In the Balance (37 page)

And there was Mordechai Anielewicz. He’d taken a bullet through the left hand during the attack on the Germans, but it hadn’t slowed him down. If anything, the fat white bandage seemed to mark him as a hero. His men swaggered through the streets of the Jewish quarter with captured German rifles on their shoulders. They walked boldly when they went into the rest of Warsaw, too: they were men whose comrades could avenge slights, and they knew it. For Jews, the feeling was rich and heady, like a fine new brandy.

The
Armja Krajowa
hated them. Many of the Mausers they bore had come to them from the Lizards: more arms than the new conquerors gave the Polish Home Army. Of course, the Poles had had far more guns at the start of the Warsaw rebellion than the Jews. Maybe the Lizards were working to balance the two groups in the newly conquered territory.

Maybe too, Russie admitted to himself, Zolraag and the rest of the Lizards were using the Jews and their plight under the Nazi regime as a tool against the rest of mankind. He listened to shortwave radio, just as he’d spoken on it from a studio for the Lizards. Though he’d told no more than the truth—and much less than all the truth—human broadcasters dismissed his reports as obvious propaganda. Even the dreadful pictures that came out of the ghetto brought little belief.

Because of that, Russie said, “Your Excellency, you will hurt yourself if you treat these captured Germans different from any other prisoners of war. People will only say you are cruel and ruthless.”

“This you say, Herr Russie?” Unnervingly, Zolraag looked at Moishe with one eye and down at the papers on his desk with the other. “You, a Jew, a—how do you say it?—a sufferer, no, a victim of these Germans? Not treat them as killers? Why? Killers they are.”

“You asked what I wanted done, Your Excellency,” Russie answered. “Now I’ve told you. Revenge is a meal better eaten hot than cold.” He spent the next few minutes explaining that, and reminded himself not to use figurative language with the Lizard governor again any time soon.

Zolraag turned both eyes on him. That was almost as unnerving as being examined with just one, for his stare was steadier than any man’s could be. “You are emperor for your people when you so say? You—decide?”

“This is what I say for myself,” Russie answered. He knew that if he lied, Zolraag’s backing of his policy would transmute the lie to truth. But if he started lying, where would he stop? He didn’t want to find out; he’d discovered too many horrors, in both himself and the world around him, over the past few years. After a moment, he added, “I am fairly sure I can bring my people with me.” That wasn’t a lie: more in the way of an exaggeration.

The governor studied him a while longer, then looked away in two directions at once. “Maybe you do this, Herr Russie; maybe you bring people
with you. Maybe this end up by being good. Maybe we say, look at Jews, see how Germans do to them, see how Jews not want—what was word you use?—revenge, yes, revenge. Kind Jews, gentle Jews, better than Germans, yes?”

“Yes,” Russie said in a hollow voice. More clearly than ever, he saw that Zolraag cared nothing for the Jews as Jews, and little for them as victims of the Nazis. He himself remained as much a
thing
to the Lizards as he had been to Hans Frank. The only difference was, to Zolraag he was a useful rather than an abhorrent thing. That marked an improvement, surely; a little while longer under the German
Generalgouvernement
and he would have been a dead thing. All the same, the realization tasted bitter as the bitter, herbs of the Seder.

Zolraag said, “Maybe we make picture, Jew give German prisoner food. Maybe we do that, Herr Russie, yes? Make picture make men think.”

“Any Jew who let himself be used for that sort of picture would find himself hated by other Jews,” Russie answered. Despair tinged his thoughts:
propaganda, that’s all they want us for. They rescued us for their own purposes, not out of any special kindness
.

A moment later, the Lizard echoed his worries. “We help you then, Herr Russie. You help us now. You owe us—what is word?—debt, yes. You owe us.”

“I know, but after what we went through, this is a hard way to repay the debt.”

“What else you Jews good for, Herr Russie, now to us?”

Russie flinched, as from a blow. Never before had Zolraag been so brutally frank with him.
Change the subject a little, before you get in deeper
, he thought. The ploy had served him well in medical school, letting him use his strengths and minimize weakness. He said, “Your Excellency, how can Jews think of giving Germans food when we still haven’t enough for ourselves?”

