‘Bella!’ Jakob cries, his voice rippling with fear. He is there suddenly, squatting next to her, his hands on her shoulders, her cheeks. ‘Bella! Are you okay?’
Bella can hear him, but only faintly. She nods. ‘Yes, I’m – I’m okay,’ she mumbles. He helps her to her feet. Something smells as if it’s burning. ‘The stove?’ Jakob asks. It has begun to hiss.
‘It’s off.’
‘Let’s get out of here.’
Bella’s legs teeter beneath her like stilts. Jakob helps her up and throws her arm over his shoulder, half carrying her back to the basement stairs. ‘Are you sure you’re okay? I thought – I thought …’
‘It’s okay, love. I’m all right.’
OCTOBER 17, 1944: ‘[Warsaw] must completely disappear from the surface of the earth and serve only as a transport station for the Wehrmacht. No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.’
– SS chief Heinrich Himmler, SS Officers Conference
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Mila
Outside Warsaw, German-Occupied Poland ~ Late September 1944
Nearly eight weeks have passed since the bombs began to fall on Warsaw in early August. When the first one dropped, Mila had considered borrowing a car to retrieve Felicia at the convent in Włocławek, but she knew she would never get there. Not alive, at least. Warsaw was a giant battlefield. Everyone was in hiding. There were Germans stationed on the outskirts of the city, holed up in bunkers, waiting to pounce the second the Home Army showed a sign of weakness. To leave would be impossible. So instead she fled to Halina’s downtown apartment on Stawki Street, where she spent her days and nights huddled with her sister and Adam in the building’s crawl space, listening in the dark as the city was decimated above them.
Every week or so, a friend from the Underground would bring a small parcel of food, a bit of news. None of it was promising – the Poles were outnumbered, and greatly out-armoured; 10,000 residents, apparently, had been executed in Wola, 7,000 in Old Town; tens of thousands more were transported to death camps; even the sick weren’t spared – nearly all of the patients at Wolski Hospital had been murdered. As the siege dragged on, the Home Army became desperate. ‘Has Stalin sent reinforcements?’ Adam asked each time he received news from the Underground. The answer was always no – no sign of help from the Russians. And so the bombing persisted, and little by little, Poland’s one-time thriving capital slowly disappeared. After a week, a third of the city was razed, then a half, then two thirds.
Mila is a disaster, sickened by the distance between her and Felicia. She has no way of knowing if the bombs have reached Włocławek, and she never thought to ask if the convent had a shelter. With little to eat and an even smaller appetite, her slacks have begun to hang low and loose around her waist. She is stuck. And with each passing day – she’s counted fifty-two since she’s been in hiding – she grows more frantic. Every few minutes, it seems, the ground shakes as another steel explosive plummets to the earth, shredding homes, shops, schools, churches, bridges, cars, and people in its wake. And there’s nothing she can do but listen, and wait.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Halina
Montelupich Prison, Kraków, German-Occupied Poland ~ October 7, 1944
Halina is jolted awake by the metallic click of a key in a lock and the grate of iron scraping cement as her cell door is wrenched open. She narrows her eye that isn’t swollen shut. ‘Brzoza!’ Betz spits at her. ‘Up. Now.’
She stands slowly, breathing through the stabbing pain in her back. In the four days that she’s been imprisoned, she’s been questioned over a dozen times. With every interrogation, she’s returned to the cell with more bruises, each a deeper shade of purple than the last. She is on the brink of giving up. But she knows she must swallow the pain, the humiliation, the blood dripping from her nose, her forehead, her upper lip. She mustn’t break. She’s smart enough to know that the ones who break don’t return. And she refuses to take her last breath in this godforsaken jail. She cannot – will not – let the Gestapo win.
