The Emperor of Lies (20 page)

‘We must be grateful,’ was all Szaja would say.

‘We must be grateful that you’ve got your work, Adam, and we must be grateful that we’ve got Lida back. Things could have turned out much worse.’

And Adam worked. And he was grateful for the employment Uncle Lajb had found for him. And he decided he would never do anything wrong again or break the Chairman’s laws. For Lida’s sake. But one morning he heard the familiar whistle from between the goods wagons again, and when he slipped in to avoid attracting the attention of the guards, Paweł Biełka said straight away:

You know Józef Feldman.

It was more of a statement than a question.

I’ve got something for him.

Biełka delved into his trousers and produced a copy of the
Litzmannstädter Zeitung
: a damp and sticky wad of wood pulp covered in heavy black type. Adam wanted to say they search us every day on our way in and out of the ghetto. But of course Biełka already knew that.

Do like me – stick it in your crotch.

If they catch you, just say you were using the shit as toilet paper

then you won’t be lying, at any rate!

Adam made as if to jump back down onto the platform, but Paweł grabbed hold of him again and fixed him with a grim look:

What do you want? Cigarettes?

It’s too dangerous.

Food?

Paweł, I can’t.

Medicines? Azetynil, Vigantol?

That was what made Adam weaken. He thought of Lida. Maybe a few little tubes of vitamin tablets would give her back her faculties and her reason. If he went through the gate with the tubes under his tongue, the guard wouldn’t find them. The only time a German shone a light into a Jew’s mouth was when he thought he might find gold there, and by then the Jew in question was most certainly already dead.

Give it a go
, said Biełka, who could see him hesitating. And he held out the crumpled newsprint at an angle from which it could be seen by every guard on the entire platform, so Adam did what anyone would have done in that situation: snatched it and hid it under his clothes as fast as he possibly could.

*

The sun was up, suspended a bare hand’s breadth above the horizon: a red globe of trembling warmth above the grey-scrubbed fields and the thinly scattered rows of shanties and earth cellars overgrown with grass. It was already May, but still cold at nights. Streaks of nocturnal mist lingered in the hollows where the light could not reach. Not much green, either, on the trees and bushes, which seemed to be coated in the same, cement-like dust that was for now lending its colour to the sky.

But there was strength in the sun. He could feel it burning the side of his face. Turning, he saw the daylight running like a knife-edge over the wall round the cemetery. The light cut reflections out of the corrugated tin roofs opposite, of the gravel chips in the road he was walking along, of the bottle glass someone had set in the top of the wall around a
działka
: scrubby fruit bushes behind an iron gate, its lock rusted through. He walked slowly along the outside of the cemetery wall, past the Green House, and went on down the hill some five hundred metres, until he reached Feldman’s nursery business. Wisps of smoke rose from the tin chimney fastened to the wall of the main building. A delicious smell of frying was coming from inside. Adam knocked, stepped onto the upturned beer crate that served as a doorstep, and opened the door.

The house consisted of a single large room, lined from floor to high ceiling with desks and bureaux, their compartments and pigeonholes stuffed with invoices and old account books; on top of every cupboard or stack of shelves were books and advertising brochures, their once garish covers now faded and curling in the damp. And above
them
, rows of stuffed wildlife: wood grouse and black grouse with courtship displays of splayed tail feathers; a marten partway along a narrow tree branch, its muzzle lowered as if hunting for prey in the cracks in the floor way below.

Józef Feldman, by contrast, was a small man, a metre and a half tall at most; he seemed to be swallowed up by the thick, moth-eaten woollen overcoat he was wearing. But the eyes peering out of the coat were unexpectedly sharp and steady, and the voice was like a dangling noose as it spat out its
who are you?
before Adam even had the door fully open.

‘Mr Feldman?’ said Adam tentatively, not yet daring to let go of the door.

Instead of stepping inside, he undid his belt and stood there holding up his trousers with one hand and brandishing the smuggled copy of the
Litzmannstädter Zeitung
in the other.

Feldman, who was busy cooking at his little primus stove, did not take his eyes off Adam’s face for a second.
Rzepin?
was all he said when Adam gave his name.
I only know one Rzepin – and he’s called Lajb.

