If I Should Die Before I Wake (14 page)

"Bubbe knows the plans. You know I will be safe with Bubbe. She won't forget."

"Chana! You are being foolish and unrealistic. You could be separated or Bubbe could get—killed. It could happen, you know it could."

"I am to get into the car that is waiting in the alley. There will be a doll with a missing foot lying in the back window. We will get in and Henrick—not his real name—will take us to a house where he will take our pictures and give us papers that say that we are Rachela and Ewa Krisowski. Then we are to get ourselves into the roundup of Polish workers going to Germany, which you say is easy to do because of all the chaos, but we will see. Then we will ride to Germany—
phfutt
—where our false papers will be less suspicious since all the Jews have been rounded up there already, and we will work beside the Germans—
phfutt.
There now, did I leave anything out?"

 

On the night of our escape the air was cold and dry, the night sky clear and alive with the stars and the moon. It was unusual weather for that time of the year. We had counted on the damp and the fog to keep us under cover as we hurried through the alleys to the waiting car. Just the same, I preferred the clear night. It made me feel awake, electric, invincible. Once inside the car, riding with the blindfold on, that charge, that energy, left me, and all I could do was fold myself up against Bubbe and cry. It was too much for me to believe we were free.

The car stopped and we removed our blindfolds. We were parked outside a freshly painted farmhouse, glowing white beneath the moon. We got out of the car and Henrick led us inside. His wife, Lili, showed us the bathroom with its running water, and our bedroom, with two heavy blankets folded at the bottom of the bed. We took off our coats and left them in the bedroom and then followed Lili into the kitchen. She handed each of us a plate of eggs, cheese, warm, fresh bread, and whole boiled potatoes.

After supper, we each took a hot bath and climbed into bed, sinking into a soft pillow of eiderdown. Then Lili gave us the two bricks she had warmed by the kitchen fire, and we tucked them under the blankets, down by our feet. I snuggled up to Bubbe and sighed. "If only every day from now on could be this wonderful," I whispered.

I had dreamed of waking up to the smell of eggs, sausage, and coffee so many times in the past few years that when I awoke that next morning I thought I was dreaming once again. I kept my eyes closed and let the warmth of that room, with the sun streaming in from behind me and spreading out over my bed, melt me deeper into the pillow, the eiderdown, the bed. This is what it's like to feel rich, I told myself. It's all I need. I will never open my eyes and everything will stay as it is this very moment.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Bubbe whisper that it was time to get up, but I couldn't open my eyes. It was too real, this warmth, the richness, the deep comfort. Hang on to it, I told myself, hang on.

"Chana, we must begin. You will want breakfast before we leave."

I clutched the blanket, already pulled up around my ears—hang on.

"We must return to Lodz this morning." Bubbe shook my shoulder.

The nightmare, it's intruding on my beautiful dream—hold on tighter, hold on.

"Chana, now you must get up. There has been a roundup this morning. We will have to hurry."

A roundup. The old nightmare was moving in. Was this Tata's roundup, where they dragged him out of his own house and made him shovel dirt and shot him in a tree? Or was it Zayde's, where they drove us out of our homes and into the ghetto and worked him to death? Or maybe it was Mama's and Anya's roundup, where they used guns and dogs and whips to drive them into the carts and haul them away. Smell the sausage, thick, rich...

"Chana!"

"Bubbe, please."

"More tears? This has been too much for you. I will let you decide. We can go back to Lodz to the ghetto or we can go to Lodz and join the roundup—but, Chana, we cannot stay here. It is too dangerous."

I wiped my face and sat up. "A roundup. How could any good come from that?"

"For freedom, we will have to take our chances."

"But joining the workers and going to Germany, how will we find Mama and Anya that way? It would be better to live and hide in the
puszcza,
the forest."

"You promised you would do as Jakub said. In the forest we would not survive long. We must first be safe before we can find out about your mother and Anya. We must trust Jakub, Chana. He said this plan is good. He said it has worked before." Bubbe pulled back the covers. "Now, quickly get dressed. I have here all your papers, your passport, birth certificate, your ration card, everything. We will tuck them in your coat, Ewa."

