Girl. Alona Frankel
it was marvelous corn silk—long, soft, shiny greenish hair like the hair of the water nymphs my mother told me about when were in the hiding place, the nymph sitting on a rock, combing her hair and seducing sailors. My doll was so wonderful—my dolls, actually, since I had many, because of the pigs.
That was the only conflict I had with my friends the pigs. When I had to leave the pigpen, I hid the doll deep down under the straw in the corner and the nosy pigs would always find it and gobble up the apple head. And again I had to put a new head on my doll. But that wasn’t so bad; there were always enough apples, peas, and straw. My friendship with the pigs was more important. It was their nature to be likable, voracious gluttons.
No friendship developed between me and the cow. The cow was skinny and brown, and she might have had tuberculosis. Maybe Grandpa Seremet, who spit up his lungs, had caught it from her. And maybe I caught it then too, but instead of getting sick and dying quietly, I developed an immunity that later saved my life when I was in the hiding place with my mother and father.
The cow and I were neighbors.
The szlufan, the piece of furniture that was a bench by day and a bed by night, a kind of coffin, was lined with the same straw that lined the cowshed, and the same mice scurried between the cow’s legs and over my body. Then, in the village, I didn’t yet know what wonderful animals mice were. I trained my gray mice, Mysia and Tysia, later on, when I was in the hiding place with my mother and father—until they left us when the Red Army, which saved our lives, began its heavy bombing and volleys of katyushas.
But already then, in the village, I liked the mice. They were my nocturnal friends.
The village mice scurried around in the cow’s straw and in the straw of my coffin. The cow and I had the same smell.
When Grandma Seremet milked the cow, sitting bent over more than usual on a round stool with three fat legs and pulling on the pink udders, the stream of milk would strike the sides of the tin pail and the smell was white, warm, and pure. It spread, filling the air and overcoming all the other smells—the smell of the fleas, the smell of the mice, the stench of urine, excrement, and dung. The smell of the milk blended with other, more pleasant smells, like the aroma of the straw, the green fragrance of clover, or the smell of sawdust. It wasn’t a sad smell like the scent of lilac would be in the future.
Luckily, the hiding place Hania Seremet dumped me into, my parents’ hiding place, had a nice smell, the smell of sawdust. After all, the room was disguised as Juzef Juzak’s carpentry shop.
When Grandma Seremet sat on the stool and milked the cow, unruly hairpins from her sparse bun of hair would drop into the pail, and she would fly into a rage. But when the hairpins didn’t fall out, and she was in a good mood, Grandma Seremet would pour some of the foamy, steaming milk into a small wooden bowl and hand it to me.
The aroma, the taste, the warmth.
Even the ice cream my father bought me from the man with the wagon didn’t taste as wonderful as that milk. That was the first ice cream in my life. It was after Tovarish Stalin and the Red Army liberated us and saved our lives, and my father had to take me from the villa that belonged to the evil, cruel Fishmans because I bothered them. I couldn’t stop crying, and crying was permitted then because they hadn’t killed us and Batiushka Stalin had liberated us. My father took me from the Fishmans’ villa to the orphanage on his way to sell newspapers, while my mother was dying of tuberculosis in the hospital.
I thought that’s how it was in the world.
EVERY NOW AND THEN, HANIA SEREMET CAME TO THE VILLAGE, the strange woman with the white face and the clenched jaw who took me out of the ghetto one damp night when I was walking between my mother and father as plump, squat rats scampered along the walls in the opposite direction.
Hania Seremet would order me to draw on the pieces of paper she brought me. After only drawing in the sand with a stick or on the walls of the pigpen with a lump of coal, I enjoyed drawing on paper with colored pencils.
Once, Hania Seremet brought me a magnificent satin dress in sweet, light pastel colors, washed me, and combed my hair—the lice were hiding close to the roots—and we went to the photography studio in the nearby town. The studio had an unfamiliar smell and it was dark, like the office of the handsome, sad eye doctor would be in the future.
The photographer stood Hania Seremet and me close together. He touched me and arranged my hands in the pose he wanted.
Hania Seremet was wearing a sweater embroidered with tiny flowers. My mother had embroidered those flowers too, just as she had made my magnificent satin dress. She would sew and embroider in the hiding place and Hania Seremet and Rozalia Juzakowa would sell her work in the market so there’d be a little more money to pay them.
The photographer also took pictures of me alone. He told me to sit this way or that and look here or there.
I never saw the dress again. The pictures exist. Like my drawings, they were proof that I was still alive. Hania Seremet gave the proof to my mother and my father, and they gave Hania Seremet money for hiding me in the village. When the money ran out, they sold the gold bridges and crowns that my father so skillfully pulled out of my mother’s mouth with his magical Swiss pocketknife. When there was no more gold left in my mother’s mouth and the search for the treasure left in my father’s villa failed to uncover anything, Hania Seremet dumped me into my parents’ hiding place, even though Juzef Juzak and his wife Rozalia had not agreed to hide them with their daughter, that is, with me.
And so I continued to hide in the hiding place for a long time.
And just as she threw me out, Hania threw out the beautiful little boy, Daniel.
She dumped me at the hiding place. The beautiful little boy, Daniel, she threw out to die.
Daniel, the beautiful Jewish boy Hania Seremet took out of the ghetto, was my age. His favorite animal was the cow, and he always tried to be there at milking time. When Grandma Seremet wasn’t looking, he’d dip his fingers into the tin pail of steaming milk and lick them. The beautiful boy Daniel stayed in the village with me for a very short time. His parents gave Hania Seremet a great deal of money, jewelry, diamonds, and gold to take him out of the ghetto and hide him in the village. They promised to keep on paying her. They even registered their house in Lvov in her name—just as my father registered the villa in Bochnia in her name—so that if the Germans murdered them and Daniel remained alive, he would have someone. The beautiful boy Daniel’s parents were murdered and Daniel was an orphan. There was no one to keep paying for his life. Hania Seremet took him to the ghetto and left him at the entrance gate, and the Germans murdered him there. Daniel, a beautiful little Jewish boy, had curls and translucent white hands. A long time later, when the war was no longer in the world, I saw Daniel in a painting by Maurycy Gottlieb, who painted many pictures of Jews with shawls on their shoulders and head coverings like the one Uncle Isser Laufer had.
That wasn’t the first or the last time that Hania Seremet, the pretty woman with the white face and clenched jaw, took money from persecuted Jews, then turned them in or left them to die. My mother called her “the murderess.” My parents knew about what she did and about the deals she made with the Jews in the ghetto. They knew she had a lover in the SS who shared her profits.
Hania Seremet threw me out too, but not at the gates of the ghetto. Maybe because there was no more ghetto. The ghetto had already been liquidated. But still, she didn’t throw me into the streets, to sure death. Maybe girls who sleep in coffins don’t die so quickly.
Hania Seremet dumped me into my parents’ hiding place.
My mother said that when she heard about the murder of Daniel’s parents, she wanted to adopt that beautiful boy—if the war ended, of course, and if he remained alive, of course. But there was no more money to pay Hania Seremet. There was no more money to pay for me, either. And the beautiful boy Daniel was murdered like hundreds of thousands of other Jewish children.
I was alive.
I FIRST BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH MY TWO LITTLE GRAY MICE—Mysia and Tysia—in our