The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (15 page)

‘Tempest was a moody baby, but he grew into a strong boy who liked to climb trees and play knights with wooden swords.’ The puppet moved from Ellie to Mama.

‘Actually, this sounds just like you, Mika. The night you were born, a huge storm lashed over Warsaw.’ Mother had broken the puppet’s tale and instead began to share the story of my birth. Other scenes from my childhood followed as I wiggled on my seat, glad when she passed the puppet to Aunt Cara, who promptly continued with vignettes from Ellie’s childhood. And so, as the prince made the round again and again, everyone, even the twins, shared precious moments until the early hours of the morning. I cherished that night despite my embarrassment; our hearts were wide open and no one held back, as if it was the last time we would all be together. The prince, once more, had been a great helper – if only I could find a way to recover my joy in playing with the other puppets too.

The next night I woke up drenched and shaking, and I knew what I had to do: I needed to see the children’s eyes on the puppets again. Whenever their eyes shone, something in me lit up too, became alive again.

I knew Mother wouldn’t allow me to go and I didn’t ask Ellie as Aunt Cara was even stricter. But very early the next morning I stole away to the orphanage. Mother was still asleep. So often in her sleep she looked peaceful and relaxed, the deep frown between her eyebrows softened, her breathing regular and soft. I scribbled a short note:

Gone to the orphanage, will be back for supper.

Please don’t worry and don’t be angry, I love you.

Mika, your prince

I rolled it up, took out the prince and placed the note under his arm, as if he were delivering an important pamphlet. Then I tiptoed out of the room, closed the front door and went out into the streets.

The early morning brought with it a light breeze and a blackbird’s song. I had forgotten about birds, we hardly heard them any more. Why would they visit us when there were only three trees standing forlorn in the whole of the ghetto and no grass anywhere? I sometimes spotted a flock of pigeons but they never landed on their crossing between our cemetery and Krasinski Park. That morning, however, the brutal shouting had stopped, and instead of the screeching of trucks and marching boots all I could hear was the blackbird’s haunting song.

It would take fifteen minutes to walk to the orphanage and I moved swiftly. The bright blue sky opened above me and for a short moment I felt happy to have escaped the darkness and stuffy air of the apartment. Hope stirred in me, as if that bird’s song had sung straight into my heart.

But hope was as fleeting as that song. Right on the corner of Leszno Street, I stumbled over an upturned pram. I rubbed my foot and as I lifted my head I gasped. The long wide road, once a place for entertainment, was littered with debris and discarded belongings: single shoes, coats, bags, toys, spectacles, hastily scattered objects that told a silent story of how they had been ripped violently from their owners, kicked around, then abandoned, left behind. Dead bodies, distorted into strange positions, lay where they had collapsed after a deadly shot. And feathers – white feathers ripped from duvets – covered the street, like snow in July.

Everything had changed in these past weeks; I could hardly recognise this as the street along which I had strolled with Grandfather all that time ago on my birthday. Fear gripped me like eagle’s claws against my neck. What about Hannah and the other children? What if they had been taken? I raced along the street. As I turned the corner I stumbled over an old man. Wrapped in rags, he lay slumped against the wall, his head hanging lifeless. I bent over him but he wasn’t breathing. My eyes caught a small object lying in his lap; a wooden flute, and next to it a single white feather. Suddenly I remembered him: I had listened to his flute the day Grandfather took me to see the puppet show. He had looked ragged even then but his joyful melodies had moved me.

I remembered a bunch of street children dancing to his tunes, hopping and whirling, and for just a little while forgetting their biting hunger. There were no children on the streets now, just a ghostly silence. How had he died? No wound showed the cause of his death. I hope he’d died peacefully. I picked up his small flute, light as a bird’s wing, a hollowed-out bone.

‘I am taking this with me, old man. You won’t need it where you are now. I hope you don’t mind.’ At that moment a gust of wind lifted the feather from his hand, and tossed it up into the sky, swirling. I took it as a good sign. I blew a few thin notes, then slipped the flute into one of the coat’s deep pockets and moved on. That little flute would become an important companion to me. I began to run as fast as I could, wanting to get away from all this death and destruction. I needed the children that day, maybe more than they needed me. When I finally saw the orphanage my heart leapt into my throat. I rang the bell. My relief must have shown when Margaret slowly opened the heavy door, peeping out through the small slit.

