The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (32 page)

That night Mara dreamt she was a dog, a large grey mongrel, searching for Mika amid a vast labyrinth of prison corridors, sniffing, scurrying in and out of every cell to no avail. As she emerged from the prison she looked up. And there, high up, was Mika, clinging on to a single balloon, moving closer and closer to the sun.

The next day, after a huge breakfast of marinated fish, cheese and cereal, Mara made her way north-west, heading towards the remembrance monument once again. Today frost covered everything in a sparkling whiteness.

She could see the grey monument from afar, but the moment she arrived, a bus full of tourists parked and spilled its load. The colourful group swarmed around the monument like butterflies, snapping pictures from all sides. They kept their voices low but she recognised the southern German accent. She wished she had come later.

She sat down on a bench, reading from her guidebook: ‘The Remembrance monument for the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto Uprising was created from a huge slab of grey basalt the Nazis brought from Norway in anticipation of their victory.’ One side of the monument depicted a wretched march of the ghetto’s people, moving as if pressed down by a storm: cloaked men, children hanging on to their mothers, a rabbi clutching the Torah; on the other side men and women of various ages stood tall, raising their weapons towards the sky like torches – the ghetto fighters, the heroes. Small stones, candles and flowers lay at the base of the monument as if washed up there by the sea. Mara was tempted to add a stone but hesitated.

The next stop on her walk was the bunker monument, at the site of Mila Street 18, the resistance’s main retreat, where Mordecai, their leader, and about two hundred fighters fought their last battle before the Germans blew up their refuge. All that remained of the bunker now was a simple grass mound surrounded by grey housing blocks. The grass shimmered like caster sugar in the morning frost as she slowly moved up the steps. On top lay a large granite block with a long list of names chiselled into it: the names of the fighters. Mara stood as stiff as the stone, reading every name.

All those brave fighters buried beneath the rubble. Should we be even standing here?
She snapped her travel book shut, walked down the steps on the other side of the mound and marched on, this time towards the former
Umschlagplatz
, the place where thousands were gathered, to be taken to Treblinka, the extermination camp a few hours to the east of Warsaw. Mara dreaded what she would find there. The former
Umschlagplatz
was not really a square any more, but rather a white marble memorial resembling an open cattle box car. As she moved through the gap in the wall, as if entering the belly of the car, she found herself in front of an unpolished wall engraved with names. A list of 448 Jewish first names chiselled into the stone from A to Z. Mara stood alone in front of the marble edifice, her lips moving as she read the names from left to right: from Aba to Zygmunt, Abel to Zanna, Abigail to Zlata, Anna to Zofia, and all names in between. She looked for Mika’s name. No Mika but Mikhail. She sat down. So many names she had never heard of. It was hard to imagine the
Umschlag
, that dirty square that for so many had been the last piece of Warsaw earth they saw, and yet Mara shivered. She pulled her coat tighter and her hands reached for the prince in her pocket.

‘Where to now, my little friend?’ She let her fingers glide over her map. She knew where to head next: the old Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street.

She got up and made her way to the north-eastern part of the city. She came to a small gate, paid the entrance fee and stopped in front of a large map of the cemetery, searching for the spot that marked the memorial to Janusz Korczak. She moved swiftly through the cemetery and soon found it. There he was, the old man, tall and commanding, carved from black stone, his precious load of children in tow, surging forward as if against a strong storm. Small piles of stones lay scattered at the base, left by visitors.

‘Love and Respect’. Mara read out the simple words that adorned the sculpture.

The morning’s walk had moved Mara but she was no closer to finding out about the boy, Mika. She remembered that there was an archive at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Ringelblum archive. Maybe she could find Mika there. But it wouldn’t be that easy. Although the people were friendly at the archive they told her she couldn’t just walk in here and find someone. It would take time. Weeks maybe, or months. Mara’s heart sank. They promised to write to her, took her address and Mika’s full name. She couldn’t give any other details. By now the sun cast long shadows, dark blue like ink.

She decided to go back via the old town. As she approached the castle, she encountered crowds of tourists, babbling in dozens of languages, streaming towards the heart of the old town. In the cobbled market square, tour guides holding up their umbrellas gathered their excited flocks, pointing out details on the colourful façades.
Such a different atmosphere here
, Mara thought.
So touristy
–
all sweet and Continental
. She strolled towards the middle of the square drawn by an intriguing statue: a mermaid, swinging a sword over her head like a fierce warrior – Syrena, the symbol of Warsaw.

Her guidebook told her that the old city had been rebuilt stone by stone from drawings and photographs after the war. It took years, and the people danced and cried in the square all night when it was finished.

Leaving the square, Mara meandered through the old town’s quaint streets, past the castle, back towards the modern centre. She recognised the white two-spired church from her book; the place where Chopin’s heart lay buried under a marble slab. His body lay in Paris, but he had wanted his heart to return to his home country. Mara stood for a moment in front of the white marble slab surrounded by flowers, a relief of his face – Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, his Polish name.

Leaving Chopin’s heart under the cold marble, she made her way back to the hotel, collapsing on the large bed. It would be another year before, one afternoon, Mara stumbled across an article about Chopin’s anti-Semitism. ‘More subtle than Wagner,’ the journalist wrote.
What comfort is that supposed to be?
she thought. She had loved Chopin’s music all her life.

Mara scribbled in her notebook all the way on the flight back to Germany, filling page after page with ideas and sketches. The next day she went straight to work on her puppet play about Warsaw during the occupation. Then three weeks later the letter arrived.