He spoke the name as if it were a swearword. Adam felt ashamed, though he could not for the life of him fathom why.

Lajb is my uncle
, he said simply.

The smell of frying sausage suddenly overwhelms him. He wants to sit down, but stays on his feet because there is nowhere to sit among all the clutter. Feldman glances at the newspaper Adam has given him, then folds it up small and stows it like a flat parcel in a slot between the sections of a filing cabinet.

At the far end of the low greenhouse is something Adam at first takes for a big, dirty window; then he sees it is comprised of little boxes or containers made of glass, different shapes and sizes, piled one on top of the other and stacked edge to edge, like a set of glass shelves from the floor right up to the roof. Some of the glass boxes contain gravel or sand, and dried plants; others are empty. As he stands staring at this incomprehensible wall of glass, it suddenly catches fire. Somewhere deep in the labyrinth of glass surfaces dimly reflecting each other, a pinprick of light penetrates, then spreads and bursts out, like a burning sun – the light suddenly so dazzling to the eyes that everything in Adam’s peripheral field of vision instantly dissolves.

It is the sun, suddenly rising on the other side of the greenhouse wall.

You must be starving
, says Feldman, and indicates a corner of the floor where there are a mattress and a threadbare old horse blanket.

Have a seat . . .

As Adam sits down, the dawn light falls into shadow again, and the glass wall no longer looks so impressive: a collection of silted-up aquariums, their bottoms covered in a layer of greyish mud and their sides caked white with dust.

Feldman later told him that as a young man he had ranged the marshy forests of Masuria with his scoop net, vasculum and a collection of glass jars and other storage vessels, determined to survey every habitat in the whole system of lakes. And how that interest had widened out in the early thirties, when he started experimenting with different ventilation and heating units to recreate other living biotopes in miniature: Brazilian rainforests, desiccated desert landscapes, steppes and prairies.

There was a time when I was obsessed with the idea of reconstructing every landscape and soil type on earth. But then along came the war and the occupation, and you could say I found I had enough to do with my own, and what I’ve got here.

Feldman transfers the cooked sausage to a plate and starts cutting it into slices. In Adam’s brain, an advanced calculation is in progress. Could there be fifty, no it must be closer to sixty, grams of sausage on his plate now? How long could he make the sausage last in his stomach? Ten hours, twelve?

It depends how slowly he eats.

Now he is nearer the fire, he can see that Feldman is much younger than he first thought. Within that dark face there are paler folds; as if the weather-beaten skin were just a mask, pressed onto the face underneath. The expression in that
other
face is boyishly bright, fearless yet somehow strangely scheming. Adam would later describe it as Feldman having a way of looking at people as if measuring them up for their funeral. That was the expression with which he was appraising him now.

There was someone else who used to bring the newspapers. Do you know what happened to him?
Adam chews his sausage; says nothing.
Rzepin?
says Feldman after that, as if sampling the taste of the name. Adam carries on chewing.
I’m surprised at Lajb making one of his own into an errand boy. What hold has he got on you?
Adam turns and says:
It was a man called Biełka who asked me, that’s all I know.

Feldman carries on looking at him, as if expecting Adam to say more, now he has finally started talking. When nothing more comes, he turns away again with a sigh that seems to spread through his whole body, and extends a surprisingly long arm from one sleeve of his coat to poke the fire with a block of wood, making the glow in the stove flare up in a shower of sparks.

Adam sits there chewing until there is no sausage left to chew. When no more food is offered, he realises it’s time to offer his thanks and go.
Do come and visit me again
, says Feldman, but in a voice and tone which indicate that he has already lost all interest in Adam and the contraband he has brought.

Adam has no sooner re-emerged into the surprisingly bright sunlight than he meets the first column of deportees on their way out from the assembly point in Młynarska Street.

The marchers have been issued with new, machine-made
trepki
, and this practical footwear is stirring up the dust in the road into a gigantic cloud that shrouds them in a pale, chalky veil which then slowly settles again behind their doggedly tramping feet. On their left-hand side, an escort of five policemen is keeping pace with them. Every so often, one of them shouts an abrupt order to keep the marchers on course.
Straight on!
or
Right turn!
Beyond that, there is no sound to be heard. The men plod past in their new clogs, with their cases and rucksacks, and mattresses tied round their waists or slung over their shoulders, and not one of them shows any sign of turning to look at him. Nor does he turn his head to watch them go. It is as if they are moving in two separate worlds, far apart.

