The Last Witness (13 page)

Jacob’s father explained their predicament and Father Kasinski listened intently. He promised to give them potatoes, onions and cucumbers from the garden beside the church. He said the priests grew more food than they needed and had plenty to spare. He also said he would give them meat, but it was pork sausage. Jacob’s mother was indignant when she saw it.

“Treif,”
she said. “I can’t eat this!” But Samuel insisted and he tore the biggest piece for her.

Jacob didn’t know anything about foods to be avoided like pork and ham. The first time he tried ham was the sandwich made by Father Kasinski and it was delicious. He couldn’t get enough of it. He couldn’t get enough of any kind of meat Father Kasinski gave him. To refuse food because it was
treif
didn’t make sense when they were starving, and when his mother was about to give birth in the sewers it didn’t make much sense to his father either.

Father Kasinski used a rope to lower the food in buckets, but was careful because the Gestapo, Polish police and Jewish police were always watching. He lowered blankets and saucepans and cups and plates. And the most important thing of all. Water. It was always done at a set time. When the bucket arrived, all six members of the Klukowskys and Zaltsmans would be waiting for it. Then the rats would appear. They would come from everywhere. Sometimes they were so quick they got into the food before anyone could touch it, and it didn’t matter if you beat them with a stick or threw a pan at them. So Jacob’s father had an idea. When the next bucket of food arrived, he hung it from a pipe running across the ceiling of the compartment that had become their home. This was the only way the rats couldn’t get at it. Jacob, Zivia and Romek watched the rats stand on their hind legs and reach for the food with their menacing teeth and their pointed noses. They even jumped to try to get at the food. They were so big.

The buckets also collected their waste and so, a bucket would come with food, another would come with water, and an empty one would come for waste, and this was how they lived. The two families were huddled in a space that was little more than a cave with cobwebs, mud and the ever present rats. When it was time for the baby, Father Kasinski lowered a bucket filled with steaming hot water.

Jacob had never stayed in one place for long since mastering the sewers. He was always on the go, travelling through the pipes, walking along the ledges below his tenement building in the ghetto and below the Church of the Virgin Mary. But not now. Father Kasinski told them all to stay put right below the church until the baby arrived.

One morning they heard voices from the chapel. It was full of people, which meant it was Sunday. They were the voices of people praying and some of the prayers Jacob knew.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.”
He found himself mouthing the words and these moments were pleasant, his only pleasant moments in the filth and darkness of the sewers. His father said they had turned into human rats living below with real ones, but what could they do? Where could they go? A cold, wet wind broke through the deadly silence with a piercing whistle and there was always the constant stench of raw sewage. The first night Jacob couldn’t stand it, but by the third night he didn’t know if he could smell it or not.

His mother’s labor pains began on a Friday afternoon. She was on a bed of blankets with more blankets spread across her, and when her pains started, Jacob’s Aunt Gerda stuffed a rag into her mouth because one scream and someone would hear. The only person who knew about them was Father Kasinski. Even the other priests didn’t know. Six hours into her labor, Jacob’s father said they needed candles. Jacob figured the baby was coming, and with candles they could
see better, but no. It was the Sabbath, and his father wanted to light candles. He sent Jacob scurrying up the ladder.

As always, Jacob had his stick with him and he used it to push on the bottom of the manhole cover, but it wouldn’t budge. He looked below and heard the voices of his father and his aunt and the garbled moans of his mother, who was soon to give him a little brother or sister. So he pushed again, harder this time, and the cover moved. It was the first time he ever pushed it open by himself. There was no Shimek. He went to see Father Kasinski and returned with a handful of candles from the church, and when the candles were lit his father spoke in Hebrew.

“Barach attah Adonai eloheinu melech ha-olam. Ashe kideshanu bemitzvotav ve-tsivanu lehadlik ner shel shabbat.”

Jacob would always remember this Sabbath. It was the last one his family would spend together.

