The Emperor of Lies (47 page)

Later that same evening, once Józef Feldman has rolled himself up in his sleeping furs out in the office, Adam gets a lamp and reads the names on Lajb’s list.

There are twelve notebooks, covering a dozen factories and workshops in the ghetto, referred to by street name and number. The Central Tailors in Łagiewnicka Street is
The Central
. The tailoring workshops in Jakuba are
18 Jakuba
and
15 Jakuba
, and the hosiery factory in Drewnowska is
75 Drewnowska
. Lajb has entered the information in blunt pencil on the coarse, ruled pages. In the margin he has sometimes noted the contacts who supplied the information. His letters are small and concisely formed: as if he was aiming for maximum clarity in minimum space.

Each
resort
name is followed by a long list of workers’ names in alphabetical order. In some cases the workers’ home addresses are also given, along with notes on family circumstances and political and religious affiliation.
Bolshevism
is the most frequently used designation; the abbreviation
PZ
stands for
Poale Zion
,
O
means
Orthodox
(
Ag I
=
Agudat
Israel
), while the Bundists are marked simply with a
B
, with a bold central stroke.

Adam leafs through the full pages of the notebook; past the saddlery where Lajb must have worked after he finished at the cabinet-makers in Drewnowska; past the nail and tack factory and Izbicki’s shoe factory in Marysin, until he finally reaches the loading and unloading section in Radogoszcz. But what name was Lajb employed under there? And how had he been able to work there for month after month, maybe year after year, without Adam or anybody else recognising him?

On the Radogoszcz pages of the notebook there are a good fifty names, and Adam knows most of them well:

Marek Szajnwald – aged 21–25 Marysińska; called ‘M with the club foot’; also called ‘The Tartar’ (Adam had never heard him called anything but Marek or Marku)

Gabriel Gelibter – aged 34 – called ‘The Doctor’ (because he once helped bandage up a man who caught his hand in a screw clamp), former member of PZ

Pinkas Kleiman – aged 27 – known Bolshevist; previously at the Clearing Committee; got to know Sefardek there

And then Jankiel, of course:

Jankiel Moskowicz – aged 17 – former Gordonia activist, now Communist, 19 Marysińska. Lives with father and mother.

Known stooge of Niutek R. No brothers or sisters. (Father:
Adam M, foreman at
56 Brzezińska –
low-voltage factory
)

Adam stood up on the loading platform watching as the vehicles and guards of the Gettoverwaltung processed past the goods sheds and came to a halt in front of the part of the railway-yard building where the stationmaster and the supervisors had their offices. It was the second day of the strike, and Adam’s first thought was we’ve had it now, they’re coming to deport us. But unlike on previous occasions, when Biebow had ‘shown round’ SS personnel and delegations of visiting businessmen, this time there was only one staff car in the procession; the rest were police outriders on motorbikes, or members of Biebow’s personal protection squad. What was more, it was obvious this visit had not been announced in advance. It took half an hour from the arrival of the motorcade for Dietrich Sonnenfarb to come rushing out to them, frantically gesturing and shouting to everyone to assemble in the railway yard, where Biebow was going to give a speech to the ghetto workers.

But Herr Amtsleiter did not have the patience to wait for the stationmaster to find him to a suitable place. Outside Sonnenfarb’s show house there was a trailer on wheels. It was parked rather on a tilt, but Biebow managed to climb up onto it, and stand upright with a helping hand from two of his bodyguards.

Workers of the ghetto!

I have come out here to speak to you directly, to make sure you fully understand the gravity of the present situation.

Many of you are seeing me for the first time – so I ask you to take an extra good look at me, because I shall not say again what I am going to say now.

The situation in Litzmannstadt has changed. The enemies of the Reich are already dropping bombs on the outskirts of the city. If any of these bombs had fallen on the ghetto, none of us would have been standing here today. I can assure you that we will do our utmost to guarantee your safety, and will continue to secure your source of livelihood.

This also applies to you railway-yard workers.

But you must take responsibility for your own safety as well.

I have today ordered two extra brigades of workers to dig trenches. A line will be drawn as rapidly as possible from Ewaldstrasse to Bernhardstrasse; another will be dug at Bertholdstrasse, from Kino Marysin outwards.

You will receive immediate instructions on where the digging battalions are to assemble. For those who may perhaps be considering not presenting themselves, I would like to remind you that the Häftlingskommando already instituted in the Central Jail is still accepting workers. I have been informed only today that labour is needed at the Siemens works, at AG Union and the Schuckert works, wherever ammunition is being made, workers are required, as well as in Tschenstochau, where I understand a good many of your number have already been taken.

