Warsaw (7 page)

It did not happen overnight, although I think the year's
anniversary of his first seeing her had something to do with it perhaps, but
our poet eventually began to turn upon his cruel muse. She was ungrateful, a
snob. She must have known she was hurting him. Bitterness spread throughout his
being like a disease of the blood. She was as vain and as ignorant as her goy
boyfriends. The angel became a whore. His passionate hatred for her - and in
turn of womankind for she was a typical woman - was just as destructive and
unhealthy as his previous amorous obsession. Thankfully there was still a sage
voice inside of the student which knew that he needed to shelve her under his
past. He needed to be indifferent to her, bury her - weaned off her. After a
tortuous month thinking about it, Duritz resigned from his position in the
Goldman household. It was on the day in which he overheard one of her vapid
girlfriends asking Jessica, "So, how was Paul? What was it like?"

Slowly but surely Duritz thought about Jessica less, though
not without the odd relapse. She was achingly beautiful. When his mother died
it was the doctor's daughter who the distraught student wished most to open up
to. Adam even pictured himself breaking down and crying with Jessica wiping the
tears away. He also secretly hoped that Jessica would attend the same
University as him. She might be more mature or appreciative if she saw him
again. Unlike high society, he was master of the academic arena. But from
thinking about her once a day Duritz eventually got it down to dwelling upon
the affair once a month. But unrequited loves are the most memorable. But Adam
eventually ploughed his energies back into his studies. He even managed to have
a couple of girlfriends, although they could never live up to the dream of
Jessica. He could be funny, engaging to women - or a puzzle they wanted to
solve - but ultimately he was a cold fish. Adam would always keep his heart
under lock and key, as if perhaps still waiting for the day when she would open
it. The melancholic was self-absorbed, non-committal. When he had the money, or
was suffering from that particular strain of depression and solitude, he
visited prostitutes. Love, marriage, was but a similar transaction he reasoned
honestly with himself. His father died. Duritz was saddened by his lack of
remorse. He felt bad because he did not feel bad.

The student was perceptive and pessimistic enough to see war
on the horizon. He sold off the bakery and hoarded supplies - which he could
use or sell off at an inflated price - long before the rest of the neighbourhood
prepared for the war and occupation. The drama and viciousness of the quick
fall and ghettoisation of Warsaw surprised the student however. The world
turned upside down. For just helping the man next to him up, when he fell over
in the ice shovelling snow, a soldier struck Duritz across the forehead with a
baton (with nails inserted into it) and scarred his face for life. He was
unable to transfer his provisions to the ghetto so his status of comparative
wealth vanished overnight. Duritz descended into a debilitating depression and
then fever. He did not go to a doctor or hospital for fear of the Germans
disposing of him as being an unfit worker. He paid the money, though he
suspected her of fleecing him, for a washer-woman in the building to take care of
him. His money soon ran out however. She would not take care of him for
nothing.

Where the summer had brought fever, winter brought acute
hypothermia. A sense of serenity came over the depressive however as,
bed-ridden and too weak to resist anymore, Duritz prepared himself
(philosophically, emotionally) for death. He just had to wait for his broken
body to catch up with the resolution. A day after his vow - the certitude of
his fate brought the ironist a certain amount of comfort - there was a knock at
the door. With a heroic effort the malnourished, shivering student answered it.
A spasm of terror, which veritably nearly stopped his heart, first gripped the
Jew. What new misery was being confounded upon him now? They would even wrestle
his peaceful end away from him.

Thomas Abendroth, at first taken back by the Jew's
devitalised appearance, apologised for having disturbed Duritz and introduced
himself. The Corporal said he meant him no harm; indeed it was the opposite for
the German had sought the Jew out, from a recommendation by Rabbi Samuel, so
that the ex-tutor may be of some assistance. The Corporal wanted to learn
Polish. He promised to pay Duritz for his trouble, either in money or
provisions. Those early scenes were a blur now to the policeman. At first the
Corporal nursed the enfeebled Jew back to health. Confused and suspicious
initially of the soldier's generosity Duritz, despite his ego and hatred of the
uniform, grew to be genuinely impressed by the engaging German. He could match
the Jew's intellect and sardonic wit - they even used to play a game in which
they'd trade Shakespeare quotes as a substitute to their own conversation.
Despite Thomas' goodness he was never self-congratulatory. He never judged or
patronised Duritz either, indeed if anything he was too indulgent of the
student's difficult moods. Furthermore he warned Duritz of the dangers and
isolation that might ensue should he go through with his decision to become a
policeman, but the Corporal still kept his promise.