“Have as much as anyone else now,” Zolraag said.

“Yes, but we were starving before. Even what we have now is none too good.” The Poles resented having their rations cut to help feed the Jews, and the Jews were angry at the Poles for not understanding—or for approving of—their plight under the Nazis. Fair rations meant everyone ate too little. Russie said, “With all your power, Your Excellency, can’t you bring in more food for everyone in Warsaw? Then we would worry less about sharing it with the Germans.”

“Where we get food, Herr Russie? No food here, not by Warsaw, no. This place where fight happen, not farming. Fight ruin farming. You tell me where food is, I get. Otherwise …” Zolraag spread clawed hands in a very human seeming gesture of frustration.

“But—” Russie stared at the Lizard in dismay. He knew only God was omnipotent, but the Lizards, aside from seeming like manifestations of His will when they drove the Germans out of Warsaw and saved the Jews from certain destruction, were able to do so many other things with so little effort that Moishe had assumed their abilities were for all practical purposes unlimited. Discovering that was not so rocked him. He faltered. “Could you not, uh, bring food in from other parts of the world where you are not fighting hard?”

Zolraag let his mouth hang open. Russie glowered at rows of little, sharp-pointed teeth and the unnerving snakelike tongue; he knew the governor was laughing at him. Zolraag said, “Can do that, when you people give up stupid fight, join Empire. Now, no. Need all we have in fight. Tosev 3—this world—big place. Need all we have.”

“I see,” Russie said slowly. Here was news he would have to pass on to Anielewicz. Maybe the combat leader would have a better feel for what it meant than he did. What it sounded like was that the Lizards were stretched thinner than they wanted to be.

A world was indeed a big place. Till the war started, Russie hadn’t really worried about anything outside Poland. The Germans’ crushing triumph taught him the folly of that. Afterward, his hope against the Germans rested first on England and then on the even more distant United States.

But when Zolraag spoke of this world, he implied the presence of others. That should have been obvious; the Lizards plainly were from nowhere on Earth. Till now, though, what all that meant hadn’t got through to Russie. He wondered how many worlds the aliens knew, and if any besides Earth and their own home held thinking beings.

Having gained a secular education—indispensable in medicine—Russie believed in Darwin alongside of Genesis. They coexisted uneasily in his mind, one dominant when he thought, the other when he felt. In the ghetto, God gained the upper hand, for prayer seemed likelier to do some good than anything merely rational. And when the Lizards came, prayer was answered.

But Russie suddenly wondered what part God had had in creating the Lizards and whatever other thinking races there might be. If He had shaped them all, what was man that He should notice him especially? If Lizards and any others were not His creatures, what was His place in the universe? Had He any place in the universe? Posing the question in those terms was even more frightening than coming to meet with Zolraag.

The governor said, “We have more food, we give you more. Maybe soon.” Russie nodded. That meant he wasn’t supposed to hold his breath. Zolraag went on, “You find out who is emperor of Jews about German prisoners, Herr Russie, tell what you think to do. Not wait—must know.”

“Your Excellency, it shall be done.” Russie repeated the phrase in the Lizards’ language. To them, it was one to conjure with, one almost as important as the
Sh’ma, yisroayl
for an observant Jew. They built their lives around elaborate patterns of obedience, in the same way people did around families.
It shall be done
was the most potent promise they had.

When Zolraag seemed to have nothing further to say, Russie got to his feet, bowed to the Lizard governor, and started to leave. Then the Lizard said, “A moment, please.” Moishe obediently turned back. Zolraag continued, “Is always so … not cold—how do you say, a little cold?—in Warsaw?”

“Cool?” Russie asked.

“Cool, yes that is word, thank you. Is always so cool in Warsaw?”

“It will be cooler yet later in the year, Your Excellency,” Russie answered, puzzled. It was still summer in Warsaw, not a hot summer, but summer nonetheless. He remembered the winter before, when heat of any sort—electricity, coal, even wood—had been next to impossible to come by. He remembered huddling with his whole family under all the bedclothes they had, and his teeth chattering like castanets even so. He remembered the endless sound of coughing that had filled the ghetto, and picking out by ear the soft tubercular coughs from those brought on by pneumonia or influenza. He remembered scrawny corpses lying in the snow, and his relief that they might not start to stink until they were picked up.