‘Nothing. They found nothing on Mika, nothing at all,’ Mara said out loud after ripping open the envelope with the colourful Polish stamps. However, the letter did state there might be a small chance he had survived: he might have emigrated after the war to Israel or America as many others did. The letter gave her the address of another archive detailing displaced persons.

That night Mara sat bent over her computer, typing furiously.

‘There, let’s see what happens now.’

This time the answer didn’t come by letter, but via email.

The archive had nothing listed under Mika Hernsteyn, but a Mikhail Hernstein left Warsaw for New York in August 1948. Could this be the same Mika? She tried the online New York telephone directory, without success.
Guess he could have gone anywhere in the US
, she thought, returning to her play.

In time Mara realised that if she were really to do the story justice she would need more than just her two hands. She needed help to change the lights, get troops of Nazis marching and manipulate all the puppets. It wasn’t long before she had a little group gathered for breakfast, and then for the first rehearsal: Rainer, an enthusiastic saxophonist and redhead, Martin, a former boyfriend with a voice as deep as a well, and Sibylle, Mara’s oldest friend, one of the very few people she had connected with in her childhood. After a month of rehearsals the play was ready –
The Puppet Boy of Warsaw
by the ‘Black Elk Puppet Theatre troupe’ as they proudly named themselves.

Puppet Boy
showed first in one of Bremen’s community halls, and after some good reviews, it moved to a small theatre. Papers and radio programmes talked about the show and it was the focus of much controversy: a puppet play about the Holocaust? And not only that, but what authority did this German puppet troupe have to address the history of the Warsaw ghetto? But as harshly as some critics judged the play, and Mara’s troupe, others approved of it and hailed
The Puppet Boy of Warsaw
as a groundbreaking piece.

Over the next three months the four puppeteers toured all over Germany – from Hamburg to Düsseldorf, Frankfurt to Nuremberg, Munich and many smaller places in between. Indeed,
The Puppet Boy of Warsaw
turned out to be an unexpected success.

One day, when Mara and the Black Elk troupe had just returned from Munich, an email landed in her inbox with an invitation to put on the play at a puppet festival in the South of France. Spain followed a week later, then Italy and Greece.

During all this time, Mara was so busy that she didn’t have time to continue her search for Mika. Then, one late September day on a rare trip home, Mara jumped up from her computer desk with a big leap. Grabbing the prince, who always sat at her desk next to the computer if not on tour, Mara danced through her sitting room like a whirling dervish.

‘I can’t believe this. We’re off to the Big Apple, the big NY! There’s a puppet festival and they invited us. All of us!

‘Everything is big there, my prince, you’ll see.’ She hugged the prince close to her heart.

They left three weeks later. To play in New York meant more to Mara than playing in any other place before – not only for the sheer excitement of the pulsing city, but for a hope that stirred in her heart of finding a link, a connection to the boy, the old man who once owned her cherished puppet.

New York City. Downtown Hospital, 14 January 2009

P
ale light falls through the milky glass of the northfacing window, illuminating the black and white marbled pattern on the linoleum. No one in the room is aware of the traffic’s constant murmur, interrupted only by the occasional siren – the familiar backdrop to life in Manhattan. The small room is a place outside time, a place of limbo, of waiting; quiet but for the monitor’s regular beeping and a machine pumping oxygen into Mika’s lungs, its plastic bellows folding and unfolding like an old accordion. Propped up and wrapped in starched sheets, the old man is held firmly in the large hospital bed’s cool embrace.

Mika floats beyond time and space, his whole being broken open by the events of the past few days: a brightly coloured poster of a puppet show; a mysterious phone call; an outpouring of his past to his grandson followed by a walk around the block; the dance under a street lamp among the whirling snowflakes; the iron cramp and white-flashing pain in his heart; Danny’s face in the ambulance as he held his hand. . .

When Daniel rang, Hannah had just prepared a pot of strong black tea, ready to settle on the couch for a late-night thriller. The news struck her like a blow, contracting her solar plexus, leaving her breathless.

‘What do you mean he’s in hospital? What happened?’ She had an eerie sense of standing outside herself, noticing her high-pitched voice, a hysterical slant.

‘In the snow? In the dark? What the hell were you doing out in the snow? He was what? Dancing?’ A wave of anger washed over her. Then she remembered she was talking to her son.

‘Sorry, Danny, are you all right? Where are you? I’ll come immediately.’

She rushed downtown to the hospital as fast as she could, cursing the snow and her father’s recklessness.

Since then, the hours had merged into one another like a sluggish, grey stream. Except for those long hours in which she listened to Danny retelling her father’s epic tale: his childhood in Warsaw, the ghetto, the puppets, the fires, the deportations, while the old man lay unconscious, kept alive only by a machine.

Hannah sits close to Mika’s bed. Her hands move restlessly over the coarse black coat that lies draped over her legs. She has not let go of it since she found it on her father’s bed, waiting like a loyal animal. Not since she reached into its secret pockets and passages, retrieving the tokens of Mika’s past. Nothing could make her let go of the coat now – this witness to her father’s life that has finally found her, come home.

On her father’s bedside table lie a pair of golden glasses, a small wooden flute, a bundle of letters and six puppets, sitting next to each other like a colourful theatre troupe on parade. Even now, two days later, she continues to stroke the objects as if they were precious pets. Sometimes she reaches out to touch Mika’s hand.

‘Daddy, can you hear me?’ Her voice is gentle and quiet. She is not sure whether to keep speaking to him or to be silent. She finds it difficult to talk – not that she can’t find something to say, she just doesn’t know where to start. The dam held for so long and she isn’t ready for a deluge, for everything pouring out just like that.