The Old Brown Suitcase (4 page)

(WARSAW, 1940)

I AM SEVEN
.

It is a sunny November day, but I am cold.

An endless dark line of us moves slowly through a gate in the tall brick wall. People carry on their backs or push in carts all that remains of their life’s belongings. They enter the Ghetto beneath the cold eyes of German soldiers and Polish police. A cruel silence reigns over us despite the voices, the shuffling of feet, the grinding of wooden carts against the cobblestone street and the clanking of pots and pans. The faces of the people around us are frightened. Some are crying as they walk.

I walk with my parents, my hand numb from the weight of the brown suitcase. It contains all I have: one chipped porcelain doll, two books, my ballet costume and some clothes. My father carries two large cases and a knapsack, while Mother holds my sister. Basia is only two years old.

We step through the gate away from sunlight, into the grey shadow of the Ghetto.

All of a sudden Mother stops as if she can’t walk any further. A red-faced soldier yells “
Schnell! Schnell!
” into Mother’s face, telling her to go faster, and hits her on the back with a thick black baton. Mother stoops beneath the blow, her face twisted with pain, and moves on, with Father next to her, his face sickly white. Basia begins to wail. The soldiers are shooting at some people huddling in the doorway of a building. As we pass by one of the soldiers points his pistol at us. There are gunshots all around. Behind me I hear footsteps of the soldier’s boots, and another shot. My knees crumple and I sink to the ground. Am I dead? No, the bullet was for an old woman who fell to the ground behind us. Father pulls me up and whispers, “Quickly, these madmen will kill anyone who disobeys them.” I look back. The old lady lies where she fell, and people step over her body.

As we stumble further away from the gate, the immediate feeling of terror only slightly wanes.

“I know how terrifying all this is,” says Father, “but we must be brave, Slava.” He is breathing hard under the weight of the luggage, and his face is still white. “You’re not going to give up now, are you?”

“No, I am not giving up, Papa,” I answer, still shuddering, my lips stiff and unwilling.

My mother walks in silence, staring ahead. Basia is quiet.

Finally we arrive at our new home. The walls of the building are greyish and shabby. The stone facade is chipped and yellow in places and the windows are dirty. We enter through the courtyard, and find the inside even worse. Masses of people mill up and down the stairs and in the corridor of our apartment, pushing mattresses and suitcases.

Through the doors that bang open and shut, I see sheets being hung around the beds, the only way to create some privacy, as in a hospital. Wrinkled sheets hang on crooked rods or string, swaying in the breeze of human motion. The three bedrooms, dining room and living room of each apartment are occupied by five families, twenty-five people who must share the one kitchen and bathroom. And the stench throughout the place! It smells of old plumbing and sweat, of garbage lying in corners, of dirt left behind by the previous occupants.

Our room is one of the large bedrooms of a common apartment, or maybe it’s the parlour. Who knows? It is like the others, filled with the same stench and shabby furniture. Black, torn shades hang against the windows like crows that have frozen in flight. On the table stands a naphtha lamp, our only source of light for the long winter nights to come. A red velvet chair huddles in one corner, its crevices filled with dirt and dust.

I sit exhausted in the red chair and watch my parents make the best of what we have. They energetically clean, wipe and arrange our provisions on a shelf and put our clothes into a wardrobe. Meanwhile, they give me the job of entertaining my baby sister, who is marvellously oblivious to our misfortune. I try to make funny faces, and then, quietly, tell her the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. She listens attentively then begins to chortle. Her laughter is the only bright moment of this unhappy day.

Mother makes tea and puts out bread for supper. The tea is hot and sweet. The coarse bread is black and stale, but we eat it thankfully as if it were the best tasting meal on earth.

Someone knocks on the door. It opens and an elderly woman enters our room. She is chubby and poorly dressed save for a beautiful hand-knitted shawl around her shoulders and arms. Her heavy beige stockings are held in place by elastics just below the knee, and they bag at the ankles.

