100 Złotys
By Ewan
- 280 reads
‘Goodbye,’ my mother said.
I had thought mother was taking me to school as she did most days. She used to say goodbye every morning before going to work making uniforms. ‘Polish Uniforms, for the army, Mama?’ She would shake her head and say, ‘No, Jerzy, not Polish.’
On that day, she took my hand as we passed the Judenrat building. My mother spat on the floor. I had never seen her do such a thing. Only a week before she had given me – and my friend Waclaw – such a blow to the ear, when she caught us trying to reach across to the opposite pavement with our spitting. Waclaw had been my very best friend since Krzystof left suddenly the previous May. Many people left suddenly in those days. Mr Staffens from next door left the following winter. I did not miss him, he smelled of being foreign. He had come from Luxembourg. My mother said it was good riddance, but she never said why. Dziadek Grigor had gone too, less than six months before. Mother had cried for days and so had I.
That day was like any other, I believe. Perhaps I remember another day’s weather: perhaps I do not wish to remember the details. Late September in Łodz. It would have been cold, windy perhaps, maybe with a milky sun. What I do remember is all the children and older people. My mother and I were swimming against the tide. I did notice that we passed the school immediately we did so, but I said nothing. The tears on my mother’s cheeks were surely caused by the chilly breeze.
We eventually came to a narrow street at the very easternmost edge of the ghetto. There were no more streams of the old and young to prevent our progress. I asked the question,
‘Where were they going, Mama?’
‘Chelmno’ was all she said.
It was a name I heard whispered at the table on Friday evenings, while my cousins’ parents and my mother spoke of serious things after Seder. We learned, my cousins and I, not to ask what sort of thing a Chelmno might be. My older cousins would tease me with it, a boy of 9 is easy to terrify with any name, after all. I did ask at school once, but the teacher would not say either.
‘It is not to be discussed.’
There were several things not to be discussed.
The murdered boy down by the railway station. The one or two boys who disappeared and were never seen again.
One night after Seder I was sent to bed. My tantrum was most theatrical, but I went to bed all the same. I did not remain. I crept to the head of the stairs to listen to the talk around the dinner table. The voices were hushed, except at points of disagreement.
‘Is such a thing better than Chelmno?’
‘At least he’d be alive.’
‘As what?’
My father left the house that night and did not return, as far as I know.
One week later, my mother and I were standing outside a rotting door in a narrow alley near the railway to the eastern edge of the ghetto. She knocked at the door. A man came. I did not like how he smelled. It was perfumed soap over rotten meat. He grabbed at my hand, seized it at the second attempt. My mother gave him 100 Złotys, in single notes. The man was smiling as he re-checked her count, one-handed. I admired his dexterity.
‘All there. Good.’
My mother’s face was as expressionless as a bisque doll’s.
“You have made the right choice, he will live. I will see to that.’ The man still smiled.
It was the smile of the greedy boy who knows his sister is ill and that he will finish her dinner.
‘Goodbye.’ My mother said.
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