Julia's Stary writing camp portfolio

Week three: The first chapter

It was official: today was our last day of complete freedom.

 Anyone who might happen to see this would call me melodramatic and tell me that I had it easy, compared to others. But until this point, we’d all been at school. My best girlfriend Joanna wanted to become an architect when she was older. She wanted to design modern houses, all with indoor bathrooms and big, open windows that could let in as much sunlight as possible. Her boyfriend Oliver wanted to join in by building those houses for her. My friend Oleg couldn’t decide what he wanted to do yet, and Nick…we never really got the chance to find out. Point being, it was the place for us to decide where our future was going. If we had a future at all.

Well, now I suppose we don’t have to wait until school ends for us to go to work. Our school was closed a few days ago. Cleared out, possibly to become a new hospital. Joanna and Oliver received their first posts yesterday, so today, it was just me and Oleg going to the employment office. We’d be getting ready to go out early, to beat the usual rush.

At six thirty I woke up, chose my best dress (The least worn, I mean) and ran into our tiny bathroom before Charlotte or Helmuth could beat me to it. Well, you couldn’t really call it a bathroom when it was just a toilet and a basin-sink in a cupboard. Still, at least we had a place to get clean in-most others had to share a bathroom this size with the entire floor!

After I was about as clean as I could be, I went back to the room I shared with my sister Lotte and put on another layer. It wasn’t snowing today, but it was very cold and the last fall was still rather thick. My stomach grumbled angrily, but I was forced to ignore it. Not even the poor ration-system could qualm the appetite I’d been born with.

I wasn’t fat exactly-but I didn’t appear to starve as greatly as everyone else. I’d been overweight for as long as I could remember. No matter how I exercised or how healthy my diet was, I could gain weight easily, but had a harder time losing it. Mama, who’d had an aunt with the same affliction, was convinced it was a heath disorder, but every doctor she ever took me to told her the same thing; I just needed to lose weight. Perhaps if those doctors could see me now, they might reconsider their diagnosis! Not fat, but ‘plump’. Plump was what mother called me when she looked at my weight in relief! Plump was what a soldier called me when he gave me a look I didn’t feel good about. When everyone else was starving, I was stuck being ‘plump’.

I didn’t think mama would be awake when I was ready to leave. But when I crept into the sitting room, there she was, sitting by the window. Everybody else was sound asleep. The elderly Mrs. Selene, her sister Gretchen, and the newly-weds, Ona and Amos.

“Are you going now?” Mama asked me, whispering.

“No. Oleg’s going to meet me here.”

“Then sit with me a while, please. I wouldn’t mind the company.”

I slid onto the floor, beside mama’s slipper-clad feet. She patted my head as she continued to gaze out the window.

“The view never changes, you know.” She said, as her eyes roamed over roof-tops. “I wonder if they knew that? Out of all the things they did to keep us in this place, I wonder if they ever thought of how it looked from all the way up here?”

“It’s hard to say mama.” I replied, following her gaze. “They want to take all the good things away from us, yet they don’t want us to believe our situation is bad.”

“They’re fools.” She said firmly, “they want all of it, don’t they? Our success, our livelihoods. If they ever listened to good advice, they’d know that chasing after everything leads to nothing. They can never choose just one thing and be happy with it; they have to have the world at their feet if they’re ever to be satisfied.”

“It seems like they already have everything. They’ve got Poland, France, and Holland too.”

“But they don’t have the world yet, do they Beatrice? If they have the world, then that makes them God. And who watches over everything?”

“God does. Does Hitler really think he can be God?”

“His followers treat him like God. If he can w**d out those who don’t, he really could be God in his own right.”

The thought was beyond scary. I’d sooner die than call Adolph Hitler a God!

“I don’t want a God like that mama. God is supposed to be merciful and forgiving.”

“He is supposed to be-but he’s letting this happen as we speak. I think Beatrice, that we should put a little more faith into ourselves than God-He’s got His work cut out for Him.”

The clock chimed seven-Oleg would be waiting outside by now. I kissed mama goodbye and crept out as quietly as I could. Charlotte and Helmuth needed another thirty minutes sleep and Alexei was lucky enough to be too young to work.

