Warsaw Requiem Read online

  Thus it came as a surprise when the black automobile of the Catholic bishop of Warsaw drove to the gate of the prison compound and stopped.

  The window of the vehicle slid down, revealing the face of the bishop himself. Beside him was an ordinary priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a Jewess cloaked in a pale blue shawl.

  “We have come to see the warden,” said the bishop.

  The flustered guard stammered a reply as he looked from the priest to the rabbi, and then to the woman. At last the vehicle was waved through the stone arch of the main prison yard. No one would believe such a thing!

  Tires crunched over the gravel. Other guards left their posts to stare at the bishop’s limousine and whisper among themselves about the meaning of such a visit. So late at night! And the bishop himself! Not an underling! And with an old Jew in the backseat, and a very striking Jewess as well! What could it mean?

  Two men recognized the diminutive form of Father Kopecky as he stepped from the car and assisted the Jewish woman over the slick flagstones of the courtyard. Behind them came the bishop and the rabbi. Side by side! What should be the protocol in greeting such a group? Would the warden cross himself! Would he kneel and kiss the hand of His Eminence?

  Only seconds passed before the warden blustered out of the building. His face revealed astonishment, embarrassment, and . . . confusion! Behind him followed two Polish officers, their swords tips clattering over the flagstones as they bowed and stepped back to flank the unexpected celebrities.

  The guards lit cigarettes and passed them around from hand to hand. Twenty minutes passed in speculation of what such a visit could mean; then the door of the prison was thrown open. An arch of yellow light spilled out onto the cobblestones. The Polish officers, coatless, hands on the hilts of their swords, emerged first and rushed ahead to open the doors of the limousine. The bishop followed, then the old rabbi, and last the woman, holding tightly to the arm of a prisoner with a blanket around his stopped shoulders. The little priest, Father Kopecky, stood at the elbow of the bowed man. He supported him on his arm and aided him as he shuffled unsteadily to the vehicle. The priest’s jaw was set and angry. He glared at one of the officers, who crossed himself after the door was shut and the engine started.

  The guards shrugged and speculated. What was the world coming to when priests and bishops rode in the same car with Jews! And on such a night as this, when Poland walked a very shaky line between Germany and Russia too!

  ***

  Mama had decreed it: “Everything must go on as usual, Rachel—as if Papa is not in Warsaw prison. We must not interrupt the studies of David and Samuel. Your papa would not like that, and so we women will be brave and silent.”

  And so it had been for the past months. Since Papa’s arrest, the questions of Rachel’s younger brothers had been deferred. “Yes, Papa will be home anytime now. But you must study your Torah school lesson, or he will not be pleased.”

  Frau Rosen, the housekeeper of the Lubetkin home, was dismissed. Her gloom and unending stream of gossip became too much for Etta Lubetkin and so, for the sake of the children, she had dismissed the old Yenta.

  Tonight Rachel had been left in charge. Although she was only thirteen years old, she was the eldest and entirely capable of tucking her brothers into bed after supper.

  The clock struck nine. The kettle was steaming with water for baby Yacov’s bath. Warm, but not too warm. Rachel tossed a thick braid over her shoulder and rolled up her sleeves. She tested a drop of water on her wrist as Mama had taught her to do. Perfect. Carefully she poured the water into the white enameled pan on the chest beside the baby’s cradle. She was an hour and a half later than she should have been in giving Yani his bath, but there had been news on the wireless from Germany. Terrible news! Hitler’s threats against Danzig kept Rachel rooted, wide-eyed, in front of the big radio. David and Samuel had fallen asleep on the floor as they listened. It was an easy matter to guide them to their bed and tuck them in when the program was finished. Now there was only baby Yani and the matter of his bath to finish up. Rachel hoped she would be done before Mama came home.

  Yani screwed up his face and bleated his displeasure when she removed his diaper and the cool air smacked his little red bottom.

  “It is not so bad.” She laughed.

  In reply, Yani let loose with an intermittent stream that soaked her left sleeve and arm.

  “Who taught you that!” Rachel gasped. “You Polish peasant!”

