CHAPTER 1

MALCHUT/REALM

Opening and closing his hands, the boy Joseph prepared to run the guard post. The right time, he knew, was coming. Every day there was just one right time.

Today, it would be easier. A Polish woman, and a pretty one at that, was leaning over to talk to the German soldiers at the barbed-wire gate. Perhaps she was bringing food that the soldiers would sell to their"brothers" in the Jewish police. Maybe some bread or blocks of cheese would find their way into the ghetto later that night. When he got back from the other side, Joseph told himself, he'd find out.

He had to watch the eyes of the soldiers. Were they both looking at the woman as they talked? Where were their hands? Far enough from their guns? Joseph was small and very quick and this was not the first time he had come to this same gate. He thought,"It's just like playing soccer. Watch the opponent, watch the foot, watch the ball... Now!"

He darted from the narrow alleyway, past a few stragglers, and into the streets of occupied Warsaw. The guards looked up just as Joseph flew by, felt a momentary panic as they realized he could not be stopped, faced each other and laughingly returned to their conversation with the young woman. They had little taste, anyway, for shooting down these young Jews. Let someone else take care of them.

Into the city of his birth, Joseph scurried. How strange. He felt uneasy in his stomach every time he escaped the ghetto. He had to get food. But even as his legs propelled him toward the fish warehouse his grandmother owned before the war, memories came — lines of Polish poetry and Yiddish songs, his father's face, always with a cigar, and his elder half-brother's angry one. He was only twelve, yet he remembered everything.

He remembered how Grandma used to tease his father."I had twelve sons, but you Shlomo, you wanted only one favorite. So in your old age, you skipped the rest and you got Joseph." Papa wasn't really that old, and he didn't have a beard so you couldn't see any gray hairs. Joseph was proud of his father, although he didn't see him much before the war started. Now he didn't even know where Papa was.

Joseph walked briskly into the twilight. He would have to get back home directly if nothing turned up. Ghetto traders came out an hour after dark. There was no early curfew for the Poles, but everybody seemed to be hurrying. Where were they all going? It reminded Joseph of when he and his friends dropped mud balls on anthills just to see what the ants would do.

Reuben, Baruch, Zygmund and Joseph loved to play together, and among their favorite games was pretending to be brave soldiers of Poland. When Joseph recited the patriotic poems of Adam Mickiewicz, the boys became the fierce horsemen of King Jan Sobieski, and together they gloriously battled the Turkish invaders and saved Poland and all of Europe.

Just a year ago, in May, Joseph had heard the first rumors of war. His mother and sister Shulam