The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (28 page)

‘You’re the only one who really knows me now. Everything’s so normal here, I don’t fit in. I don’t know what’s right any more, what really happened. But you, my friend, you know everything. You’re my witness. Look at me: I stick out like a sore thumb. I’m not really part of this family. I don’t really know these people – my people.’ He sighed, hugging the prince to him as he walked through the house.

‘Yes, there is my wife, and she is still beautiful, but there’s a coolness coming off her like the north wind. Everyone’s perfectly nice. Erna cooks my favourite food, the
Nürnberger Zipfel
I told you about. We lie together at night and have even made love a few times. But there’s this gap between us, as deep and wide as a gorge. As if she’s another country. And Karl? He’s polite but jumpy, tiptoes around me, the stranger in the house who can’t take too much noise. Karl is nearly twenty-four, he’ll leave any minute.’

From then on, Max carried the puppet everywhere in his pocket.

He tried hard to fit in, and after some months he found a job as a carpenter in a small factory in the neighbouring town; but he was tense and edgy around the loud machines and always felt cold. The smell of cut timber gave him headaches and one morning he caught himself looking for bunches of grass, afraid the guards might get him after all. He kept his head down and soon his colleagues gave up trying to make conversation with him.

‘He’s like the walking dead,’ he heard them whisper. After some weeks his hands started to swell and ache.

‘Damn cold keeps eating away at my joints. Siberia’s found me even here.’

Most nights, Max couldn’t sleep, and whenever he woke from a nightmare he got up and sat with the prince in the kitchen.

‘I don’t know how to go on. How can we go on living as if nothing happened after Poland, after Russia, after Auschwitz? We brought death everywhere we went.’

Max limped over to the stove to warm himself some milk.

‘I tried to talk to Erna about Warsaw, about the deportations, but she didn’t want to listen. Sat there peeling potatoes, then got up without a word and started to cook.’

Soon silence became their daily companion: silent meals, silent chores, silent lovemaking. Then that stopped as well. Max, like Erna, ached for the proud man who had married his wife a lifetime ago, but Max Meierhauser with his thick moustache, broad smile and warm, strong hands had vanished.

Then, after a few months at work, and despite the much milder climate in Germany, Max started to cough. Day and night his chest shook like an earthquake.

‘It’s asthma, the doctor says,’ he told the prince one night. ‘A mean beast squeezing the last breath from me, picking at me like the crows picked at the dead men in the camp. The doctor told me no more wood and dust.
Auf Wiedersehen
, work.’ He stared straight ahead. ‘What am I going to do?’

The following day, it would be his fiftieth birthday. The aroma of butter, almonds and cream, Erna’s delicious
Frankfurter Kranz
which she had baked for the occasion, still lingered in the kitchen. His favourite. He took the lid off the stoneware pot that held the cake and breathed in deeply. Suddenly grief gripped his heart and he had to sit down. On the table was his usual glass of hot milk with honey but today a smaller glass, half filled with water, stood next to it like a younger brother, the old silver spoon by its side.

‘I’ve had enough. I’m just a burden to everyone,’ he said to the prince, who was sitting between the salt and the pepper pot on the table.

‘Can’t even work any more now. Thrown away like a piece of scrap metal.’ He picked up the tablets he had tried to forget all night, slowly rolling them in his hands. ‘Just one good night’s sleep is all I want. What’d you think?’ He didn’t look at the prince but popped open the packet and dropped the tablets into the water, one after another. The last one made a tiny splash before it dissolved. He scooped three spoonfuls of sugar into the glass and stirred the liquid.

‘My old friend the silver spoon. Storm in a teacup, that’s what they tell me, I’m blowing everything out of proportion. But what if you’re one of those tiny sugar crystals caught in the glass?’ He held the glass in both hands, looking at the swirling cloudy liquid.

‘So, you’re giving up? After all you’ve been through?’

Max looked up, startled. The prince didn’t move but Max could have sworn he heard him talk.

‘What do you care? You shouldn’t even be with me – you belong to that boy, Mika.’

But the interruption unnerved him. He could wait until after his birthday, enjoy his cake. He got up and poured the water down the sink, gulped the milk, then scooped up the prince.