Where once Adam Duritz had thanked the German for saving
him, he eventually grew to curse his name. Their acquaintanceship ended. Duritz
deemed his goodness to be laced with self-righteousness. His generosity was so
formed to paper over the cracks of his guilt he judged. Saving him had
ultimately damned the Jew. Duritz often imagined that if he could turn back the
clock he would not have opened the door to the Good Samaritan. It had been his
will to die. Now he inadvertently killed, against his will. Man is born to
trouble, as the sparks fly upwards.

Sweat soaked his brow and trickled down his cheeks like
tears. His lips were dry and he struggled to swallow. Duritz searched in vain
for a bench on the street where he could catch his breath, take the weight off
his feet. Light-headed. Even Jessica evaporated from his thoughts. He could
feel himself swaying, but yet still could not cessate the sensation. Sounds
swirled. Dizzy. Epilepsy? No. Somebody had put weights upon his eyelids. Legs
heavy, as if filled with molten lead. The wooden handle of the cudgel was damp
in his clammy palm. The harsh sun throbbed upon his forehead. Adam felt a fly
land upon his bottom lip but he couldn't muster the will to brush it off. The
streaming throng before him seem to kaleidoscope in and out of focus. He heard
the distant sound of the cudgel clatter to the ground before he passed out. In
that third state of being, a twilight between consciousness and sleep, Adam
Duritz also thought he caught a familiar voice, presence. Did he recoil or
embrace the commanding apparition? A delirious darkness enveloped him like a
shroud. And all was a blissful, black silence.

6.

Time passes.

Thomas Abendroth did indeed help Duritz home that afternoon.
He had been following the policeman at the time, ruminating upon whether he
should approach his old friend. The Corporal had been taken back by the
frazzled look he had received from Adam in the Umschlagplatz. He was worried
about him - and curious. The incident of Duritz passing out in the street had
forced the soldier's hand however to make contact with his, in some sense,
colleague. Thomas carried the heat-exhausted adolescent back to his building.
With his arm around his shoulder, and his friend unconscious, they looked like
a couple of drunks on their way home. Sweat saturated the Corporal's dirty face
and aching frame as he negotiated the steep stairs of the tenement block. For
his part Adam remained somewhat delirious, muttering fragments of sentences and
falling in and out of consciousness; the whole episode, day, felt fuzzy - as if
the Jew had been plunged into a period of hypnogogic sleep. Thomas found the
key to Adam's room in his damp pockets and he let the pair of them in. He
placed the policeman on his cot, undressed him, made him take in some water and
then let him sleep it off.

Tired and somewhat drained himself Thomas also decided to
take the weight off his feet. He pulled up a chair and kept watch over his
turbulent friend till he came around, dozing off a couple of times himself as
he did so.

"I thought it was you," Duritz stated, either
weakly or lazily.

Maria had once asked her husband to write about his friend
and tutor, the Jew. She even wanted a physical description of this youth who
had affected her husband so. Thomas became quite pensive concerning replying to
his wife but he wrote what came to him and he described Adam as having a cold,
sarcastic manner. Even when he smiled it was a somewhat ironic, twisted smile -
as though he was partly grinning at something else altogether. Feeling a little
guilty at positing this about his friend Thomas was quick to also report to his
wife Adam's good qualities, his intelligence, sense of humour, resilience. And
he was capable of so much. He was Raskolnikov, Thomas had written (hopeful that
his wife had remembered and appreciated the character from a novel he had told
her to read all those years ago). Yet here was that unforgiving, bitter face
before him again, the cheeks and jaw little sharper, the eyes a little blacker,
the expression a little more choleric. Yet why should he forgive? Shouldn't he
be bitter? - Thomas later thought to himself.

"I suppose I should thank you for all you've done for
me? You should congratulate yourself on being a Good Samaritan again. Do you
think that in saving me you will be making up for everyone else you have turned
a blind eye to?" Duritz posed and then gulped down a glass of water that
Thomas had left for him by the bed.

"It appears that I only did what you would have done
for me," Thomas dryly replied, parrying sarcasm with sarcasm.

"Was it concern or curiosity which made you follow
me?"

"Both."

"When I satisfy your curiosity as to how I'm doing,
what I've become, I dare say you won't be so concerned anymore Thomas."

"You never know Adam, I might surprise you."

"I have faith in my doubts - and German is not the
language of the concerned."

"Then I'll feign concern in Polish," Thomas
replied in his friend's tongue, with an attempt of a smile on his lips.
Although Adam too switched into speaking in his native tongue the flint-like
expression on his face remained the same. For Duritz there was just too much
blood under the bridge between the German and Jew. And he just wasn't the same
man that Thomas had known. Adam possessed now - or was possessed by - a dybbuk.

