The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (35 page)

As his body lies still, memories form a collage, a kaleidoscope of images. He is fourteen, wrapped in his grandfather’s coat, queuing in the tedious lines of the ghetto; then taller but very skinny, standing in a long line of sea-beaten immigrants in a white-tiled hall on Ellis Island; his first dance with Ruth, a bright spring day in 1952, an old dance hall in lower Manhattan; three years later, his foot crushing the wine glass at his wedding, remembering not Jerusalem but Warsaw’s end, as if the shattering of the glass might break the wall around his heart once and for all. Ruth, so beautiful in her cream-coloured wedding dress. Lace.

Then Hannah, a tiny, wriggling bundle, a full head of black curls sticking to her skull, a bright purple birthmark in the shape of a moth, adorning her back. He holds her, kisses her back, right on the moth wing. Little Hannah, her smile, sweet as honey, who slipped into their lives on a hot summer’s day in 1966 in their apartment on the Lower East Side – a late surprise. Hannah, ‘favoured grace’, ‘grace of God’. Her first steps, almost one year to the day she was born, on a sunny day in Central Park. A carousel ride for all of them. Holding Hannah on his lap, his arms firmly wrapped around her, Ruth bouncing up and down next to him on a purple horse. All three laughing with delight, his heart for once flying light.

Now his heart contracts as he sees his daughter, a thirteen-year-old, transformed into a Belsen girl by her own hand. Hannah shrinking until she is as pale and thin as a ghost, a shadow puppet. Like the ghost of his other Hannah.

Suddenly Mika’s mind jolts and he finds himself in the stuffy heat of the Mila Street bunker, lying on a small field bed next to Ellie. He wants to keep hold of her but is pulled backwards as in a vortex: his grandfather turning in his new coat in front of Nathan’s mirror; Ellie at their door with her old suitcase, smiling; Mother’s fists raining down on him after the first night with the soldiers; then Ellie’s fists after the Germans had taken everyone; the prince lying next to his mother’s face, a message in his hand; the princess-puppet, his last gift to Ellie, then Ellie’s face disappearing as he climbs down into the sewers. Max, the soldier, the prince dangling between them . . .

Slowly the flood of images subsides and voices enter his consciousness. He can hear Danny, lovely Danny with his black curls, then Hannah, her voice gentle but strained. He tries hard but he cannot understand what they are saying. He is aware of another voice in the room, a woman’s voice. She doesn’t address him but he senses her presence. Then it’s Hannah again. ‘Daddy,’ she calls to him. His girl. He feels a slight weight next to him, cool and smooth, then fur touching his fingers like a breath. Something is trying to push itself into his consciousness, is calling without a sound, without words.

The three figures gather around Mika’s bed. They have stopped talking, only look and wait. Then subtly, like a trick of the imagination, Mika’s finger lifts. The ring finger first, the little finger follows, then all four, the thumb remaining on the sheet as if it is too heavy. Mika’s fingertips move over the puppet’s face like those of a blind man exploring the features of a loved one, fluttering over the fur collar, the velvet cloak, coming back to the face. Mika’s eyes remain closed but a sigh shudders through his body.

And suddenly he knows. Knows without a doubt: this is his prince. No, he hasn’t dreamt it; he recognises the textures and fabrics, the delicate features of the puppet. His prince has come home. The old puppet has returned to his bloodline. Not that a clear thought like this is able to cut through the fog inside his head, but a distinct feeling spreads from his heart like a radiating sun: this is a reunion. And more than that, it is a homecoming. Whether it is the puppet that has come home or himself, he is not sure. But does this matter?

Something inside him decides to return. To come back, like the prince, if only for a while. He takes his first unaided breath for days, rattling, slurping. His eyes twitch and the urge to open them is overwhelming. Mika senses little pockets of energy emerge from deep within him like air bubbles floating to the surface of a pond. His right hand reaches for the prince, squeezes him lightly. He opens one, then the other eye.

He can make out three figures – Danny, the last sweet face he saw before the darkness fell; and Hannah. He aches for Hannah, wants to reach for her, touch her. And there is another woman he has never seen. She doesn’t smile, looks as pale as a ghost. What did Hannah say? The woman’s called Mara? As the fog in his mind lifts, the magnitude of what he is being told hits him. The soldier’s granddaughter? He flinches, closes his eyes again. How can this be?