Oleg was waiting at the bottom step for me. Even hunched over, his head surpassed my hip. One of the first things you noticed about Oleg Rosenau was that he was large and tall. At six foot seven, he dwarfed every soldier that ever crossed his way. And though they’d never show it, you could tell they were intimidated. I’ve seen Oleg lift small trees and rods of steel by himself. It was only fitting that Nick dubbed him ‘Hercules’-there was nothing that fitted him better.

“Is everyone still asleep?” He asked me as he stood, towering over me by nearly two heads.

“Yes. Lotte and Helmuth were trying to out-snore one another by the time I woke up.”

“Well, let them snore and they can decide who wins by who wakes who first. Come on, we don’t want to end up at the back of the que.”

When we got there, the line was short. Just six people ahead. As the dawn lit up the sky and the morning dragged on, the line became longer and longer. Reaching right around the corner by the time the office had opened. I dug my hands deep into my pockets as I waited, watching my breath fog. just another Polish winter. Daring to get icier as the weeks passed by.

When it was our turn to go in, there was no sigh of relief. The inside of the office was just as cold as it was outside. As we neared the open window where the clerk stood, I went over what I would say in my head. Just remember the words; house-keeping, tutor, nanny. The three things I was truly qualified to do. 

“Name?” The clerk asked me.

“Beatrice Elbe.”

“Age?”

“Sixteen.”

“Qualifications?”

“House-keeper, tutor, nanny; I trained a little in early childhood.”

“You’re in luck.” The young, bored woman said. “A position has just opened up yesterday; the Leare household is looking for a nanny. Your I.D card?”

I’d had it in my hand in advance. I handed it to the clerk, who wrote something on one of the pages.

“Take this to the guards at the gates tomorrow. You are to show it to them every time you come and go-is that understood?”

“Yes madam.”

“Next!”

Oleg was finished just as quickly as I was. He found work at an ammunitions factory that made weapons for the German’s. Apparently, he had the choice of either that, the enamel factory or building laborer! Of course, he did. I saw the way the clerk had looked at him as he moved to the front of the que. Forgetting the fact that she was probably five years his senior, she wouldn’t last long at that job if she gave favor to all the handsome ones.

“When do you start?” I asked him.

“Five O’clock, tomorrow morning.” He replied, “my shift finishes at four.”

“Lucky-that was more than I got from her. I just have an address in my I.D book to go on.”

“Show me and we’ll see if we can work it out on papa’s maps. Meanwhile, we’ve got the rest of the day to ourselves before we have to join the working-class. What do you want to do?”

Before the Ghetto, it used to be the pictures, ice-skating, or the community beach. I didn’t much like the latter because of how tight my bathing costume was, but the rest were fun. Only now we lacked both the freedom to access these places and the funds to do so. So, what was there left to do is a place like the Ghetto? We still had gramophones and records, but if they heard us…I know! Out of the freedoms we still had, I always found it the most exhilarating.

“Let’s go busking.” I said, “Sammy and Hermann should be tuning their instruments right about now.”

“Well, I suppose there’s nothing better to do.” He shrugged, “alright then, let’s go find them. Maybe today will be our lucky day and someone might actually be able to tip us.”

We found Sammy and Hermann near the Ghetto’s perimeters, warming up. Sammy, an American n***o, came to Poland a decade ago for a performance that promised him fame but failed.  Hermann was a Belgian Jew, who had been friends with Sammy since they ended up performing in the same jazz-bar all those years ago. Both had been unable to get jobs since moving to the Ghetto so they spent their days on the streets, singing for their supper. Sometimes, we liked to sing with them.

“Betti!” Sammy greeted me with a crooked smile. “And you brought your fella! Come and pull up a piece of the curb. We’re just trying to decide what we want to play.”

“I want something slow and melancholy.” Hermann said, “Sammy wants a love song. I don’t think love-songs should be melancholy, do you?”

“Not usually,” I giggled. “Unless you like Romeo and Juliet. Why don’t we try a happy song? You know, songs that are supposed to lift our spirits.”

“Cheeky girl!” Hermann chuckled, “alright then, let’s find a happy song. It’s not as if melancholy songs are doing much for everyone else.”

