Let Me Tell You a Story Page 7

  She turned her back on me as if to signal that I’d asked enough questions. It didn’t put me off. I asked the same questions every few days and yet I still didn’t understand what the problem was. Didn’t I have blonde hair and blue eyes? Surely Zazula must have noticed? Why then did I have to hide? I was too afraid of saying anything to Zazula for fear of making her angry.

  The shifting rooms, hiding places and families began to blur together. Perhaps there were only a few families that passed us between them. Perhaps there were lots of families with whom we stayed – I don’t know. But then we arrived at Mrs Posadzka’s.

  Mrs Posadzka was a widow and was delighted, but obviously worried, to see us. She bustled us quickly into her tall, thin house and declared, ‘You can stay here with me. Marynia told me you needed somewhere to stay and I have an empty room. You must keep quiet though and only use the toilet when no one is around. Nobody knows that you are staying here – you must be quiet as mice. But I suspect you girls are good at being mice by now, aren’t you?’

  I liked Mrs Posadzka, she was younger than Babcia but older than my mother, short with brown wavy hair and soft skin. When she wasn’t in a rush she would tell us stories, not like the ones in the books that were destroyed in the apartment, but stories about people we knew.

  ‘I know your father,’ she said one day. ‘He was a chest doctor at the Military Red Cross Hospital before the war. And, oh, so kind.’ She smiled at me. I found it hard to remember my father now.

  ‘What does he look like?’ I asked, hoping to jog a forgotten memory.

  ‘He had dark hair and dark eyes,’ Mrs Posadzka said. ‘Not at all like you. And a lovely gentle smile. I met him at the hospital. My daughter was ill, we were so scared. We took her straight to the hospital. We were in a terrible state, what with Joanna making all sorts of strange breathing sounds. She had gone quite blue in the face. Your father was working that day. He was wonderful. He didn’t panic, he asked a nurse to see to us and then took poor Joanna away. A collapsed lung, he said later. Any longer and she would have died. He saved her life and I swore to him that day that if there was anything, anything, I could ever do to help him in return then he just had to say. Such a gentleman, he was, unlike those . . .’ Mrs Posadzka looked at me and paused. ‘Anyway, that’s why you’re here now, you, your aunt and Zazula. They’ll have to get past me before they lay a finger on you.’

  I had wanted to ask Mrs Posadzka whether she knew where my father was now but she said that she had stayed long enough and had work to do.

  I liked being in Mrs Posadzka’s house. Our hiding place was a small room on the first floor. The room was square with bare boards and no rugs to keep in the warmth or sounds so Aunt Adela told us to walk without shoes so that no one would hear us.

  ‘Especially if you have to cross the landing to go to the toilet,’ she said.

  To the right of the door was a chaise longue and above it a window that faced out on to a small concrete backyard and over the wall into the street beyond. Zazula and I longed to look out of the window but Aunt Adela and Mrs Posadzka refused to let us go anywhere near it. Opposite the door, filling the whole of one wall, stood a large wooden wardrobe with two heavily carved doors. It was kept locked, the massive, swirly key sat in the door, but it was too difficult for me and even Zazula to turn even though we tried many times. Zazula and I often wondered what was kept hidden inside and we made up stories about that secret world behind the wardrobe doors.

  The only other furniture in the room was a large, round, heavy oak table complete with three wooden chairs. It was covered with a plush, colourful Turkish carpet-like tablecloth that fell down in thick folds to the floor so that the chairs were never pushed completely under the table. It was the only splash of colour in a drab room into which the sun never shone.

  Being isolated from the outside world, Zazula and I were bored and desperate for information, anything to suppress our fathomless pits of hunger and give us some idea of what was going on in the world beyond our window; to give some meaning to this life we were living. Mrs Posadzka came to our rescue.

  ‘Let me tell you a story,’ she said one day. ‘How about one about this street?’ she began. She told us what was going on outside, first describing in detail the houses, what they looked like and who lived there. Then she told us how people were dying from diseases and how they had to eat rats because there was so little food. She described the killings in broad daylight and of those who were taken away by train to camps far away. She told us about the Nazis but also about the brave people who were trying to stop the Nazis. She didn’t tell us about all the ‘nasty things’ the Nazis did. She didn’t have to. The gunshots and bombs that I could hear from our room together with Zazula’s vivid explanations were enough for me.

