Free City of God by E.L. Doctorow Page B

age. There were seven of us, seven boys, who were runners. We wore special caps, like police caps, with a military brim. And the stars sewn on our jackets, of course, so it was all very perverted, my military sense of myself. I felt privileged that the star was not like all the other stars but some indication of rank, and the military-style hat, and knowing what was going on almost before anyone else—all that made me feel special. Mr. Barbanel, the chief assistant to the community leader, Dr. Koenig—he said I was his best runner. For the most important matters he chose me. So there it was, I had a star on my tunic and a garrison cap, and I was the star runner, that’s the way I thought of myself.
    I ask you to remember. I was only ten years old. At the same time of living in this illusion, and of sometimes even secretly admiring the uniforms of our enemies, I knew full well what was happening. How could I not?
    The overall duty of the council was to provide on a daily basis worker brigades for the military factories in the city. If this was not done, if the Germans thought we were not productive enough, that would be the end of us. While the men and the younger women were conscripted for labor, most women and the less able men were assigned to maintain the ghetto, to keep it functioning, the bakery, the hospital, the laundry, and so on. So women as well had to be fit. Anywoman found to be pregnant was taken away and murdered. Or if the child was born, both mother and child were murdered. So pregnant mothers as well as old people, homeless children, and the physically incapacitated were kept illegally in houses all through the ghetto. When we knew a search was coming, each runner had a number of houses to cover. I would dash to my allotted houses and knock on the door a special way. This was the signal that people had to hide. It was all done quietly, efficiently, no screaming or shouting. Then, my route covered, either I would have time to get back to the safety of the council offices or I would hide myself somewhere, usually on the roof of some empty house, huddling against the chimney. These were the moments of the purest terror, when the illegals would be dispersed into all manner of hiding places, cupboards, empty potato bins, root cellars, attic closets, wells, underground crypts. And I would listen as inevitably some of these hiding places would be discovered. From different quarters I would hear the running feet of a squad of soldiers, or guttural shouts, then the screams of someone, or sometimes a pistol shot. The Germans brought Jewish ghetto policemen with them on these searches and tortured them on the spot to find out what they knew. People were found and dragged away, you could hear awful sounds from the different streets. Wherever I was, however safe myself, I would feel such rage—to the point where I would verge on a suicidal impulse to rush out and attack the soldiers, leap on their backs, claw at them, pound them. I felt this desire in my jawbone, my teeth.
    When I was assigned to the square where the guards on post stopped and examined the work details crossing the bridge, my mission was to give the council warning of anything unusual. The guards were oafs, stupid men for the most part, they were the dregs of the German military, some clearly of middle age. In my runner’s garrison cap I was virtually invisible to them. I could keep crisscrossing the square endlessly, even occasionally hunkering behind some pile of rubble in order to observe the goings-on. If for instance one of the workers was caught in the evening trying to smuggle in a loaf of bread or a few cigarettes, there would be a terrible row and the council would have to intervene in a hurry to try to negotiate the least possible punishment. Sometimes the soldiers would accost a woman worker and try to detain her in their guardhouse on some pretext or other,and that would have to be dealt with. In the middle of the day, when