His mother, drenched in sweat from head to foot, was panting and crying into the rags stuffed between her lips to deaden the sound. Then, in the middle of the night, an explosion came from far away, but maybe not that far. It was hard to tell. And then there was a second explosion. Everything shook and rattled, and not only the pots and saucepans that Father Kasinski had sent them, but even the pipes. Jacob’s father thought it was an earthquake. He sent Jacob up the ladder again.

Father Kasinski was staying near the door of the kitchen leading to the alleyway beside the church, and when he saw Jacob he knew why he had come.

“Listen to me. The Germans know Jews are in the sewers. You aren’t the only ones. They are dropping grenades into the manholes. They want to kill you or at least get you out of there but they don’t know where you are. What is happening with the baby?”

Soon, Jacob said, and back he climbed into the sewers.

By now his mother was on the verge of passing out. His Aunt Gerda was wiping her brow with wet towels, making sure the rags between her lips stifled her moaning. Then finally, mercifully, her muffled cries stopped. It was a boy. Aunt Gerda cut the umbilical cord and washed the tiny baby with damp cloths. She wiped its eyes, nose and mouth, and Jacob couldn’t believe how small it was. Little more than a doll. It started crying and was so weak that it was almost a cry without a voice attached. Aunt Gerda closed the baby’s mouth with a soft “shh” and rocked the newborn in her arms. She moved him under his mother’s breast, but Jacob’s mother had no milk. Aunt Gerda tried grinding some of their food into water, but the baby wouldn’t take it. He just cried and cried.

‘Shh … shh … shh.”

It was Sunday morning and by now they had been a full week in the sewers. There was singing from the church and then the singing stopped. Everything stopped. There was the sound of stomping feet and loud voices.

Jacob wanted to see what was happening. Armed with his stick, he climbed up the steel ladder and pushed away the manhole cover. He got to his feet, replaced the cover over the opening, and wearing Shmuel Zelinsky’s coat went into the alleyway beside the church where he peered through a side window.

German soldiers were inside yelling at the priests and the soldiers were angry. One of the priests was Father Kasinski. There was more shouting, and then the people sitting on the benches were ordered to get up and go, leaving the soldiers alone with the priests. There was more talking and more shouting. Two soldiers took Father Kasinski by the arms, and marched him into the
kitchen and then out the side door to the alleyway. Jacob hurried behind the church so they wouldn’t see him, and watched from around a corner of the building.

One of the soldiers struck Father Kasinski across the face, and there was something so hostile about it that it didn’t seem real. But Jacob could see it happening before his eyes. Then he realized that this wasn’t a soldier who had hit Father Kasinski, but the young Gestapo officer who always patrolled near the wall. After an approving nod from the soldier, the Gestapo officer – just a boy – hit Father Kasinski a second time. Now the soldier was yelling and Father Kasinski kept saying that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Then the soldier took out his pistol. He waved it in the priest’s face and even from a distance Jacob could see the terror in Father Kasinski’s eyes.

The soldier and Gestapo officer talked some more and then the soldier put his pistol back into his holster. The two Germans escorted Father Kasinski to the front of the church, one on each arm, and by this time more soldiers had gathered around. They shoved Father Kasinski into the back of a car. Jacob saw the edge of Father Kasinski’s black robe caught in the door, fluttering in the air as they drove off in a cloud of dust.

He never saw him again.

Jacob ran back behind the church, pried open the manhole cover, and went down the ladder into the sewer where he found Aunt Gerda holding the baby. His mother was whimpering, his father was holding onto her and weeping, and Zivia and Romek were both crying. The only one not crying was the baby.

“Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba,”
his father said through his tears.

Aunt Gerda wore the sorriest face Jacob had ever seen and he had seen some sorry faces in the ghetto. “The baby wouldn’t stop crying and the soldiers were there. I’m sorry, Jacob. He would have died anyway.”

Jacob’s father finished the prayer and then he pried the still baby from Aunt Gerda’s arms. He gave a long lingering look, planted a kiss on its forehead and covered its face with the blanket. Jacob’s eyes followed his father as he walked along the ledge to where the water was deepest. He saw him put his baby brother into the water and watched as the solitary figure disappeared beneath the surface into the dank darkness of the sewer.