But Uncle Lajb’s name keeps cropping up, like a nagging toothache. Adam knows his father is right and he should be grateful for the job he has been given. But he still can’t help thinking it can hardly be a coincidence that a place in the work brigade at Radogoszcz suddenly fell vacant. Of all the jobs in the ghetto, why should Lajb offer him that particular one? And of all the people he once knew or was acquainted with in the ghetto, why should old Biełka be turning up between the goods wagons? Could it be that he had been entrusted with a task originally earmarked for somebody else? And in that case, who was that other person, and what had become of him?

By the time Adam Rzepin turns round, the marching column has gone; nothing is left but the cloud of chalk-white dust, hanging like a dense, powdery stripe above the sunlit horizon. The sun’s disc has risen higher now. The heat has begun to ache in sand and grit and stone. Adam Rzepin has sausage in his belly. He decides not to think about it any more.

It started as a game. He said: Shut your eyes and imagine I’m somebody else. And Regina laughed her clear laugh and said surely he needn’t
lower himself
. He was the Chairman, after all. The whole ghetto looked up to him. But he insisted. Shut your eyes, he said, and when she finally did so, he put his hand on her knee and ran it slowly up the inside of her thigh.

Love can also look like this.

He knew she was revolted by the sight of his ageing, flabby body, by the unpleasant smell of old man given off by his hair and skin. Now he set her free from the obligation to experience all this too close, and was rewarded with the gift of feeling her sex swell and grow warm and wet beneath his anxiously kneading fingers.

Who was she dreaming of, there behind her closed eyelids?

The story of a lie can also be told like this:

He told the residents of the ghetto he had not said all he had said, and everything that had happened had not actually happened. And those listening believed him, because he was the Chairman, when all was said and done, and there weren’t that many others to listen to and put your faith in.

He told the demented women from Pabianice and Biała Podlaska that he had assurances ‘from the very highest authority’ that all was well with their husbands and that he would intervene on their behalf to ensure their children were brought back to Łódź immediately.

And he told his brother Józef, who had been agonising ever since the deportations began, that he enjoyed the full confidence of the Reich Governor, and nothing bad would ever happen to the chosen Jews in the ghetto.

And the great Chaim went about in his lie like an emperor in his palace. In every doorway there were attendants who dropped to their knees and asked if there was anything else they could do for him. What happens to a lie then, if it is a natural extension of one’s whole being?

Despair and scepticism, said Rumkowski, are for the weak.

On the Sabbath, Regina lit the candles and set out the loaves, and every Friday evening when they were seated at the table he read the Sabbath prayers, since that was what was required of a good Jew in a home that would, he intended, set a good example to the whole ghetto. On Sunday they went by
dróshke
to the hospital in Wesoła Street. There he had paid ‘out of his own pocket’ for places and two full meals a day for Regina’s two unmarried aunts and her troublemaking brother Benji. They spent the entire visiting time sitting with the two old spinsters in their room, and Regina boasted that Chaim had recently arranged for a
permanent telephone link
between him and
the powers that be in Berlin
, and her charming, mild-mannered husband said the negotiations had gone better than expected, and he was hoping for a decision before too long on his request to expand the ghetto:
Soon
, he said,
very soon you will be able to take the tram all the way from here to Paris!

And the old ladies laughed, their hands held self-consciously in front of their mouths:

Oh Chaim, you cannot expect us to believe that –

Chaim, tylko nie wystaw mnie do wiatru.

Yet they still closed their eyes and allowed themselves to dream a little. With the great Chairman, nothing seemed impossible.

Only one thing was lacking to make the lie complete, but although he hoped and prayed, Regina did not get pregnant. Biebow informed the Chairman at this time that the authorities would not be satisfied from now on with the removal from the ghetto merely of the elderly and infirm. Soon
all
who could not work – even the youngest – would be forced to leave.

Perhaps he should have heeded the warning in those words.