I smiled. "Yes, Rachela." I threw on my skirt and blouse and then sat on the edge of the bed to wipe last night's dust off my new shoes with the edge of my skirt. As I polished them, I watched Bubbe collect the few belongings we had brought with us. All I brought was my violin. It wasn't practical, as Jakub had pointed out to me several times, but it was all I wanted.

"Bubbe, is what we are doing a sin?" I asked her when she came back over to the bed and sat next to me. "Won't God punish us for pretending to be Ewa and Rachela, non-Jews?"

"We are saving our lives and harming no one. It is more important, I think, to behave as God's chosen people, in the way of the covenant, than to proclaim we are His chosen people. You understand, Chana?"

"I think so. Although we say we are two Catholic women from Lodz, Ewa and Rachela, we will always behave and believe as Jews."

"It will not be forever. Now you go eat yourself a good breakfast. You will get fat this morning, eh?"

As Jakub had said, becoming part of the roundup of Polish workers was easy. There was chaos everywhere. Armed guards were posted in front of roadblocks, and packed behind them were the people they had rounded up from a local church. People were so busy shouting across the barricade to their friends and relatives, pleading with the deaf guards, saying good-bye to loved ones, trying to slip out from behind the blocks and join the throngs in the street, that no one bothered with the two of us as we strolled down the street toward the assembly and slipped past the barricades. The guards had no objection to people wanting to get in, just out.

When the train arrived, the guards separated the men and women and loaded us into separate cars. There was more chaos as husbands and wives tried to stay together while guards pushed and pulled and beat the people into the train.

Bubbe and I said nothing to one another or to anyone else. We pushed our way to the back of the car and sat down. I held on to Bubbe's hand and watched as other women, many in tears, tried to find a seat. Finally the train lurched forward. Bubbe squeezed my hand and whispered, "Freedom."

We had been riding for perhaps an hour and a half—I with my head resting on Bubbe's shoulder—when I felt Bubbe squeeze my hand again. I knew that this time she was signaling not pleasure but danger. I opened my eyes and standing before me was an old schoolmate, Marila Yankowitz, as fat and hairy as ever.

Her eyes widened as I looked up at her. She pointed a stubby finger at me and said in a booming voice, "Yes, I thought so. I know you!"

I TRIED NOT TO BE BITTER
about Marila turning us over to the Germans. As Bubbe had said, she had been separated from her family, and it was her chance to get back home. When the guards tossed us out of the train, however, and we landed on our knees on the concrete, I couldn't help but wish I could shove Marila under a moving train.

Two other guards, ones I hadn't seen before, ordered us to get up and come with them. They led us out of the train station and through the gray, unlit streets of a bustling German town. The people on the sidewalks were hurrying home for supper, but all of them took a little time to stop and watch the guards march us along, guns at our shoulders.

I wondered where they were taking us. Were they going to shoot us? Was this the last I'd see of the world? We stopped in front of a well-lit building with iron gates that towered above our heads. More guards were waiting for us there. They took us inside, led us down a long corridor and into a dingy, foul-smelling shower room. Here two women washed us in disinfectant, cut our hair—no style, just chop, chop—and handed us prison clothes. I watched them as they hauled away my clothes, my coat, and my violin.

My violin! Would I ever see it again? Would I ever play it again? Did orchestras still exist on the outside, or had they disappeared with the war, with Hitler and his mission of hatred and annihilation? Were they now just echoes from within the ghetto, echoes of a time and a world that could never be again?

A Defense Corps wardress with a beautiful face and deep creases in her forehead led us to another room and took our fingerprints and our pictures. Then she marched us downstairs through yet another corridor, this one lined on both sides with narrow cells. She opened the door to one of the cells and motioned for Bubbe to enter. Bubbe squeezed my hand and murmured, "Have cheer, at least we were not shot." Then she stepped past the wardress, bowed, and said,"
Danke,
"and the door closed behind her.

I followed the wardress down to the end of the hall, up a short set of stairs, and into a large room. The first thing I saw upon entering the room was my violin case. Without thinking, I made a move toward it, and two men, the wardress, and another woman charged toward me.

