Let Me Tell You a Story Read online

  ‘I hate you, I hate you,’ I screamed at the woman. ‘Look what you’ve done. You’ve stolen my hair. It will never grow again, never. Wait till my cousin comes. She’ll punish you for this. I am going to tell that man what you’ve done to me. You’re cruel and wicked and I hate you!’

  The next thing I knew, the woman was shaking me by the shoulders then pinning me against the wall. She raised one hand and brought it down hard upon my left cheek.

  ‘You’re going to learn some manners, my young miss,’ she sneered, her face in mine. ‘Just try complaining to Mr Mackiewicz and you’ll see what you’ll get. Why should you think yourself special just because you’ve got pretty hair? We’ve no time for prettiness around here, or vanity either. Don’t you dare utter another word or it will be your last, I can tell you. Now are you going to behave yourself?’ She waited until I nodded.

  ‘Over there,’ she ordered, ‘are your clothes.’

  ‘But I brought some with me.’

  ‘Brought some with you? Well you won’t be needing them. You wear the regulation stuff here. Everyone’s the same.’ She put out a bundle of grey, slightly damp garments and proceeded to go through them.

  ‘One nightdress to be washed every two weeks; while it’s drying, you sleep in your vest. One pair of knickers to last the week. One vest, two weeks, and one dress and apron, two weeks.’

  She tossed the bundle into my arms.

  ‘I haven’t heard the words “thank you”,’ she said.

  I stared at the floor.

  ‘Thank you,’ she thundered.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered to the floor.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Now we’ll go along to the dormitory and I will show you where to put your things and collect what you’ve brought with you.’

  ‘But I can keep my dolly,’ I said to Matron’s back as she headed off to the dormitory. ‘She was a present from my nanny and she goes everywhere with me.’

  ‘No dolls allowed round here,’ Matron said over her shoulder. ‘Toys are not allowed. You’re orphans and you have to work for your keep, not play and be little babies that need looking after.’

  ‘Please.’ I was clinging desperately to her arm, trying to get her to stop and listen to what I was saying. Fear had made me brave. ‘Please let me keep my doll. She’s all I have to love. I’ll die if you take her away. I’ll be ever so good and do anything you tell me and not mind about my hair, but please don’t take my dolly.’

  But I might as well have been talking to the peeling green walls or the hard stone floor.

  Chapter Ten

  January 1944. Skierniewice State Orphanage

  There was a lot to learn at the orphanage. Rule number one was don’t trust anyone. There were one or two children, such as Cesia and Basia, who I thought I might be able to trust but even with them I had to be careful. If you told on someone else’s wrongdoings, you got a reward, like extra food. I soon realised that the children were always telling lies about each other just to get more food. If you cried or showed that you were unhappy, you were told off as it might make other children think they were unhappy too. If you were kind or tried to help another child, you were told off as well. I quickly realised that it was best not to say anything at all and to keep out of everyone’s way. I decided to copy the other children and keep myself to myself and then days went by without me saying anything at all to anyone.

  The other children also scared me. I was terrified by the way they behaved; some acted more like frightened animals than children, making strange sounds and trying to hide themselves even when there was nowhere to hide. Others just stared ahead as if they were asleep with their eyes open. But the worst of the lot were the children who kept hurting themselves over and over again. I couldn’t understand why they kept on wanting to hurt themselves so badly and make themselves even more miserable.

  I was scared and jumpy being surrounded by so many children who acted in such strange ways. I knew that I could not get away from them. But then I would remember Babcia and her stories and how we used to leave the living room at home and fly to the places inside my head. So I thought about those stories, and the ones Aunt Adela and Marynia had told to me, and those that I had read myself. And I found I could still ‘fly’ and so I left the horrible orphanage and the scary children to join my story-book friends in my head and share their lives instead. I told my friends my problems and they always tried to help even if they didn’t know what to do. I tried to copy their behaviour when they had been in difficult situations like when people were being cruel to them or when they were frightened. If I felt miserable scrubbing stone corridors with a scrubbing brush too big for my hands, or carrying buckets of water which were too heavy for me, I would imagine myself as Cinderella working in her stepmother’s kitchen. At times when I felt a bit better, I imagined myself in a beautiful land full of fairy godmothers and happy children, loving parents, where knights in shining armour were waiting on big white horses to rescue beautiful damsels in distress. While struggling to swallow the orphanage food, I sometimes pretended that I was eating delicious fruits off golden plates, like those Laura ate at Goblin Market, and drinking nectar, the drink of the gods. My friends inside my head always told me that they loved me and I felt happy and I was able to get through to bedtime where I always dreamed of finding my Mamusia and Babcia and Tatuś.