We played a few happy songs at first, then we gave in to Hermann and played something soulful and melancholy. Sammy sang those songs best. When he sang, shivers ran down my back and over my arms. Sammy had this incredible power to take the words from a song and turn it into something from the heart. It made the people around him stop, to put down their tools and laundry, and feel the message of it all. I would sing along quietly, as if to add something to it, but I could never compare to Sammy. He had been singing his entire life.

When we’d come to the point of seeking a love-song, we were accosted. Two German soldiers, looking as if they’d paid a little visit to their local pub, came swaggering over to us. Fear pulsed quietly within me; I could smell the liquor on their clothes. It was one thing to encounter a soldier who wanted to cause trouble, but encountering a drunken soldier was just something that shouldn’t be done.

“Well, look at what we have here!” One of the slurred, swinging his hand in an uncoordinated gesture. “Three Jews and a n****r, playing sing-song! When did we ever give you permission to play sing-song?”

“When did you ever forbid us from playing sing-song?” Don’t Hermann! It’ll make them angry.

“I thought you Jews would’ve been cunning enough to guess.” He sneered back, “we don’t want you in our hospitals, we don’t want you as our lawyers, what makes you think we’d want your music?”

“We aren’t singing for profit, gentlemen.” Sammy replied easily. “We just like music. Even the undesirables can enjoy music.”

“That so?” The second one, who’d been silent until now, spoke. “Well, we’ll make you a deal. If you can impress us with your street-warbling, we won't beat the insolence out of you. How’s that?”

“You have yourself a deal.” Sammy smiled at them, “Betti? You want to do the honors?”

“Are you sure Sammy?” I whispered.

“Course I am! It’s not my voice they want.”

I knew then, what song I wanted to sing. I whispered the choice to Hermann and Sammy, who prepared their fiddle and bass. I let them start first, putting the song into place. Oleg, drumming against the pavement along with them. When they had it ready, I came in.

“Thanks for the memory.

Of rainy afternoons, swinging Harlem tunes,

Motor trips and burning lips,

And burning toast and prunes.

How lovely it was.”

I couldn’t sing with the same smoothness or pitch Mildred Bailey sang it with, but then again, I wasn’t her. I had my own sound, my own way of floating from note-to-note. I sang it more slowly, drifting in the melodies. Aiming to enjoy the song, rather than turn those words into a weapon. When I stopped, my mind turned to bitter things. Like I was saying ‘thank you’ to those pathetic drunkards for not always treating us like scum. I wanted my voice, and the words I chose to drift beyond this gutter where we sat and linger in the ears of those around us.

“Awfully glad I met you,

Cheerio and toodle-oo.

Thank you,

Thank you so much.”

When I had finished, that beautiful, melodic world melted away to reveal a filthy, grey street and two soldiers standing in front of me. Now that I was done, they looked as if they didn’t know what to say. I’d sung the song in fluent German-a skill I bet they never thought I could have. But had it been enough to win their little wager.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” The second one muttered, “off with you! I don’t want to look at your faces.”

They didn’t have to tell us twice! Sammy and Hermann hurried in one direction, Oleg and me in the other. Until the soldiers were out of sight, Oleg had his hand on my back. Shielding me from their view. I was grateful for that-every time he did it. I knew I was far from what young, German soldiers desired but he didn’t think that. To him, any young Jewess was in danger.

“Those pigs were soaked in alcohol.” He muttered, “making us perform like monkeys!”

“We do what they tell us unless we want the butts of their rifles at our heads.” I reminded him, “I hate them just as much as you do and there will come a time to have our revenge, but until then we’ve got to fall in line. They cannot hurt us if they don’t even notice us.”

“Fall in line, fall in line! I am sick of being told to fall in line Betti! I want to smash their skulls into a wall and I know I could, easily. But every time, I hear you or papa, telling me to keep my mouth shut and my hands to myself. Sometimes I feel like an angry bull, and they’re chasing me around with red flags, trying to make a big show out of it. They’re the brave bull-fighters and I’m the big, snarling beast. You know, they’d never tell you this, but it’s really the bull who has to suffer. They’re made to perform again and again, playing a part they were never meant for."