But the Chairman still dwelt in his Lie, and in it there was a Child, just one, that would be strong enough to survive all the misfortunes the Lord chose to visit upon them, and he would be able to confide in this, his only Child, all the things he had hitherto not dared to say to anyone.

But if his wife remained infertile, despite her youthful years, how could this child come into the world? How, and from where, could it be acquired?

He tried to save the rest of the children of the ghetto in a more tangible way.

It was quite a simple equation, after all: the more he could get into work, the more the authorities would spare.

As early as March 1942, he had begun setting up special apprentice workshops for boys and girls aged between ten and seventeen. This was where the older children from the Green House and the other orphanages in Marysin had gone.

In May of that year, after the collectives of German Jews had been moved out, he had the old elementary school building in Franciszkańska Street converted into a vocational school with twelve separate classes and fifty children to each class. There were classes in cutting out, in hand- and machine-sewing, in materials. Even simple bookkeeping was taught.

After a few weeks’ training, those showing the most aptitude were given shifts in manufacturing at the Central Tailors, where they worked under the supervision of inspectors who went round and picked them up on any mistakes, or for wasting time. The children’s task was to make special camouflage caps
for the German army, with an outer layer of white fabric for winter field warfare, and a grey top inside for fighting in normal terrain. The Chairman went from bench to bench, saw the material run in broad lengths through the children’s nimble fingers, saw the teachers bending down to help hands hold pieces of fabric straight as the sewing-machine needle tacked along them, panel after panel, and he was overcome by a feeling of
pride
in spite of everything: that despite the chaos and starvation all around, it was still possible to maintain such order and discipline.

From July 1942 he was able to get permanent sewing jobs for some 700 of the children in the ghetto over ten years old. If he only had time, he would without doubt be able to create jobs for – and thus save – at least as many again.

But while he was fortifying the walls of his worker city in this way, the disintegration proceeded unabated:

Back in April, news had started filtering through of the massacres in Lublin.

Then (in June):
Pabianice
and
Biała Podlaska.

Forty railway carriages full of women and children had left
Biała Podlaska
and disappeared without trace.

Sometimes as he sat behind the closed doors of the Secretariat, he felt there was a landslide happening outside. As if something holding together the seams of reality itself had burst apart.

Dawid Gertler came to his office and told him straight out what he had lately heard of the mass deportations about to be carried out in Warsaw. There were three hundred thousand Jews being held in Warsaw. According to Gertler, the authorities there intended to spare only a tenth of them; barely thirty thousand would be kept on to work in the factories of the Warsaw ghetto.

At the same time, the English were intensifying their air raids on strategic cities in the Reich –
Cologne
,
Stuttgart
,
Mannheim
. On 26 June, British radio broadcast news of the massacres of Poland’s Jewish population for the first time. The BBC bulletins named towns such as
Slonim
,
Vilna
,
Lwów
.

But also
Chełmno
– the city of
Kulmhof
in the district of
Warthbrücken
:

Thousands of Jews from the industrial city of Łódź and surrounding towns and villages are believed to have met their fate in this otherwise insignificant place.

This news from the other side of the wire reached the ghetto via the hundreds of illegal radio receivers, swiftly turning what had hitherto been a macabre suspicion into certain knowledge.

Outwardly, of course, nothing happened. The starving men and women of the ghetto continued to drag their gaunt bodies from one distribution point to the next; already bent backs became still more bent, if that was possible. But there was a certainty where there had been none before. And that certainty changed everything.

The morning after the BBC’s news of the massacres in Chełmno, the Praeses carried out an inspection of the Department of Statistics in Plac Kościelny. Together with Neftalin the lawyer he went through all correspondence that had been kept and made sure to burn all documents which might make it appear to posterity that he had been too ready to comply with, or had indeed acknowledged, the true significance of, the authorities’ orders. This applied, for example, to the question of dealing with the excess baggage that had been taken from the Jews as they were deported from the ghetto, for which Biebow refused to pay the additional freight costs. Rumkowski asked Neftalin to replace all record of this with a special archive entry showing not only who had been deported but also who had been granted
exceptional leave to stay
, that is, all individuals he had personally intervened to save or had otherwise vouched for.