  Yani cooed happily and kicked his feet in a perverse little dance of freedom. His fists wagged in front of his wide blue eyes as he made ragged attempts to find his toothless mouth.

  “I will speak with the Lord and Master and ask that he send me only girl babies,” she muttered in disgust as she hefted him into the water.

  The bleat turned into a wail of protest as the warm water washed over Yani’s plump thighs and belly. “You see,” Rachel said soothingly, “I get even with you. You’ll think twice next time before you wet on big sister.”

  Rachel was tender with this little one as she had never been with David and Samuel. Perhaps it was because she was older now. It came to her often that in only a few more years she would, indeed, have babies of her own. Yani was better than the dolls she had played with as a child. He was real. He smiled at her and laughed sometimes. He held her fingers and moved his eyes toward her at the sound of her voice. Such sweetness eased the stress that each new day seemed to bring to the household since Papa had been taken. When news from the world abroad became too frightening to think about any longer, Rachel fled to the baby’s crib.

  Here was innocence.

  Here was perfection.

  Rachel cupped her hand around the velvet soft head and lifted Yani onto the thick towel. She wrapped him up and put her cheek against his cheek to smell his sweet skin. Mama always said it, and it was true—nothing smelled better than a clean baby. And nothing worse than a dirty one. Well, Yani was clean and sweet-smelling. Rachel cradled him in her arms and plunked down in the rocking chair. His warmth seeped through the towel. His thumb popped into his mouth. He sucked on it in drowsy tranquility while she rocked him and hummed and told the Lord and Master that she had not meant what she said about having only girl babies.

  The clock struck the quarter hour, and then the half. Yani was asleep, his thumb still crooked at the edge of his mouth. He was diaperless, still wrapped in the towel, when Rachel finally laid him in his crib. The sound of an automobile approached in the square outside the house.

  Quickly she diapered him. He awoke with an angry protest and then fell instantly back to sleep as she pulled a gown over his head and wrapped him in an eiderdown quilt.

  The front door opened downstairs in the foyer. Mama was home! Rachel rushed to the head of the stairs to call out to her mother, to ask what news about Papa. . . .

  The light of the foyer lamp cast a golden glow on the black and white tiles of the floor. Except for that, the world seemed colorless.

  There was Mama, her face pinched, worried, exhausted beyond anything Rachel had ever seen. And there was the Catholic priest beside old Rabbi Koznon with his yellow skin and yellow beard. Together, Mama and the rabbi held up another old man. Thin and frail and broken . . . beardless and bald.

  The stranger’s eyes were dark and familiar beneath thick eyebrows. His back was bent as if his head were too heavy to hold up. And yet he managed to look up. Up the stairs. Up into Rachel’s questioning eyes, and then his cracked lips smiled. He was missing teeth. The stranger raised a hand.

  “Rachel!” The effort of speech was too much. He coughed uncontrollably.

  Rachel gasped. She put her hands to her mouth. “Papa?” she cried and swayed at the top of the stairs. Had the horror of his appearance been evident in her voice? She tried to control her trembling as she clambered down to the foyer.

  “Be careful, Rachel.” Etta warned her not to come too close. “Papa is not well. He . . . he is not well,” she finished. “Call the doctor.”
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  Rachel stopped two yards away from her father. He smelled terrible—like the public toilets in Warsaw. Like the poorhouse. Could it be? Could this old man be Papa? But yes! Those were his eyes looking back at her, loving her!

  “Call the doctor,” Etta repeated sternly. “Come, Aaron, darling. These clothes! We will bathe you and burn these things.”

  Rachel stood transfixed, staring. There were bugs on Papa. Tiny crawling things.

  Etta turned and snapped at her, “Rachel! Wake up! Did you hear me! Call the doctor!”

  Rachel found her voice. “What doctor? Dr. Letzno is gone. Who shall I call, Mama?” She realized she was crying. What had they done to Papa? What had they done to make him like this? To change him from the rabbi of Muranow into this—

  “Dr. Tannenberg, then!” Etta’s voice was strained as she and the old rabbi led Papa to the downstairs bath in Frau Rosen’s former quarters. Papa in the servant quarters? Yes. Yes. A good idea. He could not be near the baby.