“I am Mrs. Solomon,” the woman says hoarsely. “I would like to invite you to the Sabbath dinner tomorrow evening. We will share what little we have. Anything you bring will be welcome.”

Suddenly she begins to cough. At first the cough is normal, but gradually it becomes so violent that my parents rush to her side. They sit her down with difficulty as her large body heaves with spasms. Pulling a handkerchief from a soiled sleeve of her dress, she presses it against her lips. I offer her my cup of tea. She takes several sips, and when the cough subsides somewhat, she continues.

“These are terrible times for Jewish people. Before this awful thing happened we lived in a big apartment on Marshalkowska Street. The Germans took everything from us, even the samovar my mother brought all the way from Petersburg in Russia. They killed my husband on the street because he refused to undress in public.” She wipes tears from her eyes. “Now my daughter Sallye and I share one room with my brother and his wife and her sister. All in one room! They say that over a hundred thousand people entered the Ghetto today, and that there will be more to come. Where will they live?” she cries. “Where is the God of our people?”

Mrs. Solomon grows silent and her body rocks back and forth as if in prayer. No one speaks, it is getting dark. Father lights the naphtha lamp and pulls down the blackout shades. Mother offers Mrs. Solomon a cup of tea but she declines.

“Thank you, but I must go. Sallye, my daughter, has not been well lately. The doctor thinks it could be tuberculosis. But please come to our dinner tomorrow night.” She smiles, and for a moment her tired face brightens, as if some inner light had turned on. “We must continue to live in spite of all this, at least until tomorrow,” she says, and leaves.

“What is tuberculosis, Father?” I ask.

“It is a disease of the lungs,” he replies, shaking his head sadly. “A very contagious disease. Her coughing makes me wonder if poor Mrs. Solomon doesn’t have it too.”

“Papa,” I say, “I noticed blood on her handkerchief after she coughed. She tried to hide it.”

My parents look at each other sadly but say nothing. I go to bed. The light of the naphtha lamp casts eerie shadows on the walls.

I sleep fitfully, half-dreaming about poor Mrs. Solomon and her daughter Sallye. Do I hear coughing across the hall? I want to say a prayer to God and include them. But I am uncertain after today. I wonder if Mrs. Solomon is right. Could it be that God no longer hears our prayers?

The morning brings with it a jumble of sounds. There are feet shuffling past our door, voices behind the walls, cries, wailing, angry shouts, women’s, men’s and children’s voices.

“There is a long lineup to the bathroom,” announces my mother after looking out into the corridor. “What are we going to do?”

Father dresses and goes out for half an hour and returns with a bedpan and a pail. We all feel better in a while. He takes the pail out, while Mother washes out the bedpan with water taken from the kitchen, which she pours out later into the toilet.

Every Friday night my parents, Basia and I go to Mrs. Solomon’s for a Shabbat dinner. The eight of us just fit around Mrs. Solomon’s long brown table. I sit between my parents and Sallye.

Mrs. Solomon wears a black lace scarf on her head and lights the Shabbat candles. Her hand circles over the flames and she says a prayer in Hebrew, a language I don’t understand. Afterwards, she looks up towards the ceiling as if it were heaven, her eyes full of tears. I like the sound of this language and the solemnity of the prayer. Her daughter translates it into Polish for those of us who don’t understand Hebrew. It is a prayer to God that gives thanks for the food and asks for His blessing and deliverance from our present condition. At the end of the prayer everyone says “Amen.” Mrs. Solomon weeps.

We are now given bowls of watery soup with dark bits swimming in it. Then potatoes are served with something that resembles chicken. It is boiled, with mostly yellow skin hanging from the meagre bones. It tastes slimy. There are pickles and jam on the table. Mrs Solomon tells us it is practically the last of her own preserves that she brought to the Ghetto.

