12

Towards ten in the evening Max joins the large throng of Jews out on the streets. There is an air of bewildered celebration. In the fidgeting light spawned by the fires inside buildings caused by the German artillery attack, faces, many smeared with dirt and soot, possess a feverish excitement. Everyone is talking at once and hugging each other. A Jewish flag has been mounted on top of a building in Muranowski Square. The Jews have control of the ghetto, at least for one night.

He walks past a woman sitting in a doorway. She is talking to herself, reminding him of Sabina’s aunt. It occurs to him that he never knew what happened to Elsa. She vanished the day Sabina was shot and Ora was deported. He remembers the one and only moment he felt seen by Elsa. Sabina emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in a wet towel and he takes her in his arms and waltzes her into the living room where Elsa eventually tears herself away from the looking glass and smiles at him.

For a moment there is nothing much for Max to celebrate out on these burning streets.

Then he sees Ala skipping towards him. She throws her arms around him. She is holding a pistol. The cold metal touches his neck.

“Isn’t it amazing? We stood up to them. Don’t you feel proud?”

“I was hoping you’d be outside the ghetto,” he says. He is heartened he still recognises the young girl in Ala; that she hasn’t been too brutalised by the apocalyptic world in which they live.

“I’m a member of ZOB now,” she says, holding up her gun.

“I’m with ZZW. The fascists,” he says, smiling. “And I’ve got one of those too,” he says, producing his pistol. “Who would ever have thought that one day we’d be comparing guns.”

“Yours is filthy,” says Ala, smiling. “You need to clean it. Otherwise it won’t go off. Do you want me to show you how? I know as much about guns now as toe shoes.”

Max has this obsessive notion that the two bullets in his pistol are for the SS officer who murdered Sabina. He has a premonition they will cross paths again. And he is saving the two bullets for this moment.

“They say more than a hundred Germans were killed today.”

“More than five hundred,” laughs Ala. “The exaggerations going round will mean the entire German army is dead before the night is over. Every Jewish boy claims to have killed at least five. But it doesn’t matter how many Germans we kill. There will always be more. It’s the fact of fighting back that matters.”

“I wish you’d get out of the ghetto, Ala. They’ll be back tomorrow and with better tactics.”

“Maybe the Polish Home Army will help us now. Maybe what happened today will give them courage to stage a revolt of their own. If the whole of Warsaw rose up now…”

They are standing beside a building hollowed out by a shell and lit from within by a simmering fire. Sparks gust through the smoky air and rise to dance among the stars. It strikes Max that the blackened skeletal landscape is the perfect evocation of a world of unanswered prayers.

Later Henryk appears. He too is carrying a gun. Max watches him and Ala hug. He finds himself remembering once squirting the pair of them as children with a hose-pipe in a garden. Their joy appearing almost too big for their small half naked bodies.

“I killed at least three of the bastards,” says Henryk.

Ala exchanges an amused look with Max.

“One for Mum, one for Dad and one for Lily. We mowed down the bastards with our two machine guns. And it was our fighters who raised the flag. Two children. They both died doing it. But listen, we’ve got a tunnel through to the Aryan side. Unlike your lot, we’ve got an exit strategy. Why don’t you go over to the Aryan side? I’m sure Sophie would take you in. Tell her, Max.”

Before Max can say anything, Clara is hugging and kissing him. He’s embarrassed by the implied proprietorship of her greeting. Of his awareness of the crush and warmth of her breasts against his chest. It pains him that Ala and Henryk might think he has already replaced Sabina. And with a girl young enough to be his daughter. And then baffles him that concerns of propriety still exist in his world.