After I promised her the rest of her payment the next day, Mrs Rackemann handed me a pen for the last detail. I signed my new name with the decisive flourishes I’d practised – a vow of revenge turned to ink.
Having had hundreds of Christian acquaintances before being forced into the ghetto, I’d decided that a change of appearance was in order before I ventured into the Other Side; after all, if someone recognized me and denounced me, I’d be executed on the spot. So before going home, I bought hair dye at a beauty parlour on Nalewki Street.
The homemade concoction turned into a frothy, milky-brown cream when I mixed it with water, and it tickled my scalp. I had my doubts about its effectiveness, but when I washed it off, my hair was black and shiny. The contrast with my ghostly skin and deep wrinkles made me look like an aged flamenco dancer clinging desperately to youth. My eyes seemed smaller, too, as if the
Taking off my clothes and sitting close to my heater, I sponged off weeks of grime as best I could with our mushy ghetto soap. Then I shaved carefully, and dabbed my chin and cheeks with Stefa’s rosewater perfume.
I dressed in my chestnut-brown woollen suit, which I hadn’t worn since the day I’d moved into Stefa’s apartment, but the heavy fabric sagged clownishly off my shrunken shoulders, so I put on a jumper underneath. I didn’t wear my overcoat because it looked like a rag. Better to freeze than risk ruining my disguise.
As a last touch, I went to see Izzy to borrow his Borsalino. He’d recently moved his old army cot into his workshop because three newly arrived cousins of his were living in his apartment and he was feeling cornered.
On opening his door to me, he grimaced. ‘
‘I needed a new identity,’ I explained, stepping inside.
‘And it involves putting a dead crow on your head?’
‘I’m a zookeeper in a Yiddish farce,’ I quipped.
‘They keep typecasting you!’ he observed gleefully; even in grief – especially then – Izzy thrived on repartee.
‘Tell me the truth – could I pass for the
He sized me up, having to choose between humour and honesty. ‘That depends on which
‘Never mind that. I’ll need your Borsalino. Where is it?’
‘So you’re trying for the romantic lead, after all?’ A lecherous spark went off in his eyes.
‘Listen, if I don’t come back, take any clothing of mine you want. And take my books.’
‘If you’re up to something dangerous, I want to know what it is.’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Tell me the condensed version or you can forget my help.’
After I told him about Anna, and showed him my Interior Ministry papers, he made clicking noises with his tongue – Izzy’s code for a risky adventure – then slipped into the stationery warehouse behind his workshop to fetch his Borsalino. I needed to pee and went to the lavatory, which was a tin bucket hidden behind a folding screen. Hanging from the ceiling were paper arrows pointing towards Moscow, New York, Rio de Janeiro and the North Pole. A bigger one, facing southwest, read:
Back in his workroom, he handed me his hat. He already had his muffler on and was buttoning his coat.
‘So, what’s your problem, Dr Freud?’ he asked when he was done, lifting those furry eyebrows of his; I must have been showing him a puzzled look.
‘Nothing,’ I replied; by then, I’d realized that having him join me was the real reason I’d come over.
‘Watch this!’ he said, and he pulled a white silk handkerchief from out of nowhere – a trick from his days of performing magic shows aboard the
‘What’s that for?’ I asked.
Folding it in a square, he put it in my breast pocket. ‘Now you look a man not to be taken lightly!’ he observed triumphantly.
‘Or maybe just a well-dressed zookeeper,’ I retorted.
Rabe hadn’t yet arrived at 1 Leszno Street. We paid our ten złoty to a teenage guard wearing diving goggles; the cellar had recently become a rickshaw assembly plant and he doubled as a welder. About twenty men and boys – bare-chested and dripping with sweat – were hammering bicycle wheels, filing fenders, patching tyres… Izzy and I headed past them to the back, as we’d been instructed. The smell of burnt rubber and axel grease packed my nose. We climbed up a set of stairs to a scarred wooden door.
‘Could it be this simple?’ he asked.
I turned the brass handle and pushed open the door. We were in a dimly lit hallway. The guard we’d been told about had a grim moustache and dull eyes. He was eating an apple. Looking us up and down, he said in a gruff Polish, ‘Take off your Jewish armbands.’