If Zolraag thought this August day cool, how could he explain to the Lizard what winter really meant? He saw no way: as well explain the Talmud to a five-year-old, and a
goyishe
five-year-old at that. What he’d already said would have to do.

Zolraag hissed something in his own language. Russie caught a word or two: “—inside a refrigerator.” Then the governor switched back to German. “Thank you, Herr Russie, for saying beforehand what may be bad about what comes, for, ah …”

“For warning you?” Russie said.

“Warning, yes, that is word. Thank you. Good day, Herr Russie.”

“Good day, Your Excellency.” Russie bowed again; this time Zolraag did not detain him with more questions. In the waiting room outside the governor’s office sat a handsome, strikingly masculine-looking young Catholic priest. His pale eyes went icy for a moment when they met the Jew’s, but he managed a civil nod.

Russie nodded back; civility was not to be despised. Asking Poles to love Jews was asking for a miracle. Having asked for one miracle and received it, Moishe did not aim to push his luck with God. But asking for civility—that was within the realm of the possible.

Zolraag’s headquarters lay in a block of two and three-story office buildings on Grójecka Street in southwestern Warsaw. A couple of the
buildings had taken shell hits, but most were intact save for such details as bullet holes and broken-out windows. That made the block close to unique in the city, Russie thought as he scrunched through shards of glass.

Nazi artillery and unending, unchallenged streams of
Luftwaffe
bombers had torn gaping holes in Warsaw when the city stood siege after the Germans invaded Poland. Most of that rubble still remained: the Germans did not seem to care what sort of Warsaw they ruled, so long as it was theirs. The buildings smashed in 1939 now had a weathered look to them, as if they’d always been part of the landscape.

More ruins, though, were fresh, sharp-edged. The Germans had fought like men possessed to hold the Lizards out of Warsaw. Russie walked by the burnt shell of a Nazi panzer. It still exhaled the dead-meat stench of man’s final corruption. Shaking his head, Russie marveled that so many Germans, here as elsewhere, had expended so much courage for so bad a cause. God had given mankind that particular lesson at least since the days of the Assyrians, but its meaning remained obscure.

A Lizard fighting vehicle purred past the wrecked German tank. When the Nazis entered Warsaw, their roaming, smoke-belching panzers, all hard lines and angles as if the faces of SS men were somehow turned to armor plate, seemed dropped into 1939 straight from a malign future. The Lizards’ smoother, faster, nearly silent machines showed that the Germans were not quite the masters of creation they fancied themselves to be.

It was a couple of kilometers back to the edge of the, Jewish quarter Russie wore his long black coat unbuttoned, but he’d started to sweat by the time he drew near the ruined walls that marked off the former (God be praised!) ghetto.
If Zolraag thinks this is cool weather, let him wait until January
, he thought.

“Reb
Moishe!” A peddler pushing a cart full of turnips paused to doff his cloth cap.

“Reb
Moishe!” A very pretty girl, no more than thirteen or fourteen, smiled. She was gaunt, but not visibly starving.

“Reb
Moishe!” One of Anielewicz’s fighters came to a fair approximation of attention. He wore an old Polish helmet, a peasant blouse, and baggy trousers tucked into German army boots. Twin bandoliers full of gleaming brass cartridges crisscrossed his chest

The salutes pleased Russie, and reminded him he’d become an important man here. He gravely gave back each in turn. But as he did so, he wondered whether any of the people he’d greeted would still have been alive had the Lizards not come and, if so, how much longer they would have survived. He wondered how much longer he would have survived himself.

And so I decided to help the Lizards, in the hope that they would then help my people
, he thought.
And they did, and we were saved. And what
have I gained from this? Only to be branded a liar and a traitor and a renegade by those who will not believe their fellow men capable of what the Germans did here
.

He tried to tell himself he did not care, that the recognition of those inside Warsaw, those who knew the truth, counted for more than anything anyone else could say. That was true and not true at the same time. Given a choice, he would sooner have worked with any human beings—save only the Germans—against the invaders from another world.