  Rachel ran to the study and clenched her fists, trying to make her fingers stop shaking. She could hear Papa coughing, coughing, coughing! He was very sick! If he was so bad from being in Warsaw prison, what would have happened in two more weeks? Or two more days? He would have died!

  She found the number in Papa’s address book, the name and number written in his firm hand.

  The phone rang too slowly. One, two, three rings, and then a sleepy voice answered.

  “Hello, Dr. Tannenberg, please! This is the daughter of Rabbi Aaron Lubetkin of Muranow Square. My father is very ill. Please! Come quickly!”

  ***

  Rachel could distinguish the voice of the Polish priest from that of the doctor. Here in Warsaw, even accent separated Jew from Gentile. It was easy to tell one from the other after the first word was spoken. How strange it was to hear the accent of the Catholic priest emanating through the bedroom door, addressing her mother with such urgency.

  “Have you wired your father in Jerusalem about this, Rebbitsin Lubetkin?”

  “Not yet. I did not want to worry him. I was hoping that Aaron would be released, you see, and . . . my father is old and frail. Things are difficult in Jerusalem just now, as you must know. And so I have not written him about it all.”

  “You must do more than write him, dear lady.” The priest was sympathetic but firm. “Your husband and your family are obvious targets of the political anti-Semites. If things begin to go wrong for Poland, people like your husband will be blamed.”

  Rachel frowned and stared hard at the toes of her shoes. She thought of what the priest said. This was the same warning she had heard from Eduard Letzno before he left Poland for Palestine.

  Papa’s furious coughing followed, drowning out Mama’s reply to the priest. And then, in a thin, raspy voice, Papa spoke. “He. . . . is right, Etta.” He stopped, seized by another fit of coughing. “You must wire your father . . . if not for me . . . then for the children. They. . . . must not stay . . . in. . . .” His words fell away into more convulsive coughing. Rachel trembled to hear it. Papa sounded as if he could not breathe. The words were so halting, so full of fear. Yet surely he could not think that they would leave Poland for Palestine without him?

  “Yes, Aaron. Yes, my dear,” Etta soothed. Then she said to the priest, “No more talk of this. Not tonight. This is not the time. Surely you can see—”

  “Etta!” Papa’s voice was barely recognizable in its strain and desperation. “Listen to —”

  “I will carry a wire to the telegraph tonight myself,” volunteered the little priest. “Write out what you wish to say, and I will take it now.”

  A moment of silence passed. Rachel leaned forward and stared at the wood of the door as if she could see through it and read what message Mama wrote out to send to Grandfather. What would such a message say that could make a difference? Please hurry and get us papers to Palestine. Better to face Arab riots than Polish anti-Semites.

  Rachel imagined the words and knew that if this was, indeed, what Mama wrote out, then things had become very bad for the Jews of Warsaw! Before his arrest, Papa had refused to admit the possibility of any one of them going to Jerusalem. But now, through the croaking voice of a sick old man, he demanded that Grandfather be notified how desperately they needed to leave!

  Rachel shuddered. A cold fear crept up and tightened the skin on her neck. In her memory she could hear the shouts and threats of the Saturday people as they had broken down the doors of the synagogue!

  Breathing fast, she left her post in front of Papa’s sickroom and ran to the window in the front room. The imagined shouts became louder. She stood before the curtained window and pictured throngs of them with hateful eyes and flaming torches and crosses lifted high above their heads! Would they break down this door? she wondered. Would they drag Papa out of bed and carry Mama away on their shoulders to do terrible things? Terrible things . . .

  Behind her, she heard a door open. The sound of Father Kopecky’s feet padded briskly down the hall toward the front door. “No, no. I will let myself out.”

  He passed the archway leading to the front room where Rachel stared at the curtain. He stopped and put on his hat and coat. Then he saw her.

  “What is it, child?” he asked, pulling on his gloves and eyeing her pale face with concern.

