Warsaw (2 page)

Frustrated, the policeman temporarily desisted.

"Listen, the more you struggle the worse it will be for
you. You can even walk out that door if you wish, but we both know what will
happen then. I remember some of your boyfriends; you've played the part
before."

Jessica remembered why she was here. She had told herself
before that she would have to play a part, that it would just be her body he
would violate. She briefly thought of her family - of her father, a grey shadow
of the man he used to be. And little Kolya, who had his whole life ahead of him
if he could just survive the war. Jessica would comply. Her heart sank and
almost drowned in the black blood which flooded it.

From having a statue in his arms Duritz suddenly felt
Jessica go limp, as if he now gripped a rag doll in his hands - one whose eyes
remained closed. Yet her mouth opened and Adam violently stabbed his tongue
into it. Jessica's own tongue lay asleep. After mining sufficient pleasure and
stimulation from this - though again the constable was disappointed with
Jessica's lack of reciprocal desire - he clawed her dress down.

The police man then drew the girl, now silently weeping,
over to that corner of the room where Jessica had avoided looking at before.
The mattress was sodden and pea green, stained with urine. The policeman sat
his appointment upon the bed and stood over her. He was treating her now like
she was any other whore or one of the many daughters who had offered themselves
before. Jessica felt Duritz's clammy hands run up her thighs.

“Please God- no,” the girl whispered to herself, barely more
audible than the sound of her breathing.

Adam felt a pang zig-zag along his chest like lightning as
the words typed themselves on his heart. He glanced up and saw the ghost of a
reflection in the window pane. Duritz barely recognised the animalistic
apparition snarling back at him.

           
The
policeman instinctively recoiled from his doppelganger – and his victim.

           
Jessica
continued to quiver and instinctively pulled the bed clothes up to cover her
body, but Adam registered her not as he stood transfixed at the pane, lines
furrowed in his brow. His face was contorted, repulsed – or as if caught in
that comic and tragic pose just before one sobs.

           
They
remained suspended in time for a minute, or more, the rest of the world
spinning around them with fury and indifference.

           
"Can
I go now?" Jessica, numb, finally asked.

"Yes, of course. Sorry," Adam politely replied,
waking from his trance, walking across the room to get a glass of water.

Making sure that his back was turned, and that he himself
had finished dressing, Jessica got up from the cot and fixed the shape of her
dress.

"Would you like a glass of water?" the policeman
said, attempting a conciliatory smile.

"No." Hollow.

Adam here noticed for the first time how much Jessica had
been crying. Her face was flushed, her florid aspect dulled.

"I'm sorry Jessica, I never meant it to be like this.
Here, please, take some food, candles."

The policeman placed a parcel of food and some candles into
a brown paper bag.

"I've also noticed you staring at my library. Please,
take any book."

The policeman was careful not to touch the girl, but he held
out his arms as if to usher her over to his bookshelves.

As much as Jessica just wanted to leave - and us much as she
didn't want to feel increasingly indebted to the baleful policeman - or make
him feel better about himself for compensating her for what he had just done,
she knew that the bounty of food could feed the family for most of the week.
Father would enjoy a book also. So too the girl was still fearful of her
tormentor. She didn't wish to spurn his generosity, else he might turn on her
again. Not wishing to stay any longer than necessary - wary in case the beast
regained its appetite - Jessica scanned the shelves quickly and picked out the
nearest familiar book, a Polish translation of Dickens' "Our Mutual
Friend".

"Keep it, or bring it back if it's not to your liking.
You can always borrow another."

"Can I leave now?"

"Yes." Adam yearned to say something more, but
couldn't. She wouldn't have wanted to listen to it anyway.

Jessica placed the well preserved leather bound book on her
food parcel and walked towards the door. She removed her overcoat from off the
nail in the wall, where Duritz had carefully hung it when Jessica had first
entered. He had also helped her off with her coat and gone out of his way to
seat the girl in a gentlemanly fashion when she first arrived for her
"appointment". Without staying to put her coat on Jessica left.
Duritz heard the frantic patter of her heels as she ran down the wooden stairs.

