The Girl in the Green Sweater (22 page)

Together, we continued through the tunnel until we were beneath the riverbed, where we stopped to consider our next move.
Socha reported that the search of our abandoned chamber had concluded and that the other sewer workers had already taken to teasing the inspector who had come upon us for seeing ghosts. That was how the sighting was described, as an apparition. The sewer worker’s colleagues were saying that maybe this man was drunk, maybe he was seeing things. Certainly, a careful inspection of our chamber would have revealed our recent presence there, but apparently no such inspection was made, and we were therefore free to resume our uncertain lives in the sewer in a new location.

Socha led our group to a small room that looked more like a cave than a chamber. This was where Socha and Wroblewski left us—temporarily, they said, while they waited for word from Kowalow on a more permanent location—but we could not stay in this place for very long. There was hardly enough height for even me to stand straight, and it was so damp, so dirty, so horribly cold. A ripping wind sliced through us as we counted the hours until Socha returned. At some point, the men grew tired of waiting and encouraged us to follow them back toward the main canal, because they could not remain one moment longer in this terrible hovel. We did not like going against Socha’s directions, but we felt we had no choice.

Here again, we met up with Socha and Wroblewski a short time later. It was inevitable that our paths would cross: there were only so many twists and turns you could make in the sewer if you meant to keep close to the main canal. It was at this moment that Dr. Weiss asked the sewer workers to escort him safely to the streets above. Now that he was out of our initial chamber, Dr. Weiss said he could not imagine returning to such a difficult internment. Our few hours in that abysmal cave confirmed this for him. He said he had some Aryan friends who would give him
shelter. He said he had been thinking about abandoning the sewer for some time. No one was worried about Dr. Weiss giving away our location to the authorities, as they had been with Itzek Orenbach, Shmiel Weinberg, and the other Weiss. That group had been devious and scheming. This Dr. Weiss was a good and decent man, and apart from the silly mistake of lighting his cigarette at such an inopportune moment, he had never once jeopardized our group; and because of this, Socha agreed to lead him from the sewer after he had relocated the rest of us to the new hiding place Kowalow had selected.

Our next hiding place was no improvement over the cavelike hovel we had just abandoned. In some ways it was worse. It was colder, if such a thing was possible. The winds were fiercer, louder. There was no place to sit. The ceiling was lower still, and there were more rats than we could even consider. Indeed, the sea of rats would not even part for us as we crossed the small area. Ironically, we learned that this was not the place Kowalow had intended for us. Kowalow, who knew the sewer like his own name, had described for Socha the place he had in mind, but Socha made a wrong turn and so we did not have any choice but to stay here for the night.

This was where we made our good-byes to Dr. Weiss. Remarkably, this was the last my family ever heard of him. Unlike the other refugees from our group who were immediately shot and killed upon leaving the sewer, Dr. Weiss was not a reported casualty, and the efforts my father made after the war to locate him did not turn up anything. It was as if he had vanished, like the wisp of smoke from the burned-out match he foolishly struck while we were trying to hide. In any case, now we were a group of eleven—a big change from the commotion and tumult of the
night of the final liquidation, when we numbered over seventy, and a complete transformation from the mistrust and tension that characterized our group when we numbered twenty-one.

As we strained to find sleep and replenish our energy after the ordeal of the day, we counted ourselves lucky yet again for escaping the sewer inspection beneath the Mari Sniezna church. My father stayed up the entire night trying to keep the rats from our huddled-together bodies with a candle. He found that they did not like the flame, but there was only one flame and there were many, many hundreds of rats. Everywhere you looked, there were rats. It was, everyone agreed, the most miserable night we had passed underground since leaving the Ju-Lag. I do not think anyone slept, not even me or Pawel.

The next day, when Socha arrived, he was deeply sorry. We had not yet had a chance to tell him how miserable we all were, but he knew he had taken a wrong turn and veered from Kowalow’s directions, and for this he apologized. When he saw for himself the dreadful conditions and the depths of our misery, he was sorrier still, and he immediately led us to our intended tunnel. The way was especially treacherous in the beginning because we had to grasp a steel bar and hoist ourselves up while water spilled down on us from a seventy-centimeter pipe above, but once we got past this difficulty, the going was fairly simple. One of the men remarked that it was a good thing this new place was so difficult to get to, because it meant it would also be difficult for the Germans to find. We would be safe there. There was a good, hopeful feeling among our group, despite the horrible night we had just passed. In fact, there was such a good feeling that as we walked I started to whistle. I was so happy to be standing upright and walking like a human being to a new, better place that I could not help it. For all
these weeks, I’d had no reason to be happy, and now here I was, whistling.

My father and I walked hand in hand along the Peltew. We were both barefoot. I believe we were the only two people in our group in this condition. There had been no time, of course, for my father to reclaim his boots before we had to leave our chamber in such a hurry. Socha would bring him a new pair, but not until we were settled in this new place. How I came to be barefoot, I can no longer recall, but I do remember stepping on what I thought was a hat pin as we walked. I did not say anything to anybody, and I did not break stride, but it was very painful. I quickly removed the pin without losing my place in our parade of underground exiles, and as I walked a little bit of blood began to drip from my foot. My father noticed this, probably because it was not such a little bit as I imagined. He knew that it could not be good to dip an open cut into the foul wastewater of the sewer. So he lifted me onto his shoulders, and still I continued whistling. I was so happy. Even the stick of a hat pin could not dampen my happiness. My father was happy, too. Certainly, we had nothing to be happy about, but as I whistled, my father told me later, I gave everyone energy and hope.

