The Emperor of Lies (45 page)

Chaim, Chaim!

Give us bread, Chaim!

It was not an aggressive shout; on the contrary, it sounded almost friendly. Adam saw the Chairman glance up with a look that momentarily appeared full of expectation.

Then the first stone fell.

Inconceivably enough. And all the workers in the vicinity tensed.

Though it must have been one of their own number who threw the stone, nobody seemed to be expecting it. It was as much of a shock to them as to the Chairman, who now did what he had been planning to do before: stood up to dismount from the carriage.

Then the second stone came flying.

Adam saw it describe a distinct arc through what was left of the sky, before landing somewhere behind the carriage; and suddenly the air in front of him was filled with stones, and not just stones but also chunks of brick; old metal rods; bits of wood wrenched off the moulds, still spattered with cement. The snow was coming at them horizontally now, and suddenly there were shouts and yells everywhere, but most of all it was the Chairman crying out, in a hard, shrill, almost piping voice, like a little animal being unintentionally squeezed to death.

That was when it happened. A powerful blow knocked him to the ground.

He never saw where the blow came from or who delivered it, just curled up round the intense pain and shuffled his arm helplessly through the slush and mud. He felt something wet running out of his trouser leg and had time to think
as long as I don’t bleed to death
, when a kick came out of thin air, thudding into his side. Two strong hands took him under the arms, and for a moment it was impossible to distinguish the mud running through the snow from the eyes staring straight into his; and under them a row of white teeth glistening with spittle in a mouth wide open round a voice that kept on shouting:

Du SHÓYTE – how long did you think you could escape me?

According to various people of high station who witnessed the event, the ‘bad weather’ made the Chairman slip and hit his head on a cement trough, and he had therefore been obliged to seek temporary medical care. Others said Biebow had taken pity on the poorly Eldest of the Jews and had him taken to an ‘Aryan hospital’ in Litzmannstadt to receive attention.

Neither of these statements is true.

It is not true that the Chairman slipped over, nor that he sought or received care outside the ghetto. He lay in the bedroom of the summer residence he shared with his brother in Karola Miarki Street in Marysin with a bloodstained bandage round his head, dreaming that it was spring and the water was rushing and rising as it always did in Russia at this time of year, and all around him in the water stood his children, watching him drown. Then his young rescuer came wading towards him, lifted him into his arms and carried him resolutely to the shore.

Chairman
: Who are you?

Samstag
:
Ich bin Werner Samstag. Leiter von der Sonderabteilung, VI:e Revier
. I have come to tell you that liberation is near. I have also come to tell you that I have just saved your life.

Chairman
: Naturally, I am eternally grateful to you for this trial of strength!

Samstag
:
Ssschooo, mein Herr
, do you know it’s true what they say about the Russians? I saw one yesterday. He was standing in the queue at the distribution point and he turned round and said to me –
Ne bojsja, osvobozjdenieje blizko . . .
 Don’t be afraid, liberation is near! (That’s what he said. Those were his very words.)

Chairman
: If I were to take any notice of these constant rumours I’d never get anything done. What self-indulgence!

Samstag:
No, to dobreze
– now you’re starting to sound like yourself again at last –
Baléydik nisht dem eybershtn er vet dir schlogn tsu der erd!

Chairman
: Who are you?

Samstag
: Who am I? – I’m not you!

And yet: the person in the ghetto most like you!

Chairman
: It sounds like a riddle! Did I invent it . . . ?

Samstag
: At any event, they can’t stand your likeness any more.
Oyf mit den altn
, they say. You drive past in your swanky carriage and
your own people
turn their backs and pretend to be doing something else, just so they don’t have to see you. In actual fact, the whole ghetto is one big conspiracy against you. You’re the only one who can’t see it.

Chairman
: What else are the people saying about me?

Samstag
: The people are saying that you are their only shield against the darkness –

Jest szczęściem w nieszczęściu.

Chairman
: That’s true. I am.

Samstag
: They say you handed over the children, the sick and the old –

They say of the defenceless, you sacrificed them first –

They say of those who thirsted most, you let them die of thirst!

Chairman
: Are you one of them by any chance?
Bist du ein Praeseskind . . . ?

Samstag
: Legitimate or illegitimate?
Freund oder Feind?

Samstag oder Sonntag?

Ich bin der Sonstwastag – ein sonniges – ein glückliches Kind!

Ober hot nisht keyn moyre. S’z gut!

I wasn’t on the list. That’s all.

Chairman:
What list?

Samstag
: The list of all the children – your legitimate children!

Ich bin ein eheliches Kind, ein echtes Ghettokind!

