Roman
“Hello,” I said. Across the desk from me, at a machine identical to mine, Pigeon blinked as he returned from his trip to the restroom. It had taken me several hours to figure out how exactly I could initiate a conversation. I was well out of practice with small talk.
“Me?” he asked, pointing to his chest.
I scowled at him.
“Who else would I be talking to?”
He gave me a wry smile.
“Roman, we have worked opposite one another for over a year, and you’ve never spoken to me before. Not once. Do you even know my name?”
“Pigeon.”
“It may surprise you to learn that Pigeon is not actually my name,” he said and chuckled. I cleared my throat and glanced down at my machine again, adjusting the tension of the thread to tighten it, then loosen it, just to appear busy. I was embarrassed to have already made a meal of the conversation. My workmate laughed again, freely and lightly. “I’m Chaim, and it’s nice to properly meet you at last.”
I nodded curtly, then turned my attention to my machine. All day long, Sala’s factory turned out Stiefelriemen, simple leather bootstraps German soldiers used to tighten their shoes around their ankles. With high-quality boot leather harder and harder to come by, soldiers were forced to make do with whatever boots were on hand, regardless of sizing. Our boot straps enabled a soldier to wear a pair of shoes several sizes too large if that was all he could access. They allowed a soldier to march extra miles without blisters. They meant a soldier’s shoe didn’t fly off when he kicked an innocent Jew in the stomach.
With every strap I sewed, I wished ill upon the wearer. I knew the other men in the factory felt the same, even if we didn’t dare say so aloud. There were two dozen of us in Sala’s factory, all young men, split roughly into three teams. The men at the tables behind us cut the leather into shape, then Chaim and I and a half a dozen other young men sewed the ends of one of the pieces into loops. Farther down the line, a team of eight punched holes and attached buckles and pins. Sala checked every single piece for quality before it shipped out.
Several hours passed as Chaim and I worked in silence. After more than a year in the factory, I no longer felt an ache in my back as I bent over the machine, and my hands were rough with calluses in all of the right places, so I could fall into a comfortable numbness and let my thoughts wander as I worked. It seemed like too much of a jump to move from finally learning Chaim’s real name to asking if he had heard any reliable intelligence about what might be coming for the ghetto’s residents, and so I decided I would leave it at the greeting for that day. Even so, when I shuffled into the cafeteria room at lunchtime, Chaim followed me and sat beside me. I nodded once to acknowledge him and then went back to my oatmeal.
When I left the factory that day, I checked my pocket for the soap, then began to walk toward the street vendor on Zamenhofa Street. I was so lost in thought it took me some time to notice the footsteps falling in time with my own. I glanced down at the worn boots beside me and realized it was Chaim. He seemed amused that I finally noticed him.
“What is it you need?” he asked me, and at my blank look, he gave me a patient smile. Chaim was a few inches shorter than me, but he had the kind of broad shoulders that suggested that, in better times, he might have been solid and muscular. His jet-black hair was always messy and seemed perpetually in need of a trim. My hair would no doubt have been in the same state but for my mother’s determination that I keep it neat. I wondered if his parents were still alive.
“Something on the black market?” Chaim prompted. “Help with a problem? Or do you just need information?”
“I’ve been rude to you for over a year, and this is how you start a conversation with me?”
“You didn’t finally acknowledge me out of the goodness of your heart. There are only three things people talk about now: the good old days, the utter wasteland of our current existence or the rare person...my favorite kind of person...” He paused, then gave me a quiet smile. “Ah, now this rare fellow wants to talk about the future. I know you aren’t living in the past, because if you were, you’d be more cheerful.” I grunted in agreement. It was fair to say I wasn’t known for my sunny demeanor. “And I have a feeling you are also not the kind of person who is entirely consumed by our current reality, because those people complain much more than you do. That leads me to conclude that you tried to talk to me because you either need help and you have run out of other options, or you’ve heard the rumors that changes are coming and you want to know which version of this gossip is correct. Am I right?”
“Even if there were changes coming,” I repeated, cautiously, “none of us would know what they were.”
“Some of us do,” he said and shrugged easily.
“What do you know?”
“They will, at some point, deport us to camps.”
“I already heard that rumor,” I muttered.
“It’s not a rumor. It is simply the truth. And once we are there, they will kill us.”
He said this without so much as a hint of emotion.
“My stepfather says that they will not kill us while we provide free labor. He has heard rumors that the Germans have built large factories at Treblinka and that each of us will have a job, plus much better living conditions.”
Chaim barked a harsh laugh.
“Do you want to engage in fairy tales, or would you like me to be honest with you?”
“You know no more than I know. How could you?”
“I can’t tell you how I know, but I can tell you what I know. In January, a man escaped the camp at Chełmno. He saw evidence that prisoners were being executed—hundreds of people at a time. He said it was a highly organized extermination program.”