  Sometimes Aunt Adela and Mrs Posadzka would sit together in the corner of the room and talk in hushed voices. Zazula and I couldn’t avoid overhearing snippets of conversation.

  ‘. . . they were so thin, and so ill, that the soles of their feet fell off . . .’

  ‘. . . the rats are everywhere, feeding off the dead bodies, living in the dirt and squalor . . .’

  ‘. . . they smashed her poor baby’s head against a wall before shooting her . . .’

  ‘. . . the gas chambers are portable . . . going through all the remote villages . . . quicker than taking everyone away.’

  ‘. . . what about Erwin’s parents and sister? . . . Said they would be safe living so far away from . . . but Erwin tried to make Tosia and Renata go to stay with them when he . . . safer than staying in Przemyśl, he said.’

  We heard the rumours about the people left in the ghetto – how they were made to gather together outside before the shootings started, before the burning of the bodies.

  ‘So that’s what the black smoke was,’ Aunt Adela whispered, ‘and the smell. They say death smells sweet and now I know why. I can still smell it even though the flames were put out days ago . . .’

  We understood now why we had to keep quiet and stay inside and it wasn’t just for our benefit, but also for the people with whom we were staying. They would be killed as well. The horror began to sink in more fully as Zazula found it more and more difficult to explain to me what it was that we were hearing. But we had worked out what would happen if the soldiers found us, and we were scared.

  Inside the house Zazula and I understood that this was no longer a game. We tried very hard to be obedient, not to complain about our confinement to a tiny room, and only talk in whispers. In the comparative safety of our room it all seemed a little unreal, distanced from us, normal, yet at the same time terrifying, if we paused for long enough to think about it. Sometimes we became so involved in our games, and our quarrels, that we forgot the seriousness of the situation. We were always listening for any change in the noises from the street below, for the wail of sirens or the staccato sounds of the gunshots in the distance.

  ‘Let’s have a story,’ Aunt Adela would announce when we were especially worried or bad-tempered, and she would take us back to the land of fairy tales and instead of pictures in a book I had to concentrate on the pictures in my head.

  ‘“. . . what big eyes you have . . .”’ and my aunt would open her eyes wide.

  ‘“. . . what big teeth you have . . .”’ and I could see the open mouth of the wolf coming towards me, yellow teeth, saliva dripping – each time more vivid.

  I would wake in the night petrified of opening my eyes or moving in case the wolf was at my bedside. The nightmares continued, combining the stories with memories of my parents. I’d find myself endlessly searching for my mother and father through woods full of gigantic beanstalks where trees pulled at my hair; witches fed me with sweets and cakes that I should not have eaten but couldn’t resist; wolves prowled and nowhere were princes to be seen.

  I couldn’t tell Zazula about these awful dreams; she would have laughed and called me silly and a baby. I wanted to be ten and grown-up and able to listen to the sto
ries without getting frightened, just like her. So I said nothing, keeping the horrors to myself.

  Even though we were together all the time, Zazula and I never tired of playing together. Our games were limited by the continual need to be quiet, but we spent many happy hours cutting scraps of paper into shapes with a pair of blunt scissors, and drawing – with our stubby pencils – the princes, princesses and monsters from the stories. Zazula was good at drawing, but I just scribbled, frustrated that what I saw clearly in my head wasn’t what my hand was drawing on the paper. I preferred to act out the stories that either Aunt Adela had told us or Zazula and I had invented for ourselves. Our stories were always the same, about two happy sisters living in a beautiful, clean house with their loving parents and, of course, lots of good things to eat.

  I loved my older cousin with all my heart. She was wise and knew everything. I wanted to do all that she did. Zazula didn’t always like this and so sometimes we would squabble.

