The Storyteller Read online

  Darija didn't even look at me.

  "It's this part where Ania goes to Aleksander's home," I said, frantically making it up as I went. "Something has to upset her. I just don't know what it is." I glanced at Darija. "At first I thought it was Aleksander with another woman, but I don't think that's it at all."

  I did not think Darija was listening, but then she sighed. "Read it to me."

  So I did. Although there was nothing written on the page, I pulled word after word from my core, like silk for a spider's web, spinning a make-believe life. That's why we read fiction, isn't it? To remind us that whatever we suffer, we're not the only ones?

  "Death," Darija said when I was finished, when the last sentence hovered like a cliff. "She needs to see someone die."

  "Why?"

  "Because what else would scare her more?" Darija asked, and I knew she wasn't talking about my story any longer.

  I took a pencil out of my pocket and made notes. "Death," I repeated. I smiled at my best friend. "What would I do without you?"

  That, I realized too late, was exactly the wrong thing to say. Darija burst into tears. "I don't want to leave."

  I sat down beside her and hugged her tight. "I don't want you to leave," I agreed.

  "I'll never get to see Dawid," she sobbed. "Or you."

  She was so upset, I didn't even get jealous about being the second party in that sentence. "You're just going across town. Not to Siberia."

  But I knew that meant nothing. Every day, a new wall appeared, a fence, a detour. Every day the buffer zone between the Germans in this city and the Jews grew thicker and thicker. Eventually, it would force us into the Old Town, like Darija's family, or it would shove us out of Lod completely.

  "This isn't the way it was supposed to happen," Darija said. "We were supposed to go to university and then move to London."

  "Maybe we will one day," I replied.

  "And maybe we'll be hanged like those men."

  "Darija! Don't say that!"

  "You can't tell me you haven't thought about it," she accused, and she was right, of course. Why them, when everyone had spoken badly of the Germans? Were they louder than the rest of us? Or were they just picked at random to make a point?

  On Darija's bed were two boxes, a ball of twine, and a knife for cutting it. I grabbed the knife and sliced the fleshy center of my palm. "Best friends forever," I vowed, and I handed her the knife.

  Without hesitation, she cut her own palm. "Best friends," she said. We pressed our hands together, a promise sealed in blood. I knew it didn't work this way, because I had studied biology at Gymnasium, but I liked the thought of Darija's blood running through my veins. It made it easier to believe I was keeping a piece of her with me.

  Two days later, Darija's family joined the long line of Jewish families snaking out of this part of town toward Baluty with as many possessions as they could haul. On that same day, the men who had been hanged were finally allowed to be cut down. This was clearly meant as an insult, since burial in our religion was meant to happen as quickly as possible. During that forty-eight-hour stretch, I passed the gallows six times--going to the bakery, to Darija's, to school. After the first two times, I stopped noticing. It was as if death had become part of the landscape.

  *

  My nephew, Majer Kaminski, was a shayna punim. It was March 1940, and he was six weeks old, and already he smiled back if you smiled at him; he could hold up the weight of his own head. He had blue eyes and jet hair and a gummy grin that, my father used to say, could melt even Hitler's black heart.

  Never had a baby been so beloved--by Basia and Rubin, who gazed at him like he was a miracle every time they passed by his bassinet; and by my father, who was already trying to teach him recipes; and by myself, who made up nonsense lyrics to lullabies for him. Only my mother was distant. Sure, she kvelled about her grandson and she cooed at him when Basia and Rubin brought him to visit, but she rarely held Majer. If Basia passed him into her arms, my mother would find an excuse to put him down, or to shuffle him to me or my father instead.

  It didn't make any sense to me. She had wanted to be a grandmother forever, and now that she was one, she couldn't even bear to cuddle her grandchild?

  My mother always saved the best food for Friday nights, because my sister and Rubin came for Shabbat dinner. There were usually potatoes and root vegetables in our rations, but tonight, somehow, my mother had purchased a chicken--a food we had not seen in months, since Germany occupied the country. There were black markets all over the town where you could get just about anything, for a price; the question was, what had she traded in return for this feast?

  I was salivating so badly, though, I almost didn't care. I fidgeted during the prayer over the candles and the Kiddush over the wine and the Ha-motzi over my father's delicious challah, and then finally it was time to sit down and eat. "Hana," my father sighed, biting into the first bite of the chicken, "you are truly a marvel."

  At first none of us spoke, we were that occupied with the delicious food. But then, Rubin interrupted the silence. "Herschel Berkowicz, who works with me? He was ordered to leave his home last week."

  "Did he go?" my mother asked.

  "No . . ."

  "And?" my father said, his fork paused en route to his mouth.

  Rubin shrugged. "Nothing so far."

  "You see? Hana, I was right. I'm always right. You refuse to move, and the sky doesn't fall on your head. Nothing happens." On February 8, the chief of police had listed streets where Jews were allowed to live and posted a calendar citing when the rest were supposed to leave. Although at this point, everyone knew a family that had gone east to Russia or into the area of the town allotted for Jews, others--like my father--were resistant to leave. "What can they do?" he said, shrugging. "Kick us all out?" He patted his mouth with his napkin. "Now. I will not let this glorious meal be ruined with talk of politics. Minka, tell Rubin what you were telling me about mustard gas the other day . . ."

  It was something I had learned in chemistry class. The reason mustard gas worked was that it was made in part of chlorine, which had such a tight atomic structure that it sucked electrons in from whatever it came in contact with. Including human lungs. It literally ripped apart the cells of your body.

  "This is what passes for dinner conversation now?" my mother sighed. She turned to Basia, who was cradling Majer in her left arm. "How's my angel sleeping? Through the night yet?"

  Suddenly there was a pounding at the door. "You're expecting someone?" my mother asked, looking at my father as she went to answer it. Before she could reach the door, however, it flew open and three soldiers burst into the parlor. "Get out," one of the officers said in German. "You have five minutes!"

  "Minka," my mother cried. "What do they want?"

  So I translated, my heart pounding. Basia was hiding in the corner, trying to make the baby invisible. They were Wehrmacht soldiers. One of them swept the crystal off my great-grandmother's oak server, so that it shattered on the floor. Another overturned the table, with all our food on it, the candles still burning. Rubin stamped out the flames before they could spread.

  "Go!" the officer shouted. "What are you waiting for?"

  My father, my brave, strong father, cowered with his hands over his head.

  "Outside in five minutes. Or we come back in and start to shoot," the officer said, and he and his comrades stormed out of our apartment.

  I didn't translate that part.

  My mother was the one who moved first. "Abram, get your mother's silver from the server. Minka, you take pillowcases and go around and collect anything that has value. Basia, Rubin, how fast can you go home and gather your things? I'll stay with the baby until you get back."

  It was the call to action that we needed. My father began rummaging through the drawers of the server, and then he started to move books from shelves and reach into jars in the kitchen cabinets, collecting money that I had not known was hidden there. My mother settled Majer in his