The Train to Warsaw (7 page)

He laid his head back against the marble rim of the tub. We took our orders from the Accountant. King of the Smugglers. In the ghetto only Gancwajch and his Thirteen who were in the pocket of the Gestapo did more smuggling business. In a small basement room where the walls breathed out moisture and rot, the Accountant sat behind a shabby desk, lifted from a deserted Jewish apartment. The top of his desk was nearly empty. There were only boxes of smuggled cigarettes which he smoked one after the other, and a small creased photo of his twin girls who were six.

His eyes, behind thick lenses, were magnified until they looked like the eyes of a cow. But there was nothing bovine about the expression in them. His gaze was hard and unrelenting. He wrote nothing down. He kept it all in his head. Schedules, prices, personnel. He could remember endless lists of figures. The prices of black-market goods changed every hour in the ghetto and the Accountant forgot nothing. A real Jewish brain, added Jascha.

I must know everything that's happening at every moment, the Accountant said to me. What's happening on Our Side, what's happening on The Other Side. What's coming in, what's going out, who's on guard, where the next roundup will take place. I need contacts and informants everywhere. My payroll, he said, includes every kind of scum. Never mind. I need information however I can get it.

Somewhere up above, he told me, there is an Accountant keeping track of everything that goes on here on Earth. Beside Him I am more insignificant than a mayfly. But in this little quarter of the woods, this appalling little section of the globe, I know everything. Nothing escapes my notice.

The Accountant liked me, said Jascha. And one day, when I had been working for him for three months, he gave me an important assignment.

Jascha turned on the hot water tap. The water's getting cold, he said. How long are you planning to stay in there? she asked. He lay back. The water covered his chest and lapped at his neck. Forever, he replied.

Jascha closed his eyes. The moon was rising over the darkened streets of the ghetto, he said. Overhead the night sky was sprinkled with stars. As cold and dead as Their eyes. Well well, I thought, the moon will rise as it has risen for thousands of years and turn its glowing face to the ghetto. What does it care what happens here on Earth? We had gone back to a distant century where there was no light at night but the dim light from the small fires set at the sentry posts against the Wall. As the inhabitants packed eight to a room groaned in their sleep, I would be heading for the cemetery. Not in a casket or thrown onto a wagon heaped with corpses. I would be walking there on my own two legs.

I walked through the silent streets, dark as a medieval village. The streets were black with filth and rubbish, the stench was overwhelming. On the sidewalks, covered in sheets of newspaper, lay bodies who would never see the stars again. I barely saw them. I was immune to them by then. There in the shadow of a half ruined building lay a small child caterwauling like a cat for something to eat. I reached into my pocket and threw him a piece of bread. There was no ­electricity—no light and no heat. And walls all around. I knew my way in the dark. I knew every street, every building, every tunnel, every sewer, every crossing. I walked quickly. I had a rendezvous in the Jewish cemetery.

She took the washcloth from him. Lean forward, she said, and she began to soap his back. You'll need a haircut soon, it's curling over your neck. All right, that's enough, he said and slid down until the water was at his neck and his head rested against the marble rim of the tub.

At the corner of G
e
¸
sia and Okopowa, Avi and Stasik and Jurek joined me. Jurek was nervous, as always, his head twisting on his thin neck. If they don't come? he asked. If they change the guards on us? If the trucks aren't there? Jurek, I said to him, in this world of ours anything can happen. And does. I shouldn't have agreed to come along, he muttered.

Why? I asked him. Because you risk your life? So what? Even if you do nothing, you risk it. What's the difference? Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

We passed through the large brick gates of the ceme­tery. Shards of moonlight fell on the Hebrew lettering of the old stones. The open pits were filled with corpses, waiting for the new arrivals that would surely come. We passed over the uneven ground, careful not to fall in with the rest. And made our way to the Wall we shared with Pow
a
¸
zki, the Catholic cemetery. Half the black market operated over that shared Wall.

It was 10:15 at night. We had agreed on a 10:30 delivery. We were smoking and Jurek once again speaks up. What if they don't come? Stasik says to him: if they don't, they don't. What shall we do? Complain to Berlin? He was driving us crazy, that Jurek.