  One dull autumn afternoon we were sitting in our room. Aunt Adela was seated as close to the window as possible with a sock wrapped around the darning mushroom in her hands. She was trying hard to cobble together a very large hole, which had been mended again and again and was now getting to a stage where there was more darning than sock. The light was fading and she wanted to finish before it became too dark to see. Zazula and I were playing at the table with small pieces of paper and pencils, bored and wanting more than anything to go and run outside.

  ‘Be careful with the paper,’ Zazula said. ‘You know we don’t have much of it. Why don’t you let me do that for you?’

  I didn’t want Zazula to do it for me. I wanted to show her how clever I was and that I could do it on my own. I knelt up on the chair and stuck my tongue out of the corner of my mouth and concentrated really hard. Finally I finished and triumphantly I held up my piece of paper and waved it in my cousin’s face.

  ‘Look, Zazula. I can do real writing just like you.’

  I had written some of the letters I knew from having seen them on the pages of the books that Aunt Adela had read us.

  ‘That’s not writing,’ Zazula said, looking up from the drawing of a house she was making.

  ‘Anyway you’re too little to write.’

  ‘It is writing. It’s real writing just like yours.’ She was being unfair. I thrust the piece of paper in front of Zazula.

  ‘What does it say then, Miss Clever Clogs?’ Zazula asked, concentrating once again on her picture.

  ‘I’m not telling you,’ I shouted, angry that Zazula wasn’t as pleased as I was.

  ‘You’re just a baby. All you do is scribble. You’re only six.’

  ‘I’m not a baby.’ I looked across the room to Aunt Adela for support. ‘Aunty, tell her I’m not a baby.’

  ‘Be quiet, girls. Stop quarrelling,’ Aunt Adela said with a sigh.

  ‘Mummy, she is only a baby. Tell her. She can’t write like me because I’m ten and have been to school.’

  ‘Zazula, please don’t be difficult, don’t quarrel with your little cousin. I can’t cope when you two are being so naughty.’ Aunt Adela’s voice broke and then she was crying – tears streaming down her face.

  Zazula looked shocked.

  ‘Mummy, please don’t cry,’ she said. Then she turned to me and said, ‘I’m sorry. Renata, you’re not a baby. I was only joking.’

  So I had won. I beamed at her. I couldn’t contain my pleasure.

  ‘I’m growing up ever so fast and I’ll be ten soon too. I’ll get to ten and then I’ll get older than you. You just wait and see.’

  Zazula looked at me crossly but, seeing her mother’s unhappy tear-stained face, she bit her lip and climbed down from her chair and went to give her mother a hug. After a while, she looked into her mother’s face and said, ‘Mummy, shall we go out for a walk? It’s so boring being in this room all the time.’

  ‘You know we can’t, my darling. I only wish we could,’ Aunt Adela said sadly, stroking Zazula’s hair.

  I thought that this was a great idea and decided that I would help change my aunt’s mind.

  ‘We could be back very soon,’ I tried. ‘Just a little walk. Please let us go.’

  ‘How many more times do I have to explain to you both?’ Aunt Adela said wearily. ‘We can’t go out because it is too dangerous. We have to stay hidden and be grateful that we are alive.’

  ‘When will we be able to go out?’ Zazula insisted. ‘Tell us, when?’

  It was at that moment the door burst open and a white-faced Mrs Posadzka stood in the doorway looking as if she hadn’t had time to comb her hair. Aunt Adela leapt to her feet and the darning fell to the floor.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she cried.

  ‘Soldiers!’ gasped Mrs Posadzka with her hand on her chest. ‘They are doing a house-to-house search up the street and they have dogs with them. They’ll be here any minute.’

  ‘We must get out of here. We have to hide. We must leave your house. We can’t put you in danger.’ Aunt Adela looked around the room, desperate.

  Just then German voices, barks and loud banging were heard from downstairs.

  ‘It’s too late, they’re here. We’re lost.’ Mrs Posadzka was shaking, unable to move.

  Adela looked frantically round the room again, grabbed Zazula by the arm and pulled her towards the wardrobe.

  ‘Quick, in here. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound, whatever you hear. Don’t be afraid. Everything’s going to be all right.’

