Jim Shepard - The Book of Aron

The guards at Chłodna Street developed a new moneymaking scheme of announcing at twenty minutes to the hour that it was already curfew and charging twenty złotys apiece to fix their watches to the correct time and send you on your way, so we went back to the Immortal Hole. Boris worked out a schedule with the other gangs that let us use it right before and after curfew. We went through and did our buying and selling in pairs, and if we didn’t see the next pair behind us we didn’t wait for them.

In bad weather Zofia went through with her shoes around her neck and the laces tied together. She said her shoes actually fit her and if she ruined them she’d never find another pair that did.

Boris hadn’t mentioned the German or Lejkin after they’d left and he ignored how upset my mother was about it, but after four days he stopped me as we went downstairs and asked if I was just going to act as if nothing had happened. I asked what he was talking about.

“Do you think they’re just going to forget you?” he said. “Do you really want to piss in that one-armed German’s beer?”

“I was going to go,” I told him.

“Try not to always be so stupid,” he said. “These are the people with the whip hand. These are the people who are going to have information first.”

“What information?” I said.

“Whatever information there is,” he said. “Where the jumps will be, what gates will play, what players will be there, who they’re going to move against and when.”

“I know that,” I told him.

“Use your head,” he said.

“I said I was going,” I said.

“Then go,” he said. “Don’t stand here with me.”

But Lejkin wasn’t there and no one knew what to do with me. I was told to wait in the hall. It was a big fancy house so the floor was marble. Everyone’s steps echoed. Yellow police came and went but the only Jew who introduced himself was a shoeshine boy named Ajzyk. He sat opposite me in the front hall along with a few rickshaw drivers who took Germans around the ghetto. All morning laborers carried in what looked like an entire kitchen, and in the afternoon a barber’s chair and other crates and boxes as well. I had no breakfast and asked if there was anything to eat but no one answered. Twice more I went in to ask what was happening and was told to wait. The fourth time I presented myself I was told to come back the next day. Then going down the steps I ran into Lejkin, who said I should come back Friday.

THE NEXT TIME WE GOT TO THE IMMORTAL HOLE A German soldier was standing in front of it while a Jew in a smock unloaded a handcart filled with metal sheets. The building alongside had a slanted roof with dormers that hid you from the street so we went up to watch. We’d found the spot a week earlier. You got there through a hatch on the ceiling of the janitor’s closet on the top floor. We could all fit between the dormers and every so often one of us could keep an eye on what was going on below.

The tradesman held the sheets over the hole and pounded in masonry nails. His hammer on the metal was so loud that Zofia put her fingers in her ears.

“Those will pull right out,” Boris said after he took a look. He had one of his cigarettes going. He collected them off the streets and used a pin to smoke them down to the very end.

“This breeze is nice,” Adina said.

We stayed up there to celebrate Zofia’s birthday. Lutek said he’d be thirteen soon too and Adina had made each of us write Zofia a note with good wishes and give her a present. Zofia read each note that was handed over, then folded it into the sack in her waistband. Mine said You Are the Kindest Person I Know and Thank You For Making Us Happier .

Then came our gifts. Boris gave her candied cherries in a folded packet of newspaper. Lutek gave her a scarf with the constellations. Adina gave her a tin of jam. I gave her a miniature black book that said My Diary on the front.

Zofia thanked us and said we should share the cherries and that this was one of her best birthdays ever. “I know that’s hard to believe,” she said.

She said when she was young and they still lived in their nice apartment her mother hadn’t let her play with other children in their courtyard, so instead she’d had to content herself one birthday with going out on her balcony and tossing down cutouts and handmade toys and calling out, “Here, you kids, take these!” and watching them play. And one kid had written in chalk Zofia is crazy on their stairwell.

“That’s a nice birthday,” Adina said, then asked again how Salcia was, and Zofia said that she might do better if they could cheer her up somehow. She’d left her favorite stuffed bear behind when they moved to the ghetto because while she didn’t know where they were going she knew it would be a bad place.

“Well, that’s another good birthday story,” Lutek finally said.

“She has another bear now,” Zofia told him.

Adina said that she got caught on her last birthday. A Polish woman had grabbed her on the Aryan side and had told the whole street that she had a Jewish nose. Zofia asked what happened then, and Adina said no one had cared and that Adina had answered, “What kind of nose do you have? Look at yourself in the mirror!” and that had made the woman let go and run away.

Lutek said he was hungry. Zofia said now when her family finished their soup her brother Leon put the pot over his head so he could lick the bottom clean.

Adina said people in France cooked potatoes in oil, not water, and Zofia said oil-fried potatoes must taste amazing and Boris said that was probably true but good oil could be put to better use.

Boris and I looked back over the edge of the gutter. The Jew with the smock had finished and he and the German soldier had left and one of the other gangs was already around the hole. A kid with a crowbar levered the metal sheet away from the brick and the masonry nails came out as easily as Boris said they would. The sheet was bent aside but then a German officer and three yellow policemen appeared like magic. When two kids tried to scramble through the hole there were shouts on the other side and they were dragged back. They all lined up against the wall on the German officer’s orders. He had only one arm.

“That’s him,” Boris said.

“I know,” I told him.

Witossek told them each to hand over their money and after counting it he said that he was going to fine them that amount for smuggling. They stood along the wall. He caught sight of an old Jew hurrying across the street a block away and called him over. One of the yellow police had to cross over to get him to come. We could see him trembling from where we were.

“How old are you?” Witossek asked. Sixty-six, the old Jew told him and Witossek counted out sixty-six złotys and stuffed them in the old man’s shirt pocket. “Now be on your way,” he said.

He said something else to the same yellow policeman, who walked off and came back with three other Jews. Witossek asked their ages and paid them that amount of złotys. The last woman said she was fifty and he counted out his last forty-eight złotys and said that was now her age instead. Once she left he turned to the smugglers and said, “I’m a good German, aren’t I?” They said he was and he led his yellow policemen away and as soon as he was out of their sight the three of them scattered.

ON FRIDAY I WAITED AGAIN FOR THREE HOURS AND then Ajzyk the shoeshine boy came out and told me that Lejkin said I should come back on Monday. On Monday Lejkin finally showed me into his office, which was a room next to the toilet. He spread his arms like he was taking in all of Poland and asked what I thought. I told him the house had a nice front hall.