"Polish is the language of the dead and dying. For
every new word you learn each day in Polish, a hundred of her speakers are
silenced. By the time you master the language there will be no one left to have
a conversation with. Rather than you for me, I should be concerned with your
state of mind Thomas if that's your noble aim in life, to learn a dying
language and to talk with dead people," Duritz pronounced.

"As you seem to be getting back to your old self, I'll
take my leave. I have no wish to argue with you Adam."

"It's up to you if you want to go, but I'd be
interested to see whether you would agree or argue with me on a theory I have.
What do you think is the aim of Hitler and Germany in this war? The argument of
"living space" is ridiculous and you know it. My theory is that the
war is a smokescreen to the end of the murder of my people. The genocidal,
psychotic masquerade is not beyond Hitler. The Western Front is but a fence to
keep prying eyes out. The argument for the establishment of the ghetto was
containment. But were we not contained, penned in like livestock, just until
the slaughterhouses could be built? We are just animals to you. Our sense of
humanity has been distorted, erased. I spent half my time as a philosophy
student writing essays on how the concepts of "humanity",
"religion" and "conscience" were just that, concepts and
words. We were really just animals programmed by our biology to survive and
reproduce. We were just apes with more sophisticated voice boxes. Romantic
love, freedom, compassion, God were fictions, cultural constructs, lies. Yet
now I realise that even if they are lies - which they doubtless are - they
should be believed in to counter the machinations, propaganda, of the Hitlers
and Stalins of this world. Of our own bestial voices. If we convince ourselves
we're animals then we're giving ourselves the perfect excuse to behave like
animals. The relationship between the wolf and the sheep should be confined to
the wolf and sheep. I can't help but come to the conclusion though that I don't
know why or how this is happening. I'm just left with a scalding sorrow; a
darkness. I've been infected too. I know, as you do, that I'm contrary and
conceited yet there is a real sense of what I can only describe as dread - that
I am more evil than good. I must be doing something wrong, otherwise I wouldn't
feel guilty. Is it guilt, or folly? I don't know. I even have a new neurosis
Thomas. As well as not being able to look at myself in the mirror I can't even
bear to look at my own shadow nowadays. It's a chilling reminder of my heart -
black, insubstantial, lifeless. I know it's a cliché, melodramatic, but I have
lost my faith. How can one not? - Not that I can claim to have had much faith
before the occupation. But even the embers have died out. I sometimes still
talk to God - I curse his name, call him cruel and blaspheme - out of a
childish hope that he will prove me wrong or strike me down. But am I not more
scared of our guardians in grey who will descend upon me should I not serve
your God, Fuhrer? And so I bow my head and threaten, force and lie to good,
innocent people. I send them to their deaths so that I can preserve my wretched
existence. Yet lately I wake up in the morning fearing the day and desiring to
die painlessly in my sleep, escape. Yet I get up out of fear. And I am selfish,
base. I know that one of the reasons why we stopped talking was that you
suspected that I was abusing my position. You have probably even felt a little
guilty because you helped put me here. Don't. Yet I have taken advantage of
families, mothers, daughters. But no more. But yet why do I even say that? I
know I will."

Duritz expressed all this whilst lying in bed, glaring at
the ceiling. It was as if he had been talking in his sleep, or certainly he
seemed to be addressing himself as much as Thomas. Sweat moistened his
features. Finally, at the end though, Adam's febrile eyes gazed up at his
friend - pleadingly. The soldier's features and heart had already softened.

"Sometimes I don't recognise myself - but yet I also
need to get away from myself, from that place. Sometimes the looks on their
faces pierce, burn. I was there when they took Korczak and the children Thomas.
I even helped. His journal was open upon his desk when I searched his office
for any children who might have been hiding in there. I remember an extract
from it. He wrote, ‘It has been a long time since I blessed this world. I tried
it tonight. It didn't work.’ I remember it, because that's how I sometimes feel
too. When I first dressed myself in my uniform, wearing that black cap over
there with the band around it, I thought even then that I but looked like a
glorified railway porter. How right I was. I'm suffocating at that place. We've
seen things that we're not supposed to see. Dostoyevsky said, ‘Man is a
creature that can get used to anything, and I think that is the best definition
of him.’ I used to believe that, maybe. But now I'm not so sure. I feel like
I'm fraying, frayed. I'm either going to lose my mind or my life soon. I know
that. In a way it even brings me some comfort. That place will be the death of
me either way. I've even extorted out of one of my neighbours, a doctor, a
cyanide pill. Death is the only life changing experience."

Adam's lip curled into a heroic attempt at a wry smile at
the remark.

