Puppet by Eva Wiseman

you help us, we'll set you up in a trade when all this is over.”
    “But I …”
    “No, no,” said Bary “Don't say a word. Reflect on what I told you.”
    I heard the clanging of a key in the lock.
    “Watch him, Bako,” Henter's voice said to the gendarme standing guard in front of the cell. Both Bary and Henter walked by me, but I had learned that servant girls have the singular advantage of being invisible.
    They'd be furious if they knew that I always talk to Morris when I deliver his meals.
    I could see the melancholy expression on Morris's face through the bars of his cell. He brightened when he saw me. Bako opened the cell door. I went in and he locked it after me.
    “I have to go take a piss,” he announced. “I'll be back in ten minutes.”
    “I wondered when you were coming,” Morris said. “Did you see my papa?”
    This was the question he greeted me with every time I brought his meals.
    “You know they won't let me see him. I can't even go into that part of the prison.”
    I took out a biscuit from my pocket to wipe the disappointment off his face.
    “Thank you!” He tore it into pieces, then stuffed them into his mouth.
    “The biscuits are fresh. Teresa just baked them. You'll never guess who they are for!”
    He laughed.
    “Tell me!”
    “You're having a visitor tomorrow. He is coming all the way from Budapest.”
    His eyes widened. Besides his jailers, I was the only person he ever saw. He wasn't even allowed to visit his family. Bary said that he was kept under lock and key for his own protection and to keep him away from “harmful influences.”
    “Do you know who is coming?” Morris asked.
    “I do, but first, have your breakfast. I'll tell you after.”
    He made a face at the sight of the gruel but transferred it to his own bowl and began to eat greedily. I sat down on the floor and leaned against the bars of the cell.
    “How are you doing?” I asked.
    He shrugged his shoulders.
    “I'm all right … Recsky and Peczely went back to Tisza-Eszlar. Bary still comes to see me from time to time.”
    “What's Warden Henter like to you?”
    “The same as the others, but at least there is only one of him and not three.”
    “I just noticed, your Hungarian is getting better.”
    “That's all I speak now, to the guards and to Henter and to Bary. Tell me, who is coming to see me tomorrow?”
    “First, I have to tell you some good news and some bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”
    “The bad news — let's be done with it.”
    “Sophie Solymosi wrote me a letter. Teresa read it to me. Sophie says that Bary and Recsky arrested more Jews in Tisza-Eszlar and then let them go after a few days.”
    An expression I couldn't identify flitted across Morris's face. “Julie, I hope you understand that I had to testify against Solomon Schwarcz and his friends and even Papa, in order to keep him safe. You know I had no choice. You understand that, don't you?” He worried a piece of thread on his sleeve. “They kept saying they would beat Papa and keep him in jail forever if I didn't confess.”
    He looked at me expectantly, but I didn't know how to answer. I occupied myself with gathering up the container in which I brought his food to him. I had to return it to the kitchen.
    “Bary is insane,” Morris said.
    “He isn't the only one. Sophie wrote that there are people in parliament who are claiming the Jews are responsible for Esther's death.”
    “Has the world gone mad?” Morris's voice was full of desperation. He buried his face in his hands. “What have I done? What have I done?” He put down his bowl on his bunk and stood up. Then he began to pace the length of hiscell. “Why do people hate us so?” he asked. “Why do they accuse us of such terrible crimes? Sometimes I wonder.”
    “Wonder what?”
    He scuffed the toe of his boots along the clay floor of the cell and spoke without looking at me.
    “Warden Henter keeps on telling me that all Jews are thieves and liars.