(You can see that, can’t you: I’ve no skin left, I’ve no nose or cheeks – I’m like you! Nobody who saw me would be able to tell for sure –

If I am a friend or a foe.

Gut oder Böse?

Ob man von einer guten Familie stammt oder nicht.

Ob man ein Jude ist – oder nicht!
)

You too, Mr Praeses, must learn to tell Friend from Foe –

You can’t appeal to everyone and anyone at the same time.

That’s why there has to be a LIST. Who will have the privilege of coming with you, and who will be left behind?

Chairman
: And if I die? If somebody murders me on the way?

Samstag
: You can’t die – you’re my father! (I have also personally taken measures to ensure that those behind this obnoxious plot against you are arrested and imprisoned.)

And anyway, dead or not – what difference does it make?

Those who wish you their worst say you were dead from the very first moment you stepped into this ghetto –

Pan Śmierć?
Is that you?

In that case, we’re all Death’s children here in the ghetto.

We’re standing here waiting for you to lead us out.

We cry:
Father! Give us proof of your immortality!

Save our children – and you will also save yourself!

Adam Rzepin thought they would accuse him of attempted murder, or at least of inciting agitation, and if they did not kill him straight away they would take him to the ‘cinema’ of the Central Jail and then extract the truth from him bit by bit, the way Shlomo Hercberg used to. But Shlomo Hercberg’s methods were not in favour with the new prison chief. Werner Samstag was known to go into the Pit himself, and even to fraternise familiarly with his prisoners. But on these visits, he always had a swarm of
politsayen
with him, all so keen to make a good impression on their superior that this time they did not even wait for their commander’s order before pressing the Praeses’s would-be murderer up against the wall, kicking and kneeing him in the stomach and genitals until he was lying on the floor, fighting for breath.

It was these
assistants
, as Samstag called them, who informed Adam that Polish and Jewish doctors were fighting to save the Chairman’s life. That Biebow had even conferred with Bradfisch about sending in the special units of the SS, as they had in August 1940, to nip the rebellion in the bud, and that if they did, young Rzepin would not only have the Chairman’s life on his conscience but also bear ultimate responsibility for whether the remaining eighty thousand Jews in the ghetto would be deported or not.

All this was pure fabrication, but Adam Rzepin naturally did not know that.

Only after the assistants had made these accusations did Werner Samstag enter the cell. All Adam could subsequently remember of the interrogation was the shiny smile the new prison chief directed at him. Just teeth, no mouth. It was like being questioned by Death himself:

Samstag
: Are you big or little, Rzepin?

Adam
: Pardon?

Samstag
: Are you a big or a little Rzepin?

Assistants
: Is your name Adam or Lajb?

Adam
: My name’s Adam . . .

Assistants
: We know what your name is. Are you big or little?

Adam
: . . . Rzepin.

Assistants
: You’ve already told us.

What’s your uncle called?

Adam
: Lajb. My uncle’s called Lajb . . .

Samstag
: When did you last see him?

We want to know where he is, who he’s got on his list.

Assistants
: Give us the names of those Bolsheviks – those murdering German lackeys – give us those and we’ll let you out of here!

Samstag
: We already know all about you –

The price you were prepared to pay last time you came out.

Do you remember that, Adam Rzepin?

Your uncle Lajb came and bought you out that time.

And the price was your own sister.

Assistants
: When did you last see your uncle Lajb?

Samstag
: You’re in this up to your neck, Adam.

We’ve got it all on paper: the letter from the Resettlement Commission; Shlomo Hercberg’s exemption warrant – made out in your name; the document your uncle signed when he came to fetch you –

Assistants
: We know the price you were willing to pay to get out last time. Your own sister.

Samstag
: Tell us where he is, your uncle Lajb. Give us the names of the insurgents and subversives on your uncle Lajb’s list, and I’ll give you back your freedom.

*

He lay with his head on the ground, just by the bars where the long row of cells began, and all around were the sounds of steps and boot heels crunching and scraping on gritty stone. Even at night, Samstag’s men were bringing in new volunteers for the Chairman’s Labour Reserve in the Central Jail.

They were never referred to as anything but
volunteers
– regardless of how long it took them to respond to the summons, or whether the Sonder had had to go and fetch them.

The man on the barrack-bed beside him said there were three thousand in the Reserve now: all of them men fit for work. He said this with obvious satisfaction, even pride; and added that he was looking forward to getting to the munitions factory in Częstochowa, where rumour had it only the
best
workers were sent. Then he leant forward and, as if confiding in Adam, said that admittedly Hitler’s days were numbered, but the Germans would never let the Litzmannstadt ghetto be liberated. The Jews would have to leave the ghetto first. Only then would the Russians or British come and relieve them.

