Chapter Four

The Wedding

I

If there were any doubts in the Balut about how smart the Elder was, what a wonderful politician, they all disappeared when he thought of a way to solve the smuggling problem. Only ten days after Fiebig’s funeral, Trumpelman called a special meeting of the Jewish Council. There he announced his masterstroke. Why shouldn’t the Ghetto, like any other state, have its own paper money? Polish zlotys, reichsmarks, American dollars could be turned in for a new Baluty pound at a fixed rate of exchange. The pound itself would become the only legal tender within the Suburb. If the citizens of the Balut wanted a roof over their heads, to give a single example, they would have to pay the rent to the Minister of Housing in the new currency alone. The cash would be distributed at a special purchasing office, in exchange for the jewels, the crystal, and the porcelain of the Jews. Blocked zloty accounts in the Aryan section would be converted. Holding gold and silver was henceforth against the law. It was astonishing how everything had been thought out.

“But what about the Others?” asked Popower, the former waiter. “Won’t they object?”

There was a ready answer to this. “The Occupying Power has already been contacted and has agreed to accept a fixed proportion of all goods exchanged. In addition, the foreign paper will go directly to them. The problem is not convincing the Others; it’s convincing the Jews.”

Rievesaltes, the Minister of Security, jumped to his feet. “It’s the same as robbery! We cannot approve an act of theft!” It was no secret that Rievesaltes, as head of the Jewish police force, was the one who profited from the smuggling most. It was this irony, perhaps, that made Trumpelman smile.

“Too late,” he said. “We can’t call it off.”

And he spread on the table, beneath the Ministers’ eyes, banknotes in six different colors. The Elder’s portrait was on each denomination, superimposed upon a Star of David. Cotton bobbins, symbol of the Ghetto’s survival, were in the corners of the bills. At the bottom, in a bold hand, with an old-fashioned flourish, was the signature: I. C. Trumpelman.

The plan worked perfectly. First civil servants, then ordinary Jews lined up to get the new money. But these “Trumpkies,” which is what everyone called the pretty bills, so valuable inside the Ghetto, were worth nothing anywhere else. The Poles only laughed when the children offered them the script in exchange for butter or potatoes. Immediately the smuggling dropped to half its former volume, and fell again to half of that. The Jewish police were losing tens of thousands of zlotys each week. They were becoming desperate men. And at just that crucial moment the Judenrat offered a bounty on all smugglers caught in the act. The result was, instead of assisting the children, the policemen were now putting them under arrest. It was as if the Ghetto had been hermetically sealed.

That spring the streets of the Baluty Suburb were full of the so-called wild children, who had nothing to smuggle, nothing to do. One of these was Nisel Lipiczany, who had exiled himself from the Asylum and sworn not to return. For the first time in his life the boy was thinking about his real father and mother: who they might have been, why they had left him, whether or not they were alive. Do not be surprised that he decided upon a mother who was blond. In those days everyone had become an expert on genetical law. Two tall sweet peas yield three tall and one short. A smooth-coated badger and a rough-coated badger produce a litter rough to smooth in a ratio of four to one. And it had been demonstrated time and again that Aryan couples, light-haired, gray-eyed, firm-chinned, could give birth to a dark, recessive Jew. Thus it was that, in the gloom of the night, sleeping within a doorway, Nisel dreamed of a woman who was faceless and bodiless, but who had, piled on her head, a mass of gold-colored hair. It was twisted in braids, like a challah.