‘OK, but it’s not over yet, my prince.’ He folded his arms on the table and laid his head down. He had not felt as tired as this since he was trudging over the icy tundra. Erna found him fast asleep in the morning, and when Max woke to the strong smell of coffee, he found a large piece of
Frankfurter Kranz
sitting next to him.

O
ne night, after Erna and Karl had gone to bed, Max poured himself another schnapps and put the prince on the kitchen table. His face was flushed and his eyes wide.

‘Guess what, I met our old neighbour from Nuremberg. He lives in the next village. Turns out he was in Russia too. Stalingrad first, then they gave him ten years’ hard labour in Siberia, just like me, only they let him go in ’48. Didn’t recognise him at first, but I guess I don’t look my old self either.’

They met for Weissbeers and cheap schnapps in the local
Gasthaus
and talked late into the night.

‘But there were signs, Bert. Our doctor, Jacob Rosenzweig, he disappeared one night. I heard our neighbour whisper “Dachau”. We’d all heard of Dachau, hadn’t we? And then the smashed-up shops, the fires, the book burnings. How could I have been so blind? By the time I arrived in Warsaw it was too late, I was part of the machine.’ Like a dog hanging on to a bone, Max couldn’t let go, kept repeating the same questions. Bert said nothing.

‘Did you hear, the Amis paraded the villagers in front of the mountains of corpses left behind in Dachau,’ Max continued, ‘but did they lose any sleep over what had happened right under their noses? Did they feel responsible, squirm in shame, or did they just go home and cook their Weisswurst?’

Still Bert said nothing. But it wasn’t the same when they talked about the snow.

‘Death isn’t the grim reaper,’ Max proclaimed, knocking back his fourth schnapps. ‘Death is the north wind, clouds heavy with snow that will bury everything alive. It’s the cold that burns your lungs and breaks your bones, snaps your spirit. Makes you want to kill for a place at the fire, even one of those lousy wood burners.’

Bert looked at his hands. His left ring finger was missing.

‘My glove had a hole. Couldn’t fix it so after three days that was it. My finger turned black and they had to cut it off.’

Often the two men simply smoked and drank in silence, but sometimes Max shared his nightmares.

‘So in this dream I’m desperately trying to get somewhere but all I can see is this blinding whiteness. I’m drowning, choking in the snow. But the strange thing is, I’m never cold – it’s as if I am already dead. I always wake up out of breath, and don’t know where I am.’

Bert just nodded.

‘Then there is Mika, the boy I told you about. He’s being pushed into a truck. I’m there pushing him in with all the other Jews. Just before the train moves away, I see a puppet peeping out of the window: a princess, her thin arms sticking out through the barbed wire. And like a shadow behind her, Mika’s face. Then I’m inside the train. It’s so crowded I can’t breathe. I try to push everyone out of the way, struggling to get to the small barbed-wire window for some air, but I never reach it. Then I’m back in that terrible cattle truck that took us to Siberia, scratching ice from the wall with my small spoon . . . Guess you remember those trains too,’ Max mumbled.

‘They were the same damn cattle wagons. Those trains that took the Jews to Treblinka were the same ones that shipped us to Siberia.’ Max’s voice had begun to slur.

‘All the evil in the world started with those cattle trains. I wouldn’t even put a cow in them now.’

Many nights the men ranted about the German government’s lack of support.

‘Thousands of us were sent to Siberia, millions, they think, can you imagine? And the few of us who returned were only a ghost of our former selves. We’ll never know how many died, the Russians never cared about numbers.’ Bert’s face was so flushed he looked as if he might explode at any moment. ‘We died like flies and now nobody wants to listen. As if we’re a stain, some dirty mark on their whiter-than-white jackets. There are still men rotting in the camps while the big fish have all got away – well, some anyway. Hiding their Nazi arses somewhere or even getting re-elected. All this talk about “denazification” – sounds like delousing, if you ask me – but there are still enough Nazis crawling around. It’s a shambles.’

Sometimes, after a fair amount of beer and schnapps, Max tried to talk about Warsaw. But Bert always cut him short.

‘What’s done is done, Max.
Schnee von gestern
, my friend, yesterday’s snow. We’ve suffered enough, Max. I mean, really.’

Even with Bert, Max had reached a dead end.

