Mr. Milgrom nodded. “Very impressive. It’s still a tie.”
Janina stomped. She squealed. Mr. Milgrom raised his finger. She stopped squealing. She started again when he put his finger down. He raised it again. She stopped.
“But, Tata, you said I’m wonderful. Remember you said that?”
“I remember,” he said. “And I meant it.”
Janina stuck out her tongue at me. “ I’m wonderful.”
“And so is he,” said Mr. Milgrom.
“But I’m more wonderful, right, Tata?”
“You are both equally wonderful,” said Mr. Milgrom. “You are each wonderful in your own way.”
“What way am I wonderful, Tata?”
He sat down with a sigh in the only chair. He was always tired. He was no longer smiling, and yet it felt somehow as if he was. “You”—he pressed the tip of her nose with his finger—“are girl wonderful. And he is boy wonderful.”
Janina looked at me. She was the only person I knew who had to look up at me. She studied me. She turned back to her father. “But girl wonderful is better than boy wonderful, yes, Tata?”
Mr. Milgrom slumped in the chair. He wagged his head. He turned Janina around by her shoulders and gave her a gentle pat on the backside. “Go play pick-up-sticks with Misha,” he said.
We had just sat down cross-legged on the floor, the pick-up-sticks between us, when we heard voices in the courtyard. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I went to the window and leaned out. Now I could hear:
“Himmler’s coming!”
23
Janina was screaming as I raced down the stairs to the courtyard and the street. She wanted to kick Himmler, and it took both her father and Uncle Shepsel to hold her back.
I careened from person to person. “Where is Himmler? . . . Where is Himmler?” I followed pointing fingers down one street and another until I saw the cars coming, a parade of them. Huge cars, magnificent cars, with the tops down. The cars had uniforms of their own. They were gray and silver and unsmiling and proud, like the men sitting in them. Peddlers’ carts veered out of the way. I was surprised that people were not pouring out of the buildings, mobbing the sidewalks. A few people stood at the curb, hats in hand, looking down. Others kept walking along, eyes straight ahead. Such was a man whose sleeve I tugged. “Which one is Himmler?” The man kept moving as if I wasn’t there. Only the Flops looked at the parade. They stood at attention with one arm outthrust in the Jackboot salute, as if reaching for something no one else could see. A corner of newspaper over a nearby corpse waved in the breeze.
I began to panic. I grabbed at people. “Which one is Himmler?” No one would answer. I trotted along with the cars. I stared at the magnificent men. They stared straight ahead. On their Jackboot hats the great silver eagles spread their wings and seemed to glare at the people, daring them to do something wrong. Their wings were like angels’ wings, except the eagles’ wings were fully unfurled, flying.
I began calling to the men in the cars. “Are you Herr Himmler?”
Some of the men looked down at me. No one answered. I ran from car to car. “Are you Herr Himmler?” I saw a man, the most magnificent Jackboot I had ever seen, sitting in the backseat of the first car. It must be him! His ramrod attention was better than my own in the courtyard, and he was only sitting. Blond hair curled from beneath his eagle-winged hat. His head looked as if it had been chiseled from stone. His jawbone was all the weapon he would ever need. “Herr Himmler!” I shouted. “Herr Himmler!” He did not move.
But someone else did.
The Jackboot in the passenger side of the front seat turned his head slightly, enough so that one of his eyes stared at me for a moment. The eye seemed too large, as it was magnified behind the thick, round lens of his eyeglasses. The only thing magnificent about this man was his uniform. I saw half a little black mustache—it seemed to be dripping out of his nostril—a scrawny neck, a head that seemed more dumpling than stone. Can this be Himmler? The Number Two Jackboot? He couldn’t be. He looked like Uncle Shepsel!
I knew how to prove it one way or the other. His boots. Surely on the feet of Himmler, Master of All the Jews, would be the most magnificent boots of all. Maybe they went all the way up his legs. Maybe they had silver eagles.
The parade was picking up speed. I ran to keep up. “Herr Sir! Let me see your boots! Herr Sir!”