This surprised me. I knew that Oleg found it harder than the rest of us, but to hear him actually say it was something new. Oleg was usually someone who followed the old traditions of aspiring manhood; be the foundational support, but never show anyone if you were crumbling. And while Oleg wasn’t crumbling now, he was showing me that even he had his limits. I wanted to put my arms around him then and tell him that it wouldn’t last forever-but I couldn’t predict the future. This wouldn’t be over until a higher power said it was.

“That is all true Oleg-except for one thing. You’re no bull. They think they can turn you into one because they have nice uniforms and shiny medals, but when they don’t have that you’re far more ten of them combined. You have blond hair, blue eyes and if the Fuhrer ever set eyes on you, he’d be wondering if his efforts for real Aryans was a big waste of time. You’re a God amongst men; why do you think Nick always called you Hercules? They think they can beat you down but they know that if it weren’t for their guns, you could squish them all like bugs.”

“I could, couldn’t I?” He chuckled to himself, still not believing it. “Ten little Nazi’s couldn’t match my strength. But they could learn my weaknesses.”

“Hence, falling in line. To know your weaknesses, they’d have to know you. And they can’t do that if you’re virtually invisible.”

I hadn’t even realised where we’d been walking, until we stopped to take it in. We were outside the school; well, the former school. Emptier than I’d ever seen it. Even when school was over for the day,  It was like the school had a life of its’ own; a beating heart, even when its’ purpose for existing left at precisely three-thirty, every day. There was no life there anymore. Just an empty building, with construction laborers going in and out.

“We still have the day to ourselves.” Oleg said, smiling again. “What should we do?”

“Let’s go somewhere quiet, where we won’t be found.” I suggested, “I miss being able to have private moments every now and again.”

Oleg knew the alleyways in the Ghetto better than anybody else I knew-save Nick of course, who worked out the system alongside him. If there was any privacy to be had in this place, Oleg would know how to seek it. It was just a matter of knowing your sounds and smells. If you could smell cooked beetroot and carrots, you were behind the kitchens. If you smelt soap and disinfectant powder, you were definitely behind the bath-house. Pure body-odor and old urine: the prison. Rubbing alcohol and lemon-spray: the hospital. The buildings all looked the same to me, but what really got you around was knowing what they smelled like. 

For us, it was the old age home down Jozefinska. The patients never disturbed us-or rather, they never could, with how little they saw of the outside world. The workers there did try to make accommodations as comfortable as they could, but with so little money to give them even the simplest comforts, like music or good food, their existence was a gloomy one. Still, it was the only place we knew of where we could speak uninterrupted. 

“I want to get out of here.” Oleg confessed as we sat down. “I’ve got this bad feeling about this place. Like something is coming, something big, and I know I won’t be able to stop it.”

“Oleg, they’ve already put us in a Ghetto! They make us wear these silly armbands, despite that fact that we’re all Jewish here anyway, so what more could they do? Make us tap-dance every time we want a decent meal?”

“I’m serious Betti! I’ve been overhearing things- “

“-You mean you’ve been eavesdropping?”

“Yes, I’ve been eavesdrop-that’s not the point! The point is, I’ve been hearing some things, about why we’ve never heard back from any of those people who disappeared to work-camps all those months ago. They told us they’d send letters, that they would be treated fairly because ‘surely those Nazi’s cannot be as bad as people say!’. But Betti, have you ever had any letters? From your uncle or cousin?”

Uncle Jessel and my cousin Janny. Both had been selected for farm-work at a camp south of Krakow. They made the camp sound so nice! Lots of big, green fields, cows munching contently on fresh pasture, and potato-fields as far as the eye could see. At least, that was what uncle Jessel had promised before he and Janny left. Now it has been three months, and not a single letter had been sent in the post. Not even from Janny, who sent postcards wherever she went.

“We always figured they’d be too busy working or enjoying the fresh air.” I said, not quite so convinced as I was all this time.

“Exactly. So, when I heard them talk…you were always better at German than I am. Tell me what:

Sobald wir sie alle zu den Farmen gebracht haben, werden sie alle vergast. Dafür bauen sie neue “Duschblöcke”. Means?”

