Chapter 13 - Dorotha #2
‘Please God,’ Mrs Cohen muttered back. ‘Biebow would be the first person I’d like to see hanging from his own gallows!’ She stubbed her cigarette out viciously on the window ledge. ‘Then the chairman.’
‘Remind me never to make an enemy of Mrs Cohen,’ Ruth whispered in Dorotha’s ear.
Finally, when the room was empty save for a few stragglers, a shout rose up from the street outside.
‘A razie is du.’ A ration has arrived.
The room emptied in seconds, with the last remaining women rushing outside to make it to the food distribution centres to purchase whatever meagre supplies were on offer.
Dorotha was just tidying away the remaining few books with Ruth, when a man’s voice startled her.
‘Do you have anything by Flaubert or Gorky?’
She looked up and felt a jolt of surprise.
‘Mr Weiss! I didn’t know you knew where I lived.’
‘Oscar, please,’ he replied, taking off his hat and running his finger nervously around the rim. ‘And I head up the Department of Vital Statistics, so you could say it’s my job to know where you reside.’
‘Oh . . .’ was all she could muster. Ruth gave her a wink and busied herself with her mother on the other side of the room, but Dorotha was acutely aware of them both listening.
‘I told you there isn’t much demand for the literary heavyweights.
I don’t have any books by those authors.
There is even less demand for Dostoevsky and Romain Rolland.
But I have heard there’s a gentleman by the name of Mr Otelsberg, a former bookseller, who can be seen around the ghetto with his briefcase, should you wish to find him. ’
It came out far more reproachfully than she had intended.
‘I’m teasing,’ he laughed. He lowered his voice to just above a whisper.
‘Actually, I came here on something of a more personal matter. I wonder if you’d like to go for a walk in Marysin if you’re finished here? Spring finally looks to have made an appearance.’
‘She would love to,’ announced Mrs Mordkowicz.
‘Mama has the hearing of a dog,’ Ruth laughed. ‘Why don’t you go, Dorotha? I can finish up here.’
Dorotha glared at her. ‘I can’t, Ruth. I have a visit to make, remember?’
‘We can run your errand for you, my dear,’ said Mrs Mordkowicz, sidling up next to them and giving Oscar her most winning smile. ‘You go and have some rare time off.’
Dorotha felt flustered. ‘No, I really have to do this errand myself.’
‘Very well,’ said Mrs Mordkowicz, undeterred. ‘She’ll meet you at the crossroads in Marysin in an hour and a half.’
The matter was settled before Dorotha even had time to object. Ten minutes later, they were all walking to Ava and Gabriele’s hiding place.
‘I really shouldn’t be fraternising with Mr Weiss,’ Dorotha protested. ‘He’s my boss.’
‘Only by German design,’ Mrs Mordkowicz shot back. ‘Outside the walls of this ghetto, you’d be free to court.’
‘We’re not courting,’ Dorotha replied hotly.
‘Your mama would want to see you happy, my dear,’ Mrs Mordkowicz said, laying a hand on her shoulder as they slipped down the back alley. ‘That was her dearest wish.’
Dorotha said nothing, just knocked softly on the small basement window.
The scene that met her was a very different one from that dark night four months previously, thanks in no small part to Mrs Mordkowicz and her formidable ability to organise. She had insisted on returning to the basement many times with Dorotha and had formed a firm friendship with Ava Kamiński.
‘Ava, we come bearing gifts,’ Dorotha called softly.
‘What’ve I done to deserve you?’ Ava replied, ushering them in.
Ava had scrubbed the basement to within an inch of its life with detergent Dorotha had managed to purchase.
Mrs Mordkowicz had found a small gas stove and a rag rug, and risked several trips upstairs after dark to fetch more furniture and bedding.
It was a far cleaner and cosier proposition than the dark hellhole Dorotha had first encountered.
‘Did you bring me a book?’ Gabriele asked, hopping from one leg to another.
‘I did, my little shlingen bikher. Have you ever heard of Treasure Island?’
‘No, but I want to go there right now.’
‘And you shall,’ Dorotha laughed, endlessly impressed by the little girl’s ability to find joy in even the most hopeless of situations.
‘She’ll read to you right after we’ve fixed her hair,’ announced Mrs Mordkowicz, pulling out the packet of hair dye that Mrs Cohen had given her.
‘You brought that!’ she gasped. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Oh, please, Dorotha,’ said Gabriele. ‘Can I help?’
The matter was settled. How could she say no to anything little Gabriele asked of her?
‘Why don’t you go and get some fresh air,’ Mrs Mordkowicz said to Ava. ‘You’re white as a sheet.’
She nodded. ‘I haven’t been sleeping.’
‘So go,’ Ruth urged. ‘We can keep an eye on Gabriele, and most of the Schupo are probably drunk and snoring by now.’
