Striking the Balance

“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.