Free The Train to Warsaw by Gwen Edelman Page B

grandfather you loved. I asked where he was. You told me Lodz. I asked you his name. We had contacts in the Lodz ghetto. We could find anyone. And for a small fortune we could get him to Warsaw. I had made money on a large shipment of kasha brought into the ghetto. Take it, I told the Accountant and handed him the cash. And let us bring her grandfather to her. Will you find him in that swarming hive? he asked me. I will find him, I replied. I had informers there, and I told them to locate him and get him on a truck we had coming back to Warsaw. Lilka stared at him. Why did you never tell me? she asked.
    The Accountant swore me to secrecy. But the Accountant has been gone for more than forty years, she said. Why did you do it? Because I hated you. Because you loved me. Because I loved you, he agreed. His beard was soft as grass, said Lilka. He used to pull at it as pious Jews do. You’ll pull them out, I told him. He would smile at me and pinch my cheek. Lilkele, he said to me. Jews have been pulling at their beards since the world was created. They know how to do it so they don’t lose a single hair.
    She turned to Jascha beneath the soft eiderdown. My sweetheart, she murmured, and wound her fingers into his hair. Be careful, said Jascha, you’ll pull them out. She laughed happily. Never has there been a more terrible man. She kissed his face and his mouth and the skin of his chest where his shirt was open. What else, she asked him, haven’t you told me?
    He took her hand in his. We spend our years like a sigh, my sweetheart. Like a watch of the night. She clicked her tongue. Don’t be so morbid. You don’t know the psalm? he asked her. You engulf men in sleep, at daybreak they are like grass that renews itself; at daybreak it flourishes anew . . . And then? he asked. What comes next? She shook her head. By dusk it withers and dries up. Didn’t they teach you anything in that well-to-do household of yours? Where did you learn all this? she asked. Where? From the books the Jews left behind.
    When they awoke, it was afternoon. Get up, cried Lilka, pressing his arm, we have to go out while there’s still some light left. Otherwise how will we see what Warsaw has become? Is it strictly necessary? he asked. Please, Jascha, she pleaded. He turned over. Let me sleep, he said. I’m exhausted.
    She lay smoking, looking out at the fading light. What an unbearable stench, she said. Every morning we walked down Karmelicka Street to the hospital. And passed through those streets of indescribable filth. Everywhere they cried out to us nurses to help them. Their dark eyes seemed fixed with fear and starvation. What could we do? There were hundreds more like them at the hospital, three to a bed, lying in the corridors so you could barely walk. They had been beaten nearly to death, they had typhus, they were dying of starvation. And what could we do for them? Almost nothing. The only medicine left was hundreds of boxes of suppositories. Suppositories? They were dying of dysentery.
    They lay three to a bed, and bodies lay crowding the corridors so you could barely get through. There was nothing to cover them with. One little boy who was sick with typhus cried out: I want to steal. I want to kill. I want to eat. I want to be a German.
    One evening as I was going home an ancient woman came up to me. She was tiny, skin and bones, covered in layers of rags. The skin was stretched tightly across her face and her eyes were large and expressionless. She reached out a kind of claw. From her throat came a weak croak and she said my name. I stared at her and could not understand how she knew me. The stench was terrible. It’s Pani Rozen, she said hoarsely. I pulled back in disbelief. My old piano teacher. She had been pink and plump, with lively dark eyes and white teeth. Only a few years older than I. She was in love with Schubert. I’ve changed, she croaked sadly. She bent close to