Let Me Tell You a Story Page 14

  ‘Please, Jadwiga, I’ll do all the work if you’ll let me stay. I’ll be ever so good, I promise.’

  ‘There is nothing to discuss. All arrangements have been made for you to go to the orphanage.’

  ‘Is it far away?’ I asked. ‘Will I still be able to read your books?’

  ‘It isn’t far away. In fact, it is just on the other side of the town,’ Jadwiga replied. ‘But you will not be able to take my books. You heard what Mr Policky said, one book and one toy. Besides, as soon as I have got rid of you I shall be leaving too.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘That’s none of your business. After next week you will never see me again. I’ve done my bit for you.’

  ‘That child talks and argues too much,’ Mr Policky said quietly. ‘We shall soon put a stop to that sort of behaviour. Until next week then, Jadwiga.’

  ‘Thank you, Stefan. I am very grateful,’ Jadwiga said, showing Mr Policky to the door. ‘You really have taken a great weight off my mind.’

  She shut the door behind him and turned to me. I wasn’t crying but, standing in the middle of the room, I was unable to move. I felt more alone than I’d ever felt before. Since Jadwiga had introduced me to the world of books, I thought we shared something special and we were becoming friends, and now I was being pushed out and worst of all I wouldn’t have any books to read. I wanted to curl up and die.

  ‘If you’re trying to make me feel guilty or change my mind, forget it,’ Jadwiga said. ‘You won’t. I didn’t take you in for love. I took you in at great personal inconvenience and danger as a source of income that seems to have dried up. That’s all there is to it. So don’t you dare beg and try to make me change my mind.’

  The orphanage looked similar to the one I had imagined Oliver Twist lived in. It was a grey-stone building with two rows of small, caged windows and a thick wooden front door with metal studs all over. It was surrounded by flat, bleak farmland. There were no other buildings except for one old tumbledown barn off in the distance. As I stood on the steps that led to the front door, I could hear the wind howling and moaning around the cold grey walls and over the fields full of blackened tops of beets and turnips, frozen into the ground. I could see the dark clouds that rushed across the sky above my head reflected in a plaque nailed to the front door. It read: State Orphanage.

  ‘You are very lucky, very privileged in fact, to have a place at the orphanage,’ Jadwiga had told me earlier as she closed her garden gate. ‘What did I tell you this last week? You could have ended up like Jan, abandoned on the street, when his mother failed to pay for his keep. I am not a charity and I can’t afford to become fond of you.’ She paused. ‘We all have to survive as best we can. It’s the safest place for you, if you keep quiet about being Jewish, of course.’

  I had tightened my grip on my doll and tried to keep up with Jadwiga as she hurried along the lane.

  ‘Just remember you must tell no one that you are Jewish. Because if you do, they will throw you out and you will die of cold and hunger.’

  ‘Why does everyone hate the Jews?’ I had asked, still looking for an answer I could really understand.

  Jadwiga seemed to know. ‘Because anyone with any sense hates Jews.’

  ‘Do you hate me?’

  ‘What I feel about you is my business, not yours. All I know is that I have been far kinder to you than you deserve.’

  ‘Have I done anything to make you cross with me? I have tried ever so hard to be good and helpful. Please tell me what I have done wrong. Please let me stay with you. Please –’

  ‘Stop it, Renata.’ Jadwiga was getting angry but I didn’t care, anything would be better than going to an orphanage. ‘You are going to the orphanage and that’s it, so stop arguing because it will get you nowhere except to make me more angry than I already am. You’re lucky I made arrangements for you rather than throw you out on the street.’

  ‘But, Jadwiga,’ I had begged her, ‘I will die without books. I’d rather be dead than go without books to read.’

  She had suddenly stopped, grabbed my shoulders and whirled me round to face her.

  ‘If you don’t stop arguing and moaning I shall get very angry,’ she shouted. ‘Books are not essential – they are a luxury. You just be grateful that you have survived this far. That’s all there is to it. Now I don’t want to hear another word.’

  I didn’t care. This was my last chance. I tried again.