It has also been brought to my notice that many of you have complained about the food, and even refused to eat it because you have decided all of a sudden that the soup you are served is of inferior quality. I understand that you want to eat and live, and that you will do. But it is crucially important that foodstuffs be provided primarily to those who need them. What makes you think people are any better off elsewhere? Every day, German cities are being bombed. Even in the centre of Litzmannstadt, people are starving. Even native Germans are starving. It is our duty and obligation to provide for people of our own stock first and foremost.

But we will naturally take care of our Jews, too. In all my years as Amtsleiter, not a day has passed without my doing everything in my power to ensure stable conditions for my Jewish workers. Although it has periodically been politically disadvantageous I have, by winning large and important orders for the ghetto, secured employment for Jews I would otherwise have been obliged to deport. Not one hair on your heads has been harmed. You yourselves can testify to that.

Let me therefore remind you that it is vital that every order be met to the letter, exactly as directed, and that all transports of materials leaving Radegast be despatched promptly and swiftly; and that every order issued by the officers in command be obeyed instantly. Those who do as they are told will be treated with the greatest goodwill.

I AM NOT STANDING HERE TO DELIVER A MESSAGE THAT WILL FALL ON DEAF EARS!

If you persist in your intractable behaviour, which is detrimental to all, if you carry on dragging your feet and refusing to carry out the tasks set you, I can no longer guarantee anyone’s safety. So do your duty – pack your things and present yourselves at the stipulated place.

Without waiting for any reaction – as if the aim of the precipitate visit had simply been to utter these words, and nothing more – Biebow was quickly helped down from the trailer and accompanied back to the car by his attendants. On the loading platform and round the hangar, the workers who had been rounded up to listen stood waiting for something
else
to happen – for them to be assigned to the requisite digging gangs; for the door to the materials store to be unlocked, so picks and spades could be passed out.

But nothing of that kind happened.

Sonnenfarb stood there at a loss for a while in the middle of the crowd. Was that an order Biebow had just given him, or not? Then returned, apparently impotent, to his show house. From its wide-open window, the radio blared. At first it sounded something like marching music.

Those working in the vicinity of the goods yard had heard Sonnenfarb listening to the radio before, but then the sound had filtered out through closed windows and the volume had always been conspiratorially turned down as soon as the door was opened. But now the volume was being turned up and up. An excited male voice hurled its metallic-sounding exhortations straight out into the dead light:

A war of such vast historic importance as that into which we now find ourselves drawn naturally brings with it unprecedented sacrifices and burdens. There are some who are not able to see these sacrifices in their wider historical context. The more people who fail to do so, the likelier it is that future fighting generations will misunderstand the sacrifices we were forced to make, or even begin to view them as negligible.

But viewed from the perspective of time and eternity, our conception and evaluation of particular historic events changes.

History provides us with numerous examples.

It is unintelligible to us today, for example, why the contemporaries of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar did not appreciate the true significance of these men. For us, however, none of their greatness is hidden.

I know people who listen,
Adam heard Marek Szajnwald muttering,
but hardly to that loudmouth . . . !

Adam turned round. Henze and Schalz had both made their way over to Sonnenfarb’s house; but as the door was closed and their superior did not deign to show himself, they had no idea what to do. It was an indisputable breach of regulations for the radio to be on at all. The stationmaster had also decreed that those Jews involved in the unloading work were not in any circumstances to be anywhere near radio receivers or other communication equipment. But could you penalise your own commanding officer? And then it wasn’t just anybody speaking, it was Goebbels, and on Hitler’s birthday as well! Attempting to get the set switched off would be tantamount to trying to silence the Führer himself.

At that moment, the door of the house was flung open. Sonnenfarb appeared in the doorway, and announced that Herr Biebow had telephoned from the Sixth Police District to inform him that all workers were to be given an extra helping of soup
in honour of the great day
.

The soup cart seemed to come trundling up out of thin air. All at once, there were things to do. Schalz and Henze dashed off to try to get the workers into an orderly line. But the soup queue was a straggling affair, stretching many listless metres. People seemed reluctant to come up at all.

Sonnenfarb had retired inside again, and from the open window came more of Goebbels’s bombastic diatribe, followed by thunderous applause. No one in command at the station seemed to feel the need to put a stop to this highly irregular broadcasting.

HEIL HITLER!
rang out triumphally from inside the house, clearly in response to the corresponding salute from the radio. Then once again, a soup can was thrown to the ground – a gaggle dispersed – workers strode deliberately away from the soup cart, which was left standing on its own in the middle of the loading bay, shiny and almost unreal.

