The Woman from Hamburg (8 page)

“After all, this is only a dream,” Estera thought. “Tomorrow they’ll shoot and they’ll kill everyone.” They walked across the fields and through the woods and stopped in front of a large farmyard.

“Do you recognize it?” her mother asked. Estera recognized it; they were in front of Stefan Marcyniuk’s house. “Remember this,” said her mother. “This is where you must come.”

They escaped on the following day. Eleven days later
Estera and her fiancé reached the village of Janów and stood in front of the house from her dream. It was nighttime. They didn’t want to awaken the owners, so they crept into the barn and lay down on the straw.

“Who are you?”

They heard a man’s voice in the darkness and someone’s hand grasped Estera’s hand.

“It’s I, your sister,” Estera said, because that was the voice of Idełe, her older brother.

“It wasn’t your mother, it was God who sent you,” Stefan Marcyniuk said, when they told him the dream. “You’ll stay with me until the war is over.”

Tojwełe, too, reached good people in a good village, on the left bank of the Wieprz. He found a place to stay in Mchy with Franciszek Petla. Petla’s uncle was President Mościcki’s valet. He had traveled with the president to Romania, came home, and opened a porcelain booth at the Różycki bazaar. The village was informed that Tojwełe-Tomek was the valet Zięba’s own son. This impressed the children in the pasture, especially Kasia Turoń, who was the tallest girl, because she took after her father the cavalry soldier. The children looked after the cows. Their favorite game was “Catch the Jew.” The “Jew” was chosen by counting out one-potato, two-potato; the “Jew” ran away, and everyone chased him. When he was caught, he’d be asked: “Are you Jude? Did you kill Christ? Bing bang!”

Two Germans stopped Tomek in the meadow. He was walking with Stefan Akerman, the saddler, who was in hiding in Ostrzyca. One of the Germans blocked them with his bicycle. “Jude?” The boys who guarded the cows and Kasia Turoń were sitting nearby.

“Mr. German,” Kasia shrieked, “that’s our lad.”

“And this one?”

Kasia didn’t know Akerman.

“Mr. German, don’t you know what to do? Drop his pants and bing bang.”

Akerman dropped his pants. The German removed his rifle and held it out to the children. “Who wants to make bing bang?”

The children were silent.

“Do you want to make bing bang?”

The German held out his rifle to Kasia. She shook her head. The other German took Akerman away into the woods. They heard a shot. That German came back, then both of them got on their bicycles and rode away. At night, Akerman came to see Tomek. The German had given him a cigarette, fired into the air, and told him to walk away.

In the morning, in the meadow, Kasia said, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

She was pretty. Maybe not as pretty as Małka Lerner, but she had blue eyes to make up for it.

“Tomek, will you come to our drying shed? As soon as it gets dark. You’ll read to me.”

He expressed surprise. “I can’t read in the dark.”

“You can, you can,” said Kasia.

He couldn’t read, so they lay down on a pile of tobacco. It smelled lovely. Kasia still felt bad because of Akerman, so Tomek consoled her. Then he felt bad, and Kasia consoled him. Then she screamed, “Tomek, you’re a Jew!”

He jumped up and fastened his trousers.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” she whispered hastily.

She told her brother Andrzej. He started giving Tomek Polish lessons.

“We don’t say ‘Ojej, what’s haaa-pening?’; we don’t draw out our vowels, and no ‘ojej.’ ”

Andrzej Turoń belonged to the Armia Ludowa, the communist People’s Army. After the war he joined the militia. Two AL partisans in Mchy joined the militia—Turoń and Tadzio Petla, the farmer’s nephew. They came home for the first postwar Christmas, both of them in uniform, and someone fired a burst of bullets at each of them. Tadzio was seventeen and Andrzej eighteen. No one knew who shot them, and if someone did know, he’s no longer alive, says Romek, Franciszek Petla’s son. (The youth with the round face, whom Marcin B. took on as his helper, also signed up for the militia and someone fired a round at him.)

Romek Petla is a leather worker. He lives in the Nowe
Miasto district in Warsaw. He sits at an old Singer sewing machine and sews the uppers for knee-high boots. Blatt visited him this time, too. They each drained a shot glass and followed it with a bite of something. They reminisced about Mchy, Romek’s deceased father of blessed memory, the Jews, Kasia, and also that postwar girl from Tarzymiechy, a little one, but with what eyes, and also, naturally, the bullet in the jaw.

“Are you keeping it there?” Romek Petla asked.

“Yes, I’m keeping it,” said Blatt.

“And do you remember how I brought you bandages and salve? I got them from the German. For two eggs.”

