his garlic breath. ‘What do you expect me to do?’ he shouted. ‘Do you imagine your Eldest is a magician? That he can pass his hands over a top hat and produce supplies? Our community is spared from catastrophe only because I’ve made us indispensable to the war effort. How can you ask me to divert doctors and nurses from that? Or medicine? It would be insane, like signing a death warrant.’
“‘What about the work crews?’ I pleaded. ‘Do you suppose we need modernized streets more than clean water, or trolley lines transporting workers for a few lousy blocks, when the men are needed to pick up the dead?’
“This produced a tirade. ‘Do you presume to question the judgment of the Eldest of the Jews?’ he screamed. ‘You who know nothing of the inner working of Berlin? I’m sick and tired of you sniveling Polish Jews. Think you’re smart and know nothing.’
“He raised his fist and I was sure he would hit me. God pity me, I became just the sniveling Jew he had described. ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I meant no offense. I only wanted to help you save the Jews.’
“Chaim lowered his fist and now looked at me with what I can only call disgust. Evidently, I was too much a toad for him to scrape his knuckles on. I knew I had failed, that there was no way to change this monster’s heart. I turned to go—then froze. On the corner of Chaim’s desk lay a hand-lettered map of the Baluty. I missed it when I came in because I was so concentrated on the fruit. On it, the transport to the Umschlagplatz, the valves for shutting off the water supply, and the ghetto power plant were clearly marked. Around the perimeter, spirals indicated existing barbed wire around the walls, and places where a second ring would be installed. The main streets had been renamed: Getto Nord Strasse Eins, Getto Nord Strasse Zwei. It was obvious what all this meant. The Germans were going to seal us in, let us all die, and then use the Baluty as their own transportation center. Chaim hadn’t improved the roads or put in the trolley lines to help us. He was doing it for the Germans! He was perfectly willing to let his fellow Jews die if it meant saving his own skin.”
All Papa’s energy seemed to seep away. He laid his head back down on the table and remained motionless, though his shoulders seemed to relax beneath Mama’s consoling touch. I watched the scene like an outsider; theirs was an intimacy I could only dream about, and it seemed that for me, that was all it would ever be. A dream.
Then, with a shake of his body like a bear coming out of hibernation, my father roused himself and rushed to the little room he used as an office. From there he returned, carrying a box full of medical instruments—scalpels with wooden handles, stethoscopes, devices I had never seen and did not know the purpose of. He laid them out on the table with great pride, a magician about to perform his greatest trick, and with a flourish unscrewed the tops and turned them upside down over the table.
Mama gasped. Jozef was shocked. And I simply stared at the cascade of diamonds that fell to the table—there must have been ten in all—and glittered at us like friendly eyes.
“There is an administrator at the hospital,” Papa said solemnly. “A non-Jew, sent by the government to make sure we doctors behave. He’s a good man, horrified by our condition, and over the months I have come to trust him.” He sighed. “I told him about the diamonds. He says if I give them to him, he will be able to get us on a train, get us documents. They’ll allow us to travel, even though”—he spat the words in imitation of his German masters—“we’re Jews. And there are more diamonds, hidden in the basement of our old house, ones he doesn’t know about. Once the war is over, we’ll reclaim them and have enough to start a new life.”
Mama covered her mouth to stifle a cry. “But he can just take these diamonds and never come back.”
“True.”
“Then don’t do it!” Jozef said.
My father waved his hand to indicate our room, our street, our ghetto, our life. “What choice do we have?”
CHAPTER 6
“But I’ll tell them, Nate,” I assured him. “As soon as I get to Paris. I’ll make them understand.”
“They’ll never believe you. Never.” Angrily he shifted the lens of the battered Rolleiflex until my inverted profile slid into focus, silhouetted by the Baluty skyscape. Then he snapped the photo and motioned me to move away from the window. We were in my family’s flat. It was the day before we were to leave.
“Without the photographs, there is no proof,” he said. “You must take them with you.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “It’s not possible.”
“I’ll put the negatives in a sealed envelope with a Baluty stamp on it. Nobody will ask you to open it. I’ll make it look like a love letter. I’ll write ‘I love you’ on the back.” He looked wistful.
“What if I’m caught?”
“You won’t be. And if you are, what can they say? A few negatives of factory workers, sanitation workers? Chaim’s Summer Palace? That’s all.” He took my hand and stared at me with the intensity of a lover. “It’s worth the risk. It would open the eyes of the world.”
“My risk. What if they shoot me?”
“For what? Carrying a few snapshots of your family and showing the places where they work?”
“For sedition. Espionage. Crimes against the state. Take your pick.” I turned back to the window to watch the glowing smokestacks, wishing that it were already tomorrow morning and we were on the train.
What would the Germans do if they caught me carrying Nate Kolleck’s precious documentation? Treat it as an innocent child’s blunder? I didn’t think so. The first guard to see the scrawny, starving figures, the sanitation carts loaded with corpses, the children with distended bodies gulping offal, would take me straight to the Gestapo. My family, too, would be hauled off the train. And they wouldn’t be shot immediately, like me. They’d be tortured, made to tell where I got the pictures. No, it was too awful. I couldn’t take the chance.
I cringed when his chilled fingers reached out to touch me. “Please, Mia. You must do this. My work is everything and I need your help.”
“It would jeopardize my family.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. “Who else can do it? Who else will tell the world the truth?”
He was right, I knew. “Maybe you can come with us,” I said. “On the same train. You could be my cousin, my half brother.”
“My place is here, taking photographs. I’ll stay in the Baluty until they catch me and kill me. And I’ll find others to take out the pictures. I only thought that you—”
He’s a hero, I thought. And I, a coward. “Oh, Nate…”
He forced his lips on me. They were cracked and dry, like field grass after a killing frost. Instinctively, I moved my head away, and his kisses scratched along my throat and down to my shoulders. His blue fingers clutched at my arms, ran up and down my hips, and reached upward to cup my breasts. I just stood there, motionless, doing nothing to stop him and nothing to lead him on.
It was like being trapped inside a bottle of poison, a skull and crossbones clutching at me. I felt sobs wracking his body; it drained heat from mine. Gooseflesh ran up my spine, and I bit my lower lip hard, trying to will numbness. I felt Nate slipping down against my body, his head against my stomach, but to let him do this would be too much, too much, so I merely stepped back and he embraced thin air before collapsing. I walked stiffly out the door, down the stairs, and into the street, just as the golem do.
We were allowed on the train, but not in any of the compartments. Instead, we found places in a boxcar, surrounded by at least forty other people—had they sold their diamonds, too, for a trip to Warsaw?
For it was toward Warsaw we were heading, sitting in the dark in icy air, wrapped in our coats, clutching those few belongings we could carry with us, hoping that from the vast, anonymous city we could