  All the time I thought about food because I was constantly hungry. I now understood why Oliver Twist dared to ask for more even though he didn’t like the food, but I was never brave enough to do the same. Most of the time we were given a gloopy, tasteless porridge – but never enough. For a while it made me feel bloated and then suddenly I would be starving hungry again. It tasted better and went down more easily if it was warm, but usually it was cold and had hardened into a repulsive slime that was difficult to swallow. Sometimes we got thin, watery cabbage soup instead. We could tell when it was soup day because the whole orphanage stank of boiled cabbage. The smell got everywhere, into our unwashed clothes, our hair, our beds and our dreams at night. You couldn’t escape it, even outside. The stench would get into the walls and it tasted even worse than it smelt. On soup days I imagined that the whole world had turned into an enormous cabbage. And then as we tried to eat it it would grow back and get bigger and bigger until finally the cabbage would unfurl and start to eat us.

  We were also fed bread, which was given out in small quantities. It was black and sour, hard to chew and even harder to swallow. But at least it was filling – if we were given the chance to eat it. The youngest children, like me, were watched by the older, bigger boys who used to hide round corners and then suddenly appear, knocking us over and snatching the bread and gobbling it up greedily. When I first arrived I was quite glad to hand it over, but soon the hole in my tummy made me think again and I would hide my ration, usually in my knickers, until I could find a place where I could eat it without any of the big boys seeing. In the morning we were given a mug of warm, dark coffee made of ground acorns and for the rest of the day we had to make do with water.

  If not trusting anyone was rule number one, then rule number two was stealing. The horror of living at the orphanage made me learn quickly and for the second rule Cesia was my teacher. My first lesson took place on the morning of my second Sunday at the orphanage when I was feeling utterly miserable. Those of us who had shoes were marched in a long crocodile to church. Those whose shoes were too small or had worn through had to stay behind. We liked the weekly visit to the church because it meant we could escape our prison.

  On this Sunday Cesia introduced me to turnips. Cesia and I, wrapped in our thin coats and hugging ourselves for warmth, joined the crocodile of children making its way towards the town. Basia was not with us that day because both her shoes had great big holes in them and there was snow on the ground. She had walked in them like that for a long time but now everyone could see the holes and her toes all red and swollen with chilblains.

  It was bitterly cold. A howl
ing wind drove the sharp, icy flakes of snow into our faces and it took for ever to walk the two miles to the church. Inside there was no escape from the cold, it was as freezing as outside and we sat there shivering in our pews, hands in laps and heads down. Apart from the children from the orphanage there weren’t many others – a few old people all wrapped up in shawls and nodding asleep throughout the long service. I looked round in the hope that I would catch sight of Jadwiga but she had never gone to church when I stayed with her and so I really knew that she wouldn’t be here now.

  Today the sermon went on for ages and ages. The priest was talking about being grateful and I couldn’t think of anything at all to be grateful for. Cesia, who was sitting next to me, noticed that I had begun to cry.

  Under cover of the pew in front she took my hand in hers and squeezed it hard. Then I had something to be grateful for. I was grateful that she was being so kind when I really needed it. When at last the service was over we walked out into the churchyard where, although the snow had stopped falling, the cold was just as numbing. Cesia and I left the church together and joined the end of the crocodile as it snaked slowly back on to the muddy frozen road. I kept my head down, trying to shelter my face from the icy wind and keep up with Cesia beside me. After a while I realised that Cesia had begun to slow down and was now walking very, very slowly. I looked up and saw that we were now some distance behind the others.

