Striking the Balance

Anielewicz made a sour face. “Such an honor.” The Order Service in the Jewish district of Lodz still reported to Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who had been Eldest of the Jews under the Nazis and was still Eldest of the Jews under the Lizards. Most of the time, the Order Service prudently pretended the Jewish fighters did not exist. That the Lizards’ puppet police came looking for him now-he needed to find out what it meant. He got up and slung a Mauscr over his shoulder.

The Order Service officer still wore his Nazi-issue trench coat and kepi. He wore his Nazi-issue armband, too: red and white, with a blackMagen David on it; the white triangle inside the Star of David showed his rank. He carried a billy club on his belt. Against a rifle, that was nothing much.

“You wanted me?” Anielewicz was ten or twelve centimeters taller than the district leader, and used his height to stare coldly down at the other man.

“I-” The Order Service man coughed. He was chunky and pale-faced, with a black mustache that looked as if a moth had landed on his upper lip. He tried again: “I’m Oskar Birkenfeld, Anielewicz. I have orders to take you to Bunim.”

“Do you?” Anielewicz had expected a meeting with Rumkowski or some of his henchmen. To be summoned instead to meet with the chief Lizard in Lodz… something out of the ordinary was going on. He wondered if he should have this Birkenfeld seized and drop out of sight himself. He’d made plans to do that at need. Was the need here? Temporizing, he said, “Does he give me a safe-conduct pledge to and from the meeting?”

“Yes, yes,” the Order Service man said impatiently.

Anielewicz nodded, his face thoughtful. The Lizards were perhaps better than human beings about keeping those pledges. “All right. I’ll come.”

Birkenfeld turned in what looked like glad relief. Maybe he’d expected Mordechai to refuse, and also expected to catch it from his own superiors. He started away with his shoulders back and a spring in his step, for all the world as if he were on a mission of his own rather than a puppet of puppets. Sad and amused at the same time, Anielewicz followed him.

The Lizards had moved into the former German administrative offices in the Bialut Market Square.Only too fitting, Anielewicz thought. Rumkowski’ s offices were in the next building over; his buggy, with its German-made placard proclaiming him Eldest of the Jews, sat in front of it. But Mordechai got only a glimpse of the buggy, for Lizard guards came forward to take charge of him. District Leader Birkenfeld hastily disappeared.

“Your rifle,” a Lizard said to Anielewicz in hissing Polish. He handed over the weapon. The Lizard took it. “Come.”

Bunim’s office reminded Mordechai of Zolraag’s back in Warsaw: it was full of fascinating but often incomprehensible gadgets.

Even the ones whose purpose the Jewish fighting leader could grasp worked on incomprehensible principles. When the guard brought him into the office, for instance, a sheet of paper was silently issuing from a squarish box made of bakelite or something very much like it. The paper was covered with the squiggles of the Lizards’ written language. It had to have been printed inside the box. As he watched, a blank sheet went inside; it came out with printing on it. How, without any sound save the hum of a small electric motor?

He was curious enough to ask the guard. “It is askelkwank machine,” the Lizard answered. “Is no word forskelkwank in this speech.” Anielewicz shrugged. Incomprehensible the machine would remain.

Bunim turned one eye turret toward him. The regional sub-administrator-the Lizards used titles as impressively vague as any the Nazis had invented-spoke fairly fluent German. In that language, he said, “You are the Jew Anielewicz, the Jew leading Jewish fighters?”

“I am that Jew,” Mordechai said. He wondered how angry the Lizards still were at him for helping Moishe Russie escape their clutches. If that was why Bunim had summoned him, maybe he shouldn’t have admitted his name. But the way he’d been summoned argued against it. The Lizards didn’t seem to want to seize him, but to talk with him.

Bunim’s other eye turret twisted in its socket till the Lizard looked at him with both eyes, a sign of full attention. “I have a warning to deliver to you and to your fighters.”

“A warning, superior sir?” Anielewicz asked.

“We know more than you think,” Bunim said. “We know you Tosevites play ambiguous-is that the word I want? — games with us and with the Deutsche. We know you have interfered with our war efforts here in Lodz. We know these things, I tell you. Do not trouble yourself to deny them. It is of no use.”

Mordechai did not deny them. He stood silent, waiting to see what the Lizard would say next. Bunim let out a hissing sigh, then went on, “You know also that we are stronger than you.”

“This I cannot deny,” Anielewicz said with wry amusement.