One clear December night, swaying homewards through the snow after his evening with Bert, Max found himself in a philosophical mood. Taking the prince out of his pocket, he pointed to the snow that lay piled up around them.

‘I’m sure there’s snow in Siberia that hasn’t melted since we were there. That snow has seen everything. Do you think it remembers everything? Or the cobbled streets of Warsaw, will they remember our marching boots, all the blood?’ Max looked up at the stars. ‘I guess nothing ever goes away. Isn’t that terrifying and wonderful at the same time, my friend? Just like those stars?’

That night Max realised he would never be free of the past but would always carry the ghetto in his soul, next to Camp 267 and his home town of Nuremberg, which lay in ruins.

Time passed but still Max never quite settled in the village of Wolkersdorf.

‘I’m a city person,’ he often proclaimed. ‘You can’t hole me up in such a small village. I miss the old town, the castle, the city air.’

‘I know, Max,’ Erna tried to comfort him, ‘but it would’ve broken your heart to see Nuremberg after the bombing. The whole city destroyed, only a few walls standing in the old town and rubble everywhere. One source of water for the whole of the old city. And we had to clear the debris so the Allies could move in for their victory parades. It was terrible . . . and it stank. They couldn’t find all the dead under the ruins.’

Max said nothing but thought of Warsaw, its market square, the beautiful old houses torn down or gouged out by shrapnel. Its citizens also nothing but rubble.

Still, Max wanted to see his old city, and so one day he put on his best suit and made his way to the village’s station, placing the puppet prince in his jacket pocket.

After a short journey he arrived at Nuremberg’s main station. He crossed the road and strolled towards the old market square. All the way Max gave a quiet, rambling commentary to the puppet about each and every landmark – visible or absent. He didn’t care about the people who threw puzzled glances at him – he’d become so used to talking to the puppet it no longer seemed strange to him.

‘Look at that station. The façade is still the same, beautiful.’ As they walked along the Königstrasse, Max picked up his pace as if pulled towards Nuremberg’s centre by an invisible force.

‘I don’t care any more what people think. No one understands me anyway. I can’t go back to the normal world, I’m a freak in any case. I hardly recognise this place.’ He glanced at the newly built houses along the road. The longer he wandered, the quieter Max became. He could see the silhouette of the old castle but his eyes searched in vain for the butcher’s to the front of the town hall.

‘God, it’s all gone. Must have been bombed to bits.’ He felt dizzy and sat down on a doorstep. He set the prince on his lap.

‘Just look at the things they’ve built instead. Ugly. No soul.’ He studied the sober buildings.

‘What are you looking at?’ he snapped at a woman who peered down at him and his prince. ‘Never seen a puppet? Well, we’ve come a long way together, him and me,’

The woman sped away. Max struggled to his feet and moved on. As he turned a corner the cobbled road opened up into the large market square, flanked by colourful houses and the impressive façade of a large church.

‘Ah, now, at least our proud Frauenkirche still looks like it did back then.’ As he neared the church Max saw scaffolding flanking the church on both sides. His heart sank.

‘Our Lady didn’t make it either, then.’ He approached the intricately carved wooden door.

‘Let’s go in.’ He pulled the brass handle and opened the heavy door.

Max felt as small and insignificant as a mouse as he entered the majestic cathedral. As he took a few steps into the belly of the church, he realised that although the façade had remained intact everything else had been badly damaged in the bomb raids. Even six years after the end of the war, there were repairs being done everywhere. Max looked around.

‘I swear there was an angel with a huge sword right here. So many of the sculptures are gone,’ he whispered.

He moved along the aisle, looking up at the red sandstone columns that stretched overhead, supporting the gigantic roof.

Gobbles you up whole, this place
, he thought,
columns as high as the tallest fir trees in Siberia.

Max stopped in front of a flickering field of candles.

‘They light them for the dead, you know,’ he explained to the prince. ‘But just how many would we need to light?’ He stared at the candles until his eyes began to water. Then he reached for one of the thin white candles, lit it and placed it in a small metal holder next to the others. He stood quietly for a moment, then stretched his hand out for another candle and lit that one too. Then another. And another. And so on, one after another, with the same steady rhythm. Max lit every candle until none was left.