‘Daddy, can you hear me?’ Hannah’s voice is as soft as silk. Mika strains to open his eyes, succeeds. Hannah’s face is so close he can smell her – the familiar mixture of her skin and her perfume. Danny’s voice startles him.

‘Grandpa, you’re all right?’ Mika looks at Danny, opens his dry mouth, but only a croaking emerges. He is so tired.

‘How are you feeling, Daddy?’ Hannah bends over him. She looks strained, concerned.

‘Okhaay,’ he whispers, hardly recognising his own voice. He tries to smile. ‘Still here. Who’s that?’ He lifts his hand to point at Mara but it hardly moves.

‘This is Mara, Dad. A puppeteer. She’s brought back your prince puppet.’ Hannah holds the puppet up in front of Mika’s eyes. His smile grows broader and his right hand lifts higher. Hannah guides his hand underneath the prince’s velvet cloak until the puppet is propped up on his hand.

‘Helllooo.’ He moves the prince gently, turning its head from Hannah to Danny, bows slightly, then moves it to face Mara. He lingers for a moment. Mara smiles now, but he thinks he can see tears rolling down her face. The prince nods at her and gives a tiny wave before turning back to Danny. He gestures for him to sit on the bed. Danny perches on the edge of the mattress as Hannah props Mika up with some pillows.

‘This prince is for you, Danny. For you and Mom,’ Mika whispers. He looks at Hannah, smiles. ‘Keep him safe . . .’ his breathing rattles; ‘he’s come a long way, that prince.’

‘It’s OK, Daddy, don’t strain yourself, rest.’ She strokes his cheek.
I’ve never been so tired
, he thinks. Danny takes the prince from him, puts the puppet over his hand.

‘Thanks, Grandpa, I’ll take good care of him.’

‘Sleep, my friend, I’m safe now and so are you.’ The prince’s hand softly strokes Mika’s cheek before Danny puts him into his shirt pocket.

T
he coat is clearly not popular here: old, shabby and soaked with history, it’s like a lion in a library, a dangerous beast among the clean order of the hospital. Yesterday the nurse looked at it as if it were crawling with lice. She would have dumped it if she could. But Hannah stood up to the nurse and so the coat stayed in the room.

Hannah is exactly what an old coat needs: kind and fierce, all rolled into one. She strokes the coat, like a pet, a little absentminded maybe, but with enough affection to feed its old soul. It isn’t asking for much, this old coat, just not to be thrown out
–
and never to be put in a box again. All it wants now is a hook on a wall, a nice coat hanger in a spacious wardrobe, a chair to be draped over, a corner of your heart. The best thing would be a place with a view. A place where it can rest and belong.

So, whenever you see an ordinary coat, think about what might linger in its folds, what memories might be hidden in its pockets. It might whisper to you at night. There are many more stories sewn into its sleeves and many treasures harboured in its seams.

Mika’s Book of Heroes

Adina Blady Szwajger
– nurse

A young nurse in the ghetto children’s hospital who, the night before the Germans deported everyone, acted on instinct and, with a broken heart, spared some of the illest children the journey to the gas chambers. She simply put them to bed with a bitter drink of morphine and they slipped into their eternal sleep in the presence of their favourite nurse and a bedtime story. Later she fought in the resistance.

Sylvin Rubinstein
– Russian cross-dresser

Resistance fighter and entertainer who performed a flamenco act with his twin sister all over Europe and the US before the war. While performing in Warsaw in 1939, he was caught up in the German occupation and was forced into the ghetto. His twin sister and mother were deported, while he survived. He escaped the ghetto and became a famous resistance fighter in Poland and Germany, fighting as a woman and becoming involved in many assassinations of Gestapo and SS officers. He has been living in Hamburg since the war ended.

Janusz Korczak
– Polish-Jewish children’s author, paediatrician and child educator

He wrote widely on child pedagogics and ran an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. Despite receiving release papers, he did not leave his two hundred children and staff when the whole orphanage was deported to Treblinka on 5 August 1943. All perished.