The ex-philosophy student and linguist (Adam was fluent in
Polish, Yiddish, German and English) selected a book from the shelf but
immediately put it back again, realising he was in no mood to read. He could
feel the familiar bony hand of dejection wringing his heart. He decided to try
and sleep to kill the time until he would have to go out and help enforce
curfew. Do his duty. He had been up for most of the night before, in
anticipation of his meeting with Jessica - even rehearsing what he wanted to
say to her. But yet that script was almost like one from a Russian novel and
would remain unplayable. Adam hoped for once that he would be delivered up to
sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Despite having a couple of drinks and feeling fatigued the
policeman's eyes were still stapled wide open as he lay upon his bed. He felt
like crying, but couldn't. He knew people cursed and condemned him behind his
back but did any of them realise what he was trying to do? He always tried to
select the infirm, those about to die anyway, or criminals and bullies. He
never selected children, or a lone parent that would turn a child into an
orphan. Nor did Duritz ever exceed his quota of five, like some of his
colleagues zealously did in order to impress their masters. He never would have
carried out his threat to select the Rubensteins. It was a bluff, which worked.
In his careful selection of others it was people like the Rubensteins who
Duritz was deliberately intending to save. Jessica, intelligent, beautiful,
needed to survive the war; her father, a doctor, also needed to be preserved,
although when Duritz had seen him again he seemed sick, defeated. The mother
was the head of the household now Adam suspected. So too was not his own
preservation essential? Whether it was the Russians or British who liberated
them, the policeman could speak either language. Yet in the eyes of the people
who he was trying to save he was worse than the enemy.

A plane whined overhead. Was it an air-raid? They were few
and far between. Sometimes the policeman prayed that he could just go to sleep
and perish in the night, oblivious to his end, "'Tis a consummation
devoutly to be wished" Duritz would muse. What was death but a sleep from
which you may or may not wake up from? And if one didn't wake from it one would
never know anyway - so Duritz sometimes reasoned.

The plane was only a transport, carrying engineers for the
trains.

Dripping with sweat, brain-feverish, Duritz finally stumbled
into asleep.

2.

Corporal Thomas Abendroth gazed up, squinting in the light
of the brilliant blue sky, and followed the trajectory of the roaring transport
plane. He allowed himself the optimism to think that a letter from his wife
Maria and son Wilhelm would be on board. Thomas had just celebrated his
thirty-eighth birthday but he looked younger, especially when he grew tanned
and fair-haired in the summer. His athletic build and striking blue eyes might
have been imposing but Thomas' features radiated friendliness and trust. Good
humoured and informed, Thomas Abendroth was comfortable and confident in most
company. The German possessed an amiable, open expression - yet if one caught
him off guard in a private moment one might have suspected that his persona was
but an act, for should you have witnessed the intellectual Corporal when he
believed no one was looking, you might have observed a different man - a
tortured figure ill at ease with the world, indignant. Tentatively, yet drawn
with intrigue, you might then approach the Corporal - but once your presence
was detected he would, as if by magic, re-ignite the light in his eyes and
warmth in his heart to play the part of the experienced soldier and gregarious
comrade again. He would have brushed off, as if ‘twere a fly in front of his face
in the June sun, any questions or concern you might have had for his mood or
what was troubling him.

Thomas was often unshaven, permitting himself the lazy
indulgence of shaving but twice a week, but his uniform and rifle were well
maintained. His hair was cropped short, narrowing his odds from contracting
lice. So too it held the advantage of him not needing to brush or wash it so
frequently. His hands were large, but dextrous - and one could often find the
soldier with a piece of wood or scrap of metal in them, which he would fashion
into a tool or toy to distribute to the nearest child when finished.

At present however Thomas held a glass of beer in his hand
as he sat outside a cafe in the ghetto - which was strictly for the use of
soldiers - and conversed with a couple of men from his unit. Both the weather
and the music in the background, courtesy of a Jewish violinist, were agreeable
to him. After all three companions paused to watch the plane fly overhead, each
with his fancy as to what the transport might contain, they resumed their
discussion. Oscar Hummel, a gruff veteran of the Great War with a good, cynical
head on his shoulders - when it wasn't doused in too much beer or vodka -
warned that:-

"As much as I admire him, I worry for Rommel in Africa.
The more he advances the longer his supply lines become."

"Then he should press home any advantage he has now.
The enemy can supply him as he advances" Dietmar, a young Private,
enthused whilst moving the empty glasses on the table forward as if they were
Rommel's infantry and armour. The handsome youth covertly glanced at his
Corporal to check whether he was impressing the well respected, well liked
leader of his platoon. Oscar thought the new recruit "a shiny toad".

All but ignoring the nonsense of the wet-eared boy the
grouchy Hummel continued to speak to his Corporal, who knew what he was talking
about and was not too blind to sometimes criticise his own army (and the Party)
in private.