Halina was incarcerated just days after General Bór waved his white flag, declaring the uprising in Warsaw over. In the end, Stalin’s men, stationed on the outskirts of the city, never arrived; after sixty-three days of fighting, the Home Army was forced to surrender. On the second of October, for the first time in two months, a hush came over the city. When Halina ventured outside, shell-shocked, filthy, and half starved, Warsaw, still ablaze, was unrecognisable. Her building was one of only two still intact on Stawki Street. The others had been obliterated. Some were shorn in half, exposing their insides in an alarming state of disarray – toilets, headboards, porcelain, tea kettles, and parlour couches pushed up haphazardly against twisted metal and brick – but most were nothing more than shells, their insides hollowed out, gutted, like fish. Halina had picked her way through the rampaged city to try to find Jakob and Franka – a nearly impossible task as many of the roads were impassable. She arrived at Franka’s doorstep first, where she fell to her knees – the building was gone. Franka, her parents, and her brother were nowhere to be found. An hour later, when Halina finally reached Jakob’s apartment, she discovered that his building, too, had been eviscerated. She nearly fainted when Jakob surfaced from the remains with Bella in tow. They were safe. But they were also starving.
By then, Halina could barely think straight. Franka and her family were missing. She knew she couldn’t leave Warsaw without trying to find them. But she, Adam, Jakob, and Bella were in trouble. They were hungry and broke and soon it would be winter. Before the uprising, Halina’s employer, Herr Den, had told her that he’d requested a transfer to Kraków. ‘If you need anything, find me at the bank in the city centre on Rynek Kleparski,’ he’d said. Halina had no other option but to call on him for help. Adam objected to the idea, of course, claiming that it wasn’t safe for Halina to travel to Kraków alone. But Halina insisted. There was a pocket of the Underground that was still functioning in Warsaw and they needed Adam now more than ever. And there was also Mila, who was in a panic to reach Felicia. ‘If you stay, you can help Mila find a way to Włocławek, and you can keep searching for Franka,’ Halina said. ‘Please, I’ll be fine on my own.’ She would go and return straight away, she promised, with some money – enough to get them through the winter. Finally, Adam agreed. And so, after arranging an exchange with another young Jew – her coat for a sack of potatoes to feed the others while she was away – Halina left for Kraków.
Her well-laid plan, however, came to an abrupt halt a day later at the Kraków train station when, moments after disembarking, she was arrested. The Gestapo who pulled her in showed no interest in her story, or in contacting Herr Den to validate it. ‘Then let me wire my husband,’ Halina said, making no attempt to mask her anger. Again, the Gestapo ignored her. Within an hour she found herself being escorted by police car through Kraków’s centre to the city’s infamous jail, Montelupich. As she passed through the prison’s red-brick entrance, she glanced up at the barbed wire and broken glass surrounding the building and knew without a doubt she wouldn’t be returning to Warsaw. At least not anytime soon. And that Adam would be a wreck. ‘Brzoza!’
‘Coming,’ Halina grunts. She steps over legs and arms as she limps toward the door.
Of the nearly three-dozen women who share the cell, surprisingly few are Jews, at least that she knows of. She’s one of four, maybe five. Most of the incarcerated in Montelupich’s women’s ward seem to be thieves, smugglers, spies, members of various resistance organisations. Her offense, according to the Gestapo, is her faith. But she’ll never admit it. Her religion will never be a crime.
‘Get your hands off me,’ she growls as Betz locks the cell door behind them and wrenches one of her arms behind her back, pushing her down the hallway in front of him.
‘Shut up, Goldie.’
At first, Halina thought her nickname was derived from her blonde hair, but she quickly realised it was born from
the yellow stars the Jews in Europe were made to wear.
‘I’m not a Jew.’
‘That’s not what your friend Pinkus says.’
Halina’s heart wallops her rib cage. Pinkus. How do they know his name? Pinkus – the Jewish boy with whom she’d bartered her coat before leaving Warsaw. Pinkus must have been caught and given up her name in the hopes that it would help him somehow. She curses his stupidity. ‘I don’t know a Pinkus.’
‘Pinkus, the Jew who took your coat. He claims he knows you. Claims you’re not who you say you are.’
Pinkus, you spineless shit.
‘Why would a Jew turn in another Jew?’ Halina huffs.
‘It happens all the time.’
‘Well, I told you, I don’t know this person. He’s lying. He’ll tell you anything to save his own life.’
In the windowless, bloodstained cell the Gestapo have designated for interrogation, she offers the same explanation, over and over again, this time to two brutes she recognises from past interrogations – one by the gruesome scar over his eye, the other by his limp.