The next day the soldiers returned. They opened the manhole cover, went down the ladder and found the six of them. Immediately, the soldiers covered their faces and complained about the stink.
“Verfluchte Juden,”
they said. Nudging them with the butts of their rifles, they marched the group up the ladder. One by one. They wouldn’t let any of them help Jacob’s mother, who was still bleeding from the birth.

It was August and the air was hot. When they emerged from the sewer none of them could open their eyes because the sun was too bright. Jacob’s eyes hurt so much that he had to cover them with his hands and even his skin hurt with the sudden heat. He looked at his father, but the man he saw just then wasn’t his father. Jacob didn’t see a tailor and a fixer of sewing machines. He didn’t see a man who could make the crooked line of a shirt straight by merely putting it on. What he saw was a broken man in tattered clothes with a dead face of stone.

The Germans said the ghetto was now
Judenrein
. Free of Jews. They called the Jews pigs and vermin, and they spit on them. Jacob wanted to know what happened to his friend Father Kasinski, but he didn’t dare ask. He was too frightened. The next day Jacob, his parents, his Aunt Gerda, and Zivia and Romek were all on a train heading to a new place.

Auschwitz
.

17

Jack’s alarm went off at seven o’clock. He opened his eyes and felt sluggish. Despite his airs, he couldn’t get used to all this business about being a hundred years old. It was a number that belonged to Methusalah. None of his friends had lived that long and no one in his family. There were more centenarians than ever, but the age still came with a stigma. It meant you were ancient, a dinosaur, a relic from an earlier time that people didn’t understand and didn’t even want to understand. But shouldn’t Jack be thankful that he had lived so long? Hadn’t God saved him when so many others were taken? But God also made him an orphan at the age of five or was it four? Jack didn’t know. He never knew exactly what happened to his parents or when it happened. Only that they met a horrible end.

All these years he had lived without parents, siblings, cousins. Not one single relative. It meant orphanages and homes with strangers and such deep scars that not a day went by when he didn’t think about his mother and his father and the time they had together. It was so little time and even that had been a prison for them. Why would a merciful God let Jack survive only to wallow in a bog of guilt where the strands of his earliest memories tugged like ghosts reaching out day after day after day? Pulling him in to join the dead where he belonged.

He had been living like this for ninety-five years.

He left his room, headed down the hall to the elevator, and passed a door with a message taped to it. A different message was posted on this door every day.
God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage
. That was today’s message. Trudy, the woman who lived there, always wore a smile.

Jack made his way further down the hall and caught the elevator where he found Eric, eighty-seven and a widower like him. He was a man who never said much, just a nod or a shrug. Jack said hello, but got nothing in return and then, a few seconds into their ride, a sign of life.

“What makes you think you’re so special?” Eric said.

“Excuse me?” said Jack.

“You know what I’m talking about. You think you’re the only one who suffered? You think no one else deserves any pity?”

“Pity?”

“Yes pity. What makes you think you’re so special?”

“What are you talking about?”

The elevator doors opened and Eric marched off in a huff to the dining room. Jack followed him through the lobby with the yellow-brown wallpaper on the wall and the red floor that was painted like that so you could see it. The first person he bumped into was Trudy, the one who put all those messages on her door.

“Good morning, Jack,” she said. “How are you today? Lovely day, isn’t it?”

Trudy was always smiling, but never had much to say. Nothing of substance. It was usually the weather or the Yankees or politicians or how the coffee they served in the dining room was never hot enough, but she was a lot more pleasant than Eric had been in the elevator.

“Good morning, Trudy,” said Jack. “I’ll try for that safe landing.”

“You do that,” and she gave him a warm smile. It would be the only smile he would see all day.

The next person he bumped into was a woman he admired. Linda was a few years short of the Hundred Club, but carried herself with the dignity of a well-preserved seventy-five. She could pass for that.

“Good morning, Linda,” Jack said.

“Hmmph,” was all she said.