  She unlocked the door, pushed Zazula inside, turned the heavy key and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt. Then she looked round for a hiding place for me, still sitting at the table, terrified and unable to move.

  ‘I’ll go with Zazula. I can play hide and seek with Zazula,’ I said.

  Aunt Adela grabbed me by the arm, pulled me off the chair, lifted the heavy cloth and pushed me under the table.

  ‘You’re to stay there till I fetch you. Don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t cry or we are all lost.’ She let the heavy cover fall back in its place and I was alone sitting on the dusty wooden floor in the pitch black.

  It wasn’t the first time that I had been bundled into a hiding place without any explanation. I knew that I wasn’t alone in the room; my aunt and cousin were somewhere there too. I also knew that I couldn’t cry out or seek the comfort of my aunt’s arms. I must keep still and quiet because the safety of the three of us, and that of Mrs Posadzka, depended on me. I cowered under the table, hugging myself for comfort, feeling the hammering of my heart in my chest and blood thundering through my ears. I was convinced someone would hear it. I buried my face in my lap and folded my arms over my head trying to block out the world around me.

  From underneath the table I could hear everything but see nothing. Mrs Posadzka and Aunt Adela were frantically whispering in hurried voices but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then I heard the sound of heavy boots coming up the uncarpeted stairs. Deep, muffled voices. A sharp command. The door bursting open. The scrabbling claws on the bare floorboards and the eager whining of a dog just the other side of the tablecloth. Thick male voices and that word: Gestapo.

  Then a woman crying – my aunt. A slap. A scream. A brief silence. The silence was quickly broken by a harsh staccato command and then the excited single bark of a dog, too close. I heard every sound and felt the tablecloth move as the dog brushed past. I heard its panting and suddenly the volley of barks and scraping of wood as the dog leapt about. Then I heard Aunt Adela shriek as the sound of splintering wood was followed by the haunting screams of Zazula calling frantically for her mother.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy!’

  Aunt Adela howled, ‘Leave her alone. Please leave her alone. She’s done nothing wrong.’

  I heard her cry over and over again. My heart was about to explode; I couldn’t take much more. I wanted to run to Aunt Adela and hide myself in her warm bosom and let her arms hold me tight and tell me everything was going to be all right as she always did.
But I couldn’t. My arms and legs were frozen to the floor; I hugged myself closer to stop myself shaking.

  Then the screaming began to fade. I could hear men’s angry voices accompanied by the sounds of something heavy being dragged downstairs. Then silence. The sound of emptiness more terrifying than all the screams and shouts. But I remained rooted to my spot under the table, shaking, paralysed with terror and foreboding.

  I sat there in that pitch-black silence.

  Then from below there came a single bang. Seconds later another. Then total silence. Silence for hours and hours.

  Eventually, many hours later, I heard other footsteps hurrying up the stairs, this time softer and gentler, and then someone came into the room and tiptoed across the wooden floor.

  ‘Renata,’ a voice called into the deathly stillness. ‘Renata, my darling, are you here?’

  It was Marynia. I emerged from my hiding place under the table into the blinding light of the late afternoon and into the arms of Marynia, breathing in her familiar smell and drowning in the folds of her clothes. In the relief of having survived and the joy at being with Marynia, I didn’t give my cousin and aunt another thought, at least not then. Having saved me twice, Marynia was my fairy godmother and I clung to her; I was never going to let her go.

  Chapter Six

  November 1943

  Marynia took me home. I couldn’t remember ever having visited her house before the war and had only stayed there for a short time after she rescued me from the ghetto, but it didn’t matter. It felt like home. Yet even here I still had to hide every time there was a knock at the door. Marynia would call out, ‘I’m coming, one moment,’ whilst waving quickly for me to go into the bedroom, with a finger over her lips so I knew to keep quiet. Then she would shuffle over to the door, wiping her hands on her apron, and start talking in a bright, cheerful voice. Quite often these visitors were Nazi soldiers coming to put in an order.

  ‘Why hello, Marynia,’ they would greet her. ‘Your husband is out, I see. Working hard. That’s good. Now we have a little list here of things we would like your husband to get, if you would be so kind . . .’