“How could they possibly kill so many people? Why would they bother to do so? Are we not starving to death quickly enough for them?” I muttered impatiently. I wanted to honor my mother and stepfather’s request to find reliable information, but the very thought that there might be some truth to these rumors made my stomach ache. “No. It’s absurd.”
“What did you want today, Roman?” Chaim asked me. He stopped abruptly, and I realized it was because he needed to turn left, and I had begun to turn right. I looked at him one last time, mentally cataloged him as a fool who traded in fallacies and shook my head. There was no chance I’d pass the details of this conversation back to my family.
It turned out I’d only been interested in hearing a rebuttal to the rumors.
“I think you wanted to know what I knew, and you want to know because you want to save someone. A girlfriend, perhaps, or maybe your family.”
“I told you. I don’t want anything from you.”
“Roman.”
I glanced back at him impatiently.
“When you figure out what it is you want, ask me. I know people.”
I sighed impatiently and continued on my way to the street vendor. There, I traded my miserable slip of soap for some turnip peels and a carrot top for my mother, and on my way home I made sure to avoid that quiet side street where I’d found the bread the night before.
“Good morning, my friend.”
Chaim had begun greeting me this way every morning. He chatted almost incessantly through most workdays and then made a point of walking beside me on that first block after we left the workshop. I was gruff with him, even when I wasn’t openly ignoring him, but he seemed undeterred. Having studiously avoided any kind of attachment to my workmates for so long, I thought I could continue to ignore Chaim’s attempts to befriend me, but three weeks passed, and I’d become bafflingly fond of him.
“Good morning.” I sighed, taking my seat at my machine.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Does anyone sleep well these days?”
“Do you live with your family?”
“Do you ever stop asking questions?” This question slipped out as sharp and flat rather than my usual gently gruff and surly tone. Chaim raised his heavy eyebrows at me. For a moment I thought I’d finally offended him enough for him to abandon his quest to befriend me. I was stunned to feel something like regret and then immediate relief when he chuckled and shook his head.
“Looks like my new friend has woken up on the wrong side of the bed.”
Later that day, as we walked side by side on the first block away from the workshop, I gave in to a sudden impulse.
“Where do you live?” I asked him.
“Twarda Street.”
It was almost as far from my apartment as I could walk within the walls, but I had nothing to trade for food that day and no plans beyond searching trash cans. Besides, Twarda Street was in the Little Ghetto where wealthier families lived, so an even better place for me to search. When we reached the end of the block, I turned left with him instead of right. Chaim didn’t react, and we walked in silence for several blocks before he spoke to me in a murmur.
“My parents are in London. They went to visit my sister just before the invasion. I stayed in Warsaw because I had just started university, and besides, they were only going for a month. My mother didn’t want to go. She was nervous Hitler was going to invade...but my sister had been very ill and she had a new baby, too, and in the end my parents had to choose between guarding me against a possible danger and helping my sister with an existing one. I worry about them, mostly because I received a few letters from Mother early on, and I know the guilt of leaving me behind is eating her from the inside. Even so, I’m glad they aren’t here. I’m happy that they are safe.”
“You talk a lot.”
“And you, my friend, do not talk enough, and I don’t know if you have noticed this, but you are unusually surly.” I frowned at him, and he laughed. “Are you on your own, too?”
“If you are on your own, who were you living with? How have you survived?” I asked, ignoring his question.
“I am one of the lucky ones,” Chaim said easily. “Some of my parents’ friends took me in, and since I am the youngest member of the household, they let me sleep in the bathtub all by myself. I live like a king.”
“And food? Money?”
“I took what I could when they moved us here. And I’m resourceful. I make do.”
“What you said about Chełmno,” I blurted, “is it true? Do you know any more?”
“Everything I told you is true.”
“This isn’t the first time my stepfather has heard rumors.”
“I’ve also heard rumors that come to nothing so I understand why you are skeptical. But I’m certain of this information. I have mutual friends with the man who escaped Chełmno. It’s true that what I’ve heard is secondhand, but it is only secondhand, and I trust the man who shared it with me.” He dropped his voice. “If what you’re really asking is what we do about all of this, I can help.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Don’t you want to fight?”
“Of course I do,” I said and abruptly stopped walking. Chaim turned back to face me, eyebrows high. “But I also have to protect the most important thing—the one thing I have left.”
“Your family,” he surmised.
“Exactly.”
“I respect that,” he said easily, then he motioned to the sidewalk and began walking again, as if I hadn’t just refused to take the bait he’d dangled in front of me. “Come on, friend, keep up. If I’d known you were as slow at walking as you are at sewing, I’d never have allowed you to walk me home.”