In the Balance

His wife looked at him as if he’d suddenly taken leave of his senses. Not only was he anything but an enthusiastic shopper, his cheery manner did not match the way he’d stormed into the apartment. Before she could say anything, he pulled out the note and handed it to her.

“What is-?” she began, but fell silent at his urgent shushing motions. Her eyes widened as she read what he’d written. She rose to the occasion like a trouper. “All right, we’ll go out,” she said happily, though all the while her glance darted this way and that in search of the microphones he’d warned her about.

If we could spot them so easily, they wouldn’t be a menace, he thought He said, “When we go, why don’t you put on that new gray fur hat you bought? It goes so nicely with your eyes.” At the same time, he nodded vigorously to show her he wanted to be certain she did just that.

“I will. In fact, I’ll fetch it now so I don’t forget,” she said, adding over her shoulder, “You should tell me things like that more often.” She sounded more mischievous than reproachful, but he felt a twinge of guilt just the same.

The hat, a sturdy one with earflaps, had once belonged to a Red Army soldier. It wasn’t feminine, but it was warm, which counted for more in a city full of scarcity and too near empty of fuel. And it did set off her eyes well.

They made small talk to kill the time Anielewicz had asked them to kill. Then Rivka buttoned her coat, put a couple of extra layers of outer clothes on Reuven-who squealed with excitement at the prospect of going out-and left the apartment with Moishe. As soon as they were outside, she said, “Now what exactly is this all about? Why are we-?”

While they walked to the stairs and then down them, he explained more than he’d been able to put in his note. He finished, “So they’ll spirit the two of you away somehow, to keep the Lizards from using you to get a hold on me.”

“What will they do with us?” she demanded. “Where will we go?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Mordechai wouldn’t tell me. He may not know himself, but leave the choice to people the Lizards won’t automatically question. Though any rabbi would have a fit to hear me say it, sometimes ignorance is the best defense.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” she said. “Running from danger while you stay in it isn’t right. I-”

Before she could say won’t, he broke in, “This is the best thing you can do to keep me safe, too.” He wanted to say more, but by then they were at the entrance to the flats, and he couldn’t be sure how much Yiddish or Polish the Lizard guards there knew.

Somehow he wasn’t surprised when those guards, instead of staying at their post, started following him and his family. They didn’t come right alongside as if they were jailers, but they never let the Russies get more than ten or twelve meters ahead. If he or Rivka had tried to break and run, the Lizards would have had no trouble capturing or shooting them. Besides, if they broke and ran, they’d wreck whatever plan Anielewicz had made.

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.