It was 10:40 when we heard a whistle from the Polish cemetery on the other side of the Wall. All the guards had been paid off. But only the ones on that shift. We had half an hour before the guards changed. It took four of us to set up our wooden ramp, leaning it against the ancient wall. We could hear the sound of their ramp going up, the sound of voices. And then we heard a truck door opening and the lowing of cattle. Well, I said, they're here. And there beneath the light of the moon, twenty-six farting, shitting cows made their way up the Christian ramp and came down the other side on the Jewish ramp. What a deafening noise of hooves. They moaned, they grunted and groaned.

What a sight as they stood framed in the moonlight on their way down. Even Jurek smiled. When the first one came off the ramp Stasik slapped her on the rump. Where's your armband? he growled. Twenty-five cows came over. Then what happens? The twenty-sixth balked. She didn't want to come into the ghetto. Can you blame her? We could hear them swearing in Polish, calling her every name in the book. She wouldn't come.

What a clever cow. They shouted at her, they gave her precious sugar, they did everything but climb on her back. At last I gave a whistle. I was afraid the guards would change. Let it be, I called out. You keep her. But remember, you owe us one. They threw a few packets of cigarettes over the Wall. Shalom, Jewish goniffs, they called out with a laugh. Never mind. We had the cows.

Now we tried to load them onto the trucks. One wandered off and almost fell into one of the open pits. Another started to go back up the ramp. Do I look like a cowherd? What chaos. As we prodded them into the truck, these Aryan cows, I thought, just like the Jews, once in the ghetto you won't get out again. Suddenly I was sorry for them. They too had mothers and fathers, sisters and grandmothers, uncles and aunts.

I rode in back with the cows. Stasik went home. Avi and Jurek sat up front next to the driver. The cows were packed in so tightly they couldn't move. Well, Aryan cows, I said to them. How does it feel to be in the ghetto? Packed together in trucks. Like sardines. Like Jews. They groaned and mooed, their soft mouths wet with slobber. I gathered they weren't too happy to be on the Jewish side. The truck slowed, and in their panic they began to push against each other and against me. I felt squeezed in by warm flanks, and I slapped them and pushed them aside.

The truck entered a courtyard where there was a warehouse. The driver got out and knocked four times and the door was rolled up. We drove downhill and soon came to a halt. The back door opened. We were below ground in a large empty warehouse. There were signs of the previous occupants—cow patties, flattened hay, feeding troughs. Here, underground, men in overalls led the cows down one by one from the truck.

Where are their armbands? cried one. We won't take them without. I looked around me in amazement. I hadn't seen anything like this before. A small emaciated man with tiny black eyes watched me. We milk some of them, we slaughter the rest. Come back tomorrow for some milk. The Accountant has promised a pail of it to a Polish policeman with young children who gives him information.

It was a primitive structure. It looked like a great barn from the previous century. Now it housed twenty-five cows. With relief I took out a cigarette and lit it. Put that out, cried the little man, are you crazy? With all the straw in here and no exit. Do you want twenty-six cows to go up in smoke and me along with them? I put it out and placed it back in my pocket. Twenty-five, I corrected him. The twenty-sixth didn't want to come. I'm wondering, I said, how the hell I get out of here. The man grinned. Take the stairs, he said and pointed to the back. It was two flights up. When I was back on street level, I had to go through several doors until I was shown a small doorway. I knocked twice and went through to an apartment.

A large woman with swollen legs sat knitting in a rocking chair. She asked my name and holding her knitting in one hand, checked me off on a list. Have you got cigarettes for me? she asked and held out her hand. I gave her a few packs along with what we owed her. How many tonight? she wanted to know. Twenty-five, I told her. The twenty-sixth refused to come into the ghetto. Smart cow, she said. Everyone seemed to share that sentiment. The price of milk will go down tomorrow, she said. It's always that way. She went back to her knitting. Don't take Karmelicka Street tonight, she said. They've brought in some tourists.

They shot Avi and Jurek on their way home, he said. A lunar moth lives eight days. The average life­span of a Jew in those days. He lay back and closed his eyes. I've forgotten nothing.

