Jim Shepard - The Book of Aron

My mother again brought up the idea of getting Aryan papers and told us Czerniaków’s sister-in-law had assured her it could be done and for not much money, but when she said how much it was, my father asked, “For each person?” so loud that she had to shush him. She told him that was what a birth certificate and an identity card cost. She said there were cheaper ones but they looked suspicious even at a glance.

My father asked how she thought we would eat while we saved that much money and who we would contact on the other side to help us, or would we be all alone. He pointed at me and said, “And do you think this one can pass?” He reminded her she’d said about me that the minute I opened my mouth you could hear the Jew in me.

My mother looked at me sadly and said, “Aron, what do you think?”

“I think we’re doing all right here,” I told her. I could feel my ears burning.

“There,” my father said. “Even he thinks we should stay.”

My mother said she would ask my brothers when they got home but I could tell by her voice that she’d already given up.

But they never got home because they were picked up on the street outside our apartment by soldiers and the yellow police for the work battalions. We heard the shouting but didn’t understand what it was. My mother pulled me from the window and then our neighbor rushed in to tell us. She said that another man had pulled money from his pocket and handed some to each of the soldiers and policemen and they’d let him go.

She thought they were taking them to Józefów. At least that was what one of the police had told her. My father pulled all the money we had from our hiding places and rushed off to try to catch them before they got to the police station. I ran after him. It was almost curfew.

The column was being marched double-time and the yellow police were in the back, shouting and thumping with fat sticks the ones who didn’t keep up. The Germans at the front every so often looked back and then there was more shouting and thumping.

“Listen,” my father called when he got close enough to the last yellow policeman.

“Go away or you’ll end up with them,” the man warned him. My father lagged back but I took the money from his hand and passed him because I’d noticed Lejkin up ahead.

“Look who it is,” Lejkin said when I fell into step alongside him. “Do you want to go to a labor camp? Where’s my bootjack?”

“I found a beautiful one,” I told him. “But I also have a deal for you.” I showed him the money I held inside my coat.

“Who’s being saved?” he asked. I pointed out my brothers a few rows up. In their misery they still hadn’t seen us. “And what’s in it for me?” he added.

“More where this came from,” I told him. Though as far as I knew we didn’t have any more.

He let us march another half block just to let me suffer and then said something to the trailing policeman and they both went forward and pulled my brothers from the line and dragged them back to my father, who made such a cry of happiness and relief that he almost gave the whole thing away.

“I NEED A BOOTJACK,” I TOLD LUTEK.

“A bootjack?” he said. “What do you need with a bootjack?” We were standing next to each other to get warm back at our old Leszno Street gate. It was snowing. Lutek was trying to get our old arrangement going again, but his father’s friend had more business than he knew what to do with so he was making us wait. Lutek kept bringing up phlegm and spitting it onto the pavement to watch it freeze. Our shoes were soaked through and coming apart and we were stamping our feet.

“I have a contact that maybe we can use,” I told him.

“Who would that be?” he asked.

“Someone I met. You don’t have to know everything,” I told him.

“Going into business for yourself?” he said.

“You don’t tell me about everyone you meet,” I said. I didn’t know why I wasn’t telling him.

“That’s true,” he said.

“So are you going to help me or not?” I asked.

He blew on his hands and rubbed his cheeks and then gave me the address of a shop on Niska. “Bring something to trade,” he told me. Then something caught his eye across the square. “He’s ready for us,” he said.

MY PARENTS HAD BEEN SO HAPPY AT MY BROTHERS’ return that they celebrated even with Boris’s family. My father suggested we open the honey, but Boris’s father said that we should save it for a bigger occasion. Like maybe the end of the war, my brother said, then added that he’d heard there’d been a recent bombardment of Berlin. He was always talking about new peace proposals he’d heard had been offered through the Swedes or the Swiss or the pope. Everyone sat around the table smoking their cigarettes and telling everyone else what they’d heard. My father always said that if you gave Jews a minute to themselves they produced rumors. Boris’s mother said the rabbi in their village had predicted a year earlier that the war would end this month because his cabalistic calculations had proved the cup of Jewish suffering was now entirely full. Her husband cheered ironically and proposed a toast to the news. He poured a little bit of vodka for himself and my father.

When their toast was drunk he said, “So Hitler asks the governor-general what’s being done to oppress the Jews. The governor-general talks about all the rights and privileges that have been taken away but Hitler’s unsatisfied. The governor-general talks about everything that’s been stolen from the Jews and Hitler’s still unsatisfied. He talks about the ghetto and all the disease and filth and Hitler’s still unsatisfied. Finally the governor-general says, ‘Oh, and I’ve also set up a Jewish Self-Aid Organization,’ and Hitler exclaims, ‘ Now you’ve got it!’ ”

My brothers laughed with him. “Here’s to the Jewish police as well,” my father said grimly when they stopped.

We were all quiet. Outside we could hear the street vendor calling out his coke and carbide for sale. “Well, that helped the party along,” Boris’s father said.

My mother had recovered enough by then to smile. “At first I liked the idea of Jewish police,” she finally said. “If you have to take orders from a Pole or a Jew, why not a Jew? And they didn’t turn over the merchants’ baskets and trample everyone’s goods.”

“That was before they started rounding up everyone too poor to buy themselves out of a trip to the labor camps,” my father said.

“Yes, that was before,” my mother said. And then the party really was over. Later she asked my father again if he could get me back into the factory and when he said he was lucky to still have a position there she lost her temper and asked what he was going to do on the day when I didn’t come home. He told her they weren’t rounding up children for the labor camps and reminded her that at my size I looked even younger than I was.

“If something happens to him I will never look at you again,” my mother said.

“You never look at me now,” my father said.

“We’re trying to sleep out here,” one of my brothers called from where we were lying in the hallway.

“They fight like my parents,” Boris said, and in the dark it sounded like he was waiting for me to agree.

“I think he’s asleep,” my brother finally said.

“He’s not asleep,” Boris told him.

BECAUSE MY MOTHER WAS SO UNHAPPY I INTRODUCED her to Zofia and Adina, both of whom she liked more than Lutek, as I knew she would. Adina said, “Why are we meeting your mother? Are we getting engaged?” but Zofia said she understood and told Adina that doing something nice for someone wouldn’t kill her. We met in a café and my mother insisted on buying the girls tea even though I could see how upset she was at what she spent. She asked after their families and made her such a shame face when she heard their sad stories. Then when our visit was almost over she said that her friend who was Czerniaków’s sister-in-law had told her about the performances at Janusz Korczak’s orphanage and would we all like to go?