15

The Germans have now offered free bread and marmalade to everyone who volunteers themselves for resettlement. The congregation point is known as the Umschlagplatz. In bed at night Ala sometimes sees vivid unknown faces in her mind before sleep arrives. They look at her with knowing eyes. It unnerves her that she doesn’t share their recognition. There’s something malevolent about the way they look at her. And it’s as if they are waiting for her. Waiting, she has come to think, for her too to be taken to the Umschlagplatz.

Henryk returns every evening with stories of what happens at the railway siding. This evening he has a more urgent tale to tell.

“How long would you imagine it would take a train packed with miserable Jews to get to the Ukraine? At least three days? Well, one of our workers jotted down the serial numbers of some of the carriages today. And guess what? Those same carriages were back in Warsaw later the same day. Those Jews aren’t being resettled in the Ukraine. They’re being taken on a three-hour journey, which means they aren’t even leaving Poland.”

Ala hates being cooped up at home all day. She is frequently at loggerheads with her mother. Her mother, she senses, often gets angry without knowing why she is angry. Ala sometimes takes refuge on the roof. She is here, drying her hair and reading The Trojan Women, when she hears the singing of children. She jumps up from the deckchair, walks over to the edge of the roof and looks down at the long orderly column of children, all holding hands, all carrying bundles. They are escorted by a cordon of Jewish policemen. She knows these are the children from the orphanage where Luba and Henryk now live. Adrenalin surges into her chest and limbs. She charges down the stairs in her bare feet, her hair still wet.

She runs past Dr Korczak who is leading the singing from the rear of the processional column. Luba is frightened when Ala grabs her arm. Ala realises there must be a wild desperate look on her face.

“You and Henryk must come with me,” she says, composing herself. She has pulled Luba, Henryk and a girl in a blue pinafore with pigtails who is holding Henryk’s hand out of the orderly marching lines.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The Jewish policeman fingers his truncheon.

“These two children have to come with me,” she says, still gripping Luba’s small hand.

“Says who?”

“They are my brother’s children.”

“What have you got in exchange?” he says, looking her up and down.

She looks down for her eighteenth birthday present ring but realises she isn’t wearing it. She took it off when she washed her hair. “I’ve got nothing on me, but I live over there and I can get you some money.”

The rear of the singing column has now marched past them. “Too late,” he says.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” she says, succumbing to a blast of hatred for this man.

“Right, you can join them,” he says, grabbing her wrist.

She tries to free herself from his grip. “My father works for the Judenrat,” she tells him in desperation.

“Good for him. You can explain that to the Germans in the Umschlagplatz.”