Read Online The Woman from Hamburg by Hanna Krall - Free Book Online Page B

was “Catch the Jew.” The “Jew” was chosen by counting out one-potato, two-potato; the “Jew” ran away, and everyone chased him. When he was caught, he’d be asked: “Are you Jude? Did you kill Christ? Bing bang!”
    Two Germans stopped Tomek in the meadow. He was walking with Stefan Akerman, the saddler, who was in hiding in Ostrzyca. One of the Germans blocked them with his bicycle. “Jude?” The boys who guarded the cows and Kasia Turoń were sitting nearby.
    “Mr. German,” Kasia shrieked, “that’s our lad.”
    “And this one?”
    Kasia didn’t know Akerman.
    “Mr. German, don’t you know what to do? Drop his pants and bing bang.”
    Akerman dropped his pants. The German removed his rifle and held it out to the children. “Who wants to make bing bang?”
    The children were silent.
    “Do you want to make bing bang?”
    The German held out his rifle to Kasia. She shook her head. The other German took Akerman away into the woods. They heard a shot. That German came back, then both of them got on their bicycles and rode away. At night, Akerman came to see Tomek. The German had given him a cigarette, fired into the air, and told him to walk away.
    In the morning, in the meadow, Kasia said, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
    She was pretty. Maybe not as pretty as Małka Lerner, but she had blue eyes to make up for it.
    “Tomek, will you come to our drying shed? As soon as it gets dark. You’ll read to me.”
    He expressed surprise. “I can’t read in the dark.”
    “You can, you can,” said Kasia.
    He couldn’t read, so they lay down on a pile of tobacco. It smelled lovely. Kasia still felt bad because of Akerman, so Tomek consoled her. Then he felt bad, and Kasia consoled him. Then she screamed, “Tomek, you’re a Jew!”
    He jumped up and fastened his trousers.
    “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” she whispered hastily.
    She told her brother Andrzej. He started giving Tomek Polish lessons.
    “We don’t say ‘Ojej, what’s haaa-pening?’; we don’t draw out our vowels, and no ‘ojej.’ ”
    Andrzej Turoń belonged to the Armia Ludowa, the communist People’s Army. After the war he joined the militia. Two AL partisans in Mchy joined the militia—Turoń and Tadzio Petla, the farmer’s nephew. They came home for the first postwar Christmas, both of them in uniform, and someone fired a burst of bullets at each of them. Tadzio was seventeen and Andrzej eighteen. No one knew who shot them, and if someone did know, he’s no longer alive, says Romek, Franciszek Petla’s son. (The youth with the round face, whom Marcin B. took on as his helper, also signed up for the militia and someone fired a round at him.)
    Romek Petla is a leather worker. He lives in the NoweMiasto district in Warsaw. He sits at an old Singer sewing machine and sews the uppers for knee-high boots. Blatt visited him this time, too. They each drained a shot glass and followed it with a bite of something. They reminisced about Mchy, Romek’s deceased father of blessed memory, the Jews, Kasia, and also that postwar girl from Tarzymiechy, a little one, but with what eyes, and also, naturally, the bullet in the jaw.
    “Are you keeping it there?” Romek Petla asked.
    “Yes, I’m keeping it,” said Blatt.
    “And do you remember how I brought you bandages and salve? I got them from the German. For two eggs.”
    Romek Petla placed boot tops with sewn-in linings onto a level pile. The linings were insulated. The boot tops were ugly. For cheap boots, for poor people. Romek Petla said the demand for them keeps growing because there are more and more poor people. But so what, since the boot tops exude boredom. Romek Petla poured out another glass for each of them, but it was of no help for his boredom. On the contrary. For some reason, boredom takes root most eagerly in parts of shoes—in the soles, linings, and uppers.
    “So why do you really hold onto that bullet?” asked Romek Petla.
    “Do you think I know?”