Jim Shepard - The Book of Aron

“Well, I should have a roast goose,” Lutek told him. “But we don’t always get what we want.”

“I should get two,” the kid repeated.

“Get away from us or we’ll show you what a beating looks like,” Boris told him.

“I’ll call the police,” the kid said.

Boris stood up and lifted him off his feet by the neck with one hand.

“What are you doing there? Put him down,” someone shouted, scaring us.

It was Korczak, the Old Doctor. “You should be ashamed ,” he said. He pulled Boris’s arm from the kid’s neck. Zofia and Adina got to their feet.

“Get out of here, Grandfather,” Boris told him. “I can smell the vodka.”

The old man straightened up. I couldn’t smell it. Then he said, “Pay attention. What I have to say may come in handy.”

“This is the Old Doctor,” Adina told Boris. “He runs the orphanage.”

The old man waited, as though that was going to change something.

“So did you come to lecture us or do you have a suggestion to make?” Boris said.

“I have a suggestion to make,” Korczak said. “I suggest you leave my boys alone. I suggest you leave all these boys alone.”

“Who made you King of the World?” Lutek said.

“I’m sorry for our friends,” Zofia told him.

“Mietek, go home,” Korczak said to the kid. The kid moved behind him. They made quite the pair: the old man with dirty spectacles and the shirtless kid with the lazy eye.

“You have pants like a hobo’s,” Boris said.

“A hobo wouldn’t take them,” Korczak told him.

“You know where I found him?” Boris said, nodding at the kid. “Looking through the garbage. Maybe you should feed your kids.”

“Anyone who’s gotten in my way can tell you I can still kick pretty hard,” Korczak told him.

“This old wreck’s threatening me?” Boris asked Zofia.

“Boris, let’s go,” Adina told him.

“Did we make you do anything, kid?” Boris asked.

“You don’t care what happens,” Korczak told him. “Or who gets hurt. Just so in the meantime you can find a piece of bread someplace. Right?”

“You’re the big shot with your own place, judging us?” Boris said.

“Our own place? What does a Jew have?” Korczak told him. “We’ve never owned a thing.”

“So maybe the houses are theirs,” Boris told him. “But the streets are ours.”

“The streets are yours?” Korczak said. “Look around.”

“We do all right,” Boris said.

“Leave my boys alone,” Korczak repeated.

“Go back to your orphanage,” Boris told him. “Dish out some soup.”

The old man turned to the rest of us. “For each one who acts like that, there’s another who behaves decently,” he said. Then he left, holding the kid by the shoulder. And the kid we’d been waiting for finally made it through the gate to let us know that our new arrangement was going to be okay.

EVERY MORNING MY MOTHER BEGGED ME TO GO TO the Order Service headquarters to see what information Lejkin would give me. Sometimes I waited till noon before he would see me. He told me that my father and one brother were still together and that they’d worked in the SS barracks in Rakowiecka Street, in the cavalry barracks at Służewiec, and spreading coal bricks at a railroad siding outside of town. He said he thought they’d also done some road construction. They hadn’t been paid for it yet since the Judenrat was behind in its wages, but they had been given bread and radishes. He thought they were in a camp in the Kampinos forest. My other brother and Boris’s father he knew nothing about. He said families whose main breadwinner had been selected for the camps were eligible for a small welfare payment from the Judenrat, though he wasn’t sure who to see about that. He also said that since I was now thirteen it was time for me to be registered as well. I left this out of what I reported to my mother.

He said he had little information beyond that. Czerniaków himself had personally intervened about the state of the camps with the SS man in charge of Jewish affairs and the director of the Department of Jewish Labor in the Arbeitsamt, and both more food and better conditions had been promised.

One morning in a downpour I opened our door and Lejkin was standing there in the hall with an SS officer behind him. The officer was tall and had a rain bonnet on his cap. He smiled and shook the water from the arms of his raincoat and moved Lejkin aside with his hand and said, “Guten Morgen.” He sounded like someone who was happy that he’d kept his patience for so long with misbehaving children. He asked in Polish if I spoke German. When I told him no he nodded and wiped the mud from his boots so energetically that he split our old doormat in two.

The left sleeve of his uniform jacket was tucked into his belt and there was no arm in it. He saw me looking and said in Polish, “Wars aren’t much fun. Now don’t you feel like a lucky young boy?”

Lejkin introduced him as Obersturmführer Witossek. I said hello and the German seemed amused by my tone.

Boris pretended to be asleep on the floor near my feet. “I’d ask to come in but perhaps now is not the best time,” the German said.

“His Polish is good, isn’t it?” Lejkin asked.

“You’re Aron Różycki?” the German asked.

“Yes,” I told him.

“Could you step into the hall,” he said.

“Aron!” my mother called from the kitchen.

I stepped out and he shut the door behind me. The window in the hallway was broken and it made the rain louder. A family camped under it had strung up a shelter to keep dry. A bucket caught the runoff.

The German said he wanted me to come to an office he was setting up on Żelazna Street. A dozen Jews were already there, and Lejkin had recommended me.

What was I supposed to do at such a place, I wanted to know.

“It’s a little Jewish concern,” he said. “Your friend here is part of it. He’s the one who recommended you,” he repeated.

“Recommended me for what?” I said.

“Well, there’s always more to discover when you stick your nose into the world,” he said. I looked at Lejkin, who raised his shoulders.

“Or you can serve in a labor battalion,” the German said. “Do you have your card?”

“I’m not registered yet,” I said.

“It’s 103 Żelazna,” the German said. “Your friend can tell you if there’s anything else you need to know.”

“There isn’t anything else you need to know,” Lejkin said.

“Oh, and yes,” the German said as he was leaving. He opened the door and there inside the apartment stood my mother and Boris’s mother, gaping. “Could I ask you for some sort of Jewish holy volume or object?”

We looked at one another. “An object?” Boris’s mother said.

“Something in which you believe,” the German said.

“Something in which they believe?” Lejkin said.

“To serve as a charm,” the German said. While we still stood there, he added, “I had one before from Cologne and you can see what happened when I lost it.”

Boris’s mother left the doorway. My mother just stared. “Good morning,” the German said to her.

“Good morning,” she answered.

Boris’s mother returned with a mezuzah that she handed to the German.

“Thank you,” the German said, once he had it. “Auf wiedersehen.”

BORIS SPENT AN ENTIRE DAY HAPPY BECAUSE ONE OF our contacts over the wall told him that so much bread was being smuggled into the ghetto there was an actual shortage of it on the other side. Lutek’s old chiseled passage in the wall on Przejazd Street had been bricked up and reopened so often that people started calling it the Immortal Hole. The Germans cleared away the shed that covered it. Boris said that the hole proved there were only three invincible forces in the universe: the German Army, the British Navy, and Jewish smuggling.