Warsaw (20 page)

17.

Luckily, Thomas Abendroth freed himself from any duties that
late afternoon so he was not particularly torn in his decision to remain
waiting for Duritz outside of his building. Besides that the Corporal was
naturally inclined to stay out of the heavy rain. Thomas glanced at the two
bodies, mother and pre-teen daughter, strewn upon the opposite curb. A half an
hour previous the pair had been dragged out from their building by a trio of
drunken Ukrainian soldiers. Had they raped them or were they just about to?
Such were the fraught cries of the mother and piercing screams of the child
though that all the soldiers wanted to do in the end was silence them. Both
were shot in the chest whilst the Corporal debated whether to intervene or not.
It struck Thomas how much blood must be contained in the human body for still
he saw a strong scarlet channel of rain run along the street and down into the
black drain.

Before the soldier had a chance to grow too maudlin (imbuing
himself with feelings of self-loathing, contempt for others, lachrymose
sadness, impotence) a sodden Adam returned to his building. He had just come
from having spoken to the vendor who Kolya was supposed to have delivered to.
Words were exchanged and the man was not happy, but it seemed that he wouldn't
punish Kolya over the episode.

From the moment that he laid eyes upon his friend Thomas
knew that there was something wrong. Adam looked drained, as if somebody had
just died. After drying himself off and silently making some weak coffee
(Thomas politely declined a cup in order to preserve his friend's stores) the
soldier learned of the events of the afternoon.

"If the come, they come," Duritz shrugged,
unnaturally inexpressive considering that he would wake to certain death the
following morning - if indeed the diabolical policeman was not already
mustering a small force to take Duritz away.

"You can't really think that, be that indifferent to
life?"

"Why not, life has been that indifferent to me,” the
philosophy student replied, a smile forming and then disappearing on his lips
in a telling moment. Fear - primal to the point of seeming to be its own
animal, like jealousy - could be traced in his anxious heart and tormented
features. Sometimes Duritz was indeed possessed by a brooding will-to-death, or
at least a Socratic irony and indifference towards his fate. Equally so though
- as if indeed it might have even depended upon the weather or his diet -
abstract philosophy proved too brittle a shield. He would cower before Death
like a trembling child, or sinful old man. His body too - with his hands
fiddling with the rim of his cup and his knee jerking up and down - betrayed
the youth's frantic state of being.

"You do know it's not safe here anymore Adam? This
policeman will easily find you."

"I know." The room filled itself with silence,
like smoke. Finally Thomas spoke, his tone charged with would-be
purposefulness.

"I like to think I've helped you Adam - and that I have
not just done so merely out of pity for you, or conceit. I like to think I
haven't just done so either to feel good about myself, ease my conscience.
Although we both could probably argue otherwise. But I've never asked you for
anything before, until now. I'd like you to trust me."

"I could not make a leap of faith for the Almighty;
surely it would take a leap of faith on your part to believe I could do so for
you?" Duritz replied, a thin, fractured smile lining his pale face.
Nevertheless he braved looking his friend in the eye and a flicker of gratitude
and hope could be discerned in his expression.

"That we'd both miss your sarcasm is reason enough for
you to trust me. So too do you really want to give that vicious cretin the
satisfaction of knocking on this door and finding you?"

"What can I do? Where can I go? I fear that, even if
there are positions to fill, I wouldn't be allowed to enlist in the Wehrmacht.
I'm too short," Duritz dryly, unsmilingly, remarked.

"I know someone that might take you in," Thomas
reassuringly replied, grinning in wonder at the student's mordant wit.

Balancing the need for a speedy departure with that of
trying to carry as many of Duritz's possessions as possible (books, rations,
clothes, a few stolen valuables, a few pictures - one of them being a lovingly
composed, but poorly executed, portrait of Anna Weil) the two men left the
apartment. Welcomingly the rain abated, although a grey canopy of clouds
moodily smeared the sky and darkened the ghetto - auguring a further shower.
The streets were relatively empty save for the odd waif and stray but still
Duritz nervously darted his head from side to side to ensure that no one was
taking an interest in him. Soon the police and soldiers would be out enforcing
curfew and rounding up stragglers for tomorrow's transportations. The only
slight suspicion that the pair could have aroused was due to the fact that a
German appeared to be carrying a Jew's possessions. Usually the nearest zhids
were requisitioned for such duties. Not wishing to take too much of an interest
in this fact though, for fear of joining the Jewish youth who looked to be
being marched to his death, most people kept out of the way of the soldier and
his prisoner.

