The boy didn’t answer. “Tell him,” he said to me.
“Tell me what?” Korczak said. And all three of them looked at me.
“They’re also here because they want my help,” I told him. “I said if they wanted me to help them they had to do this for me.”
“Do what for you?” Korczak asked. His expression was so surprised and disappointed that I had to look away.
“Get you out,” Boris said. He said the Germans were directing their resettlement from an office on Żelazna. He said Lejkin was the Jew in charge and that I had worked as an informer for him and the Gestapo, which meant I could get inside. And since I could get inside, then I could help them attack it when the time came.
“You want him to help you attack their office?” Korczak asked.
“His price was getting you out,” the other boy said.
“When was all this arranged?” Korczak asked me.
“They came to the home yesterday,” I told him. “I talked with them on the front step.”
“When did you imagine you would do this?” he asked me, in the voice he used when he talked to the Germans.
“He’ll have to come now,” Boris said.
“I’m not doing anything until he’s out of the ghetto,” I told them.
“Do you have guns? Do you have bombs?” Korczak asked.
“We’re getting guns. We’re getting bombs,” Boris said.
“From where?” Korczak asked.
Boris finally told him that his plan was for me to bring him to the wall at the end of Próżna Street at four the following night and there would be a ladder and someone waiting on the other side to take him out of the city.
Korczak walked to the sink and stood with his back to us. “I’m waiting to speak until I’m not so angry,” he said.
The other boy moved the tea glass from spot to spot on the table like a chess piece. When I looked at Boris he only shrugged.
Korczak turned around. “And all the children in this orphanage?” he said to me. “I’m going to leave them now, when they have so little time left?”
I put my hands on my face. “I just wanted to save you,” I said.
The other boy said, “Boris chose the spot along the wall from your smuggling days. He picked a good one.”
“When they argue with one another the children have a saying,” Korczak finally told us. “They say, ‘I’ll give you away in a bag.’ ”
“Tell them the truth,” the boy said. “Tell them we can’t save them.”
“Tell them they’re all just on their own?” Korczak asked, and his anger surprised even them.
“They are all on their own,” the boy said.
“They’re not all on their own,” Korczak said. None of us could look at anyone else.
“So you won’t go?” the boy finally said to Korczak. “And you won’t help us if he doesn’t go?” he said to me.
My hands were still on my face. Madame Stefa was now standing in the doorway.
“Maybe he’ll change his mind,” I said.
“But you have to come now,” Boris said.
“And just leave him? And everyone else?” I asked.
“Aron’s not a violent boy,” Madame Stefa said. She cleared her throat and said it again.
“Sh’maya? Don’t tell me about Sh’maya,” Boris said. “Because of him my two best friends are dead. Sh’maya doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Do you, Sh’maya?”
The other boy got up from the table and looked sad when he put the glass in the sink. “So you’re going to do as you’re told,” he said to Korczak. “And make everything simpler for the Germans.”
“Gentlemen, it’s been a long day,” Korczak told them. Madame Stefa stepped over and put an arm on his shoulder.
“And now he’s crying,” Boris said to the boy about me, as though he’d predicted it. I put my fists atop my head as if that would help.
The Jews could fight better than anyone knew, the boy said. He said there was an anti-aircraft post near Mława during the first days of the war when everyone else had run away during an air raid and the Jews had shot down seventeen planes. “Seventeen planes!” he said.
“You won’t go?” I asked Korczak. He looked away.
“Make yourself useful,” Boris finally said to me.
“Make up for what you’ve done,” the other boy said.
“I’ve never been useful,” I told them. “And I can’t make up for what I’ve done.”
They both stared at me. “I never thought he’d help,” Boris said, pointing at Korczak. “But I thought you might.”
The other boy looked at me with hatred. “We have no chance without someone on the inside,” he said to Korczak. “Tell him that.”
“It’s his decision,” Korczak said.
Lice and bedbugs swarmed around on my head and chest. I raked my hands over them. “Can I take a day to think about it?” I asked.
“You don’t have a day,” the boy said.
“Then no,” I told him.
KORCZAK WENT UP TO HIS ROOM AFTER THEY LEFT and Madame Stefa followed him. I sat below in the dark with the sleeping kids until I couldn’t stand it anymore and climbed the stairs.
They were sitting together. He had pulled the blackout paper down from one of the windows and the sheets on all the beds gave off a pale light. The paper was still in his hand and when he crumpled it only a few of the sicker kids stirred.
“What a marvelous big moon over this camp of helpless pilgrims,” he said to himself. It was as sad as I’d ever seen him.
“I’m sorry,” I said from across the room.
He nodded. “Do you even understand why I’m so angry?” he said.
“I just wanted you to be safe,” I said. But he didn’t seem to have heard.
“Can I get you anything?” Madame Stefa asked him after a minute.
He shook his head. “Sit with us,” he said without looking at me, and patted the sheet.
I went past the other beds and sat at the foot of his next to Madame Stefa and after he laid down we did too, though our feet were still on the floor. We listened to his breathing.
“Did you know I met Madame Stefa on a trip to Switzerland when I was still a student?” he asked. I shook my head but he couldn’t see. She made an amused sound.
“I told her on our first meeting during a long exchange on a park bench that I was the son of a mental patient but was going to become the Karl Marx of children,” he said.
“Thank you,” I told him, “for calling me over.”
“She was very self-assured,” he said.
“I’m still self-assured,” she told him.
“She was eating an unripe pear,” he said, and she stretched an arm in his direction. I felt his knee under the sheet.
“Always at the back of your mind is the question of what you’ll do when they finally do come,” he said after we’d been lying there for a few minutes. He touched his glass and his cigarettes and then fell asleep.
WHEN HE WOKE UP I DID TOO AND HE PROPPED HIMSELF up on his elbows. It was early. Gieńa was in her nightshirt under the window. “Good morning,” he said to her.
“Good morning,” she said back.
“Smile,” he told her, and she did. He said that today he thought he’d like a breakfast of sausage, ham, and buns. Madame Stefa got to her feet and walked to the staircase and shouted “Boys! Breakfast! Get up!” and down below we could hear beds moved and the wooden tables pushed together and the pot being filled in the kitchen. Then there were two whistle blasts and men at the front and back doors shouted, “All Jews out! All Jews out!”
Gieńa put a hand to her mouth. Madame Stefa ran downstairs. Korczak struggled into his clothes and I followed him down once he’d stuffed his feet into his shoes.
Madame Stefa was in the main room trying to keep the kids calm. She shook some who were making too much noise. The Germans and Ukrainians were still shouting. Korczak looked out the kitchen window and saw something that made him pull me out the back door into the courtyard with him.