We walked along the river for several minutes. I was whistling the entire time. Finally, we arrived at a shelter that was a little bigger than the chamber we had just left behind. The walls were wet and covered with mold and cobwebs. A layer of mud covered the ground. Rats covered every surface. The men did not like this place because they could see how much work there would be to make it habitable. It was still, after all, a small tunnel along one of the tributaries of the city sewer system, but Kowalow had determined that this was the place where we would be safest of all.

Socha smiled at the disinterest of the men and turned to my
mother. “Chigerova,” he said, “it does not matter, the opinion of the men. What matters is the opinion of the women.”

At this, my mother turned and held out her arms, as if to marvel at our new surroundings. “It is like a palace,” she said. “Here we can stay.”

And so we stayed. For over a year we stayed. In a place we would all come to call the Palace. A palace for the hen and her two chicks.

I
was always grateful that my mother was able to see the possibilities of this chamber we called the Palace. She was the only one among our group to recognize the space for what it could be. I was also grateful to Dr. Weiss for impulsively lighting that match and giving our group away, because it forced us to abandon that dismal hiding place beneath the Mari Sniezna church. It was a blessing disguised at first as adversity.

The men were right to view this new chamber as merely another dark, damp hovel, but my mother could see beyond the mud and the cobwebs and the rats. She had a great vision that came from only reasonable expectations. She could see that this hiding place would be more suitable than any other we could expect to find in the sewer. It had a higher ceiling—not quite two meters—so
the grown-ups did not have to walk stooped over all the time. They still had to stoop over, but not so much. The shorter ones could stretch almost to their full height. Also, the chamber had an L shape, which meant there was a smaller room to the side of the large main room, and this could be used for privacy. She was smart to see that we could be comfortable here for an extended period.

Of course, we did not know how long we would be here, in what was essentially a storm basin beneath the Bernardynski church, located underground somewhere between the Bernardynski and Halicki squares. We could pray that our stay would be mercifully short, but we had to plan for it to be hopelessly long. No one could predict. My father had been keeping up on news from outside. This was what we called the rest of the world—outside,
na zewnatiz
. Socha would bring reports on outside developments, and then in the evening we would discuss these reports. There was nothing to do but discuss. Soon, Socha began bringing the daily newspapers, in Polish and German, and my father and the others pored over every word. We talked about the war. We talked about the hoped-for Russian liberation, which already seemed our best chance for surviving this ordeal. We talked about the camps. Mostly we talked about what our lives might be like when we returned to the outside. This last was always discussed as a certain eventuality. It was never
if
we returned to the outside. It was always
when
. In this there was probably the most important aspect of our survival: hope. And it was not just my parents who remained hopeful; it was our entire group. Without the negative influence of Weiss and his cronies, without the constant fear of being discovered that began to abate after nearly two months underground, we were now trying to be positive about our circumstance. Chaskiel Orenbach was still a
disagreeable, offputting personality, but there were enough of us taking an optimistic view to drown his pessimism.

Another key aspect of our survival, as I wrote earlier, was the presence of routine. Socha was quick to recognize this on our behalf. As soon as we were settled in this new place, he set about dividing the daily tasks we would need to accomplish in order to keep our group safe and whole. Socha and Wroblewski began making their deliveries at a certain time each morning, usually between nine o’clock and ten o’clock, and this meant we could build our day around their visits. This was useful to us and helped us to know when to have our breakfast, when to have our supper, when to have our dinner. It gave us a necessary sense of structure, something we had not had before, and it allowed our bodies to return to their accustomed rhythms. Now there was an order to our days.

When we were hiding under the Mari Sniezna church, the sewer workers came to us whenever they could sneak away from their assignments or whenever they felt they could do so without being detected, but here in the Palace they made an effort to keep to the schedule. Socha also made a schedule for the men, telling us who would go to retrieve the water, who would collect the supplies he and Wroblewski would leave to improve our new living space, who would do this or that. He made a schedule for the women, telling who would help with the cooking, who would help with the cleaning. Always, he would tell us what to do and when to do it. Everybody had a job, except me and Pawel. Probably Babcia, too, did not have any defined duties. She was a very good woman, but she was getting sicker and sicker. The dampness, the bacteria, the cold, the unsanitary conditions . . . it made her appear so very old. She was not such an old woman by today’s standards, but by our circumstance she was made tentative and
fragile. She would help when she was strong enough, and at other times she would sit and rest.

My mother used to say she had a special ache in her heart for the suffering of old Mrs. Weiss. The poor woman could not have been proud of her son, who bullied his way around our group in our first weeks underground, who abandoned her here, who had earlier abandoned his wife and daughter. Most of the time, Babcia was lying down. It was difficult for all the adults to stand, but for Babcia it was especially difficult. Always, my mother took care of Babcia. She bathed her. She held her hand. Babcia blessed my mother. She said, “Every day I say a prayer that you and your family will survive.” My mother cherished this prayer. She believed that it helped keep us alive.

My mother’s primary responsibility, Socha said, was to take care of her two chicks, and in many ways she took on this same role with the other women in our party. She was like a mother to us all. She was like a mother to poor Babcia, a woman who was probably old enough to be my grandmother. She was like a mother to Klara Keler, a young woman who had lost her own mother during the liquidation and now looked to my mother for strength and comfort. She was like a mother to Genia Weinberg, who carried the weight of her secret pregnancy alongside the memory of the child she had left behind and the cowardly husband who had abandoned her. She was even like a mother to Halina Wind, a young woman who carried herself as if she did not need any carrying. It was my mother’s nature to look after others, and now, according to Socha, it was also her job.