Hanush Hachenberg
– poet and writer, who, as a thirteen-year-old, was an inmate of Terezin

He wrote poetry and plays for the children’s magazine Wedem. After being taken to Terezin he wrote a puppet play, Looking for a Monster, about a king searching for old bones. He was deported to Auschwitz and killed there when he was fourteen.

Irena Sendler
– child-rescuer of giant proportions

Irena, a Roman Catholic social worker, helped rescue about 2,500 children from the Warsaw ghetto with her secret organisation, consisting mostly of women. They smuggled children to the Aryan side and placed them with Polish families – she herself smuggled about four hundred children, recorded their real surnames and with whom they were placed and buried these lists in milk bottles in her garden under an apple tree. Through this action, some of the children who survived the war could be reunited with their families – others at least knew their real Jewish names.

In 1943 she was caught, tortured by the Gestapo and left for dead in the forest outside Warsaw. Miraculously she survived and continued to fight in the resistance. She stayed in Warsaw after the war and died in May 2008 at the age of ninety-eight; in interviews she said she always felt she could have done more.

Hakina Olomoucka
– painter of the Holocaust

Hakina survived the Warsaw ghetto, Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. All the way through she managed to paint and draw, hiding her art whenever she could. Her paintings are perhaps the most chilling depictions of the horrors, showing the rawness of pain, loss and the abysmal conditions with such clarity. Her fellow inmates asked her to tell the world what had happened to them should she survive – and she did so in the endless images that poured out of her. She lives in Israel and still paints today.

Nivelli
– the Great Magician

Born in Berlin in 1906, he survived Auschwitz, while his parents, wife and children perished. He was forced to perform for the Nazis and even had to teach them some of his tricks. He emigrated in 1947 to the US and continued to perform there with his second wife. He died in 1977.

Sophie Scholl
– activist within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany

She was convicted of high treason after being found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans. They and several other members of their group were executed by guillotine. She was twenty-one years old.

The Rosenstrasse protest

A non-violent protest in Rosenstrasse (‘Rose Street’) in Berlin in February and March 1943, carried out by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men who had been arrested for impeding deportation. The protests escalated until the men were released. It was a significant instance of opposition to the events of the Holocaust.

The Edelweiss Pirates
, Edelweißpiraten – a youth culture group in Nazi Germany

They emerged in western Germany out of the German Youth Movement of the late 1930s in response to the strict regimentation of the Hitler Youth.

W
riting this book has been an incredibly rewarding and challenging journey and I feel extremely blessed to have such wonderful people supporting me.

I am most grateful to my coach and mentor Dr Eric Maisel. You supported me beautifully with your invaluable wisdom, kind guidance and humour, helping me navigate each and every step and challenge in the long process of writing this novel.

A huge thank you to Charlotte Robertson, my agent, for putting your trust in me and ‘Puppet Boy’ and for supporting me in such a special way. I will always treasure the faith you have in me and your huge enthusiasm.

A warm thank you to everyone at Orion House and especially to Kirsty Dunseath for your thorough edit, which helped to bring out the shine and make the book what it is now.

A big thank you to my early readers, Eva Coleman and Sophie Fletcher, for your thoughtful feedback and to all my wonderful friends and colleagues who read all or parts of the manuscript along the way, or who simply encouraged and believed in me: Dee, Betsy, Tim, Kirstin, Gabriele, Natasha, Bob, Erin, Linda, Mark R., Emmanuelle, Kathy, John, Mags, Stevie, Mikhail, Charlotte S., Chloe, Caroline, Johanna, Amy, Cici, Laura and my colleagues at the D. – your support means so much to me.

Thanks to all my writing buddies from Eric Maisel’s Deep Writing workshop in London, Paris and Prague for cheering me on throughout the process and to Mark and Jennix from my little writing group. I am also very grateful to all the artists who gathered with me at BLANK studios in the autumn of 2008 in whose company I found the seed for ‘Puppet Boy’: the coat with money pockets . . .

Thank you to Mary Buckham for an early edit that steered me in the right direction and to Antony Polonsky, Professor of Holocaust Studies, for his generous endorsement.