Free The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg Page B

he was apprehended by the Jewish police on the Lutomierska side of the ghetto with a rucksack crammed with chocolate powder, cigarettes and ladies’ stockings. The police took him for interrogation to the headquarters of the first police district at Bałuty Square. When the Germans heard that the Jews had caught Zawadzki themselves, they rang for a car from the centre of Litzmannstadt. The Jewish officers realised this was the end for Zawadzki and asked him if he had a final request. He replied that he wished to go to the toilet. Two policemen escorted Zawadzki to the latrines out in the yard. They handcuffed Zawadzki to the latrine door and then stood guard outside, keeping a careful watch on the shoes clearly visible beneath the locked door. The policemen stood staring at Zawadzki’s shoes for a good hour. Then one of them plucked up the courage to break down the door. The shoes were still there, and the handcuffs, but no Zawadzki. An open roof hatch showed which way he had escaped.
    Zawadzki the smuggler was a legend. Everybody talked about Zawadzki. But Zawadzki was a Pole – he came from the Aryan part of the town. And when he had been in the ghetto for as long as he wanted, he got out again! Whenever Adam Rzepin dreamt he was free, he dreamt he had a rope and a rucksack, like Zawadzki. He dreamt that one day he would hit the big time like Zawadzki, be something more in life than a mere luftmentsh .
    Adam’s dream very nearly came true one morning when Moshe Stern sent one of his many messengers round to the brickworks, where he was at his usual post, keeping guard on the kids. The message was that there was pekl to be fetched. Pekl could be almost anything – a bundle, a packet, a consignment – from coal briquettes to dried milk. Adam Rzepin had learnt not to ask questions. But when he got to the address where he had been sent, some empty basement premises in Łagiewnicka Street, all he found there was Moshe Stern, no pekl .
    Moshe Stern was a small man, but walked as if he were several sizes larger. When he handed out orders and instructions, he crossed his arms on his chest like a resolute bureaucrat. But not this time – Moshe Stern took two firm steps towards Adam Rzepin and gripped his shoulders. As always when he was worried or nervous, he licked his lips.
    The parcel in question, he said, was to be delivered to ‘a very important person’. This person was so important that if the police stopped him or started asking questions, Adam was in no circumstances to reveal that he had been given the parcel by Moshe Stern. Could he promise that?
    Adam promised.
    Moshe said Adam was the only person in the ghetto he could rely on; then he handed him the parcel.
    In the middle of the yard of the house in Gnieźnieńska Street there had once stood a chestnut tree with mighty roots and trunk and a huge crown that made the tree look as if it had found its way there from one of the grand avenues in Paris or Warsaw. Beneath the chestnut, puppet-maker Fabian Zajtman had his workshop: an adjoining pair of wooden sheds, so cramped that there was only room for the puppets inside. From long metal hooks along the roof and walls of the sheds hung rabbis with long kapotes and peasant women with headscarves, all equally smiling and helpless. In summer, when it was hot under the wooden roof, Zajtman preferred to sit out under the chestnut tree with his tools. There he sat among the children, carving puppet heads and watching the clouds drift across the pale-blue sky of the yard. Do you know where the thunder goes to rest? he had once asked Adam, there on a visit to the Wajsbergs, and had nodded meaningfully up into the crown of the tree, behind which the tall mass of dark clouds was gathering. From that day on, Adam had lived in permanent terror of what really lay hidden in the crown of the chestnut tree; particularly on hot days when the leaves hung motionless and the air was as hot as a baker’s oven in the narrow