Jim Shepard - The Book of Aron

He said Witossek and other Germans in the Security Police were putting together an anti-crime unit and that Lejkin had picked me to be a part of it. “They’re not hunting smugglers as much as wanting to regulate them,” he said. “You know how the Germans like to keep track of everything.”

“I don’t know anything about anything,” I said.

“Yes, that’s been your position,” he told me. “But you do know the old joke that’s now going around again. If two Jews meet, one says to the other, ‘Statistically, one of us must be reporting to the Gestapo!’ ”

“I have heard that joke,” I told him.

“There’s no salary, of course, but there are other advantages,” he said. “Including influence in the work camps.”

“I still don’t even know what I’m supposed to do,” I said.

“Nothing for the time being,” he said. “Maybe some minor reports. Maybe not even that.”

I sat in my chair and he looked at me. He was so small behind his desk that it looked like he was kneeling on the floor. I could hear an accordion player outside his window.

“So can I go now?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

He gave his attention to some papers in front of him. He signed two and made a mocking noise at a third. He stood up and came around the front of his desk and said he’d traded for new boots, then walked around and did knee bends to break them in.

“Have you heard that the Germans are already in Leningrad?” he asked. I shook my head.

“So Hitler sees Jesus in Paradise and says to St. Peter, ‘Hey, what’s that Jew doing without an armband?’ ” he said. “And St. Peter tells him, ‘Leave him alone. He’s the Boss’s son.’ ”

“That’s a good joke,” I told him, after we were quiet for a while.

“You’re like those shopkeepers who hold goods under their coats and go over to customers only when they recognize them,” he said. “I like that about you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“We have to stick together,” he told me. “It’s a terrible thing to see how the Germans have divided us.”

“So can I go now?” I said.

“Do you remember how you felt the first time you saw a Jews Not Wanted sign in the window of a Jewish shop?” he said.

Another policeman swung the door open and told Lejkin that one of the Czapliński brothers was finally there. Lejkin tossed him two packs of cigarettes and the policeman said that the Czaplińskis smoked too. Lejkin tossed him two more. “Weren’t they both lawyers, as well?” the policeman wanted to know.

“I think they were, yes,” Lejkin told him. “Back in Lódz.”

“It’s like a bar association around here,” the policeman said. He said that Mayler was a lawyer too and by the way he was still trying to find out where his wife’s family had been sent. “The Poles complain that we’re privileged because they all got sent abroad and we at least got to work at home,” he told Lejkin.

“Tell the Organ Grinders,” Lejkin told him, and the policeman left.

“Who are the Organ Grinders?” I asked.

“That’s what they call the Judenrat,” he said. “You know: throw a coin to the organ grinder and he plays along with his monkey.”

He bent to fix his boots and once he was happy with them went back behind his desk and sat down again. “So what’s your decision?” he said.

We both listened to the minute hand of his clock click over into the next position. “I think I’ll do what I can to help,” I told him.

He said I’d be hearing from him and dismissed me. When I was heading down the front steps a long black car pulled up with two Germans in the front and three bearded Jews with terrified eyes in the back. When I told Boris that evening he clapped me on the back for having done the smart thing and said maybe now we’d get some word in advance as to what was going on.

HANKA NASIELSKA GOT THE TYPHUS AND DIED. SO did Zofia’s Uncle Ickowicz. For a few weeks Lejkin passed along messages from my father and brother and then he said they’d been transferred and he didn’t know where. My mother asked me to find out and told me to spend more time with him until I did. There were more soup kitchens on the street. In September Lejkin said the ghetto would be further reduced in size but that in October some schools could open again. He had our gang hang some new placards forbidding Jews from leaving the housing districts designated for them.

“What does it mean?” Zofia asked the day we got them, though after we finished hanging them we found out: German soldiers and blue police surprised us at the Immortal Hole and the gang got away but a Pole grabbed me by the back of the neck. Three older kids from another gang also were caught. The Pole gave me a kick in the behind, let me go, and said, “This one’s too short to shoot.” The other kids were told to empty their pockets and stand against the wall. I ran away and after I rounded the corner I heard them shooting. Later the dead kids were still there on top of one another against the wall.

GOING HOME FROM A SHOP WITH MY MOTHER WE heard more shots and she dragged me to the pavement and covered me with her arm. At dinner she told us that four bodies had been found beside the wall at Nowolipke.

“A lot of people have typhus,” Boris said.

She told him they’d been shot for smuggling.

“That’s why we’re not going to do that anymore,” he told her.

“Is that the truth?” she asked me.

“We already decided not to,” I told her.

Boris told her smuggling had gotten too dangerous and that a housepainter on his way to a job had been ordered by a German to fill in the Immortal Hole one more time and then when that German wandered off, another came along and, seeing a Jew working on a hole in the wall, shot him dead. Boris’s mother asked what the Immortal Hole was and we told her.

Two days later it was open again. We gave up on it but heard that a German with a bullhorn had announced to the neighborhood that thirty Jews would be shot if it wasn’t permanently closed by noon the next day. We also heard the smuggling went on as before after he left and that he never came back.

BORIS GOT CAUGHT. HE SAID THAT WHEN THEY WERE about to shoot him a cloud of gnats flew into his eyes and nose and also bothered the Germans, who argued with one another while he stood there against the wall and then for whatever reason just left him there.

Adina and Zofia embraced him and Lutek said he’d had some close scrapes of his own and the only reason he hadn’t been killed was he was so short that all the bullets went over his head.

Zofia said, “I think we have to stop.”

And Boris said, “What’s the difference how you’re done for. You have to eat.”

“It’s time to think of something else,” Adina told him.

“Yes,” Boris said, as if he was talking to small children. “Let’s do that.”

We liked to meet outside Mrs. Melecówna’s matrimonial introductions parlor because she let young people in the courtyard and it had an awning besides. One morning Adina and Boris and I waited an hour before Lutek finally arrived. He was sweating so much from running that the bill of his cap was soaked through. He said Zofia had popped up at his window at midnight the night before. Her family had been getting ready for bed when they heard boots on the stairs, which was always bad news after curfew. Her mother tucked Zofia and Leon into a space she’d made under the bedframe before going to the door. The Germans searched but had been distracted by all of the valises they’d dragged out from under the bed and emptied. Zofia and Leon didn’t make a sound though they heard Salcia crying and Jechiel and their father protesting and their father telling the Germans about his broom factory. Their mother told the Germans, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” as if saying goodbye to Zofia and Leon. They stayed quiet after everyone left, climbed out, and then in the street walked into more Germans. While they were being chased she shouted to Leon to run in one direction and she’d go in another and he was shouting back “Why should I run that way?” when the Germans caught him. She spent the night weeping that this had been the last thing he’d said to her.