And suddenly I was on the ground. I had run smack into someone. As I got to my feet, a club was swinging back and forth before my eyes. I heard a loud smacking kiss. There was an overpowering smell of mint. Beyond the swinging club the parade rolled through an open gate in the wall and was gone.
I knew who was on the other end of the club. I looked up. It was Buffo. Buffo was the worst Flop of all. He was the only one I was really afraid of. We all were.
No one knew how to account for an existence like Buffo’s. It did not seem that he could possibly be a Jew, but then he wasn’t a Jackboot either. We boys decided to believe he was a Warsaw sausage maker—he looked like a pile of fat sausages—who hated Jews so much that he pretended to be one so that he could live in the ghetto. Then he could become a Flop and torment Jews to his heart’s content.
Like all Flops, Buffo was not allowed to carry a gun, but that made no difference to him. He would not have shot anyone if he could. He carried only his club. It was said that he loved the sound of his club cracking open a skull like a pumpkin, but this was not true. He hardly ever used his club. His real weapons were his hands.
More than anything, he loved killing Jews with his hands. And not just any Jews. Jewish children. If you were an adult Jew, he would walk right past you, but he went out of his way for children. Sometimes he left the streets and waddled through the alleyways and rubble, smacking his club on his thigh, hunting. When he spotted someone to go after, he kissed the club. Fortunately, he was fat and slow. If he managed to catch you or trick you, he used the club to stun you. Then he jammed it into his belt and waggled his fingers for the treat to come.
He always smelled of mint. Not from chewing gum or candy. From mint leaves. He chewed them like some men chewed tobacco. There were always tiny flecks of mint on his lips. If you could see them, and if you could smell the mint, you knew you were too close. In fact, that was how we came to say a child was killed by Buffo: “He smelled the mint.”
His favorite way to kill you was to pull you face-first into his bottomless belly and smother you. When this happened, the odor of mint hovered about the body until the wagon came to cart it away.
I think Buffo hated me most of all. I was the only one who ever got close enough to smell the mint and lived to tell of it. Though he terrified me, I pestered him. I couldn’t help myself. I called him Fatman. I had no sense. If I had had sense, I would have known what all the other children knew: The best defense against Buffo was invisibility. Never let him see you.
Me? If I saw him waddling down the street, I would sneak up behind him and yell, “Fatman!” He would be fuming as he turned around, for he recognized my voice—his personal gnat—and the club would already be swinging and I would be ducking out of the way. “Your ears are hairy!” I would shout, and thumb my nose at him and scoot away into the crowd.
And now here he was, looming above me, smiling and kissing his club, and that was giving me all the time I needed to get away—but I couldn’t. He had my foot pinned to the ground with his boot (a scuffed, mud-caked, un-Jacklike boot). I screamed in pain. He laughed. The club clattered to the street—he wasn’t going to use it. He was going to drown me in his belly. His meaty hands gripped my shoulders. I was dizzy with mint. My nose sank into his belly. And suddenly I was loose. I had yanked myself out of the shoe he had pinned to the ground, and now I was running, bouncing off people.
When it was safe to stop, I sat on a curb. I had foiled Buffo again. I was alive. I took the other shoe off and threw it away. It was spring. When the cold came back, I would steal another pair.
That night on th
e rug, I laughed as I told the other boys about my close call with Buffo.
Uri did not laugh. He said, “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I said.
“Don’t bait Buffo.”
“Why?” I said.
He smacked me, hard, three times. “Don’t,” he repeated. The rest of the boys were silent.
I turned away and whimpered myself to sleep. I never mentioned the man who could not have been Himmler.
24
“Find the cow,” Doctor Korczak had said.
It was the only time Doctor Korczak was ever stern with me. Whenever I brought him food for the orphans from the other side of the wall, he received it happily and patted me on the head and said, “My little smuggler.” And as I turned to go, he never failed to say, “Be careful.” Then one day he added, “Find the cow.” From then on, every time I saw him: “Find the cow.”
