The Warsaw Anagrams Read Online Free PDF

don’t understand, Stefa my sweetheart,’ he told her, ‘is that madness and magic are inseparable. The swastika will prevent the Nazis from confiscating Gloria when they pass a law against Jewish pets.’
    By then, Adam was in love. Gloria’s repertoire was limited to eating, chirping, defecating and tearing out her breast feathers in a neurotic frenzy, but my nephew would put her on his shoulder and carry her around as if she were the bewitched form of a princess. When Stefa wasn’t home, he’d even sit her on his head. Gloria seemed to enjoy riding on a bouncy perch made of blond hair and smelling of our last bar of lavender soap, but does anyone know what a budgie is really thinking in between meal times?
    For Adam, joy had feathers. And after a while, I realized there was something affecting and encouraging about Gloria – maybe because her total, irremediable uselessness was proof that we could still afford at least one luxury.
     
     
    Adam’s chorus gave its first concert on 28 January, at Weisman’s dancing school on Pańska Street. A water pipe had burst that morning, and despite some frantic mopping by the organizers, puddles were still scattered around the room.
    In the audience were a few friends and acquaintances, including the renowned jazz pianist Noel Anbaum, and Ewa, whom Stefa – ever the matchmaker – had hooked up with Rowy after sizing up the young man at a chorus rehearsal. According to my niece, the two had already had three extremely successful dates, and the knowing look she gave me as she pronounced her assessment made it clear just how far they’d already journeyed together.
    Soon, the lights flickered for the audience to take its seats. Eight girls and four boys filed up the stairs at the side to the stage, fidgeting and pushing, which made me fear a descent into musical hell. Under Rowy’s raised baton, however, the children’s faces grew serious, and they harmonized their Bach chorales like brothers and sisters. Closing my eyes, I felt as if I’d stopped hurtling through my own displacement for the first time in months; I was just where I wanted to be. I’d landed.
    The first encore was Rowy’s own solemn arrangement of ‘ El Male Rachamim ’, which left the more religious among the audience in tears. The second was ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ – Adam’s suggestion.
    As he took his bows, my nephew looked at me with such adult earnestness that I was overwhelmed with admiration. For the first time, I had the feeling he’d accomplish magnificent things in his life, and I knew then that protecting him was the most important job I could have been given for my time in the ghetto.
     
     
    The next day, a blistering cold front swept over the city. Adam stumbled around stiff-armed inside two sweaters and his fur-lined coat – a full-fledged member of a corps of Jewish penguins marching through the ghetto to their secret schools. I purchased two stoves powered by sawdust; by now, coal had vanished – hoarded by the Germans. The new stoves proved criminally inefficient, however, and for several nights in a row the temperature in our apartment rose to only seven degrees.
    By now, some insidious avian disease had turned Gloria’s left eye milky white, and Adam was sure that the cold front was at fault. He moped around whenever he thought of her being summoned to budgie heaven, and nothing we could do could cheer him up.
    I started going to bed with a scarf wound around my head into a Thousand-and-One-Nights turban. The sheets were ice caves, so to warm them up for my nephew I’d lie on his side of the bed for fifteen minutes, then slide over and summon him under the covers. He’d rush into my arms with his teeth chattering. I held him close all night.
     
     
    The seventeenth of February 1941, was a Monday. The morning was bitter cold – 14 degrees below zero. Stefa had a sore throat and fever, and she’d developed an acne-like rash on her chest. She finally agreed that Adam could