"This is where we could learn something from the
English; they know how important supply lines are. It all goes back to
Marlborough - who was an ancestor of Churchill's would you believe? - and
Wellington". Oscar enjoyed and appreciated his European History and the
great characters from its pages.

Thomas knew Oscar was correct, but unlike his Private
perhaps he wanted the army to keep on making the same mistakes, in Africa and
Russia. Germany, Hitler, deserved, needed to be defeated. His only
disappointment would be that Rommel, a genuine hero and figure that Germany could
be proud of, would have to be defeated as well. Sensing that an argument could
ensue between his two polarised companions - the Corporal knew all too well how
much Oscar enjoyed testing the mettle of the new recruits - Thomas decided to
subtly alter the direction of the conversation.

"Rommel will be all right. Apparently the joke that is
doing the rounds at the moment is that we offered to sack Rommel as long as the
Allies retain all their Generals."

Oscar grinned and Dietmar, more than a little tipsy now from
being unable to hold his drink, banged his glass approvingly on the table as if
to simulate clapping. Oscar deemed the display to be but another example of the
boy's toadying towards anyone superior to him in rank. It was embarrassing,
unmanly, and the veteran frowned to himself and at the youth. The other story
that Thomas saved for his friend that evening, in between Oscar's Nestor-like
stories of the Great War and comparing his generation to that of the automaton
youth under the Reich - was that of when Rommel disobeyed the Fuhrer's direct
orders. A Commando unit was sent in by the British to kill Rommel at his
headquarters. Although the mission failed Hitler, in a piece of returning fire,
ordered that all captured Commandos were to be shot. According to the rumour
Rommel, an officer and a gentleman, burnt the order on the spot.

Realising that Dietmar would soon become a little worse for
wear - and wishing to spend some time on his own before they were all on duty
together this evening - Thomas asked Oscar to take the young Private back to
their quarters to let him get a couple of hours sleep. When Dietmar protested
Thomas threatened to turn it into an order so the fresh-faced recruit assented.
They left with Oscar shaking his head disapprovingly at his comrade for not
being able to take his drink. He would also rib the youth about his vanity -
always playing with his hair and cleaning his fingernails - on the way back to
their billet. Dietmar was "too pretty to be a soldier" Oscar judged,
and laughed to further goad the adolescent.

Thomas enjoyed coming to the corner of the square where the
cafe was situated. He could hear himself think, though he was a little ashamed
of this as the reason was that the Jews stayed away out of fear from the often
raucous, sometimes violent soldiers.

Thomas wondered again if indeed the transport could've been
a mail plane. Maria promised that she would try and enclose another photo of
Wilhelm. So too he had asked for another photograph of her. The last one, six
months old, had alarmed him a little when he first glanced at it. He barely
recognised his wife. She had cut her long blonde hair and her face had become a
little gaunt. The smile was also forced. The Corporal's reverie was disturbed
however as the violin music in the background began to distort. He turned
around to find that a couple of Ukrainian soldiers - who had just recently sat
down and could not therefore blame their behaviour on the drink - were tossing
lighted matchsticks at the violinist. The skeletal musician, who flinched in
abject terror almost at each missile fired in his direction, nevertheless
attempted to keep playing.

"I do not believe that the German army supplied you
with matches for that purpose. That's enough. You're ruining the music for everyone."
Thomas flashed them a displeased and combative look to accompany his words.

One of the Privates apologised, whilst the other tut-tuted
and fancied that he'd have his fun with the Jew once the Corporal left.
Witnessing the look in this petty sadist's eye Thomas thought it best to
dismiss the violinist now. It was here that he realised that, having seen him
playing in the morning when walking past - and having spent the afternoon at
the cafe - the musician had been working all day under an unforgiving sun.

"What is your name?" Thomas amiably asked the
violinist in his own language and smiled, to put him at ease.

"Henryk," the still suspicious and nervous
musician replied.

"You're an accomplished player Henryk, although I fear
that too much practise and playing may be bad for you. You're free to go home.
Here, for your trouble," Thomas said and removed the few remaining coins
in his pocket. The Corporal well knew the change could hopefully feed the man
and his family for a week and, smiling kindly, he placed the various coins into
the musician's withered fingers.

The incident received a couple of raised eyebrows and turned
a few heads - not least because the Corporal spoke in Polish and placed the
money into the vermin's hands (usually the Germans threw their coins to watch
the Jews comically scramble around like ants after them) - but then everything
carried on as normal. The scene was perhaps worth noting, but not regarding.