  ‘I have been really, really happy with you since you taught me to read.’

  Silence.

  ‘You know Frederika won’t ever leave me. She loves me, she always told me she did and she promised to send you the money.’

  Silence.

  ‘What if she doesn’t find me in the orphanage? Will I have to stay there for ever?’

  But still Jadwiga refused to answer and had marched on in silence whilst I trotted along behind desperately trying to keep up with her stride, tears rolling down my face. Dressed only in the thin coat with my teeth rattling from the numbing cold and from being so nervous, I felt more miserable than ever. Jadwiga held my hand so tightly that it hurt and she dragged me along behind her. She didn’t speak to me again and ignored my whimpering.

  Then, as we approached the looming building, she had suddenly stopped for a second time.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ she said and glared at me. ‘It’s not my fault that I can’t afford to keep you any longer. If your relations fail to keep their side of the bargain and don’t bother to pay for your keep, then I certainly have no obligation to look after you. Just count yourself lucky that Mr Policky agreed to take you as a special favour to me. So you’d better behave yourself. You’re a miserable little brat and I shall be glad to be rid of you.’

  As we stood on the steps of the orphanage, Jadwiga raised the iron knocker and let it fall back loudly. We waited but no one came. She tugged a rusty bell pull and I heard the dull clanging from inside the building. It seemed a very long time before there was a sound of bolts being drawn back and the door opened a crack. A bent man all shrunken and old, with shabby clothes hanging off him, peered out at me. His face was purple, with blotches of darker red on his cheeks and nose. He stared angrily.

  ‘What do you want?’ His voice was thin and reedy.

  ‘Mr Policky is expecting me,’ Jadwiga said. ‘Take me to him, please. I’m in a hurry.’

  The man stared at me before opening the door wider to beckon us in. He didn’t say another word but set off down the corridor at a brisk trot. Jadwiga followed while I had to run to keep up with them.

  The narrow corridor went on and on. The floor was made of hard, square stones and the walls were flaky and green. The halls were cold and dim with just a few bulbs hanging from the peeling ceiling. It felt like the dungeons where princesses were imprisoned by wicked witches or where brave knights were kept with chains around their ankles. I had read about these dungeons and now I was in one. Sadly, I wasn’t a princess and there was no brave knight waiting to rescue me.

  Three little girls came down the passage towards us. I hadn’t seen any children for such a long time and I gave them a little smile but they flattened themselves against the wall to let us pass and just stared at me. All three wore stained white aprons over black dresses and I thought they looked very thin and very unhappy.

  At the end of the long corridor we stopped outside a big door. Our guide knocked and after a pause we heard a voice call out, ‘Enter.’

  The old man pushed the door and stepped away. Jadwiga marched in, dragging me behind her. Sitting on the far side of a huge messy desk was a large man with a bushy black beard. He didn’t look up and we had to stand there waiting. When eventually he did look up, he had the cruellest eyes I had ever seen and his mouth was a thin tight line.

  ‘I have come to see Mr Policky,’ Jadwiga said. ‘Where is he?’

  The man got to his feet. His stomach was huge and bulged over the top of his trousers like an over-inflated balloon. He alm
ost knocked me over as he brushed past, hand extended towards Jadwiga.

  ‘Jadwiga, may I call you that? Mr Policky sends his apologies; he was called away very suddenly. I am his deputy, Mr Mackiewicz. How are you?’

  ‘The better for being here,’ Jadwiga responded with a curt nod towards me. ‘She’s bright enough, but spoilt. Needs a firm hand.’

  ‘We shan’t have any problems with her,’ Mr Mackiewicz said. ‘She will find it pays to behave. We haven’t time for rebels. They all learn soon enough that life isn’t fun and games. We feed them, we house them, but we don’t have the time or the resources for anything else. They all have to work for their keep, whatever their age.’

  All this time he hadn’t as much as glanced in my direction, but I’d had plenty of time to examine him – to notice how red his face was and how his thin, greasy hair lay plastered to the top of his shiny head. With his thick, bushy beard, he looked as if he had put his head on upside down. His eyes were so small that they almost disappeared into the puffiness of his cheeks and his lips, only just peeping through his beard, were wormy pink lines. I thought about the ugly troll in ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’.