"If I owned the authority to recommend you for the
police service then maybe I can pull a few strings and get you released from
your position, although I don't want to promise you anything and give any false
hope."

Adam barely registered the final part of his friend's
sentence however for although he promised it not, hope indeed shot through his
heart like adrenaline and cracked his hardened, sickly features. He had once
thought that joining the Jewish Police would be his salvation. Now he knew that
his second-chance could only come from leaving the force.

The next day Thomas Abendroth secured for Duritz two months
temporary leave from his duties. Although the Corporal wasn't on familiar terms
with his SS counterpart, who was supervisor to Adam's brigade, Thomas knew him
to be corrupt - and corruptible. Resolute in his decision not to release the
Jew from the service completely ("it would prove a death sentence for him
in the long run - and more importantly I cannot spare any men") Thomas
nevertheless purchased two month's worth of time and respite for his ailing
friend.

During the following two weeks Adam regained his strength
and refreshed himself through sleep and periods of sober reflection. Thomas
continued to visit him and although there were moments of awkwardness (Adam
still possessed shards of a phlegmatic humour and silences ensued when the
conversation began to move onto things that both preferred not to discuss), the
two men regained something of their former intimacy and affection. In a way
Thomas became Adam's confessor. One day Duritz spoke of his fears of turning
into his father. He was a bully - he used to beat his wife without remorse and
had used his belt on Adam's younger brother to the point of making Joshua run
away from home. The self-absorbed patriarch was also a womaniser and creature
of appetite; not only, Adam suspected, had he raped his mother on occasion when
he was young but so too he knew that he visited prostitutes. He had probably
spent more money on his mistresses and whores over the years than he had on
investing in the business. Adam confessed that when young his father had shaped
him in a way because he vowed to himself that he would be the opposite of the
petty tyrant and ignoramus; he studied hard, developing both his intellect and
a humanist's sensibility. He spent as much time away from the house and bakery
as possible. And when Adam did come home each night he locked himself in his
room and read - and the books provided him with yet another world in which to
escape and prove himself to be the anti-thesis of his father. Yet had not the
sins of the father - despite the best efforts of Shakespeare, Kierkegaard and
Kant - still infected the son? Had there not been moments when Adam had freely
used his cudgel as much as his father had unbuckled his thick leather black
belt? Had he not become a glassy-eyed debaucher and - although too ashamed to
declare this to Thomas - a rapist?

As well as confessing his sins to his sympathetic friend
Adam was also conscious of Thomas acting as a vessel for his thoughts and
history. The Corporal would out-live him. The idea naturally came to Duritz
that, if he could still ingrain his life and philosophies into Thomas, then he
too might live on in a way and continue to tell his story. Adam asked Thomas,
who accepted, to keep hold of copies of some the writings (poems, essays, a
journal) that he had composed when younger and during the fall and occupation
of Warsaw. Duritz, in a strange way, envied the members of the Oneg Shabat - a
secret group (though known to Duritz, albeit he would never have reported
them). They met on the Sabbath to collect memoirs and letters of the people in
the ghetto. He craved their sympathetic company and the act of rebellion.

By the end of the two weeks, Thomas couldn't help but notice
the change in his friend, or patient. His eyes seemed more expressive, free
from sleep deprivation. Adam smiled more. He even laughed on the odd occasion.
His demeanour enlivened - he gesticulated with his hands, looked his friend in
the eye and stooped less. Duritz' mind, as well as his body, became
increasingly animated; diverse thoughts flowed freely and clearly. They
discussed literature. When Adam confessed of his desire to begin to translate
again, Thomas duly provided his friend with the necessary pens, paper and
dictionaries. Feeling like the world was opened up to him once more Adam, at
first, was at pains to finally settle upon choosing a project for himself.
Eventually he decided upon translating a set of Plutarch's essays from English
into Polish. He always liked reading and writing in English, the language was
rich in sensibility, whimsical. A couple of years previous to the occupation,
Adam had composed a paper on how - rather than one being in control of language
and using it as a tool - one's language shaped one's thoughts. He himself
believed he projected a different character, or felt slightly altered,
inhabiting or being inhabited by different languages and dialects. The
nihilistic student produced the syllogism at the close of the essay, published
in one of Warsaw's minor academic journals (under a Christian pseudonym), that
if words have no sovereign meaning - and Man is the sum of his language - then
isn't Man but a sum of meaninglessness? Although still somewhat sarcastic and
resentful Thomas was relieved in that his young friend no longer seemed to be
unhealthily morbid or fatalistic in his humour. He convalesced. Was he
mistaken, but Thomas began to sense that had Adam a burgeoning sense of
consolation in his life? Purpose.