‘Oh, Mika, what are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here, it’s so dangerous.’

‘Isn’t it dangerous everywhere? Please let me come in. I’ve missed you all so much. I worried about you. How are the little ones?’

Margaret opened the door and quickly pulled me in, but not before she had looked around, making sure no one had seen me. The strain on her face showed; she was paler than usual and she had deep dark circles under her eyes, giving her the appearance of a weary owl. She had lost weight, but her smile shone as beautiful as ever.

‘They are as well as can be expected. And they’ve missed you too, they’ve all been asking about you. Still, you shouldn’t be here.’

Yet after a while she brought me a steaming cup of tea and announced my arrival to the children. Soon we were back to the old routine, surrounded by all the little ones, Hannah helping me with the puppets. For the first time since that fateful day when the doctor had spoken up, I forgot myself completely in the puppet play. The children’s sparkling eyes were indeed the remedy I needed. But clouds of worry passed across Janusz’s face even though he tried to smile. He looked years older than the last time I had seen him some weeks ago.

‘I’ve nothing left to give them, Mika,’ he told me, pulling me into a corner; ‘I can’t thank you enough.’

Hannah did not leave my side and later in the morning she drew me away from the others. I can still feel her tiny hand pulling my fingers.

‘I’m always thinking about you, Mika. You’re my best friend.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Can I marry you when I grow up?’ She just came out with it. No more time for being shy or polite, she had held back long enough. The first and only proposal I ever received. And fool that I was, I didn’t know what to say. I bent down and took her little hands in mine.

‘But we are friends, Hannah, I’ll always be your friend.’

‘But I want to marry you,’ she insisted.

‘I can’t marry you, Hannah, you’re just a little girl, and I am far too old for you. But don’t worry; I know you will marry someone nice one day.’

Her eyes brimmed with tears but she didn’t let them fall. She clenched her fists and her tiny jaw. Seeing her effort not to cry I realised I had broken her heart. She turned away, but before I left that day she gave me a drawing. A simple sketch of two stick people holding hands under a cheerful sun: one tall, the other little. One wore trousers, the other a red and orange skirt. Both were smiling broadly and a colourful butterfly fluttered between them. She signed it ‘
For my friend Mika from Hannah – come back soon.
’

That day in the orphanage I was just happy to see the children again, and even the puppets were different: free to be themselves. The plays turned very silly, funny and light-hearted, and I even let the fool play the tiny violin, something I had never allowed the Germans to see.

In the afternoon I suddenly remembered I had stolen away from home and my stomach tightened. I promised the children I would return soon and left quickly.

I rushed back through the streets. Anyone I saw darted like prey, hiding closely in the shadows of houses, hushed like mice. Everyone looked at everyone else suspiciously, not knowing who could still be trusted.

When I turned the corner into Gęsia Street, I froze. One of the feared green German trucks was parked right outside our neighbour’s house, ready to take its daily load to the
Umschlag
. The street swarmed with soldiers and SS units, shouting and kicking in doors. My ears rang and my heart pounded so hard I thought it would burst. I stood and watched, rooted to the spot.

Then, with the same efficiency and brutal shouting we had heard all over the neighbourhood for weeks, I saw them move towards our house.

‘
Raus, raus, schnell, macht schon, alle Juden raus.
’

The blood hammered in my ears, echoing their beatings on the door. I stood and stared, my legs trembling. A useless boy with no weapons in his hands.

When I looked up I could see soldiers inside our flat. My eyes followed the intruders from the bedroom to the kitchen. One of them opened the kitchen window, grabbed my mother’s beloved window box with both hands and threw it full force into the street. Earth and flowers exploded all over the pavement, leaving shards of pottery, petals and uprooted plants scattered as far as the opposite side.

My stomach heaved. Why the flowers as well? My mother’s beautiful garden. Another soldier kicked earth and plants from our balcony, hitting them with such force it was as if he was trying to score a goal. His face shone with sweat and satisfaction, the ugly joy of destruction.