‘You gave him your coat,’ the one with the scar yells. ‘If you are a Pole like you say, then why were you doing business with a Jew?’
‘I didn’t know he was a Jew!’ Halina postures. ‘I hadn’t eaten in weeks. He offered potatoes. What was I to do?’ Suddenly she’s off her feet, a fist lifting her up by her collar, slamming her ribs against the cell wall. ‘I didn’t know he was a Jew,’ she wheezes.
Crack. Her forehead meets the wall.
‘Stop lying!’
The pain is blinding. Halina’s body is limp. ‘Don’t … don’t you see?’ she spits. ‘It’s revenge! The Jews … are trying for revenge … on the Poles!’
Another crack, a trickle down her nose, the hot, acrid taste of blood. You must not waver.
‘He swore on his mother’s grave,’ one of the Gestapo hisses. ‘What do you say to that?’
‘The Jews … hate us.’ Whump. She speaks through her teeth, with one cheek stamped up against the wall. ‘Always have … it’s retribution!’ Whap. The bony, muted crunch of her jaw meeting the back of a hand.
‘Look at you – you look like a Jew!’
Halina’s breathing is wet, heavy. ‘Don’t … insult … me. Look at you … at your women. Blonde … with … blue eyes. Are they Jews?’
Crack. Again, her skull against the wall. Blood in her lashes now, burning her eyes.
‘Why should we believe you?’
‘Why shouldn’t you? My … my papers don’t lie! And … neither does my boss … Herr Den. Call him. He is at the bank on Rynek Kleparski. I’ve told you … I was en route to see him when you bastards arrested me.’ This part of her story, of course, is true.
‘Forget about Den. He’s of no use to us,’ the one with the limp hisses.
‘Then wire my husband.’
‘The only person of use to us is you, Goldie,’ the scar-faced one yells. ‘You say you’re a Pole. Then recite the Lord’s Prayer!’
Halina shakes her head, feigning annoyance and saying silent thanks for the fact that her parents had chosen to send her to Polish gymnasium rather than to one of Radom’s Jewish schools. ‘This again. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …’
‘All right, all right, enough.’
‘Call my boss,’ Halina pleads, exhausted. He’s the only card she has left to play, her last hope. She wonders if the Germans have even tried to reach him. Perhaps Herr Den got caught up in the uprising in Warsaw and never made it to Kraków. Or perhaps they’ve called, and he’s finally given up vouching for her. But he seemed so adamant: ‘Come to Kraków. Find me, I will help.’ She’d tried. And now she’s here. It’s been less than a week and already her body is in ruins. She doesn’t know how many more of these interrogations she can take. She’s heard from one of the new arrivals in the women’s ward that Warsaw is still smouldering. She worries constantly of Adam, who would have been out of his mind when she didn’t return, of Mila, who could barely function when Halina left, and of Franka, but mostly she worries about her parents. The Górskis expected money once a month to keep her parents safe, and now they haven’t received anything in nearly two months. Could she count on the goodness of the Górskis for her parents’ survival? She’s seen their meagre home; they can barely afford to keep themselves. Halina can’t help but imagine it – Albert escorting her parents out of the cottage, unable to meet their eyes: I’m sorry, I wish you could stay, but either you go, or we all starve. Surely, in time the Górskis will presume her dead. The family will presume her dead.
I’m coming back to you, she says silently, part to herself, and part to Adam and her parents, in case they are listening, as she’s escorted, finally, back to her cell.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Mila
Outside Warsaw, German-Occupied Poland ~ October 1944
The drive to the convent takes twice as long as usual. Many of the streets are impassable, forcing Mila to veer off on painstakingly long detours. Everything that once looked familiar along the way is gone – the barrel factory in Józefina, the tannery in Mszczonów – the scenery reduced to an endless patchwork of rubble.
Mila leans forward, squinting through the windshield of the stolen V6. She and Adam had found the car lying on its side a block from Halina’s apartment; it took six people to flip it back onto its wheels. Adam had helped her jump-start it. All four of its windows were missing, but it didn’t matter. Its tank, in a stroke of good luck, was still a quarter full – it had just enough fuel to get her to and from the convent.