‘Just keep off the main thoroughfares, bridges and away from the perimeter,’ Mrs Mordkowicz warned.
‘Can I please go out too?’ Gabriele begged. ‘Please, Mama, I’m so desperate to see the sky.’
A terrible silence stretched over the basement.
For everyone knew such a plea, however innocent, was simply not possible.
Ava could blend into the thousands of other beaten-down souls walking the streets, but a child like Gabriele would stand out immediately and run the risk of being snatched by a passing field grey.
‘Why don’t I read to you whilst you dye my hair with this disgusting mixture?’ Dorotha suggested. ‘The skies over Treasure Island are every colour from gold to indigo.’
Gabriele nodded, appeased, and Dorotha could see the relief in Ava’s eyes.
‘Go, but don’t be too long,’ Mrs Mordkowicz said. ‘I’m going to make fried potatoes and I even have a little sausage meat. I warn you, it’s of dubious origin, but meat is meat.’
Ava escaped, and soon the little girl had forgotten the four walls of her prison as Dorotha read her into the high seas and a story of buried treasure and buccaneers, while Mrs Mordkowicz worked on dying her hair.
Short of feeding a child, reading to one was probably the most absorbing and satisfying way to spend an hour of one’s life, Dorotha reasoned, as Gabriele curled up in her lap and listened with her thumb in her mouth.
Even Dorotha forgot the horrible concoction Ruth was painting on her head as the delicious smells of frying potatoes wafted through the room.
‘Ta-da,’ Ruth said eventually, finding a small cracked mirror next to a bucket and placing it in front of Dorotha. Dorotha stared at herself, unable to find words.
‘You look like a Spanish piratress,’ Gabriele gasped.
‘What’s a piratress?’ Ruth laughed.
‘A lady pirate of course,’ Gabriele replied, reaching up to touch a strand of Dorotha’s hair.
Dorotha said nothing. Her hair was transformed, and was now closer to black than grey, but it was her eyes and face she found haunting.
It had been so long since she’d last registered her appearance.
Those with the will to do so used a dirty windowpane as a mirror.
Dorotha never had the inclination. She stared at her reflection now, taking in the sharp planes of her cheekbones.
Her eyes sunken into their sockets. The putty-pale skin.
All her softness had gone. Dorotha didn’t recognise herself, and with that dawned an awful thought.
Nor would her sister and friends recognise her either.
A part of her had died. The desperate quest for survival, that belonged to a new, harder woman. She was all steel and fire now.
Gabriele reached up and curled her arm around her neck, her voice a soft, wet whisper.
‘I think you’re ever so pretty.’
Dorotha smiled for Gabriele’s benefit and pushed away the mirror.
‘Dorotha, you’re going to be late to meet Mr Weiss. Go now!’ ordered Mrs Mordkowicz.
‘But Gabriele . . .’
‘Is perfectly safe with us,’ she insisted.
Dorotha demolished her plate of potatoes, and thirty minutes later approached the northern edge of the ghetto.
A pale spring sun was turning the soggy filth of the pavements to dust. Municipal sanitation services were non-existent in the ghetto, as were sewers, and a marshy stench was muscling its way out of dark corners.
This is a mistake, she told herself crossly. I don’t even know the man, much less harbour any romantic notions towards him. I’d rather be back in the basement with Treasure Island.
Then she saw him. Oscar Weiss was sitting in a small patch of sun next to a ramshackle allotment, reading what looked to be a dense piece of historical fiction.
‘Any good?’ she asked.
‘Immeasurably,’ he replied, sitting up as she approached. ‘Reading’s not only an escape, but also a discipline of the mind, wouldn’t you say?’
He squinted up at her, the sun lighting up his deep-set green eyes.
‘The more they reduce us to beasts, the more important it becomes to retain the habits of a civilised existence. Reading about past wars and catastrophes universalises our experience and transcends the misery within the ghetto walls.’
Dorotha burst out laughing, surprising even herself.
‘Not one for small talk, are you?’
A smile curled across his face, creasing his cheeks into dimples. ‘Sorry. This is what the ghetto has done to me.’
‘I suspect you weren’t one for small talk before the ghetto either,’ she said, arching one eyebrow.
‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ he said ruefully.
‘Please, won’t you sit?’ He took off his coat and laid it down on the ground.
‘You look different,’ he said, before realising. ‘The hair.’
‘It’s supposed to make me look less conspicuous to them,’ she whispered, nodding to a German truck as it lumbered mechanically along the edge of the field.
He nodded. ‘Very sensible. There was a round-up earlier. I only avoided it by telling them I worked in administration.’
He squeezed his eyes shut.
‘How many?’ she asked.
‘Two shot and a dozen taken, from what I could tell.’
They lapsed into silence.