It took me a moment to translate. When I did, I felt sick. I still didn’t completely understand what it meant, but I felt Oleg would. Something about it just seemed so s******c.

“They said ‘Once we get them all to the farms, they’ll all be gassed. They’re building new ‘shower’ blocks for it’. I don’t completely understand it Oleg. I know how the mustard-gas attacks work but why would they need a shower-block to do it? And how would it benefit them, giving those people lung-damage?”

“I don’t just think it’s lung damage Betti.” He said quietly, his voice weak. “A mustard-gas attack wouldn’t completely kill a lot of people because the open air interferes with it. It causes a lot of damage, but it doesn’t exactly mean instant death. If it was done in a place that was air-tight, where they can seal the doors, there’d be nowhere to escape, would there? Mustard-gas would be the only thing there you could breathe in.”

“But why mustard gas? It settles in low areas so they’d need a lot of it to poison one person at a time. They’d have to produce big doses to kill an entire shower-block of people.”

“Maybe it isn’t mustard-gas then. Maybe they’re using something else, something quicker.”

“So, in theory, these shower-blocks would never be used to pump water.” I felt like vomiting, “they would pump gas.”

“Now you see why I want to get out? If this is really what they’re planning, we’re all going to die before we see the end of this war. I can’t let that happen. I knew those bastards were evil, but this? They would be murdering so many! I mean, how do we know they aren’t planning to do the same thing here? They could easily do something to our own bath-house and we would be none the wiser.”

“Except, we are, aren’t we? Oleg, I don’t think they would do that. Not when we’re all so bunched in together. Someone would guess what was happening and then what can they do? It would’ve gotten out there before they could even act. They still allow us to write letters to our friends; we could get it to the public before they could stop us.”

“Well, even if they aren’t going to gas us here, they could still do it.”

“The most important thing is working out how they’ll do it. Where did you overhear this conversation?”

“Behind the hospital where the front gates are. I was getting papa’s medication when I heard them talking.”

“We should go back there, together. Listen in on any other conversations we might come across.”

“No Betti, I won’t let you. I will go myself.”

“You said it yourself-my German is better than yours. You need me to translate those conversations, don’t you?”

“I need you to be safe! It’s bad enough that they’ve got papa working in his condition, and I can’t be there to help him. What do you think I’d do if you…if I couldn’t protect my friends?”

“Oleg, I’m not a little girl! I can protect myself from any German that comes my way. You should know; you taught me how.”

“I know, but…” He sighed. He knew I was right. “You would have to be careful. If they even suspected- “

“-I know how to be careful, Hercules. And remember, I’ll be with you.”

He smiled at me. A sort of smile I’d been seeing a lot of lately, that made my heart skip a beat. I couldn’t say when he started smiling at me like that, or when I started returning that smile. All I know was that it happened very suddenly and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I mean, it was true that I felt safe with him and sometimes excited, but when did that start to mean something different?

“It’s almost noon-I promised papa I’d meet him at lunch-time.” He said, “I’d better walk you home today-in case those soldiers show up again.”

He didn’t just walk with me-he held my hand tightly, from the alley, all the way to the front steps. When I was twelve, our hands were almost the same size. Mine were slightly pudgy with fine nails. His were grubby, with nails bitten down as short as possible. Now his calloused hands dwarfed my softer ones by just over an inch, yet still, there wasn’t much difference. Hands told stories. His hands told me he worked hard for the ones he loved and didn’t mind getting dirty to do it. Mine said that I was a careful person and despite what they were reducing us to, I still took pride in how I appeared.

“Will you try writing to Nick again?” He asked me before he left.

“Just one more for this month. I’m going to try that other address Andre left-his girlfriend, Sandrine. If she’s heard from him, he might’ve mentioned Nick.”

“It sounds like a long-shot.”

“I know it is-but if there’s even the smallest chance- “

“-We’ve got to take it, I know. Well, when you do write, tell them hello from me. I miss them.”

“I will.”

It was just Alexei home for the moment, so I went into the closet-room I shared with Lotte and dug out my old writing set from under the bed. Sitting atop the quilted blanket, I began to write out the letter.