Mordechai Anielewicz stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the building on Lutomierska Street. “I can deal with my enemies,” he said. “The Nazis and Lizards are not a problem, not like that. My friends, now-” He rolled his eyes in theatrical despair.“Vay iz mir!”
Bertha Fleishman laughed. She was a year or two older then Mordechai, and normally so colorless that the Jewish resistance of Lodz often used her to pick up information: you had trouble noticing she was there. But her laugh stood out. She had a good laugh, one that invited everybody around to share the joke.
Now she said, “Actually, we’ve done pretty well, all things considered. The Lizards haven’t been able to get much through Lodz to throw at the Nazis.” She paused. “Of course, not everyone would say this is a good thing.”
“I know.” Anielewicz grimaced. “I don’t say it’s a good thing myself. This is even worse than being caught between the Nazis and the Russians. Whoever wins,we lose.”
“The Germans are living up to their promise not to attack Lodz so long as we keep the Lizards from mounting any moves from here,” Bertha said. “They haven’t thrown any of their rocket bombs at us lately, either.”
“For which God be thanked,” Anielewicz said. Before the war, he’d been a secular man. That hadn’t mattered to the Nazis, who’d dumped him into the Warsaw ghetto all the same. What he’d seen there, what he’d seen since, had left him convinced he couldn’t live without God after all. What would have been ironic in 1938 came out sincere today.
“We’re useful to them at the moment.” Bertha Fleishman’s mouth turned down. “Even that’s progress. Before, we were working in their factories, making all kinds of things for them, and they slaughtered us anyhow.”
“I know.” Mordechai kicked at the paving stones. “I wonder if they tried out their poison gas on Jews before they started using it against the Lizards.” He didn’t want to think about that. If he let himself brood on it, he’d wonder why he was helping Hitler, Himmler, and their henchmen against the Lizards. Then he’d take a look at Bunim and the other Lizard officials in Lodz and be sure he couldn’t help them beat the Germans and, in so doing, subject all of mankind.
“It isn’t fair,” Bertha said. “Has anyone since the world began ever been in such a predicament?”
“We’re the Chosen People,” Anielewicz answered with a shrug. “If you think I’d be just as glad if we hadn’t been chosen for this, though, you’re right.”
“Speaking of which, aren’t the Lizards supposed to be moving a convoy of lorries through town in about half an hour?” Bertha asked. Since she was the one who’d come up with that bit of intelligence, the question was rhetorical. She smiled. “Shall we go watch the fun?”
The convoy was supposed to head north up Franciszkanska Street, to bring reinforcements to the Lizards who were trying to cut the base off one of the German prongs advancing to either side of Lodz. The Lizards had not had much luck with their counter-movements. What they would do when they figured out why would be interesting-and likely unpleasant.
Jews and Poles stood on the corner of Inflancka and Franciszkanska and in the streets themselves, chatting, chaffering, and carrying on their business as they would have on any other day. It was a scene that might almost have come from the time before the war, save that so many of the men-and a few of the women-had rifles on their backs or in their hands. Cheating, these days, was liable to meet with swift and summary punishment.
About fifteen minutes before the convoy was due to come through, human policemen, some Jews, some Poles, began trying to clear the street. Anielewicz watched them-especially the Jews-with undisguised loathing. The Jewish police-thugs would have been a better word for them-owed allegiance to Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who had been Eldest of the Jews when the Lodz ghetto was in Nazi hands and still ran it for the Lizards. They still wore the long coats, shiny-brimmed caps, and red-white-and-black rank armbands the Germans had given them, too. Maybe it made them feel important. It made everyone else despise them.
They didn’t have much luck with their street clearing, either. They were armed with nothing better than truncheons. That had been intimidating back in the days when the Nazis held Lodz. It did not do much, though, to shift men with rifles. Anielewicz knew the Jewish police had been screaming at the Lizards for guns of their own. What had been in place before the Lizards arrived, though, seemed to be like the Torah to them: not to be changed or interfered with by mere mortals. The police remained without firearms.
An old Jewish man driving a horse-drawn wagon that carried tables stacked four and five high tried to cross Franciszkanska on Inflancka just as a Polish lorry-driver rumbled down Franciszkanska with a load of empty tin milk cans. The Pole tried to slow down, but seemed to be having trouble with his brakes. His lorry crashed into the old Jew’s wagon.
The racket that immediately followed the collision was louder than the crash itself. The rear gate of the lorry hadn’t been well secured, so milk cans clattered down onto the pavement and started rolling away. As best Mordechai could see, the load of tables hadn’t been secured at all. They landed in the street, too. Some of them broke, some didn’t.
By what looked like a miracle, the wagon driver hadn’t been hurt. Surprisingly agile for an old man, he jumped down from his beast and ran up to the driver’s side of the lorry, screaming abuse in Yiddish.
“Shut up, you damned kike!” the Pole answered in his own language. “Stinking old Christ-killer, you’ve got your nerve, yelling at me.”
“I’d yell at your father, except even your mother doesn’t know who he is,” the Jew retorted.
The Polish lorry-driver jumped out of the cab and grabbed the Jew. In a moment, they were wrestling on the ground. Jews and Poles both ran toward the altercation. Here and there, some of them bumped into one another and started fresh trouble.
Policemen-Jews and Poles-blew furiously on whistles and waded into the crowd, trying to clear it. Some of them got drawn into fistfights, too. Mordechai Anielewicz and Bertha Fleishman watched the unfolding chaos with eyebrows raised high.
Into the chaos came the Lizards’ motor convoy. Some of their lorries were of their own manufacture, others human products they’d appropriated. A Lizard lorry horn made a noise that reminded Mordechai of what you’d get if you dropped a bucket of water onto a red-hot iron plate. When you added in the klaxons from the Opels and other human-made lorries, the din became truly dreadful.
No one in the street paid the least attention to it. As far as the Jews and Poles were concerned, the impatient Lizards might have been back on the far side of the moon, or wherever it was they came from. “What a pity,” Mordechai said. “It looks like the Lizards are going to be delayed.”
“That’s terrible,” Bertha said in the same solemn tones he’d used. Without warning, both of them started to laugh. In a low voice, Bertha went on, “This worked out even better than we thought it would.”
“So it did,” Anielewicz agreed. “Yitzkhak and Boleslaw both deserve those statues the Americans give their best cinema actors every year.”
Bertha Fleishman’s brown eyes twinkled. “No, they couldn’t have played that much better if they’d rehearsed it for years, could they? The rest of our people-and also theArmija Krajowamen,” she admitted, “are doing nicely, too.”
“Good thing most of the people at this corner really do belong to us or the Polish Home Army,” Mordechai said. “Otherwise we’d have a real riot on our hands, not a scripted one.”
“I am glad no one’s decided to pull a rifle off his back and use it,” Bertha said. “Not everybody here knows we’re playing a game.”
“That’s true,” Anielewicz said. “The police don’t, and the Lizard lorry drivers don’t, either.” He pointed back to the rear of the long, stalled column of motor vehicles. “Oh, look. Some of them look like they’re trying to turn around and use a different route to get out of town.”