  “Are they . . . out there?”

  Curses replayed in her mind. The faces of the wicked men who had grabbed Mama swam before her eyes.

  “Who?” asked the priest.

  “The men . . . who . . . those men. You know.”

  Father Kopecky passed under the arch and hurried to the window. He pulled back the heavy brocade drape. The rain-slick cobbles glistened by the light of street lamps in the deserted square.

  “There is no one out there, child.” He glanced back over his shoulder at her with concern.

  “I thought I heard them . . . lots of them. I . . . I thought I heard them.”

  He smiled in sympathy. “There is no one there. Nothing happening.” He gestured for her to come to the window, to see for herself. “Just Muranow Square. Everyone is indoors, I think, drying their shoes by the fire. Tucked into bed, where you should be now also.” He consulted his watch. “You will need to rest so you can help your mother, yes, Rachel?”

  He pronounced her name differently than it was spoken among her own people. It startled her. Made her wonder once again why this priest concerned himself with them. She was grateful and yet uncomfortable at the sound of her name on the lips of a Catholic priest.

  “I do not like the goyim,” she blurted. “They are a cruel and barbaric people.” She raised her chin, daring him to argue on behalf of his own race.

  For another minute Father Kopecky gazed out at the silent square. Then, letting the curtain fall back, he simply nodded his agreement and wished her a good sleep before he hurried out of the house.

  ***

  It was very late in the night when Werner the cat got up from his sleeping place on Alfie’s pillow. The fur brushed Alfie’s cheek and woke him up when he did not want to be awake. He lay there with his eyes closed and listened to the other boys breathing. Jamie Ibsen wheezed. Mark Kalner, in bed beside Jamie, rattled. Jacob Kalner breathed deep and even. Alfie could always tell just who was where, and which one got up to use the toilet in the dark by the way everyone breathed. He knew the soft breath of Werner-kitten, who was not really a kitten anymore.

  Alfie did not like it when the breathing at night was not like it should be. Sometimes Jamie dreamed unhappy dreams. Jacob tossed on his squeaking cot and fought with dream people who visited here all the way from Berlin. And now, tonight, when everyone was breathing fine and not dreaming at all, Werner was prowling across the bed, jumping on the chest of drawers and . . . sitting on the windowsill.

  The cot squeaked when Alfie sat up. He swung his legs over and kicked off the covers. Maybe Werner needed to do out? Alfie stepped around the piles of clothes the boys left on the floor. He kicked a shoe that
thumped against the frame of Jacob’s cot, but Jacob did not wake up. Then Alfie joined Werner on the sill of the tall narrow window that faced north, out over Danzig. The city looked very small and dark tonight, compared to the sky!

  Alfie pulled back the curtain and asked Werner if he wanted out. But Werner did not want out. He was watching the streaks of color in the sky. Far away, blue and gold and red moved and faded, then brightened like a curtain of fire in the north. Northern lights. Mama had told Alfie all about them when he was little. Lights like that had called Alfie’s papa to go to sea, she said.

  Alfie stroked Werner and watched the lights for a long time. They were pretty colors, but they did not make him feel happy inside his heart. The glow reflected in the dark windows of other Danzig houses and looked like fire—like the fire Alfie had seen in Berlin the night he had run away from Sisters of Mercy Hospital. That was never a happy thing for him to remember. It was the sort of thing he usually remembered when everyone was fast asleep and he could not be comforted.

  Alfie frowned and bit his lip as the colors in the sky changed to a deep red. The white walls of the house next door, the lace curtains Lori made, Werner-cat’s eyes—all were red. Holding up his hand, Alfie could see that his skin was also red, like the color of blood.

  He did not mean to, but he blurted out Jacob’s name. His heart was pounding, and he was sweating through his pajamas.

  “What!” Jacob sat up straight in bed.

  “There . . . there are lights in the sky.” Alfie was frightened, but he knew he could not explain why he was afraid.

  Jacob moaned. “Stars. Just stars, Alfie.” He sounded unhappy to be awake. “Now go to sleep.”