The flaky complexion of the buildings made them appear
diseased. Jaundiced, feral faces covertly eyed the intruding soldier who was
walking down their street; alternatively some were so dead to the world that
they vacantly ignored the Wehrmacht Corporal. The blistered feet of vagrants,
of men and women alike, jutted out beneath lice-ridden blankets. Shrivelled up
torsos of newly orphaned children, some no more than toddlers, wailed and
wandered aimlessly down the once thoroughfare, clinging to their flannel rags.
Not one face displayed resistance, dignity, or even resentment. At times Thomas
had to raise his handkerchief to his mouth, such was the fetid stench in the
infernal heat. A few corpses, wrapped in white paper, even populated the
street. Some of the soldiers joked and called them Mummies’, especially when
they had been lying out in the sun and, as the gasses in their stomach were
inflated in the heat, the bodies began to move. They could've died from any
number of epidemics: stomach typhus, influenza, dysentery, tuberculosis. Thomas
indignantly recalled to himself the conversation he had overheard between two
officers a week or so ago. They argued how the ghetto could almost have been
described as a laboratory that had proved the government's doctors right. Jews
were sub-human, one need only observe their appearance and environment; had
they not proved themselves to be carriers of disease, especially, as suspected,
of spotted fever?

Every so often Thomas Abendroth would expose himself to such
scenes as these. It was an acid test to prove his humanity. If he continued to
feel compassion and guilt then he reasoned that he still possessed a conscience
- and if one still possessed a conscience then Man was still worth fighting
for, having faith in.

Thomas also exposed himself to the ghetto in order to
consciously record these inhuman injustices for History's sake. People must
know.

Awkwardly, absurdly, Thomas tried to smile and greet a few
of these innocents as they accidentally made eye contact with the strange
looking soldier. But the German tried in vain for an opportunity to practise
and improve his Polish. He had first been taught the rudiments of the language
by a Jewish student, who was also fluent in German and even English. At first
it was a business arrangement, with Adam preferring it that way, but yet after
a while the two men began to like and esteem each other. Thomas and Duritz
owned a lot in common, they were both intelligent, well read and shared the
same dry sense of humour. In return however, as well as payment in money and
food, Adam had asked the favour that Thomas arrange it for him to become a
policeman in the ghetto. The Corporal had tried to dissuade him from the
decision but Thomas had given his word and he made good on his promise. It was
shortly after Adam became a policeman when Thomas noticed a change in the young
man's character. Duritz wouldn't speak about himself as much - particularly his
day as a policeman - and Thomas rightly suspected that Adam was beginning to
abuse his authority. He witnessed him take bribes one afternoon, auctioning off
positions at the front of the queue to obtain a work card. There was a new
hardness, cynicism to his words and actions. He learned of his bribe-taking and
other abuses of his power. Was he going even further nowadays and extorting
more than just valuables from mothers and daughters? No, Thomas hoped and even
believed. The Corporal couldn't remember who ended their acquaintance, but both
seemed comfortable with the fact in the end. Naturally they had seen each other
since but neither admitted to their past friendship so, once again, their
relationship was at best formal - that of German soldier and Jewish policeman.

Yet still Thomas was interested and concerned with speaking
to Adam again. He wondered how the daily selections for resettlement were
affecting him. Duritz was already susceptible to mood swings before becoming a
policeman. There was always a dark part of his psyche, a fatalism or
ego-centricity, which Thomas could not shed light upon. It couldn't be easy for
him, the German had thought to himself.

Jessica scampered down the stairs of the policeman's
building. The anxious thought that he might try to follow her, or call her
back, quickened her heart and pace. When she got to the exit of the building
however her purposefulness became frayed. Her nerves addled, Jessica became
temporarily disorientated and nauseous. The light strained her eyes and she was
at pains to remember the most expedient way back to her district. She grew
distressed at the way a few people looked at her, or how she imagined they were
staring at her and what they were thinking. Tears began to stream down her hot
cheeks again which she tried to wipe away whilst simultaneously holding onto
the bulky brown paper bag and her coat. Jessica walked briskly for a couple of
blocks until she was about half way home and decided to stop for a rest. Not
only was she physically exhausted and a hive of nerves but Jessica pictured how
distraught she must've looked. She thought it prudent not to return home until
she had recovered her self-possession and appearance.

Although the weather was far from inclement, Jessica began
to shiver and so she put on her chocolate brown overcoat. She sat upon a step,
placed the parcel between her legs, bowed her head and sobbed. Jessica
retrieved an already oft used handkerchief from her coat pocket, doused it in
spittle, and attempted to wipe the tears away that were drying upon her skin.