She taps her thumbs nervously on the steering wheel, scanning the wreckage before her. She must be in the wrong place, Mila thinks. Has she made a wrong turn? She’s barely slept in weeks – it’s certainly possible she’d lost her way. The convent should be just there, ahead, she could swear it … and then her eye catches something black, a shard of slate jutting up out of the earth. Her stomach heaves as she recognises it for the chalkboard it once was. She’s in the right place. The convent is gone. Vanished. It’s been blown to pieces.
Without thinking, she climbs from the car, its engine still running, and sprints across the plot of land where she’d last seen her daughter, leaping over scattered bricks and mangled fence posts in the tall grass. At the sight of a miniature desk chair lying upside down, she crumples to her knees. Her mouth is gaping, but she is breathless, faint. And then her screams slice like knives through the October sky, growing more violent with each desperate inhale.
‘Miss, Miss.’ Mila is being shaken by a young man. She can barely hear him, even though he’s knelt down beside her. ‘Miss,’ he says.
She feels the weight of a hand on her shoulder. Her throat is raw, her cheeks tear-stained, the voice in her head relentless. Look what you’ve done! You should have never left her here! Her heart throbs as if someone has driven a javelin through it.
Mila looks up, blinks, a palm to her chest, another to her forehead. Someone, she realises, has turned off the engine to the V6.
‘There is a basement,’ the young man explains. ‘I’ve been trying to reach them for days. My name is Tymoteusz. My daughter Emilia is down there, too. Yours is …?’
‘Felicia,’ Mila whispers, her mind too frantic to remember that at the convent, her daughter went by Barbara.
‘Come, help me, there could still be hope.’
Mila and Tymoteusz take turns lifting rubble from the place where the convent once stood.
‘You see,’ Tymoteusz explains, pointing, ‘this appears to be a stairwell. If we can clear it perhaps we’ll find a door to the bunker.’
They’ve been at work for nearly two hours when Tymoteusz stops, kneels, and presses his head to the earth. ‘I heard something! Did you hear it, too?’
Mila drops to her knees, holding her breath as she listens. But after a few moments, she shakes her head. ‘I don’t hear anything. What did it sound like?’
‘Like a knock.’
Mila’s pulse quickens. They stand and begin slinging rubble again, this time with a renewed sense of purpose, a thread of hope. And then, as Mila bends to reach for a block of cement, she freezes. There it is. A sound. Yes, a knock, coming from beneath their feet. ‘I hear it!’ she gasps. She places her face to the wreckage and yells as loudly as she can, ‘We hear you! We’re here! We are coming for you!’ Her cries are met by another knock. A muffled shout. Tears immediately spring to Mila’s eyes. ‘It’s them.’ She half sobs, half laughs, and then reminds herself that a knock could mean anything. It could mean a single survivor.
They work faster now, Mila brushing sweat and tears from her cheeks, Tymoteusz breathing heavily, his eyebrows knit together in concentration. Their hands bleed. The muscles running the lengths of their spines spasm. When they break, they rest for a minute or two, no longer, making small talk to keep themselves from imagining the worst.
‘How old is Emilia?’ Mila asks.
‘Seven. And Felicia?’
‘She’ll be six in November.’
Mila asks where Tymoteusz is from, but skirts the subject of Emilia’s mother, in hopes that he won’t ask about Felicia’s father.
They are halfway through clearing the stairwell when the sun disappears, which means they have another hour, at most, of light. They both know, though, that they won’t leave until the stairwell is cleared.
‘I’ve brought a flashlight,’ Tymoteusz says, as if reading Mila’s thoughts. ‘We’re pulling them out of there. Tonight.’
There are stars overhead when they finally reach the bunker door. Mila had thought there would be more shouting, more communication with whoever had knocked earlier, but since they’d made initial contact, she’s heard nothing, not a sound, and suddenly it’s not the rubble or the dark or the task of prying open the door that terrifies her, but the quiet. Surely whoever is inside can hear them now – so why the silence? She grips the flashlight with two shaking hands as she shines it on the door’s handle, watching with her face half turned away as Tymoteusz wrenches it open.
We Were the Lucky Ones Page 33