Sonnenfarb appeared at the door once more.

Provocation? Again?

– and suddenly there were armed German guards all round them. Where had they come from? The deceptive lethargy that had descended on the goods yard transformed totally and was all running boots, jangling shoulder straps, hoarse German voices shouting
Halt!

Someone from the knot of workers turned and shouted:

It was HIM, it was HIM . . . !

Adam saw Jankiel turn towards Schalz, who had already raised his rifle. Jankiel held up his soup can in one hand, as if to show that it was brimming with Hitler’s delicious birthday soup. Or was it just another scornful gesture?

Adam turned round, and at the same instant, Schalz pulled the trigger and fired. The echo of the shot rang out in a silence that was one great cavity.

They all stood round the cavity, stunned. Jankiel lay sprawled on the ground in front of them. The blood was pumping from a wound in his neck and spreading in a big pool around him, as his eyes stared blankly and uncomprehendingly over to the place where his soup can was lying – impossible to tell if he had thrown the can as far from him as he could or if now, even in death, he was doing all he could to reach out for it.

But the soup can was empty. Not a drop of soup had landed in it.

*

Adam walked home along empty roads. The sun was burning out of nothing. In the splinters of light and shade from the greenhouse, he saw the same cars that had brought Biebow to Radogoszcz standing waiting outside the nursery, but none of them contained Biebow. The only person who had stepped out of the motorcade was Werner Samstag. It was the first time Adam had seen him wearing the new uniform that the Sonder had commissioned: grey-green jacket with the red-and-white insignia of the local police on the lapels and shoulder straps, a cap of the same colours, and tall, black boots.

Samstag was smiling as usual, but when Adam got up to him only a grimace remained: a greyish-white row of teeth stuck in a face that looked as if it was coming unhinged.

Where’s the list?
was all Samstag said.

Adam couldn’t keep his body still. The constant, nagging hunger, the exhaustion and the terror sent cramps running in long spasms from his legs right up to his chest and shoulders. He attempted to shake his head, but only set his teeth chattering, which enraged ‘the new’ Samstag.

Adam found himself pressed hard against the wall:

Where?
shouted Samstag, the spittle spraying from his lips.

We know you went to see Lajb, where’s the list . . . ?

And before he could even reply:

You’re lying! Why are you lying?

Adam’s first impulse was just to give way at the knees. Jankiel was dead anyway. What did it matter if his, or for that matter any other workers’, names were on somebody’s list? Why not just give Samstag the list he wanted?

But Samstag’s rage didn’t seem to be in proportion to what he was asking for. And moreover – wasn’t it strange that the authorities were escorting their Jewish police superintendent? If the authorities didn’t trust their cowed subjects, who
could
they trust? And who should Adam trust, in his turn?

In the office of the nursery, Feldman had lit the stove. Through the cracks in the rusty metal, the licking flames looked pale and lifeless, set against the dull sunshine.

Samstag was bent forward, raking around with the poker among the glowing logs. Adam stood with his back to the wall, watching the young policeman’s leaning, still boyishly slim body. He simultaneously saw himself, standing alongside and waiting for the punishment that would now be meted out. And the greenhouse wall behind him was a solid wall, and the solid wall (he thought) will continue to exist, and it will be the same wall everywhere, and no matter what happens, those in authority will always have some threat to use. Deportation, assault, red-hot iron in your face.

But there was another thought in him at the same time, awoken the moment he saw the line of cars parked outside the nursery, and Werner Samstag beside the front car, all dressed up like a chauffeur in old-fashioned livery.

What
resort-laiter
(he thought) would agree to make uniforms for a Jewish special unit that might no longer even exist by the time they were finished? And why would the authorities care about uniforms if there wasn’t going to be anybody left to police?

They’re scared.

(That was what he thought. Just the one simple thing:)

Something’s happening, but they don’t know what – just that all the power they once had is slowly slipping out of their hands. And as he stood there with the certainty of their fear at his back, Adam told himself he was not going to give them anything more. Let them beat me to a pulp, but from now on I’m not giving them anything more.

Samstag stood before him with the hot poker raised.

Then Józef Feldman stepped out of the soil-reeking pitch darkness and put a hand on Samstag’s shoulder:

Don’t bother, Werner; he hasn’t got anything . . . 

Samstag’s and Feldman’s eyes met fleetingly, but still long enough for the glow of the poker Samstag held in his hand to fade. Then the grimacing leer on Samstag’s face turned to an expression of unspeakable distaste and ennui, and with a practised jerk of his head, he ordered his men to let go of Adam.