The cow had become something to believe in or not to believe in. Like angels. Mothers. Oranges. How could something as large as a cow live in the ghetto and not be seen? How could it survive? What would it eat? Rubble dust?
And yet so great was the cry for milk for children that the cow seemed to materialize from the very hunger of the people, until one could almost see the animal loping down the street. Of course, no one really did see it, and the more we did not see it, the more we believed in it. Almost every day someone claimed to have heard a mysterious moo.
Of course, the day soon came when Janina said she heard it.
“No, you didn’t,” I said, just to be contrary. Janina was always making things up.
“I did!” she said. We were playing pick-up-sticks. She swept the sticks away.
“You’re being a baby,” I said.
“You’re being a poop,” she said.
Uncle Shepsel looked up from the book he was reading and growled at Janina. “There’s no cow.”
Reading the new book he had found was all Uncle Shepsel did these days. When he reached the end of the book, he went back to the first page and started again. He muttered under his breath as he read. It was a book about the Lutherans. He was teaching himself to be one. Then he would no longer be a Jew, and they would let him out of the ghetto.
Mr. Milgrom told him, “You cannot stop being a Jew.”
Uncle Shepsel said, “I’ve already stopped. I’m a Lutheran.”
When Uncle Shepsel growled at Janina that there was no cow, I switched to her side. “Yes, there is,” I said. “I heard it too.” Until then, I had been uncertain. From that moment on, I believed in the cow. (I had done this before: it seemed I believed whatever I heard myself say.) A few days later, when Doctor Korczak first said, “Find the cow,” my belief was confirmed.
I could not find the cow. I looked all over. Courtyards, backyards, cellars, rubble. No cow. No moo.
“I can’t find the cow,” I complained to the boys one day.
“That’s because there is no cow, stupid,” said Enos.
Big Henryk bellowed, “No cow!”
Kuba climbed up Big Henryk and sat on one of his shoulders. “I’ll bet Big Henryk is lying,” he said. Kuba leaned down so that his face was upside down in front of Big Henryk’s. “Big Henryk, do you believe there’s a cow?”
Big Henryk swayed under the weight of Kuba. “Yes!” he said.
We all laughed because we knew his answer proved nothing. Big Henryk was not only the biggest boy but also the most agreeable. He said yes to everything.
This was our signal to play the Big Henryk game.
“Big Henryk, do you believe you’re the biggest, dumbest person in the whole wide world?”
“Yes!”
“Big Henryk, do you believe you’re a little itty-bitty baby?”
“Yes!”
“Big Henryk, are we going to sleep in a castle tonight in big soft beds and eat all the chocolates we want and the Jackboots will be our servants?”
“Yes!”
“Ask him if he believes in Buffo,” said Enos. “Or Himmler.”
“Big Henryk, do you believe in Himmler?”
I butted in. “I don’t,” I said. “There is no Himmler.” And I told them at last about the parade of magnificent cars and how I called and called Himmler’s name and the only one who turned was the chicken-looking man in the front seat, turning one eye to stare at me behind the eyeglass.
“That was Himmler,” said Uri.
“He can’t be,” I said. “He looks like my uncle Shepsel.”
“It’s him,” said Uri.
So Himmler—Number Two Boss Jackboot, Master of All Jews Not to Mention Gypsies—was a one-eyed chicken. At that moment, I began losing respect for Jackboots. I no longer wanted to be one.
25
SUMMER
There were no longer bows in Janina’s hair or socks on her feet. The straps on her shoes were broken and flapped when she walked. The shoes had become muddy scraps. For a while I tried to shine them with spit, but the mud was too much. The best reflection I had ever seen of myself disappeared with the shine of her shoes.
Janina cried a lot. And kicked. And screamed. Sometimes she screamed at her mother. “Mama, Mama, make me a pickled egg! . . . Make me! . . . Make me!” She loved pickled eggs more than anything, she said. But her mother only lay with her back to the room on the mattress in the corner.