Romek Petla placed boot tops with sewn-in linings onto a level pile. The linings were insulated. The boot tops were ugly. For cheap boots, for poor people. Romek Petla said the demand for them keeps growing because there are more and more poor people. But so what, since the boot tops exude boredom. Romek Petla poured out another glass for each of them, but it was of no help for his boredom. On the contrary. For some reason, boredom takes root most eagerly in parts of shoes—in the soles, linings, and uppers.

“So why do you really hold onto that bullet?” asked Romek Petla.

“Do you think I know?” Blatt sank into thought. “I lose everything. If I had it removed, I would lose it, and this way it sits in my jaw and I know that it’s there.”

The war ended. The surviving Jews from Izbica got together in Lublin. For some ill-defined reasons it never occurred to them that they could return to Izbica. It also never occurred to Tomek, but he couldn’t leave. His boots remained in Marcin B.’s barn. He was walking around barefoot. The war was over, but he was barefoot. He gave ten zlotys to a boy.

“Go to Przylesie,” he told him, “go into the fourth house on the right and ask for Marcin B. Tell him that Tomek is waiting for his boots near the well in Maliniec. Say that Tomek’s boots remained in the barn.”

He waited near the well. It was July. It was hot. Marcin B. arrived, also barefoot. He held in his hands tall boots, polished to a shine. They were Szmul’s boots. Without a word he held them out to Tomek, turned around, and walked away. Tomek took the boots and also walked away. Still barefoot. With Szmul Wajcen’s boots in his hands, the right boot in his right hand and the left in his left hand.

He went to Lublin. He met Staszek Szmajzner, the one to whom Peczerski had given the single rifle in the woods.

“You have splendid boots,” Staszek observed.

He told him about Fredek, Szmul, and Marcin B.

Staszek stopped a Soviet truck carrying a captain. He gave him a half liter of vodka. They drove to Przylesie. Marcin wasn’t there. He’s gone to do the threshing, his wife said. You can stand in for him. Staszek indicated
Marcin B.’s daughter with his head. Gentlemen, the wife groaned. She ran off somewhere and came back with gold in a pot. Take it, gentlemen. The girl was already standing against the wall. She isn’t guilty, Tomek yelled. And my sisters, were they guilty? asked Staszek. Was my mother guilty? Marcin B.’s wife sank down on her knees before Staszek. He raised the rifle he’d taken from a German to his eyes and took aim at the girl. Tomek shoved his arm. Marcin B.’s wife was weeping loudly. Marcin B.’s daughter stood there calmly, leaning against the wall. She was looking up at the sky, as if she wanted to discern the flight of the bullet.

They lived on Kowalska Street, with Hersz Blank, who had established his own business in Lublin. Come what may, people will always need hides. Someone stopped Tomek in the stairway: “Don’t go there; there’s still blood.” He wasn’t surprised. He knew that people exist, exist, and then they’re gone. He went to the Jewish cemetery. Hersz Blank lay in the little cemetery hut, wrapped in linen. A boy from Sobibor, Szlomo Podchlebnik, had brought him there and wrapped his body. Jews from Izbica, Lublin, and Sobibor came for the funeral. At the funeral people talked about two things. That this was done by men from the Armia Krajowa, the Home Army, and that it would be necessary
to leave here. Many people left for Palestine. Tomek went to the States via Palestine, because he knew an American Jew. He settled in California. At first he worked on automobile radios. Then he began speaking about Sobibor, he wrote a book about Sobibor, and placed memorial tablets in Sobibor. Twenty-odd years later, his wife informed him that she didn’t intend to spend the rest of her life in Sobibor.

Staszek Szmajzner left for Rio. He married a Miss Brazil. He settled down in Copacabana. When he opened his windows, he could hear the Atlantic. He left his home and moved to the Amazon. He didn’t want to see any people other than Indians. With his rifle that he acquired in Sobibor and with which, in Marcin B.’s homestead, he had fired an honorary shot for his mother, his sisters, and also for Fredek and Szmul, he shot at birds in the Amazon jungle. He spent thirty years writing a book. When he finished it … and so forth.

The Home Army men who were involved in the Hersz Blank affair were executed in April 1945. Not because of Blank, but for a conspiracy against Bolesław Bierut and the authorities. Bierut personally approved the sentence. It was carried out in the Lublin castle. Eleven people were executed during a fifty-five-minute period. They were young people, patriotic and brave. The Supreme Court recently absolved them of all the crimes they were accused of. Several articles appeared in the press in relation to this. All of them included references to Blank. The journalists
agreed that since it was Home Army people who killed him, they must have had a reason. Evidently, Blank was an agent of the UB, the secret police. One journalist wrote: “One may assume that Blank was suspected of being an informer.” Another journalist didn’t assume. He knew that the Home Army men suspected Blank of collaboration. The third journalist was certain: Hersz Blank was a collaborator with the UB.