  The adults exchanged a few more words and then Jadwiga turned to me.

  ‘I’m going now,’ she said. ‘Be sure you behave yourself and everything will be all right.’

  ‘I shall miss you, Jadwiga,’ I said, trying not to cry. ‘Please come and see me, and thank you for teaching me to read.’

  Jadwiga paused. For a moment I thought her face looked kinder, just a little, and then it was gone. She quickly bent down to give me a small peck on the cheek, then stood up and walked out of the room without another word or backward glance. I stared after her willing her to change her mind. Then I was alone with Mr Mackiewicz.

  ‘Go and stand by the window,’ he commanded. He returned to his chair, sat down and stared at me. ‘Turn round very slowly.’

  I did as I was told.

  ‘You’re very blonde and quite pretty,’ he said. ‘Obviously pure Aryan stock.’

  This was another strange word that I would try and remember.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Sir. You say “sir” whenever you speak to me. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He leapt from his chair, grabbed my hair and jerked my head up so that I was forced to look at him.

  ‘What did I tell you?’

  I nodded. Tears began rolling down my face.

  ‘I’m waiting!’

  ‘Yes. Sir.’

  ‘That’s better.’ He released me. ‘Don’t you ever again dare to forget. I won’t have disobedience or insolence from anyone. How old are you?’

  ‘Six. Sir.’

  ‘Quite old enough to know how to behave and certainly old enough to do a full day’s work.’

  He pushed a bell set in the wall above his desk and said nothing more until, moments later, there was a timid knock on the door. I stood where he had left me, not daring to move. I felt a surge of anger towards Jadwiga for having left me here.

  ‘Enter,’ Mr Mackiewicz ordered and the door opened and in came two girls about the same age as me.

  They stood just inside the doorway and curtsied. One of them was twisting the edge of her apron round and round her finger.

  Mr Mackiewicz opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a black book. He looked at one of the girls, picked up a pen, dipped it in ink and wrote something in the book.

  ‘Do you know what I’ve just written in the crime book, Basia Lipska?’ he asked, fixing his mean stare on the smaller of the two girls who was now twisting the end of her apron even more nervously.

  ‘No, sir.’ Her eyes were wide with terror and she could hardly get the words out.

  ‘You don’t? Well, I will tell you. I have written a black mark against your name for ruining your clothes, so who knows what will happen to you at the end of the week.’

  Basia immediately dropped her apron and I could see that she was shaking all over. I wanted to go and comfort her, but didn’t dare move.

  ‘In the meantime,’ Mr Mackiewicz went on, ‘you two girls are to take this new one and show her where she will sleep. Then introduce her to Matron who will allocate her duties. This is Basia Lipska and this is her sister Cesia.’

  Cesia was a little taller than her sister and very thin. She too looked frightened.

  ‘Take her away now,’ Mr Mackiewicz said, waving his hand towards the door and turning back to the papers on his desk as if he had already forgotten us three children.

  I followed the two girls out of Mr Mackiewicz’s room and into the hallway.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Cesia asked in a whisper as we went back down the long corridor.

  ‘Renata. Why are you whispering?’ I asked, not thinking to lower my voice.

  ‘Shhh. We’re not allowed to talk in the corridor. We get a black mark if we’re caught. Come in here. This is where we sleep.’

  The girls went into a long room with iron bunk beds down both sides. The floor was bare and beside each bunk stood two chairs, one at each end. All the beds were covered with grey blankets. I counted ten bunks down each side of the room. At the end of the room the girls showed me a small door that led into a washroom with six washbasins and a lavatory.

  ‘Your bed will be under mine at this end of the room,’ Basia said. ‘We’re lucky because we’re near the lavatory. Cesia is at the other end because she’s older.’

  ‘What is a black mark?’ I asked. ‘What happens if you get one?’ I was worried by what I had seen in Mr Mackiewicz’s room.