As much as Janina cried, she laughed too. But she didn’t just laugh—she howled. Especially when I told her that Himmler looked like Uncle Shepsel. We were sitting on the floor picking each other’s lice at the time, and Uncle Shepsel had just said, “You look like monkeys,” and I had whispered to Janina, “Himmler looks like Uncle Shepsel,” and Janina burst out laughing so hard she fell backward and knocked her head on the floor and lice flew from her hair, and the head knock really hurt and Janina didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she did both.
One day Janina ran to me in the courtyard. “I found the cow!” she screamed, and grabbed my hand and we ran. She led me to a bombed-out ice cream shop. Two walls were still standing. On one of them hung a tilting picture—of a cow.
She often played such tricks on me. Once, she tricked me into lending her my yellow stone necklace. She wore it for days. When I asked for it back, she threw it over the wall. I couldn’t believe it.
I was so mad I threw the bag of gifts she had left on the steps for me over the wall.
She threw my cap over the wall.
She had brought one toy animal with her from the other side—a blue-and-gold stuffed pig. She hid it. I found it and threw it over the wall.
She said no more. She said even though I threw away her things, she was going to give me something new. I believed her. I felt bad. She said the new gift was already under my coat-bed. I looked. It was a rat bone.
She liked to goad me into chasing her. Whether I did or not, she always ran. If I didn’t chase her, she would stop and thumb her nose at me and call me “Feeshy Meeshy!” I didn’t have to be goaded the time she leaned out of the window above me and dropped a raw turnip on my head. I picked the turnip out of the dirt, put it in my pocket, and took off after her. When I caught her, I shook her and told her never to treat food that way. All she did was laugh, so I rubbed the dirty turnip in her face and shook her harder, and the harder I shook, the louder she laughed.
I became so used to her noise—chattering, whining, pestering, laughing, crying—that my ear went on hearing it even when it stopped. All during one particular day I sensed that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know it was the absence of Janina. I barely heard her all day, barely saw her. That night, as usual, most activity came to a stop. The lightbulb was always dark now. The end of the day’s light was the end of ours. No more knocks on the door for Mr. Milgrom’s pills and potions. Uncle Shepsel put away his book on how to become a Lutheran. Mrs. Milgrom did not have to stop whatever she was doing, for she did nothing to begin with. All day, all night, she lay on the mattress with her back to us. She moved only when she coughed.
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Usually Janina continued to play pick-up-sticks in the dark—by fingertip feel—until her father said, “Janina,” and she would stop and lie down on the overcoat next to me. But on this night she was already on her coat when I lay down. I slept with my new family almost every night now. Mr. Milgrom always said good-night to us, first to Janina, then to me. I always looked forward to that moment, as no one had ever said good-night to me before. On this night, when he said, “Good night, Janina,” there was no answer.
As usual, I waited until I heard everyone sleeping. It pleased me to do this. I liked to pretend that if anyone heard me go out, I would be forbidden. I got up and crept from the room. I did this nearly every night. I tiptoed down the stairs and into the moonlit courtyard and into the street. My instinct was to be bold and uncatchable, but I enjoyed being sneaky too.
The streets looked deserted, but I knew they were not as deserted as they appeared. I knew that somewhere along the wall Big Henryk stood as tall as he could with Kuba on his shoulders, and Kuba was draping two thick coats across the barbed wire and hauling himself over and down to the other side, then tossing over the wall the rope that Big Henryk would winch him back with.
I knew that beneath my feet, in the sewers where daylight never fell on the rats and the rivers of poop, Enos and Ferdi and one-armed Olek were creeping toward the wall, puffing on Ferdi’s cigars to give themselves points of light and to smoke over the stink.
I knew they all wished they could come with me. They wished they could fit through the two-brick space.
As for Uri, who knew? He was somewhere, doing something.
I darted from shadow to shadow until I was across the street from the wall. I stood in the shadow of a doorway. The night glowed beyond the barbed wire. Sounds floated over: a clink, a tinkle, a voice, a wisp of music. I leaned out to watch for Flops on patrol. Someone was standing in the moonlight an arm’s length away. I couldn’t believe it.
“Janina!”