There seemed to be a good deal of optimism among the ‘volunteers’ generally. Adam soon realised this was very largely Samstag’s work. Since Samstag had taken over, all the cell doors of the Central Jail stood open, and prisoners in the so-called ‘outer’ Reserve could come and go as they pleased (some of them only had makeshift beds or barrack-beds along the corridor of the cell block, as if they were on their way somewhere else and had just made camp there temporarily); and early in the mornings when the soup cart came out with its cheerfully clanking vats and billy cans, who was the first to reach it but Samstag himself, like a proper soup lady, shouting in his peculiar, foreign-sounding idiom:

There’s food here for anyone who wants to work!

FOOD FOR ALL! FOOD FOR ALL!

Adam found himself being moved deeper and deeper into the passages as ‘volunteers’ continued to arrive and the cell block got more and more crowded. Down in the passages was where they put people rejected by the Reserve, those who had some deformity or injury they did not like others to see.

On his last stay in the Pit, it had been warmer down here. There had also been that high, whining note he had been instinctively drawn to, though he could never explain why. As if there was a hole or opening somewhere lower down, letting in air through some vent or hatch. Though that was completely impossible, of course. That would have meant the solid rock on which the ghetto was built was hollowed out at the base.

The strange note was still there, but it was broader and more diffuse now: not as keen and piercing. And just as before, there seemed to be some sort of acoustic low pressure that gave you a sucking, dragging feeling in your head, like a whirlpool.

Deeper down in the Pit, Adam saw, too, that the passages did not lead out of the cell block, as he had previously assumed, but carried on down through the ground in a rough spiral: so at a level perhaps five or ten metres below the one he had been in before, he could hear the same sounds above him that he had heard minutes or days before – but more faintly: the rattle of keys being turned in pointless locks; doors being opened or unlatched; the slightly manic laughter of the men in the Reserve who were so relieved at finally having something to eat when nobody else in the ghetto was getting anything that they forgot they were about to be deported.

– Rock upon rock, in distinctly defined layers.

(and between and below all those layers of rock:

these passages winding and going on winding, down and down) –

When did he realise that he had crossed a threshold and was no longer in the realm of the living? Perhaps it was the way the rejects sat. Huddled and turned away, as if they no longer even had faces to show.

But the song remained the same. A long-drawn-out note, which at this depth in the earth sounded more like a rumble that vibrated not only in your forehead and temples but also in your whole jaw cavity and at the base of your skull. And there were still the running, gushing sounds from the latrine trench along the side of the rock passage, with the additional inflow of the water that seeped from the cave roofs and walls and even seemed to rise from the uneven stone surface under him. In some stretches of the tunnel, he had to wade through deep pools of cloudy, stinking waste water.

But he could stand up straight now as he walked, and when he raised his eyes it was as if the darkness in the cave shaft was more porous, or at least easier for the eye to penetrate. A dark landscape spread before him. The roof of the cave passage became a rock sky, and in front of him the latrine trench ran out into an underground sea that the wet conditions had created and widened, with waves moving against the distorted rock walls in a long, oily swell.

The dead surrounded him now on all sides –

Some of them had their travel bags and mattress bundles with them, as if they could not be parted from their possessions even here. But most simply sat alone or in pairs, their arms stretched out from their bodies as if even their own limbs had suddenly become alien objects.

And of course, Lida was among them. She was sitting on a rocky projection, dressed in the pale cotton shift she used to pull on over her head each morning, with her angel’s wings on her back, the ones she had always dreamt of wearing. And beside her sat Werner Samstag, with one foot in the latrine trench and dark glasses covering his eyes, as if to protect himself from the overpowering, now ever-present, light.

Samstag didn’t need to say anything. Perhaps he had never been as easy to understand as he was now.
A father
, he declaimed, putting his arm theatrically round Lida’s thin shoulders,
never abandons his own children.

But not even Werner Samstag could stop Adam touching Lida one last time. He took her hands, near the tips of her fingers, and waded out with them into the brown mess of sewage under the dead white light. Her body floated up behind her as if it suddenly weighed nothing, and her sleeveless dress filled out like a balloon or a shining white sail; just for a little while, before the black sewage water was absorbed into the fabric and her body was weighed down by the strange, underwater currents. But for an almost imperceptible moment, she lay floating there – and the most fleeting of smiles passed across her face. Almost like those times he had pushed her round in the wheelbarrow: a smile born of the bliss of moving freely without constantly falling.

And so he finally lets go – and allows her to glide out into that open sea that is nothing.