In the meantime, the Home Army men were charged not with Blank’s murder but only with participation in his murder. The murderers were not sentenced at all. Even their names were not mentioned during the investigation. Pseudonyms were used: “Rabe” and “Mietek.” Why weren’t their names revealed? Why weren’t they charged? Why did the authorities guard these secrets till the end?

Who killed Hersz Blank is not known. Home Army soldiers? Members of the UB? Or perhaps murderers hired by the security organs, either the Polish or Soviet ones?

No one is trying to explain this death. The Supreme Court, which declared the innocence of the Home Army men, dismissed the Blank case as beyond the statute of limitations.

Hersz Blank was twenty years old. He was religious, from a Hasidic family. When he was murdered, his older brother was sitting over the Talmud, as was his custom, talking with God about the most important matters.

Thomas Blatt parked the car before entering the village. We walked through a ravine.

Along the right side, there were houses at intervals of about two hundred meters. If you have to ask for food, these are the kinds of houses to approach, Thomas Blatt said with expertise.

A forest stretched along the left side. If you want to disappear, this is the kind of forest you need.

He believed that he would recognize the trees from behind which they saw the light in Marcin B.’s house. And also the trees behind which Szmul Wajcen had disappeared. That was obviously absurd. Those trees had long since been chopped down for fuel.

He began counting how many shots had been fired. First one, at Fredek. Then another, at him. Then many shots, but how many? Four? Three? Let’s say four, so six altogether, two plus four. But what if there were five shots? Then it would have been seven all told. At the same time, he was counting the houses. When we passed the third house, he became noticeably agitated. “Oho,” he kept repeating, “the fourth house will be soon.”

With every passing year there were fewer traces. At one time, the walls were still standing; then only the corner room (by some strange chance, it was “their” corner room, with the hiding place), then the foundation, then only rubble—rafters, boards, stones.

This year, there was nothing. Nothing. Other than an unpruned apple tree with crooked, rheumatic limbs. Thomas Blatt wasn’t even sure if he’d found the right place. He walked back and forth, looked around; the brush and grass reached his chest. There was no such brush growing anywhere else in the area.

We walked straight ahead. We noticed a farm. An old woman was standing in the yard. I said that I was collecting material for a book. About what? Oh, about life. This wasn’t a precise answer, but she invited us into her kitchen. It turned out she was the sister of Zosia B., Marcin B.’s wife. Blatt was again preoccupied with arithmetic. If she heard shots, how many were there? She knew immediately what he was talking about. She hadn’t heard, but Krysia Kochówna, who was spending the night with them, had said, “There was shooting at Uncle Marcin’s last night.” At night, the sound of a shot carries well, very far, and you can hear it. “In the morning people in every house knew that the Yids had been picked off. Three of them were lying there, but do you know what? One had risen from his grave and walked off. No one knows where he is.”

“He’s here with you.” Blatt couldn’t contain himself, although I had begged him, before we went in, to sit quietly. “With you, in your kitchen.” They looked at him with disbelief. “Check it out, if you like. Here’s the bullet, right here.”

They came over to him, one after the other: Zosia B., the sister, the sister’s daughter, the daughter-in-law. My,
oh my, a bullet. Can you feel it? Because I do. It’s really a bullet. Comforted, they rushed to make sandwiches. So, you’re alive. Help yourselves. And did you give them a lot of that gold? My, oh my. Because our Józik found a ring with a heart in their farmyard, a big one that fit his middle finger. He lost it in the army. But I told him, Don’t take it, Józik. And my daughter lost the bracelet that a Jewess from Maliniec left her as a memento. She came with her child, we gave her milk, but we couldn’t take them, because we were afraid. The little girl was big; she could talk. And what did she say? She said, Mama, don’t cry. Here, help yourselves. Two Jewesses were hiding in Dobre, in the woods. People brought them yarn and they knitted it; then someone denounced them, and they hanged themselves right there. A beautiful Jewess lay in the road beyond the bend. First she was dressed; then someone took her dress. People came to look at how beautiful she was. Marcin, too, disappeared together with his wife and children. On the day when the uniformed men came from Lublin. The horses were neighing, the cows were mooing, the grain was standing there, but everyone was afraid to go in and everything was going wild. Perhaps he’s no longer alive? Or maybe he bought a farm with that gold? Or set up a mushroom-growing cellar? And why are you looking for him? Could you kill him now? I couldn’t, said Blatt. Do you want to ask him about something? I don’t. Then why are you looking for him? To look at him. That’s all, just to look. To look? And is that worth it to you?