Seeing even those small islands of triumph destroyed made me feel nauseous. I was sick to the core and gripped by an overwhelming desire for revenge: to kill off the rats, once and for all. Yet for all that rage I just stood there, frozen, breathing heavily like a workhorse.

The familiar sound of our front door opening – a click followed by a drawn-out creak – shook me out of my trance.

Then I saw them, being led out of the house one after another: first the parents, holding the twins – how thin they looked in the summer light, the baby clutched to her mother’s breast – then Cara, and lastly my mother. Mother was very pale, and although she tried not to look around too obviously I knew she was scanning the street for me. They were all wearing coats despite the July heat and each carried only one suitcase, as ordered by the Germans. Neighbours from both sides of the street joined them, a herd of terrified people, clinging closely to each other.

I thought I could hear Mother talking quietly to the twins, but where was Ellie? Had she come after me to the orphanage or was she hiding somewhere?

In that split second I decided to hold back, although my whole being ached to run over to my mother and join her, to turn myself in and go with her wherever they might take us. But if Ellie wasn’t there, I had to find her.

‘
Na macht schon, schneller, raus
.’ The soldiers’ brutal commands echoed down the street. They loaded the group into the truck at gunpoint. All stood tightly packed in the open car, hanging on to each other and the iron bars. The truck sped off with screeching tyres.

The rats would take everyone they rounded up that day to the
Umschlagplatz
. I had seen the
Umschlag
from the second floor of the hospital a few days after the deportations started: it was a fenced-off square, packed to the brim with people, chaos and despair. Later, when the trains had departed, it lay empty and abandoned, cherished possessions left behind like flotsam after a flood: a small suitcase, books, a leather bag, paper, clothes. Our neighbour had told me that they were taking away seven thousand of us each day during these terrible weeks. Seven thousand souls washed away every single day.

Through the mist of my tears something tried to push its way into my consciousness. While my eyes knew instantly, it took my brain some time to realise what I was seeing. It was Max, the soldier. He jumped down from one of the trucks that had just pulled up outside the houses on the opposite side. Without thinking I stepped out from the shadows of the wall and approached the van.

‘Max.’ My voice sounded hoarse and thin. Before I could reach him, another soldier stepped into my path and pointed his gun at me.

‘
Halt, Jude, stehenbleiben
,’ he yelled.

Max looked startled, as if he thought I was familiar but did not recognise me. Then something changed in his face.

‘Wait, don’t shoot. It’s the Puppet Boy, don’t you remember?’

I realised I had seen the other soldier at one of the evenings with the officers. Instinctively I put my hand in my pocket.

‘Put your hands up,’ a thin lanky soldier with sharp features screamed at me.

I raised my hands slowly, the prince hanging limp from my right hand. This time it wasn’t the prince who spoke but me.

‘Max, they’ve taken my mother, my aunt and my friends, please don’t take them. They can all work.’ My voice gathered strength. I could see sadness in Max’s eyes but his voice cut like a knife.

‘This is how it is now, boy, there’s nothing I can do. Orders have changed. And orders are orders. You can be glad we let you go.
Mach dass du fortkommst
. Go.’ He had given me a chance to disappear but that was all.

My world collapsed, turned into dust right before my eyes. I couldn’t move, just kept staring at Max, this soldier whose interest in puppets led me to live a double life. Suddenly, as brief as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, I saw Max give a tiny wink. I could have been mistaken, but when Max passed me on the way to the next house he whispered, ‘I’ll see what I can do, meet me at the
Wache
tonight at ten. What’s your mother’s name?’

‘Halina Hernsteyn.’

Then he strode on past as if he had never known me.

Was this a final trap or did he really mean to help us? I turned and stumbled away, my body still trembling. In the
Aktion
Max behaved as a brutal rat like any other, smashing our doors with his boots, yet he’d taken risks before, smuggled medicine for us and shielded me once from the other soldiers’ games. But even if he wanted to protect my family now, how could he? He was a Wehrmacht soldier, part of the killing machine, sworn to follow orders. Maybe he felt as trapped as I did? I shook myself. How could I even think this? I loathed them all. As for meeting Max that night, there was nothing I could do but wait and see. But where to hide until then? Nowhere was safe now, and I needed to be at the
Wache
at ten despite the curfew.