The Warsaw Anagrams

What did it mean to be nine years old and trapped on our forgotten island? A clue: Adam would wake with a start over our first weeks together, catapulted from night-terrors, and lean over me to reach for the glass of water I kept on my side table. Stirred by his wriggling, I’d lift the rim to his lips, but at first I resented his intrusions into my sleep. It was only after nearly a month together that I began to treasure the squirming feel of him and his breathless gulps, and how, on lying back down, he’d pull my arm around him. The gentle rise and fall of his slender chest would make me think of all I still had to be grateful for.

Lying in bed with my grandnephew, I used to force myself to stay awake because it didn’t seem fair how such a simple act as drawing in air could keep the boy in our world, and I needed to watch him closely, to lay my hand over his skullcap of blond hair and press my protection into him. I wanted staying alive to involve a much more complex process. For him – and for me, too. Then dying would be so much harder for us both.

Nearly all of my books were gone from the wooden shelves I’d built – burned for heating, no doubt. But Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and some of my other psychiatry texts were still there. Whoever was living here now had likely discovered that most of them were first editions and might fetch a good price outside the ghetto.

I spotted the German medical treatise into which I’d slipped two emergency matzos, but I made no attempt to retrieve them; although hunger still clawed at my belly, I no longer needed sustenance of that kind.

Eager for the comfort of a far-off horizon, I took the apartment-house stairs up to the roof and stepped gingerly on to the wooden platform the Tarnowskis – our neighbours – had built for stargazing. Around me, the city rose in fairytale spires, turrets and domes – a child’s fantasy come to life. As I turned in a circle, tenderness surged through me. Can one caress a city? To be the Vistula River and embrace Warsaw must be its own reward at times.

And yet Stefa’s neighbourhood seemed more dismal than I remembered it – the tenements further mired in shaggy decay and filth despite all our wire and glue.

A voice cut the air with a raucous shout, dispelling my daydreams. Across the street, leaning out a fourth-floor window, a shrivelled man in a tattered coat was waving at me frantically. His temples were sunken and his stubble was white.

‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘You there, you’re going to fall and break your neck!’

I saw a reflection of myself in his shrunken shoulders and panicked gaze. I held up my hand to have him wait where he was, clambered off the roof and down the stairs, then padded across the street.

Up in his apartment, the man recognized that I wasn’t like him right away. He opened his bloodshot eyes wide with astonishment and took a step back. ‘Hello there,’ he said warily.

‘So… so you can really see me?’ I stammered.

His face relaxed. ‘Absolutely. Though your edges…’ He jiggled his hand and tilted his head critically. ‘They’re not so good – a bit indistinct.’

‘And aren’t you scared of me?’ I asked.

‘Nah, I’ve had visions before. And besides, you speak Yiddish. Why would a Jewish ibbur do me any harm?’

‘An ibbur?’

‘A being like you – who’s come back from beyond the edge of the world.’

He had a poetic way with words, which pleased me. I smiled with relief; he could really see and hear me. And it eased my worries to have a name for what I was.

‘I’m Heniek Corben,’ he told me.

‘Erik Benjamin Cohen,’ I replied, introducing myself as I had as a schoolboy.

‘Are you from Warsaw?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I grew up near the centre of town, on Bednarska Street.’

Puckering his lips comically, he gave a low whistle. ‘Nice neighbourhood!’ he enthused, but when he flashed a grin I saw that his mouth was a ruin of rotted teeth.

Interpreting my grimace as a sign of physical pain, he came closer. ‘Sit, sit, Reb Yid,’ he told me in a concerned voice, pulling out a chair for me at his kitchen table.

Formality seemed a little absurd after all that we Jews had suffered. ‘Please just call me Erik,’ I told him.

I lowered myself in slow motion, fearing that I’d fail to find a solid seat, but the wood of his chair welcomed my bony bottom generously – proof that I was getting the knack of this new life.

Heniek looked me up and down, and his expression grew serious.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘You faded away for a moment. I think maybe-’ Ending his sentence abruptly, he held his gnarled hand above my head and blessed me in Hebrew. ‘With any luck, that should do the trick,’ he told me cheerfully.

Realizing he was probably religious, I said, ‘I haven’t seen any sign of God, or anything resembling an angel or demon. No ghosts, no ghouls, no vampires – nothing.’ I didn’t want him to think I could answer any of his metaphysical questions.

He waved off my concern. ‘So what can I get you? How about some nettle tea?’