“Does the Lord hear our prayers?” I ask Sallye after the meal.

“Of course He does,” she answers cheerfully.

“I like the idea of Shabbat,” I confide to Sallye. “We never had it in our home, only sometimes at our friend’s house, but I can barely remember it.”

At night I say my own prayer to God.

I like Sallye very much. She treats me like an adult, and plays with me when she feels well. She sings Yiddish songs, some of which sound sad, some happy. She says that it doesn’t much matter whether you understand the words, the Jewish soul comes through the sound. On this and other Friday nights we listen to Sallye after dinner and then clap, asking for more songs. Our lives become less dreary on Shabbat nights.

Sallye is becoming terribly skinny, her skin transparent like yellow tissue. She coughs more frequently now that winter is upon us, and sometimes stays in bed all week. I want her to get better, but one morning I awake to the news that Sallye has died during the night. I go back to bed and weep into my pillow. I vow never to pray again.

Mrs. Solomon is hysterical for days. Shortly after Sallye’s death, she becomes very ill. As days go by, I avoid looking at the soiled and smelly pile of sheets outside her room. One day they carry her body out on a stretcher. Our Shabbat dinners resume after a while in someone else’s room, but they do not feel the same.

A sign appears in the courtyard and on the outside of our building:

The gate to the courtyard remains open, because our whole street has been quarantined. But the food grows scarce because no one is allowed in or out beyond a certain point. Are we going to die? I wonder about it each night as I lie in bed. Often I hear a young boy cry out in pain from an apartment above us. I listen, helpless. In the mornings he sits in the window, white as a ghost. His mother tells everyone that he has a nervous stomach.

One night I hear nothing. Maybe he is better. But in the morning they carry him away. He died of typhus, and he was only fourteen.

A few days later I am playing hide-and-seek in the courtyard with the other children, when I am nailed to my spot by a scream. I look up. The mother of the boy who died stands in a window on the second floor. Her hair is wild about her face and she screams and screams. Suddenly she lunges forward and falls out of the window. She is falling towards me, but I can’t move. Her body lands next to me with a thud.

Choking on tears, I run out of the courtyard into the street. But soon I am forced to stop, for the street ends abruptly at the high wall of the Ghetto, a quarter of a block from our building. I stand panting in front of the wall. This part of it is made of wood. Down below there is a space between the wood and the cobblestones, and through it I can see the soldiers’ black polished boots, marching back and forth, back and forth. I hear men laugh and speak in their harsh-sounding language, which I have come to fear and hate. I turn around and walk back very slowly to the courtyard.

Life goes on.

Mother combs my hair thoroughly everyday, because it is through lice that typhus spreads, and lice love to get into hair. She uses a special comb with two sets of teeth. Through luck and cleanliness, we escape the plague, and soon the quarantine is lifted.

One evening my parents tell me that I will be finally going to school, but that it must be kept a secret. Schools in the Ghetto are forbidden. No one must know in case the Germans find out.

In the morning, Father takes me to a building not far from ours but on another street. We walk down to a room in the basement where he leaves me, saying that he will be back at noon to pick me up.

The teachers are two young sisters. Fela is short, and Hala is tall. But both are skinny, have dark hair and wear glasses.

There are about ten of us children, both boys and girls. The youngest is six and the oldest is ten. We sit in two groups of five at separate round tables. The tables are very low, and the seats are wooden boxes with lids on them. Each table has a stack of exercise books, paper and pencils.

When introductions are over, Fela calls us to attention.

“Children, we are happy to have you with us,” she begins, “but before we start our lessons I want you to listen carefully to the following instructions. Each of you is sitting on a bench that opens at the top. Inside it you will keep your books and drawings. If there is a knock on the door, I want you to put your pencils, books and drawings quickly into the bench. My sister Hala will be responsible for all the other things that have to be put away, while I will take care of whoever is at the door.” We sit quietly listening to our teacher’s words.