Tilting the Balance

But when Russie tugged at the brim of his hat in salute, the Order Service man returned the gesture and kept on walking. Emboldened, Russie turned and called after him: “How are the potatoes today?”

The policeman stopped. “They’re not wonderful, but I’ve seen worse,” he answered. Pausing to spit in the gutter, he added, “We all saw worse last year.”

“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Russie said. He headed on down to the market while the Order Service man resumed his beat.

More policemen roamed the Balut Market square, to keep down thievery, maintain order-and cadge what they could. Like the underofficer, they still wore the emblems of rank they’d got from the Nazis.

That helped make Lodz feel haunted to Russie. In Warsaw the Judenrat-the Jewish council that had administered the ghetto under German authority-collapsed even before the Lizards drove out the Nazis. Its police force had fallen with it. Jewish fighters, not the hated and discredited police, kept order there now. The same held true in most Polish towns.

Not in Lodz. Here, the walls of the buildings that fronted the market square were plastered with posters of balding, white-haired Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski. Rumkowski had been Eldest-puppet ruler-of Lodz’s Jews under the Nazis. Somehow, he was still Eldest of the Jews under the Lizards.

Russie wondered how he’d managed that. He must have jumped from the departing train to the arriving one at just the right instant. In Warsaw, there were stories that he’d collaborated with the Nazis. Russie had asked no questions of that sort since he got into Lodz. He didn’t want to draw Rumkowski’s attention toward him and his family. For all he knew, the Eldest would turn him over to Zolraag, the local Lizard governor.

He got into line for potatoes. The lines moved fast; the Order Service men saw to that. They were fierce and fussy at the same time, a manner they must have learned from the Germans. Some of them still wore German-style jackboots, too. As with the ghetto stars on their armbands, the boots raised Russie’s hackles.

When he reached the front of the line, such worries fell away. Food was more important. He held out a burlap bag and said, “Ten kilos of potatoes, please.”

The man behind the table took the bag, filled it from a bin, plopped it onto a scale. He’d had endless practice; it weighed ten kilos on the dot. He didn’t hand it back to Russie. Instead, he asked, “How are you going to pay? Lizard coupons, marks, zlotys, Rumkies?”

“Rumkies.” Russie pulled a wad of them out of his pocket. The fighter who’d driven him into Lodz had given him what seemed like enough to stuff a mattress. He’d imagined himself rich until he discovered that the Lodz ghetto currency was almost worthless.

The potato seller made a sour face. “If it’s Rumkies, you owe me 450.” The potatoes would have cost only a third as many Polish zlotys, the next weakest currency.

Russie started peeling off dark blue twenty-mark notes and blue-green tens, each printed with a Star of David in the upper left-hand corner and a cross-hatching of background lines that spiderwebbed the bills with more Magen Davids. Each note bore Rumkowski’s signature, which gave the money its sardonic nickname.

The potato seller made his own count after Moishe gave him the bills. Even though it came out right, he still looked unhappy. “Next time you come, bring real money,” he advised. “I don’t think we’re going to take Rumkies a whole lot longer.”

“But-” Russie waved to the ubiquitous portraits of the Jewish Eldest.

“He can do what he wants in here,” the potato seller said. “But he can’t make anybody outside think Rumkies are good for anything but wiping your behind.” The merchant’s shrug was eloquent.

Russie started back to his flat with the potatoes. It was on the corner of Zgierska and Lekarska, just a couple of blocks from the barbed wire that had sealed off the ghetto of Lodz-Litzmannstad, the Nazis had renamed it when they annexed western Poland to the Reich-from the rest of the city.

Much of the barbed wire remained in place, though paths had been cut through it here and there. In Warsaw, Lizard bombs had knocked down the wall the Germans made. Of course, that barrier had looked like a fortification and most of this one didn’t. But something else went on here, too. The potato seller had said that Rumkowski could do what he wanted inside the ghetto. He’d meant it scornfully, but Moishe thought his words held a truth he hadn’t intended. He had the feeling Rumkowski liked being a big fish, no matter how small his pond was.

At least there were enough potatoes to go around these days. The Lodz ghetto had been as hungry as Warsaw’s, maybe hungrier. The Jews inside remained gaunt and ragged, especially compared to the Poles and Germans who made up the rest of the townsfolk. They weren’t actively starving any more, though. From where they’d been a year before, that wasn’t just progress. It felt like a miracle.