have happened upon one good and generous thing.
The seller was a miniature sphinx, of a kind common in Warsaw: though barely five feet tall, and surely in her sixties, she had the coarse, big-boned hands of a locksmith. ‘Two,’ I told her, showing her the smile I’d withheld from the shoeshine boy, but she chose a pair from near the bottom of her pile that were covered with a nicotine- yellow ooze. She held them out to me, asking for four zloty each, as if they were the models of perfection she kept on top.
Frowning, I waved them away. I knew I ought to have simply eased my ten-zloty note and my disappointment back in my pocket and headed off, but I wanted to give her a chance to reconsider – a chance for grace. Though maybe I really just wanted to start a quarrel. ‘Eight zloty for those
‘That’s the price.’
‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’
‘What do you mean?’ she replied, outraged by my implication, raising a cauliflower triumphantly in each gnarled hand.
Taking a giant step towards her, I thrust up my thumb and index finger. ‘How many fingers do you see?’ I demanded.
She leered at me, sensing a deception. ‘Two,’ she replied hesitantly.
‘So you’re not blind, after all – which means you chose the worst ones on purpose! Tell me, what’s it feel like to try to cheat a hungry man?’
Even as I spoke, I was aware that I sounded like a Dostoevsky drunk, but I couldn’t stop myself.
‘You old fool, get the hell out of here before I call my husband! He’ll punch your face in!’
Her contempt backed me into a tight corner, and – stupidly – I chose the easiest way out. ‘Impossible!’ I scoffed at her. ‘Whores don’t have husbands!’
Her cheeks turned red and she leaned her head back, henlike. When she spat at my feet, I charged her, eager to get my hands around her throat and squeeze, but just as I grabbed the collar of her coat I flew forward on to my knees, crying out from the pain.
As I came to myself, I found I was lying on my side, my hands up by my face – a protective position I must have learned as a kid. The burly young man who’d knocked me over was cursing me in Yiddish. Was he her son? I never found out.
‘
My attacker continued cursing me, but now in Polish, as if one language wasn’t enough to express all his disdain. I stood up with difficulty and limped away, holding my wrist, which was very tender. Just past Pawiak Prison I stopped at a produce shop and purchased potato skins for soup and three wormy cabbages. I had a good cry in a bombed-out, ground-floor flat, sitting on the rim of the soil-filled bathtub that some clever soul must have been planning to use for planting vegetables in the spring.
Self-hatred stalked me home, though it comforted me to find Ewa and Helena watching over my niece, who was sleeping with her arm over her eyes. Helena looked at my torn trousers and dashed to me as I stood in the doorway, needing reassurance. I lifted her up and pressed my lips to her ear, her favourite spot for kisses.
‘What happened to you?’ she asked.
‘I tripped on a cauliflower,’ I replied, forcing a smile.
After I put the girl down, Ewa asked her to watch over Stefa, then led me into my room as though on a mission, easing the bedroom door closed behind her.
‘I don’t want Helena to hear our conversation,’ she whispered.
‘Very well,’ I agreed. I tossed my bag of potato skins and my cabbages on the bed.
‘Listen,’ she said, brushing a tense hand back through her hair, ‘my father says that Stefa has typhus. And she’s had it a while – maybe too long.’
Ewa continued speaking, but frantic wings of panic were beating at my ears, blocking out her voice. ‘Give me a moment,’ I told her.
She helped me out of my coat and opened my collar. I sat down on the mattress.
‘Over the next few weeks, Stefa will need nursing,’ she told me. ‘I can take over in the evenings, but you may have to quit the Lending Library. Her clothes were infested with lice, of course. To be safe, I had her sheets taken away to be washed. And Papa will have your apartment sprayed with carbolic acid later today. By all accounts, you should be under an order of quarantine, but he managed to avoid that. Listen, Erik, you may be infested, too.’
Her efficiency disoriented me. Ewa – with her small, determined eyes – now seemed one of those timid and reticent women who turn into Joan of Arc when their loved ones are threatened. A useful person in a war.
‘Are there medications that will help?’ I asked.
‘Some ghetto physicians say that a Swiss serum has produced good improvements in patients, but it costs a thousand zloty a vial.’
‘My God! Can your father get me some?’
‘Yes, though I don’t know how long it will take him.’
‘I’ll go and see him. I’ll sell Hannah’s engagement ring to raise the money.’
‘No, please, don’t do that!’ she said sharply. Then, sensing she’d only heightened my sense of guilt, she added, ‘I only meant there must be something else you can sell.’
‘Not if I need to raise a thousand zloty in a hurry.’
Sitting on the floor in front of the clothes chest I’d shared with Adam, I opened the bottom drawer, clawed my way past his tangle of underwear and socks, and unhooked the ring from its hiding place. Holding it in my hand made me feel faint. My mouth was as dry as dust.
I held up the ring for Ewa to see. ‘It’s a two-carat diamond with a gold band.’
I got to my knees but was too dizzy to go any further. Ewa helped me up and fetched me a glass of water. After a long drink, I sat down on my bed again.
‘I’d appreciate it if you would sell it for me,’ I told her.
‘Me? My God, Erik, I don’t know anything about selling jewellery.’
‘Neither do I, but you’re a pretty young woman, so you’ll get a better price. You can say it’s yours – for sympathy.’
When I held it out to her, she moved her hands behind her back. ‘No, don’t make me,’ she pleaded. ‘I’ll get nervous and ruin things. Please, Erik…’
Tears appeared in her eyes and her shoulders hunched; she had transformed back into her usual self, so I didn’t insist.
When I asked if she knew where Rowy Klaus might be, Ewa glanced at her watch and told me he was giving a piano lesson on Sienna Street, which was in the Little Ghetto, a relatively well-off section of our territory that was separated from the bigger – and poorer – section by Chlodna Street. In fact, Sienna Street was the most elegant address in the ghetto.
I left right away; I needed to question him about Anna and could elicit his advice on selling my ring at the same time. On the way, I got myself deloused at the disinfection bathhouse at 109 Leszno Street.
What unlikely marvels I saw in the shop windows that afternoon while waiting for Rowy! – six big fresh trout lying in a tub of ice; a burlap bag brimming with coffee beans from Ethiopia; and a bottle of Sandeman port from 1922. In the window of M. Rackemann & Sons, Tobacconists was a Star of David made out of twenty-four mustard-coloured packets of Gauloises cigarettes. The design had the unexpected, peculiar beauty of a Dadaist collage.
A blonde young prostitute with caved-in cheeks and frantic eyes soon caught my attention. She stood outside the Rosenberg Soup Kitchen, rubbing her spidery hands together, gazing around nervously, as though waiting for an unreliable friend. Had she been an art student? She dressed like the subject of an Otto Dix painting, with red stockings on her stick-figure legs and a lumpy, fox-headed stole slung around her neck.
When she asked me if I was looking for some affection, I thanked her for her interest but told her she’d have better luck with a younger man.
By the time Rowy emerged, the sun was going down. He was dressed in grey except for a crimson woollen
