine, who was right in front of us.

I announced the show, then ducked down behind the coat and whispered to Hannah to start. She reached up and pushed the princess over the edge of the coat, bouncing her up and down as if she were promenading with a spring in her step. The monkey joined her and the two began a game of hide and seek, accompanied by some silly babble. Hannah clearly had talent.

Then, with a loud clatter, one of my favourite sound effects – a pot-lid crashing to the floor – I produced the villain, who abducted the princess, leaving a shrieking Hannah and a jumping monkey. What a tumultuous play it was: one minute it looked as if the prince, the doctor and the fool would win, then the villain took over again; but in the end it was the fool who rescued the princess in front of an enthusiastic audience.

Hannah beamed as she bowed with me, and even more so when the man handed me a small pouch of sugar and a jar of strawberry jam.

We left the house, and when we were out of sight, I carefully rolled back the cellophane and opened the jar. A long-forgotten smell greeted us: sweet and full, a whole happy summer in a jar.

‘Come, Hannah, have a scoop.’

In a flash she transformed once more into the shy girl I had met a few hours earlier.

‘It’s OK, Hannah, you deserve it, you helped me out.’ I smiled at her and held the jar in front of her nose.

She stuck her tiny finger into the jam and left it there for a moment, not quite sure whether to trust this delicious, sticky substance. Was it a trick? Maybe it wasn’t jam at all?

Then she bent her finger, pulled it out and quickly put it into her mouth. She could not hide her pleasure – it was everything it had promised to be.

By now the light had faded; and it was not long until curfew.

‘Let me take you home.’

‘But my brother . . . you promised.’

‘We can look for him on the way.’

I took her tiny hand in mine – it weighed almost nothing, was as light and thin as a bird’s wing – and she guided me swiftly through labyrinthine backstreets until the road opened out in front of a large, three-storey building – a benevolent, whitewashed creature with too many eyes and a large mouth for an entrance.

‘You live here?’

Hannah nodded.

‘Yes, and a lot of other children do too.’ Pride shone in her voice. She let go of my hand, stepped on to the porch and rang the bell. We could hear its sound echo deep inside the house. Quick running steps, then the door was flung open.

‘Hannah! Where have you been? We thought we’d lost you.’

A woman, her flushed face in contrast to her white, starched uniform, a pair of round golden spectacles framing her thin face, scooped Hannah up and lifted her over the threshold. Her delight at seeing Hannah made me smile and she embraced her like a long-lost treasure.

Only then did she notice me.

‘And who are you, young man?’

‘He is a puppet player.’ Hannah was hopping up and down with excitement, her dark curls bouncing. ‘I helped him. He’s called Mika.’

‘What kind of a place is this?’ I asked.

‘It’s an orphanage, dear, and Hannah here is one of our little ones. Would you like to come in? Now that you have brought back our angel we at least owe you some tea.’

And so Margaret, the matron of the orphanage, introduced herself. Very soon a group of children of various sizes, all mouths and tiny hands pulling at my coat, surrounded me.

‘Show us the puppets, we want to see them, please,’ they shouted.

Standing there in the middle of this shrieking audience, I made up a magic show as the puppets had learned some brilliant tricks by this time. From the pockets’ maze I pulled a paper flower, a tiny rabbit I made from the rest of the fur, and the small violin. And for the first time in a very long while, surrounded by this sea of screeching, grabbing children, I felt happy. Hannah giggled and laughed, and when the monkey chased the crocodile she poked her neighbour, saying, ‘That’s my monkey, I played the monkey!’

At the end of the show the children begged me to be allowed to hold the puppets and so I handed them over one by one. All hell broke loose as the puppets were released: stuck on tiny hands they hopped, shrieked, giggled and chased one another; hitting and hugging, clinging together in small crowds, taking off again to find new companions.

As I moved slowly out of the centre of this wild spectacle, I noticed an older man with a neatly trimmed white beard, leaning against the wall in the corner of the hall, smiling. He stepped forward and stretched out his hand to greet me.

‘Hello, my boy, and thank you, what a wonderful performance. The children here have so little but today they have been able to forget everything for a while. I can’t thank you enough. What is your name?’ His voice was deep and warm like a cello and his smile stretched all the way to his eyes.

‘I’m Mika. Children always love the puppets. And who are you, sir?’

‘Janusz – Janusz Korczak. Nice to meet you, Mika. I’ve been looking after the children for some years now but the orphanage has grown so much since they packed us into the ghetto, especially over the last few months. We’re completely full already, but how can we possibly turn away a child who comes knocking on our door? We don’t have enough food to feed all these little mouths.’

His smile faded and I could see how strained he looked. He shook his head.

‘But let me show you around, Mika, so you get an idea of what we are doing here.’

While the children continued to play with the puppets, Janusz led me through the large building. Everything appeared so clean and ordered, it even smelled clean, but my heart dropped with every floor – so many children and so few things to play with. The rooms were packed with simple beds squeezed next to each other and the pictures on the walls were the only spots of colour. A few wooden toys lay scattered among the furniture and there was a small wood burner in the middle of each room. Janusz showed me a classroom: about fifty small wooden desks all crammed into one large space.

‘We make do with whatever we can get. The children are happy here, but they are always hungry and it is getting more and more difficult every day. We have over two hundred little ones now.’

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He seemed tired, worn out.

‘You know, Mika, they still want to learn. I’m sure you do too. They are so curious about life. The Germans have taken everything from us, but we will still teach them and be a family as best we can.’

My throat tightened and tears threatened to force themselves from my eyes. I admired this man. Later he became so famous – Janusz Korczak – but even then I could see what a special person he was. Slowly we made our way back to the entrance hall.

