The Emperor of Lies (14 page)

Shrayt yidn, shrayt aroyf

Shrayt
hekher ahin dort;

Vekt ir
dem altn oyf –

Vos
shloft er kloymersht dort?

Vemen
vil er gor gevinen?

Vos
zaynen mir – a flig?

Loz er
undz a zkhus gefinen

Oy, es
zol shoin zain genuk
⁵

When Rosa Smoleńska went over the whole
scene in her mind afterwards, it seemed to her as though the bell on the wall
outside the kitchen had jangled all evening, and she had gone up to the piano
tuner several times during the performance and asked him to please turn off the
racket, and in future keep his hands off things that did not belong to him.

But perhaps the angry, jangling rings
had not, apart from that first and only time, been the piano tuner’s work.
Perhaps it was just as Miss Estera Daum later said: the Chairman’s staff had
been trying to get through to the Green House all evening, but received no
answer. Their last attempt had been long after midnight. By then, Rosa had
finally managed to get the sweaty, overexcited children out of their costumes
and into bed, and even had time to go to bed herself.

Riiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiing . . . !

went the peremptory signal again.

She heard Superintendent Rubin in the
office on the floor below, stamping around in search of the telephone receiver
which was somewhere under all the papers and books on his desk; then his voice
answering, and immediately assuming a submissive tone, with a
yes
and an
of
course
and an
at once, Mr Chairman
.
She realised straight away what was happening, pulled on a cardigan over her
nightdress and went from room to room, to try to shake some life into the
children again:

Hurry up and get dressed, the Praeses is on his way!

Hurry up!

The staff of the Green House normally
had between thirty and forty minutes to wash and dress all the children, and
comb their hair. That was about how long it took the Chairman to get all the way
out to Marysin from his office once Miss Estera Daum had rung to alert them.

The children were by this point so
exhausted that she had the utmost difficulty getting them back on their feet. By
the time she and Malwina finally had them lined up in fairly neat and tidy rows,
with the youngest at the front and the older children ranged in rising order of
size on the stairs behind them, the Chairman was already out of his carriage and
on his way into the house. Without so much as a glance to his right or left he
swept past Mirjam, who was trying to give him the album of illustrated Talmud
verses which the children had prepared in case of a visit. But for now, the
ghetto’s highest of the high had no eyes for young Mirjam, or any of the other
children either; he just handed his hat, coat and walking stick to Chaja and
addressed Superintendent Rubin in a loud voice.

Be
so kind as to accompany me to your office, Dr Rubin.

Yes, at once . . . ! And bring the lists of all the
children!

Ever since the time in Helenówek, Miss
Smoleńska had tried to read the old man’s many shifting moods as one might the
weather. Was he calm and pleased with himself today? Or was he once again in the
grip of the strange
fury
that occasionally
overcame him?

There were nearly always clues. Like
the way he moved his hands: whether they were calm and assured, or restless and
fumbling, as they felt for cigarettes in his jacket pocket. Or if he had what
Chaja Meyer called his ‘joker look’: that knowing little one-sided smile, a hint
that he had
ideas
or
plans
for one of them, or even one of the children.

But on this late visit she detected no
sign. The Chairman appeared strict, grave, resolute. What was more, he was
closeted in the office with Superintendent Rubin for an unusually long time.
Several hours passed. Then Chaja, apparently acting on orders from the office,
started filling buckets with hot water from the big pan in the kitchen, and Miss
Malwina went round the tables, laying out towels. It was by then
half past two
in the morning, and since no
contradictory order had been given, the children were still lined up on the
stairs. Some were already asleep, their heads propped on each other, or the wall
or banisters; or they had subsided into a sitting position on the stairs, like
Samstag, who had his hands between his knees and his knees drawn up to his ears
like a cricket.

Then the Chairman appeared again. In
one hand he had the
Zugangslisten
Superintendent Rubin had asked for.

Rosa Smoleńska would later remember the
empty, lifeless expression on the Chairman’s face, and the fact that when he
finally opened his mouth to speak, he could not initially find the words he was
looking for. Was it then – only then, having sat in Rubin’s office and gone
through the lists of all the children’s names with Rubin – that the full extent
of the fate awaiting the incarcerated Jews of the ghetto hit him? Not just the
children, but them above all, since the children were
his
. After that, it was unclear whom he was addressing, the dozing
children on the stairs or the staff of the Green House, worn out and short of
sleep. But he
stammered
as he spoke. He had
never done that before.

I am
only going to say this once, and I shall say it now, to explain once and for
all the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves:

The
authorities, whose rules we must all obey, have decided that without
exception, everyone in the ghetto must work – including children and young
people – and that those who do not work will be sent away from the ghetto
immediately.

I do
not say this lightly – because I have be no wish to frighten people
needlessly – but beyond the borders of the ghetto there is no one who can
guarantee the safety of you or any other Jews. Only in the ghetto, under my
protection, since I have secured the lasting trust of the authorities, can
you be safe.

I have
therefore in consultation with Mr Warszawski decided to create special
apprentice places for all ghetto children old enough to work. Even those who
have not yet had the compulsory health inspection are from now on expected
to start as trainee cutters and sewers at the tailor’s workshops of the
ghetto!

At his words, a degree of alarm spread
among the older children on the stairs.

Have we got
to leave?
Debora Żurawska was heard to cry from somewhere behind
Werner Samstag’s legs. And from behind her, a chorus of muttering. But now the
signs were unmistakably there in the old man, the signs she had long since
learnt to recognise: the smile at the corner of his mouth, the darting eyes, the
hand going in and out of his jacket pocket:

It’s
your young lives at stake here, and you dare to set yourselves against
me?

A deathly hush descended on the hall
and stairway.