Thomas was confident that Jessica would be kind enough to
take Adam in - especially when he would explain that it would only be for a
night or two. Still he was keen to rehearse his arguments over in his head
before he confronted her with the proposition. He would reveal Adam as the
long-suffering but good-hearted friend who he visited in the ghetto, how the
authorities were after him because Adam had saved a boy from being beaten to
death by a policeman - that he had nowhere else to go, that he would consider
it a favour and would be in Jessica's debt. But that he would understand also
if she didn't want to take him in.

Duritz was preoccupied with his thoughts as he trudged
behind Thomas through the cancerous architecture of the ghetto. The fetor of a
collapsed rugby scrum of corpses and a couple of gun shots hammering out on the
other side of a tenement building distracted him not.

The air was swamped with damp. Cold blobs of rain began to
fall. For a second or two Duritz believed that Thomas was merely taking shelter
from the oncoming storm in the building's doorway but then he realised that
they had reached their destination. Dread and something else, peculiar, churned
over in his innards and strangled any ability to speak. Like a trap door
opening upon a set of gallows the rain suddenly, dramatically, crashed down.
The boisterous rain slapped down upon the street to create a metallic sound.

With Adam being already distraught looking Thomas noticed
not the distress in Duritz's face as they ascended the rickety stairs. Such
were the dizzying thoughts scrambling around like a hamster on a wheel inside
his head that the memory eluded Duritz of the Rubenstein's exact floor and
apartment - yet he strangely, sublimely, felt himself being led there, like a
hand drawn to the flame.

"It's just at the top of these stairs," Thomas
unassumingly remarked. Even the athletic Corporal betrayed a certain
breathlessness and relief in his voice that they had reached their destination.
Carrying only slightly less than the German, but yet several stone lighter than
the soldier, Duritz understandably appeared exhausted. But for different
reasons the sallow Jew looked like death warmed up.
 

Three quick knocks in succession was the signal which meant
that it was Thomas at the door. As special as those three glorious raps upon
the damp wood were they had become far from rare of late with Thomas even visiting
Jessica twice in one day over the last week or so - yet the sound could still
occasionally alter and animate the girl's mood to some degree. The shiny
blackness of the storm outside served to magnify and highlight Jessica's
reflection as she briefly checked how she looked in the room’s sole window
pane. She would be grateful for the company and distraction, having suffered
the duress of seeing Kolya come home this afternoon. He had explained how he
had been robbed by a policeman - and then been saved by a stranger coming
along. But then, after refusing to be fussed over by an overly mothering
sister, Kolya had gone to bed.

"I'll get it," Jessica hastily said as Kolya
motioned to answer the door, coming out behind the curtain from their parent's
old bedroom.

In the interim between Thomas knocking and Jessica coming to
the door a supernatural chill possessed Duritz to the point of making him
shiver. Part of him just wanted to bolt - should he never even see Thomas
again, no matter. His hands and brow were dripping with sweat and all the blood
in his body seemed to flood his organs to leave him with a febrile, waxy
complexion. His mouth was dry as sand-paper and, for the life of him, he could
not swallow. During this time he also made sure to shuffle away from the
doorway, thus making sure that whoever answered - and Duritz still held out a
slither of hope that it wasn't Jessica's apartment or floor - would not see him
at the instant of unlocking the door.

Was it the fact of her still being hauntingly beautiful for
him, or was Duritz frozen to the spot for a different reason? Sheepish, he
bowed his head and awaited his judgement as - at first having only eyes for the
soldier as she opened the warped door - Jessica coldly recognised the
ex-policeman.

