The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard Page A

holding the kid by the shoulder. And the kid we’d been waiting for finally made it through the gate to let us know that our new arrangement was going to be okay.
E VERY MORNING MY MOTHER BEGGED ME TO GO TO the Order Service headquarters to see what information Lejkin would give me. Sometimes I waited till noon before he would see me. He told me that my father and one brother were still together and that they’d worked in the SS barracks in Rakowiecka Street, in the cavalry barracks at Służewiec, and spreading coal bricks at a railroad siding outside of town. He said he thought they’d also done some road construction. They hadn’t been paid for it yet since the Judenrat was behind in its wages, but they had been given bread and radishes. He thought they were in a camp in the Kampinos forest. My other brother and Boris’s father he knew nothing about. He said families whose main breadwinner had been selected for the camps were eligible for a small welfare payment from the Judenrat, though he wasn’t sure who to see about that. He also said that since I was now thirteen it was time for me to be registered as well. I left this out of what I reported to my mother.
He said he had little information beyond that. Czerniaków himself had personally intervened about the state of the camps with the SS man in charge of Jewish affairs and the director of the Department ofJewish Labor in the Arbeitsamt, and both more food and better conditions had been promised.
One morning in a downpour I opened our door and Lejkin was standing there in the hall with an SS officer behind him. The officer was tall and had a rain bonnet on his cap. He smiled and shook the water from the arms of his raincoat and moved Lejkin aside with his hand and said, “Guten Morgen.” He sounded like someone who was happy that he’d kept his patience for so long with misbehaving children. He asked in Polish if I spoke German. When I told him no he nodded and wiped the mud from his boots so energetically that he split our old doormat in two.
The left sleeve of his uniform jacket was tucked into his belt and there was no arm in it. He saw me looking and said in Polish, “Wars aren’t much fun. Now don’t you feel like a lucky young boy?”
Lejkin introduced him as Obersturmführer Witossek. I said hello and the German seemed amused by my tone.
Boris pretended to be asleep on the floor near my feet. “I’d ask to come in but perhaps now is not the best time,” the German said.
“His Polish is good, isn’t it?” Lejkin asked.
“You’re Aron Różycki?” the German asked.
“Yes,” I told him.
“Could you step into the hall,” he said.
“Aron!” my mother called from the kitchen.
I stepped out and he shut the door behind me. The window in the hallway was broken and it made the rain louder. A family camped under it had strung up a shelter to keep dry. A bucket caught the runoff.
The German said he wanted me to come to an office he was setting up on Żelazna Street. A dozen Jews were already there, and Lejkin had recommended me.
What was I supposed to do at such a place, I wanted to know.
“It’s a little Jewish concern,” he said. “Your friend here is part of it. He’s the one who recommended you,” he repeated.
“Recommended me for what?” I said.
“Well, there’s always more to discover when you stick your nose into the world,” he said. I looked at Lejkin, who raised his shoulders.
“Or you can serve in a labor battalion,” the German said. “Do you have your card?”
“I’m not registered yet,” I said.
“It’s 103 Żelazna,” the German said. “Your friend can tell you if there’s anything else you need to know.”
“There isn’t anything else you need to know,” Lejkin said.
“Oh, and yes,” the German said as he was leaving. He opened the door and there inside the apartment stood my mother and Boris’s mother, gaping. “Could I ask you for some sort of Jewish holy volume or object?”
We looked at one another.