Superintendent Rubin took a step
forward so he was at the Chairman’s side. Rumkowski’s reaction was to grab the
lists out of his hand in exasperation.

The
particulars of a number of the children which should be on these lists are
missing. I have also just seen with my own eyes that many of the children
arriving have been entered under incorrect or even false
names . . . The day the authorities call on me to
account for all the children under my protection, we are all doomed!
Children! Please now be so good as to come forward one by one when
Superintendent Rubin calls you out, tell us your names and where you come
from, and then go into the kitchen where Dr Zysman will examine
you.

No one wonders why this procedure had
to be gone through at three o’clock on an icy cold winter’s morning. They all
know that if the occupying authorities had carried it out themselves,
considerably worse things could have happened. Even so, some of that same sense
of terror and unreality creeps under their skin as Superintendent Rubin clumsily
adjusts his glasses on his nose and starts to read the list out loud:

Rubin
(
reads
): Samstag, Werner.
Geburtsort: Köln. Vater/Mutter –
Unbekannt
.

Chairman
: And what does
Unbekannt
mean?

Rubin
: Samstag arrived in the second transport. There were no
accompanying relatives and he has not been able to tell us of any since.

Samstag
: My name’s not Samstag.

Chairman
: It doesn’t say Samstag here. It is you, Superintendent
Rubin, who wrote in Samstag. Didn’t you? That’s what happened, isn’t it?

Rubin
: We thought we ought to give him a surname.

Chairman
: What crap! Go on.

Rubin
(
reads
): Majerowicz, Kazimir.
Geburtsort:
Łódź.
Vater/Mutter
–
Unbekannt
.

Chairman
:
Unbekannt
again. How is
that possible?

Rubin
: It was your order that children who had been separated from their
parents were to be brought here.

Chairman
: How old are you, Mr Majerowicz?

Kazimir
: I’m fifteen going on sixteen, thank you for asking Mr
Chairman.

Chairman
: It says here that you were born on 12 January 1926.

Rubin
: There may be a few mistakes, Mr Chairman.

Chairman
: Very well. Next.

Rubin
(
reads
): Szygorska, Mirjam.
Vater/Mutter –

Chairman
: Let me guess.
Unbekannt.

Rubin
: How did you know?

Chairman
: Do you know what, Mr Rubin. Do you know how many lives
your appalling lack of accuracy could cost me in the next few days?

Rubin
: No, Mr Chairman.

Chairman
: Would young Miss Szygorska please step
forward . . . ?

Mirjam came forward. Since she was
still holding the album of illustrated Talmud verses, she tried once again to
present it to the Chairman. This time the Praeses, clearly taken aback, accepted
the gift. Then he stood staring at her, the smile at one corner of his mouth
becoming more marked:

Chairman
: And how old is young Miss Szygorska, then?

Rubin
(
anxiously
): Young Miss Szygorska
can’t speak, Mr Rumkowski.

Chairman
: Talkative or not, perhaps Miss Szygorska would be so good
as to answer for herself.

Rubin
: Miss Szygorska is eleven, Mr Chairman.

Chairman
: She looks big for eleven. Or is this just another attempt
to get out of my apprentice scheme?

Rubin
: Young Miss Szygorska unfortunately doesn’t have the gift of
speech, Mr Rumkowski.

Chairman
: Doesn’t have the gift of speech? It seems to me that in
other ways nature has been more than generous in its gifts to Miss
Szygorska.

Then he takes Mirjam by the arm and
drags her roughly into the office. In the doorway he turns and imperiously
beckons Chaja to bring him one of the washbowls and a towel, waits impatiently
for her to bring them and then shuts and locks the door behind him.

For quite some time they just stand
there – frightened, nonplussed – staring at the closed door. After a time they
hear faint noises from within. Chair legs scrape; something heavy hits the wall
and then rolls slowly across the floor. The thudding and rattling are repeated
several times. Then they hear the Chairman’s voice, muffled and angry. And
superimposed on it, a descant – Mirjam’s. So she does have a voice, after all!
It sounds as if she has something loud and urgent to say, but something or
someone stops the words getting out.

Chair legs scrape the floor again, and
once more it sounds as if something heavy is hitting the floor or falling
over.

Then it goes quiet. Appallingly
quiet.

Debora is the first to break out of the
collective paralysis. She runs back to the Pink Room and starts pounding the
piano keys. Then the rhythm emerges and the whole keyboard bends to the notes of
the old Jewish protest song that the theatrical troupe performed earlier:

Tseshlogn, tseharget ales

Tsevorfn, yedes bazunder

Fun
khasanim – kales

Fun
muters – kleyne kinder

Shrayt,
kinder, shrayt aroyf.

Shrayt
hekher ahin dort;

Vekt ir
dem tatn oyf

Vos
shloft er kloymersht dort?

Far dir
herstu veynen, klogn

Kinder
fun der vig

Zei
betn doch, du zolst zey zogn:

Oy, es
zol shoyn zayn genuk!
⁶

Kasimir beats time on the drum, loudly.
Out in the other room, the younger children are racing round in an increasingly
frenzied dance. Natasza Maliniak has put her hands over her ears and is
screaming, while Liba and Sara climb up onto the piano and try to grab hold of
Debora’s hands from above, as if they were perched on the edge of a well, trying
to catch butterflies.

Rosa remembers that Chaja usually keeps
the spare keys to the office in one of the kitchen drawers. When she gets back,
key in hand, she sees Werner Samstag lying flat on his back on the floor outside
the office. He has unbuttoned his flies and is masturbating with long,
convulsive movements of his right hand, while the fingers of the left open and
close like a throbbing heart. He has caught her eye long before she realises
what he is doing, and she sees that he is smiling, in the middle of the long
ascent to his orgasm: the shiny, saliva-wet smile, shameless and full of the
certainty of the initiated.