"My violin," I said as I backed away from them.

One of the men, a tall, emaciated-looking man with a fat nose and glasses that sat smashed up against his face, grinned down at me.

"You want your violin?" he asked me in German.

"
Jawohl,
"I replied. Of course I did.

"Good, we can arrange that for you. If you tell us your name and where you got these papers"—he gestured to my passport and birth certificate on the desk behind him—"then you will get your violin back and everyone will be happy. It is easy, no?"

I opened my mouth to speak and saw the other woman in the room hurry to her typewriter, which sat on a small desk at the right-hand side of the room. She was almost a midget, coming up, perhaps, to my rib cage, and yet her hands were normal-sized, with long, thick fingers that waited poised above the typewriter for me to speak.

"My name is Ewa Krisowski," I said. "That is all I have ever been called. If I have another name, I do not know it."

The man snapped his fingers. "Give me that paper with the names on it."

One of the other men, also tall, but well filled out, lunged toward the larger desk in the center of the room and grabbed up a sheet of paper. He handed it to the man with the fat nose.

"You are Chana Shayevitsh, are you not? A Jew from Lodz, Poland."

"That girl from the train must have told you that. She wanted very badly to return to Poland. Of course, she told you that so she could be set free. I, too, have family I left behind. They do not know where I am. She was clever, that girl from the train. She fooled everyone. Even you."

The man with the fat nose straightened up. His eyes darted sideways to the other man beside him and then returned to me. In less than a second his expression changed from pleasant but serious to ragingly angry as his skeletal hand came down upon my shoulder in a chop that knocked me to my knees. It felt as if my collarbone had snapped in two. Where had his strength come from?

I began to stand up, but again his hand came down upon the same shoulder and rammed me back onto the floor. I stayed there, frozen, my left shoulder throbbing.

"Now you understand. To enter the
Retch
illegally is a serious crime. You will tell me where you got those papers."

"I have always had them. I do not know what more I can say." I braced myself for another blow
but none came. Instead he ordered the wardress to take me away so I could think about it awhile.

As I stood up to leave, I saw through the window that dawn was breaking and wondered if the Germans ever slept.

The wardress took me back to the cells and opened the one where Bubbe was waiting. When she saw me, her eyes filled with tears and she reached out for my hands.

Before I could respond, the wardress had stepped in and grabbed Bubbe's arm. She pulled her out of the cell. I wanted her to know that I hadn't said anything.

"Good-bye, Rachela," I said.

 

I don't know how long I had slept but when I awoke Bubbe still had not returned. I stood up and peered through the door. I hadn't noticed earlier if there were any other prisoners in this hall of cells, but now I could hear movement coming from the cell next door.

"Rachela?" I called out. "Rachela, is that you?"

I heard a low chuckle coming from the cell to my right. "She'll not be coming back, that one," a voice muttered.

I backed away from the door as though it were a wall of fire. What does she know? She doesn't know.

"Please, Bubbe, please come back."

I waited—hours? days? I didn't know. The lighting in the windowless cells never changed. All I knew was that Bubbe was not with me and that I was so thirsty I had begun to lick the bars on my door as if they were bars of ice. I had not been fed or given anything to drink since we had arrived. I thought perhaps I would go mad. I slept as much as I could, always hopeful that when I awoke Bubbe would be standing in front of me, her hand reaching down to pat my head.

Every time I heard the light steps of the wardress tapping down the hall, I rushed to the door, expecting to see Bubbe behind her, but she was never there.

I prayed for long periods of time, stringing together any bits of prayer I could remember.

"Look upon us in our suffering and fight our struggles," I prayed, recalling the seventh blessing of the
Shemoneh Esrei
"Redeem us speedily, for Thy name's sake, for Thou art a mighty Redeemer. Blessed art Thou, Lord, Redeemer of Israel."

I repeated this for hours and tried to convince myself that Bubbe was all right, that she was alive. I was down on my knees chanting with my eyes closed when I felt a presence in the room. I turned toward the door, expecting to see Bubbe, but instead I saw my "friend," the one I had seen before the death of my father, and before we left for the ghetto, and then again as Mama and Anya were carted away.