  ‘We’d better hurry and catch up with them,’ I said, worried that Matron would notice, but Cesia grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  ‘No, wait. Let them get ahead. We’ll soon catch up, don’t worry.’

  We were by now out of the town and in the open countryside. It was freezing and grey angry clouds were gathering above us stopping any sunlight coming through that might have helped to warm us. I saw Matron ahead leading the children back up the dirt track to the orphanage. She was cold herself and wanted to get back quickly and so was hurrying on, not bothering to check that we were all keeping up. Suddenly I felt Cesia pulling me sideways off the road.

  ‘Come on,’ she hissed.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Cesia took me completely by surprise by saying, ‘I’m going to show you where to get food.’

  She pulled me again and I fell off the side of the road and into the field. When I scrambled to my feet, my clothes were soaked and covered with freezing mud.

  ‘Look what you’ve done!’ I cried.

  ‘Stop fussing. The mud will brush off when it’s dry. Quick, grab a turnip, there are loads on the ground, and then hide it under your coat. Nobody will notice.’

  ‘What am I going to do with a frozen turnip?’ I asked, still cross that my clothes were so dirty and afraid of Matron’s anger, but Cesia wasn’t listening.

  ‘As soon as we get back, say you need the lavatory but instead go and hide it in your bed, under the pillow is best. Then you can eat it tonight. It will be warmer to bite by then and if you keep under the blanket no one will hear you crunching. There’s one, take it. I must get one for Basia too.’

  Confused, I did what my friend told me. I bent down to pick up a turnip half sticking out of the earth but I couldn’t move it. I tried another and managed to free it from the frozen ground.

  ‘But it’s like a lump of ice, and ever so hard. How can we eat that?’ I gasped. ‘I can’t carry that under my coat, I’ll freeze to death.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Cesia, ‘it will have thawed out by tonight,’ and she stood up, clutching two turnips that she tried to hide under her coat. I copied her and with the icy turnip close to my body I felt colder than ever. Cesia scrambled back on to the road and ran to catch up with the others, telling me to hurry. I was still not convinced that these ‘hidden treasures’ would be worth the bother.

  Once back inside the orphanage, still hugging ourselves and our turnips, we were sent straight to the kitchen to get on with our chores but, as Cesia had told me, I asked to go to the lavatory. Matron tutted and said, ‘Hurry up, for goodness’ sake. I shall be timing you.’

  I rushed off to the dormitory and pushed the turnip under my pillow before returning to the kitchen as fast as I could.

  That night long after everyone was asleep, I bit into my ‘treasure’. Cesia was wrong, it was still very cold and it hurt my teeth. The skin was gritty and bitter and didn’t taste at all nice but, once I managed to get into the turnip itself, I was surprised at how sweet it tasted. Best of all, it filled the hole in my stomach and made me feel calm inside, for a while at least. Over the following weeks I became a real expert in stealing turnips and began to look forward to my weekly crime. I never came to like the taste but a large turnip would last nearly all week so I saw stealing as an adventure that helped to make me less bored and give me something to tell the friends in my head. For the rest of that winter I came back after the service every Sunday with a cold, hard turnip and an urgent need to rush off to the lavatory. No one suspected a thing.

  It was not just the food in the orphanage that I hated, but mealtimes themselves. Each day we would be hard at work and then a bell would clang through the building. We had to stop what we were doing, make our way to the dining hall and form a long line outside the door. Then, and only when ordered to do so, slowly, one by one, we filed in, holding our hands out in front of us ready for inspection. This was silly, I thought, as we almost never washed ourselves, or our hair, or our clothes. Anyone with very dirty hands was cuffed and sent out to wash them and then had to queue up all over again.

  Most of the time there wasn’t enough food to go round, so the children at the back quite often missed the meal. As we filed into the dining hall we had to pick up a bowl and spoon from a table near the door, then walk in line to queue for food at another table across the room. Three women stood behind the table poised over a ladle and a large, dirty-looking metal pan. As each child came forward with an outstretched arm one of the women would drop a dollop of porridge or soup into the bowl. No one said anything. Then we would file to the nearest empty space and sit in silence at the table watching our food grow cold, waiting for all the others to be served. Then, and only then, could we begin eating. We could not choose who we sat next to or where we sat, it simply depended upon where you happened to be in the long queue.