  Cesia looked at me. ‘You get it read out on Punishment Day and if you have more than one you get punished.’

  ‘Have you ever been punished?’

  ‘Yes. I was locked in the coal cellar for a whole afternoon, in the dark. It was horrible.’

  ‘Why did you get a black mark?’

  ‘I forgot to make my bed and fold my clothes.’

  I decided there and then that I would never forget to be tidy. I was frightened of the dark and felt quite sure that if I was ever locked in a dark cellar I would certainly die.

  ‘We’d better go to Matron now,’ said Cesia, ‘or we’ll be in trouble for wasting time. We’re all orphans here so we have to be grateful and obedient,’ she added. ‘Are you an orphan?’

  ‘I hope not,’ I said. ‘I have a father who is away with the Army and my cousin Frederika is coming to take me to live with her as soon as she can fix it. So I don’t suppose I’ll be here long.’

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ Basia said, looking sad. ‘Our mother died because a bomb hit the house. She only went out of the cellar to get some food and at that very moment the bomb landed and killed her.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘That’s awful. I was in a house when a bomb fell, too, but we were all in the cellar and didn’t get killed. Are there lots of orphans here?’

  ‘Loads. Probably about a hundred but I think you must be the only one with a father.’

  ‘Who brought you here?’ Cesia asked.

  ‘Jadwiga. She looked after me and taught me to read. Do we have books and lessons here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what do we do all day? Isn’t it boring?’

  ‘We have to work, sweep and scrub floors, wash dishes, things like that.’

  I didn’t like the sound of this at all, but at least it was nice to have people of my own age to talk to again and I liked these two sisters.

  ‘We must go and find Matron or we’ll be in trouble.’ Cesia looked around nervously.

  We set off once more along the long corridor, down a flight of stone stairs to an icy-cold, dark passageway and finally to Matron’s room. Cesia knocked and led the way into a room steamy with drying clothes – grey-white aprons, shapeless black dresses and endless grey knickers – hanging in long rows in lines attached to a pulley on the ceiling.

  Matron looked bad-tempered with hair sc
raped back from her face into a bun. Strands of her hair were trying to escape and had got as far as her neck.

  ‘This is Renata, miss,’ Basia said. ‘She’s just arrived and Mr Mackiewicz told us to bring her to you.’

  ‘More trouble,’ the woman said, staring at my hair.

  ‘We’re going to have to cut that blonde mop off before the lice eat it.’

  She grabbed my arm, spun me round and poked around in my hair.

  ‘No lice at the moment, but we’ll take precautionary action.’

  She picked up a pair of large scissors and began to snip vigorously. As I stood, head on one side, I saw my long golden curls tumbling to the ground around my feet. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Everyone used to tell me how beautiful my thick golden curls were and now this woman was getting rid of them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I cried, trying to pull my head away, but Matron held me even tighter, then after a minute or two said, ‘That will do,’ and put down her weapon.

  I looked at my two new friends and saw that they were giggling, hands over their mouths.

  ‘You look so funny,’ Basia said. ‘Naked.’

  ‘We’ve no time for vain misses here,’ Matron said strictly. ‘And you two had better get back to work instead of standing around being silly. Go and get on with your jobs and come and collect this one in time for supper.’

  The sisters, still giggling, went and I was left alone with Matron.

  ‘Now I’m going to scrub your scalp with soap,’ she said. ‘In case you’ve brought any nits in with you. Bend over this basin.’ She pushed my head down and with a small bucket poured a stream of icy water over my hair. It made me gasp and cry out.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby,’ Matron said, rubbing a horrible-smelling liquid into my hair with such force that I felt as if my head would fall off. More icy water followed then she rubbed my hair with the roughest of towels leaving my ears and neck raw and smarting.

  ‘Here’s a comb and there’s a mirror over there. Make yourself respectable and then we’ll see about your clothes.’

  Looking in the cracked mirror, I saw a pale-faced stranger staring back at me with spiky hair cut so short that, even wet, it wouldn’t stay flat. I felt anger bubbling up inside me but this time I couldn’t stop it coming out.