So they kept walking, outwardly as calm as if nothing unusual were happening. By the time they got to the market, four Lizards trailed them and two more walked ahead; with their swiveling eyes, the aliens could keep watch without constantly turning their heads back over their shoulders.
Gesia Street, as usual, boiled with life. Hawkers loudly peddled tea, coffee, and hot water laced with saccharine from samovars, turnips from pushcarts. A man with a pistol stood guard over a crate of coal. Another sat behind a table on which he had set out spare parts for bicycles. A woman displayed bream from the Vistula. The weather was cold enough to keep the fish fresh till spring.
Several stands sold captured German and Russian military clothing. More German gear was available, but the Red Army equipment brought higher prices-the Russians knew how to fight cold. Rivka had bought her hat at one of these stands. Now, Moishe saw, even Lizards crowded around them. That made him abruptly move away.
“Where are we going?” Rivka asked when he swerved.
“I don’t exactly know,” he said. “We’ll just wander about and see what there is to see.” Wander about and let Anielewicz’s men see us, he thought.
As if from a distant dream, he remembered the days before the war, when he could walk into any. tailor’s or grocer’s or butcher’s in Warsaw, find what he wanted, and be sure he had the zlotys to buy it. Compared to those days, the market on Gesia Street was privation personified. Compared to what the ghetto market had been like when the Nazis ruled Warsaw, it seemed cigar-smoking Wall Street capitalist affluence.
People surged this way and that, buying and bartering, trading bread for books, marks for meat, vodka for vegetables. The Lizards who were watching Russie and his family had to get closer to make sure their quarry did not somehow vanish in the crowds. Even then, they had no easy time because they couldn’t even see over or through the taller humans who kept stepping between them and the Russies.
Moishe suddenly found himself in the middle of a large knot of large men. By main force of will, he made himself keep his face straight-a lot of them came from the ranks of Mordechai Anielewicz’s fighters. Whatever happened would happen now.
One of Anielewicz’s men bent down, muttered something in Rivka’s ear. She nodded, squeezed Moishe’s hand hard, then let go. He heard her say, “Come on, Reuven.” A couple of burly fighters shouldered themselves between him and his wife and son. He looked away, biting the inside of his lip and fighting back tears.
A few seconds later, a hand joined his again. He spun round, half afraid something was wrong, half delighted he wouldn’t have to be separated from Rivka and Reuven after all. But the young woman whose fingers interlaced with his, though a fair skinned, gray-eyed brunette who wore Rivka’s hat, was not his wife. Nor was the boy beside her his son.
“We’ll wander around the marketplace a few more minutes, then go back to your flat,” she said quietly.
Russie nodded. This impostor’s coat was much like his wife’s, the hat was hers. He didn’t think the ploy would have fooled, say, SS men, but to the Lizards, one human looked much like another. They might well have recognized Rivka by her hat rather than her features-that obviously was Anielewicz’s gamble, at any rate.
Russie’s first urge was to crane his neck to see where the fighters were taking his family. He fought it down. Then he really realized he was holding the hand of a woman not his wife. He jerked away as if she’d suddenly become red-hot. He would have been even more mortified if she’d laughed at him. To his relief, she just nodded in sympathetic understanding.
But his relief did not last long. “Could we leave now?” he asked. “It’s not only the Lizards, and it’s not that I’m not grateful, but people will see us together and wonder what on earth we’re doing. Or rather, they won’t wonder-they’ll decide they know.”
“Yes, that is one of the things that can go wrong,” the woman agreed, as coolly as if she were one of Anielewicz’s rifle-toting fighters herself. “But this was the best way we could come up with to make the switch on short notice.”
We? Russie thought She is a fighter, then, regardless of whether she carries a gun. So is the boy. He said, “What’s your name? How can I thank you properly if I don’t know who you are?”
She smiled. “I’m Leah. And this is David.”
“Hello, David,” Russie said. David nodded back, as soberly as any adult might have. Moishe felt a stab of guilt at using a child to protect himself.
A short woman with curly gray hair pushed her way between the fighters around him. “Reb Moishe, I need to ask you-” she began. Her words trailed away as she noticed Leah was not Rivka. She backed off, her eyes as wide and staring as if Russie had sprouted a second head.
“That’s torn it,” Leah muttered. “You’re right, Reb Moishe we’d better go. I’m sorry for the damage I’m doing to your reputation.”
“If I have to choose between my reputation and my family, I know which is more important,” Russie said firmly, adding, “Besides, the way we gossip here, before long everyone will know why I’m playing this game.” He spoke for Leah’s benefit, but also eased his own mind because he realized he was probably right.
For the moment, though, what would spread was scandal. Before people started gathering around and pointing fingers, he and Leah and David left the market and strolled, not too fast and not too slow, back toward his home. The Lizard guards moving along in front and behind them were in a way a blessing, because they kept most folk from coming too close and puncturing the masquerade.
Russie’s conscience twinged again when he closed the door to his flat behind him. Bringing a woman-a young, attractive woman-here… shameful was the mildest word he thought of. But Leah remained utterly prosaic. She took off the fur hat, handed it back to him, smiled without saying anything: she must have been warned the Lizards might be listening. She pointed to the hat, then to herself, and shrugged as if to ask how anyone, even a Lizard, could imagine she was Rivka if she didn’t have it on her head. Then she walked out the door and was gone.
The simplicity of the escape took Moishe’s breath away. The Lizards hadn’t posted guards right outside the flat, only at the entrance to the building. Maybe they didn’t want to act as if they were intimidating him, even though they were. Or maybe, as Anielewicz had said, they were just naive about how tricky human beings could be. Whichever was true, Leah, now that she was no longer disguised as Rivka, plainly intended to stroll right past them and off to freedom.
The boy David sat on the floor and played with Reuven’s toys for a little while. Then he got up and stood by the door. Moishe opened it for him. He nodded again with that surprising gravity, then went out into the hall. Russie closed the door.
The flat seemed achingly huge and achingly empty now that he was here alone. He walked into the bedroom, shook his head, came out again in a hurry. Then he went into the kitchen and shook his head for a different reason-he was no cook, and now he’d have to feed himself for a while. He found some black bread and a slab of cheese on the counter. He picked a knife from the dairy service, made himself a sandwich. if he wanted anything fancier than that, he’d need to get someone else to fix it for him.
Of course, the Lizards might fix things so he wouldn’t have to worry about food any more. He tried not to dwell on that. He went back into the main room, pulled out an old medical text on diseases of the large intestine. His eyes went back and forth, he turned pages, but he remembered nothing of what he read.
He slept badly that night. Rivka’s bed next to his, Reuven’s little cot, painfully reminded him his loved ones were not here. He was used to soft breathing and occasional snores in the bedroom with him. The silence their absence imposed on him somehow was more disturbing than a dreadful racket; he felt smothered in thick wool batting.