  Sunday was a little different. Although we always had the same porridge, we were given a small blob of jam as a special treat so that at least it tasted of something. It was on Sundays that we girls wished that we were boys, because if there was any food left the boys were given seconds. We girls were never given any more.

  One Sunday Basia, Cesia, I and some other girls managed to get into the dining hall together and were able to sit next to each other at the table nearest the serving women. As usual we sat in silence with our bowls untouched, watching the food grow cold. Usually I didn’t mind waiting as the food was horrible, hot or cold, but today for some reason I was hungrier than ever. I was miserable too for it was a particularly cold day and on our return from church we found the turnips frozen into the ground. No matter how hard we tried we had been unable to yank them out of the soil – so today there was no Sunday treat to look forward to at bedtime.

  At last all the children were served and seated and the signal given for us to begin. Everyone ate greedily and quickly. For some reason that day the jam had been sweeter and the porridge tastier so when I finished, I longed for more. When the boys were called to come up for seconds, I longed to join them but instead had to watch as the ladles dipped in and out of the pot and more dollops were dumped into the boys’ bowls. I thought that it was so unfair and I had to try very hard to stop myself crying. Jorik, the person I hated more than anyone in the world and someone who scared me to death every time I saw him, was the last in the queue. As he passed by my chair he gave me a kick which almost made me cry out. I quickly turned my cry into a splutter because if Jorik was caught and punished he would look for me everywhere and then take his beating out on me.

  I watched as th
e server dipped her ladle into the pan and tipped a spoonful into his bowl. But it wasn’t only porridge that landed in his bowl. I also saw a cooked mouse slide from the ladle and land on top of the porridge with its tail hanging neatly over the edge. I saw the look of surprise on Jorik’s face before loud screams filled the hall and I was violently sick all over the table, my clothes and the floor.

  Matron appeared at my side, slapped me hard across the face then pulled me to my feet and shook me until my teeth rattled. I could hear someone still screaming but now it was far away and, even though I saw Matron’s hand rising and falling in front of my face, I could feel neither the slaps that came fast and furious, nor the shaking that left bruises on my arms. Matron then dragged me out of the dining hall and outside into the icy cold. Even this didn’t stop the screaming. It was only when a doctor was called and he had given me an injection that I began to calm down a little.

  ‘That child has suffered a terrible shock,’ I heard him say. ‘She must not be left alone in the night. She might die.’

  Through Jorik I learned rule number three: how to hate. Before I had heard people saying that they ‘hated’ the Nazis and I knew that I should hate them too because I was Jewish; because they had taken my mother and grandmother, killed my aunt and Zazula, and made me come to this orphanage. I was scared of them finding me but I didn’t really understand how I should be hating them as they were not real to me. They only appeared as monsters in my nightmares and even then I couldn’t always see them. Now that I was older I knew that I was often unhappy and I knew I was terribly lonely and frightened and I knew how these feelings made me feel inside.

  But when I met Jorik, I then knew what it felt like to hate someone. Jorik was a lot older than us. He was at least fifteen and had been in the orphanage longer than any of us. The first time I met him was soon after I had arrived when I saw him tumble out of the Warden’s office holding his hands under his armpits. He was crashing down the corridor bouncing from one wall to the other as if he couldn’t see and although I tried to get out of his way he bumped straight into me. As I started to cry, he stopped, let out a big roar and bent down over me, his teeth clenched in a horrible grimace and his fingers stretched out like claws. His face was round and red, his chin was very small and the breath that came out of his mouth and on to mine was smelly and full of spit. His staring eyes were popping out of his head. They were strange and wild and did not seem to see me although his face was nearly touching mine. He could tell I was more frightened of him than anything in my life and he roared at me again. I scrambled to my feet and ran off down the corridor. He followed me, caught me and held my shoulder in a tight hard grip, spun me round and began roaring and roaring in my face until Matron came running down the corridor and saved me.