Lilka lifted the carefully folded white bath towel. It's time to get out, she said. You've been in there for ages. Are we in such a hurry? he wanted to know. I remember the first time, said Lilka. She touched his wet curls. You said to me: what are you waiting for? Do you think we live forever? Do you think this parade goes on and on? The days in the ghetto are short and the nights shorter. From one moment to the next you can disappear. So you don't take years to make up your mind. These days a long engagement has lost all meaning, you said. The bride to be could be dead in twenty-four hours. But, said Lilka, I wasn't sure . . . Ha, replied Jascha, splashing his neck. As though I had to talk you into it.

That long ago night in his tiny room in the ghetto, she had rolled toward him and pressed herself against him on the tattered blanket. Here we are in the Garden of Eden, he said. She took one of his dark curls between her fingers. Tell me, she said, what was it like, the Garden of Eden? Ha, he replied. What was it not like? Full of every tree and flower in creation, fruits hung from the trees in their fullness, eternally ripe. Birds sang, butterflies also sang. What happiness. Morning, evening, another day. Time without end. And then Adam extracted a rib and brought forth his misfortune. She pinched him. How can you say such a thing? He gripped her arm. Come here my sweetheart, let me touch your skin, smoother and sweeter than any pear or peach that hung in the garden. Come my angel.

Tell me more, she said, about the Garden of Eden. Why did Adam listen to her? he asked, his hand between her legs. What a madman. She comes up with a crazy scheme and he falls for it. Their skin glistened with moisture, her hair was wet at the temples. She pressed her face into his cheek. Where did they do it? she asked. Where did they do it? They did it everywhere.

The garden was theirs. Adam lay with her on soft ground, open to the sky. He didn't yet know that God saw it all. Did they do everything together? she wanted to know. Everything, he replied. Everything there was to do in this situation. Show me, she whispered. Show me what he did to her in the heat of the day. He took a handful of her damp hair and kissed her mouth. He ran his hand along the curve of her waist. And then he climbed on top of her. I'll show you, he said. I'll show you what they did. Again and again. Until the snake came . . .

It was stifling in that little room, she said now. No air, no light. She dried her hands. But that night we forgot, didn't we, where we were? I was madly in love with you, he said. But I didn't want to show it. It's not good to spoil women. They shouldn't know their power over you. Do you think I couldn't tell? she asked. When we marched to the hospital the next morning, I was in a daze. God forgive me, I didn't see the dead and dying, I even forgot the terrible stench.

Have you been with your smuggler? my mother asked with disdain, and she turned away. What a foolish girl you are. Lilka shrugged. She wanted a Jewish policeman for me. Not a smuggler. The bitch, said Jascha. She understood nothing. Jascha! You mustn't talk about her that way.

The bathroom was filled with steam. It fogged the mirror and floated above the tub and the sink. I can barely see, said Lilka, mopping off her face. It's like a steam bath in here. An old Jewish tradition, he remarked.

In the ghetto, said Lilka, you couldn't survive if you didn't have someone to love. It was the only thing that could save you from despair. Everyone was getting together—old women with younger men, old men with young girls, scholars with former party girls, yeshiva boys with modern girls.

Before the war, said Jascha, two doors away from us was a pharmacy with a hunchbacked woman behind the counter. She was a famous matchmaker. Nearly invisible in the dim recesses of that little shop, she dispensed all kinds of medicine while sizing up her customers. She spoke in a small voice like a bird. Because of her hump she could not look up at customers directly, but had to incline her head slightly. She could read people in a moment. She cross-pollinated the shy with the bold, the plain with the dazzling. She saw something that others did not. It will work very well, she would say whenever her taste was questioned. Let the lion lie down with the lamb, the dove with the coyote, the rabbit with the hawk. You'll see. Golda knows.

Would she have matched us, I wonder? Lilka wanted to know. Never, he replied. You're not my type. And seeing her expression he stroked her cheek. Oh darling, I'm only joking. You're still a beauty, he told her. I'm nearly sixty. Not to me, he replied. For me you're still a young girl.