Everyone who came into contact with the Chairman at this time could testify to a change in the smell of his body. He seemed to secrete a sharp but sweetish odour that clung about his clothes like stale tobacco smoke and followed in his wake wherever he went. But most who saw him in those days also said he carried himself with great determination and dignity. As if it were only now, with all this practical management of large groups of people, in assembly camps or columns of statistics, that he could set a course worthy of the enormous task he had imposed on himself.

*

On 24 July, the news comes through of Czerniaków’s suicide in Warsaw:

The cowardly man would thus rather die than be involved in the evacuation of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto. And yet, as far as I understand it, thousands of Jews are still leaving Warsaw every day. So if that is the operation Czerniaków wanted to stop, his suicide has altered nothing. It is just a vain and meaningless gesture.

So reads his summary of the situation that has arisen for the other members of the Council of Elders.

Nothing like what is now happening in Warsaw will be allowed to happen here, he assures them. This is not a ghetto, after all – it is a city of workers, he says, unintentionally using the same phrase as he did the day he received Himmler outside his barrack-hut offices at Bałuty Square:

This is a city of workers, Herr Reichsführer, not a ghetto.

*

He admits to his private physician, Dr Eliasberg, that his heart has been giving him trouble again, and asks if he could possibly get him some more of the old nitroglycerine. Eliasberg not only procures more nitroglycerine, he also brings other medicine for the heart: little capsules, white and shiny like the saccharine pills that little children used to sell on street corners.

For someone who is starving, even a tiny amount of sugar like that on their tongue can mean the difference between life and death. The thought arouses him strangely. He keeps the little cyanide tablets in a metal case in his jacket, and is always putting his hand in his pocket to check they are still there.

He never thinks about what it would be like to take the tablets himself. Instead, he sees himself stirring two of them into Regina’s tea. She’ll pull a face at the bitter taste, but that’s all she’ll have time to do. Death is instantaneous. Dr Eliasberg has assured him of that.

How could he even be contemplating such a move, he who loved her so dearly? The answer was that it was precisely because he did love her so dearly. He could never endure the shame of standing before her destitute and humiliated. Like Czerniaków, chairman of the Jewish Council of Elders in Warsaw, who had not understood what obeying orders meant.

‘Czerniaków was weaker then me,’ said the Chairman. ‘That’s why he’s dead now.’

That was as he lay there, letting Dr Eliasberg listen to the rhythm of his heart.

‘He took his own life rather than send his brothers and sisters east.’

Dr Eliasberg said nothing.

‘That will never happen here,’ said the Chairman.

(
My children are making camouflage caps for winter field warfare. It can’t possibly happen here.
)

Dr Eliasberg said nothing.

‘But if it did happen here, I want your assurance, Dr Eliasberg . . .’

‘You know I can’t give any assurances, Sir.’

‘But if I were to die . . . ?’

‘You will never die, Praeses.’

*

On the big area of worn grass behind the Green House, the children from the Marysin orphanages gather and play games.

Their laughter echoes beneath the hard, black sky.

The children form two rows, holding hands, then raise their hands high above their shoulders and walk towards each other. The two lines join to form a circle and they start to move round, circling first one way and then the other.

He sits in his carriage, following them with his eyes. He does not want to reveal his presence immediately and spoil their game.

The younger children stumble and fall; the older ones laugh. Samstag, the German boy he noticed last time he was here, is leaning against a rusty old car chassis without wheels. He is wearing shorts that would have fitted a child ten years younger and a short, ribbed pullover that reaches to just below his navel. He smiles all the time, but without any visible sign of pleasure: as if his mouth were detachable and flopping about at the bottom of his big face. All over Marysin, the grass grows high and lush. In back yards, behind wooden sheds and latrines. The children eat the grass. That is why they are all black and sticky round the mouth.

He must remember to have a word with Miss Smoleńska about it. There could be poison in the grass.

He waits. They still have not noticed him. The clouds gather in the sky above and merge into thin veils of Scotch mist, slowly thickening. There is a distant rumble. Thunder is on its way. Soon the first raindrops will start to fall.

The children look up –

He puts his hand in his jacket pocket, prises the case of cyanide tablets open with his thumbnail and stirs them with his fingers.