"Jessica, sorry to disturb you, but I have a favour to
ask," Thomas opened with and smiled, hesitantly. "A friend of mine is
in trouble - the one I've spoken to you about before."

Jessica appeared to be vaguely listening but, instead of
looking at Thomas as he spoke, she glared over the soldier's shoulder at his
companion. Absorbed in his own rhetoric and desire to convince Jessica to take
Adam in Thomas mistook the blunt expression on her face for general shock and
suspicion at the stranger at her door.

"I promise you, it will only be for a day or so until I
sort something out. Adam attacked a policeman who was robbing and beating a
boy."

At this point Duritz finally met Jessica's adamantine gaze,
glower. His features were drawn, bloodless. If it had been anyone else but the
policeman Jessica might have felt pity for the courageous Jew. But her heart
remained untouched by his plight, or his apparent decent act. Jessica barely
registered what the German was saying. It was what he had done in the past, to
her, rather than what he had become now - to someone else - that mattered. Her
lips and smooth jaw were jammed together for fear that if they parted the truth
would damn them all. Hate mixed with bewilderment, that Thomas could be friends
with the wicked collaborator and not know what he was like. And had he said
anything to Thomas? Coincidence overpowered Jessica and left her temporarily
paralysed.

Kolya rightly suspected that it was the German at the door
for he had worked out their ridiculously simple coded knock. Although he was
begrudgingly grateful for the soldier's help over the past month or so - for
the food he bought and work placements he arranged - Kolya was far from wholly
trusting of the over friendly German. He sometimes felt the soldier was either
leading Jessica on - promising her false hope - or he had an ulterior motive of
taking advantage of his sister. His charity could and would only do so much for
them. And ultimately he was one of them.

Kolya had initially positioned himself behind the open door
and out of sight of the soldier during his conversation with his sister but
upon hearing the story of the Jew's run-in with the policeman his heart
momentarily raced and he couldn't help but skirt around the other side of
Jessica to see if it was indeed Adam. It was. The boy's sense of coincidence
was nearly as strong as his sister's, albeit dramatically different in shade
and temper. He swiftly embraced the twist of fate.

"Adam, it's me."

Tangled up in the webbing of seeing Jessica again - and
second-guessing the outcomes of the encounter - Duritz had forgotten about
Kolya. He smiled at the boy, seeing the unaffected delight on his youthful face
at encountering him again. A couple of hours had but passed since their
encounter, but it had felt like days to Duritz. Kolya however had hardly let
five minutes pass without him thinking upon the ex-policeman and their meeting
that day.

"This is the man who saved me and taught Yitzhak Meisel
a lesson today Jess. He broke his nose with one punch," the teenager
exclaimed with relish. Later that evening he would even replay the brief bout
by punching the air - and then play a defeated Yitzhak Meisel staggering
backwards and clutching his nose, sobbing like a baby.

Perplexity and sternness knitted Jessica's once adolescent brow.
Thoughts were ungovernable. A potent feeling of powerlessness undercut the
stringency of the girl's smouldering nerves and will to truth, justice. Like
Duritz she was unable to bring herself to speak, but for different reasons. The
pregnant silence desisted however as the icy wind outside billowed and a gust
of hail shattered against the window as if a vandal were throwing stone’s up at
the glass.

"I would not ask if I wasn't desperate. He has nowhere
else to go this evening. I can vouch for Adam, as can Kolya here it
seems," Thomas said, taken back too by the harshness of the storm (though
he was not unaware that it could help his suit). The Corporal's brow too was
furrowed, but sweetly and imploringly. Could he not see the trauma etched into
her face though?

Jessica shivered. Tears welled in her reddened eyes. She bit
her bottom lip as if she were pinching herself, dreaming. Before Jessica could
respond Kolya, assertive, practical, answered for his sister.

"He's all right Jess. He hates the police now as much
as you or me. Are these all books?" the boy said with anticipation,
walking around his sister and picking up a sack containing the remnants of
Duritz's library. For both his decisive part in inviting Duritz into their
lives - and the fond way in which the boy took to her tormentor - Jessica would
snap at Kolya and take things out on the boy over the next few days.