From a distance I watched the crowd of children playing with the puppets. It hit me how desperately thin and pale they all were. And although the children and the puppets animated each other for a short while, lending each other colour and joy, when I began to collect the puppets, the spark and colour disappeared, until it seemed as though I were looking at an old, faded photograph. I had to leave.

‘I’ll come back soon, I promise.’ I hugged Hannah, who clung to me, her little hands grabbing my coat as if it were a lifebuoy at high sea.

‘I promise, Hannah.’

Carefully I loosened her grip and slipped out into the evening, rushing back towards our apartment. I would not make it before curfew. What if I was caught? I wrapped my coat tightly around me, pretending it would make me invisible. But that evening I was lucky and did not encounter any police or soldiers.

I was dying to tell Ellie what had happened, but when I returned she completely ignored me, and kept reading her book. So I ended up with Mother in our bedroom, drinking weak tea as I told her about Janusz and his orphanage, Margaret the matron, and the overcrowded conditions in the small ghetto.

She listened with an occasional sigh.

‘I’m proud of you, Mika. You made them happy for a while.’ She looked away and I heard a muffled sob. ‘Your father would’ve been so proud.’

‘Proud of what?’ A huge wave of helpless anger rose in me like boiling water. ‘Performing a few tricks with papier-mâché puppets while thousands slowly starve? What is there to be proud of?’

I stormed out and hid in the corner of the workshop. Mother’s praise made it all the worse. We had just about enough to keep us alive with the extra rations that the puppets earned, and even then we were hungry all the time. But what about all the people I had seen that day on the streets? What about the orphans? What good could my silly puppets do them? And Ellie? What was the matter with her? Had she stopped caring? I flung the coat away from me and buried my head in my elbows. I missed Grandfather, and yes, I missed my father, a strong male presence who would absolve me from this new responsibility that hung like a lead weight on my back and chest. I needed someone else to take over, or at least tell me what to do.

I lay down on the floor and stared at the ceiling, keeping my eyes open to hold back the tears. Suddenly a flash of colour caught my eye where the coat was heaped like a shot animal. The prince. I got up slowly and slipped my hand underneath the fabric.

‘So you want to give up?’ The prince’s fine, silvery voice startled me.

‘Well, it’s no use, is it? You puppets can’t feed these children or get us out of here, all you can do is make them forget their misery for a while.’

‘But you know that’s not true. It’s precious what you do. Didn’t you see, they actually laughed?’

‘True, but what use is laughter? You can’t bite off a piece of laughter and eat it, can you? Maybe we should fight, get some guns and shoot them all: the soldiers, the corrupt police. We are slowly starving to death here and they simply watch us, they don’t even need to do anything else. And you know what they did to Grandfather. So what if I make us forget all this for a while? Maybe that’s not a good thing after all, maybe it would be better if I told everyone to take up weapons, do something instead?’

‘Well, I never said you couldn’t!’

‘What did you say?’ A pause.

‘I never said you couldn’t tell them to fight.’ And with that, the prince bowed and stopped talking.

I was in shock. Where did all that come from? I had heard murmurs about people, fighters hiding in the woods, blowing up railway tracks, shooting soldiers and informers. People who risked their lives: forging papers, smuggling others out of the ghetto and hiding them on the Aryan side, right in the lion’s den. There were rumours too that some people in the ghetto were gathering weapons for an even greater fight.

I looked at the prince with his innocent smile, then dragged myself back to our bedroom. I lay awake, too excited and terrified to give myself over to sleep. Mother was still with Cara and Ellie in the kitchen, and when she came to bed I pretended to be asleep.

‘Sleep well, my prince.’ Her hand stroked my face, light as a feather. Little did she know what a can of worms this prince had just opened. I wanted to sling my arms around her neck and tell her everything, but I didn’t move.

That night images passed in front of my eyes like clouds flying across a stormy sky. There I was, shooting a pistol from a hiding place, aiming perfectly, policemen and soldiers falling like tin cans at a funfair. Applause all around me, thundering like hail. But then, as I bowed, black fur, snouts and claws surrounded me: the soldiers had morphed into giant rats, their small ears sticking out from under large iron helmets. Scurrying up the staircase, they kicked down the door to our flat, dragged me outside and ripped my coat to shreds with their long claws. Then they beat me to a pulp, leaving me to die on the cobbled streets of the ghetto.

All night my mind wandered between these scenarios, hero and victim, as I slipped in and out of a light sleep.

By the time the subtle grey of morning illuminated our room, I was completely worn out, but also changed. I glanced at Mother, who was still asleep, sheltered for a short while from all the worry and fear.

There was such tenderness in her face and she seemed so young. She meant so much to me and I had hardly paid her any attention in all these months, yet it was Mother who held everything together. It was she who managed to put a pot of soup on the table each day and kept our clothes as clean as they could be. She kept my spirit from freezing over so my heart wouldn’t become like the frozen lakes in Krasinski Park. We used to skate on those lakes not so long ago. Right there on the other side of the wall lay Krasinksi Park with its lakes and amusements – unreachable for us now.

Mother was gentle, but also very brave – she had soldiered on with a broken heart after Father died, never complaining. And she had risked her life to honour Grandfather’s last wish – that I should have the coat. I pulled the prince from the coat’s pocket and put the colourful puppet with its rabbit-fur trim next to her face so it would be the first thing she saw when she woke.

Later that day I found the prince back in my pocket with a note wrapped around it.

‘Thank you, my dear; I will always cherish you, my prince.’

After that night of restlessness and visions I realised just how much the puppets infused me with energy, purpose and even morsels of joy – gold nuggets in the dark chaos of the ghetto. From that day I didn’t go out without my coat and the puppets and slowly a plan grew in me like a seed germinating in the dark, a seed that instinctively knows that some day it will break through into the sun and grow to its true size.