The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  And I never saw him again.

  On that day, I began the fourth part of my education in Przemyśl. It was wrong to paint all men the same color. Whether they be Jewish or Polish.

  Or even German.

  * * *

  I stayed with Helena the next day, keeping her in bed and using the last of my food supplies. The morning after that I watched at the window, glass blurred by a drizzling rain, and when I saw the guarded lines of men coming down the street, I ran out to meet Max. I started to step into line beside him, water dripping from my hair, but he shook his head and looked back over his shoulder. This was not the usual guard. This was an SS man. I backed away, and Max held up seven fingers. He would meet me at the fence at seven in the evening. Then he put his head down and faced front, so as not to attract attention.

  I watched him walk away, rain dripping off hair as dark as Izio’s.

  He had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen.

  I thought he must have gotten my letter.

  I walked down the street, thinking, then stood on a street corner, turned my back to the road, and reached surreptitiously for the money in my bra. I still had the zloty from Izio’s train ticket. If I was careful, I would have enough to feed Helena and the Diamants for another week. At the most. And Helena needed a dress, shoes, underclothes, a nightgown, and probably other things I hadn’t thought of yet.

  I straightened myself up in the glass of a shop window and went to the dressmaker’s, where I had asked about work before, but that position had been filled long ago. Then I stopped in every shop between Mickiewicza and the market square. Either there was no work, or I wasn’t suited to the work, or there was just no shop at all, because it had been owned by a Jew. I gave up, went to the market, and got a decent bargain, since not many people were out in the rain, even managing a skirt for Helena that might be a little large. If I could get some thread, maybe I could tighten the waist and make her torn dress into a blouse.

  When I came down the sidewalk, the sky was clearing and two trucks were blocking the road in front of my building, furniture piled in the backs like a house had been turned upside down. We were getting neighbors. I climbed the stairs, negotiating around people and boxes, and when I got to my room, I found a neighbor already there. Emilika had Helena in her lap, combing her hair, and Helena did not look pleased.

  “I’ve met your sister,” Emilika said, pulling Helena’s hair straight back from her face. “She’s been telling me all about your trip home, haven’t you?” This last was to Helena, and Emilika didn’t seem to notice when my sister didn’t answer. I set down my packages, dropping my coat on top. If Emilika saw how much food I’d bought, she would ask questions. She talked on and on. About her mother, even though I didn’t have mine. About a boy she’d met, even though I didn’t have mine.

  It wasn’t fair. She didn’t know. But I wanted to toss her out the window.

  “So, Fusia, been biting pickles?” Emilika asked pleasantly. I think this meant I had a sour look on my face. So I told her about my search for work.

  “Oh, but there are plenty of factory jobs,” she said, “if you’re willing to work for the Germans. There was a long line at the labor office yesterday just to put in applications. All the way down the street.”

  Which meant I was too late. I rubbed at my temple.

  “There, there, Fusia, there’s always a way,” Emilika said. She’d tied back Helena’s hair with a string. It was too tight. “A small gift might do the trick. Something to help the Germans put your name at the top of the list.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of gift?”

  “About three hundred fifty zloty. That’s what I’ve heard.”

  Three hundred fifty. How could I ever raise that much money? The box was nearly empty. I didn’t have anything left to bargain with.

  None of these thoughts sweetened my mood, and Helena’s was no better. As soon as Emilika left, she sat down on the bed, arms crossed, refusing to come to the table for the bread and butter I’d cut. I told her she had to eat. She said she didn’t. I told her Dr. Becker said so. She said no, he didn’t. I ordered her to eat. She said she didn’t take orders.

  She was my sister, but she was also a child, and I didn’t know what to do with her. I told her I had to go on an errand. Really, I just needed to walk. To think.

  “I want to go with you,” Helena said.

  I must have already had the word “no” on my face, because she screwed up hers, arms tightening across her chest.

  “I want to come.”

  “No!”

  “Then take me home.”

  I didn’t know what to do with that, either. I wasn’t her mother. I wasn’t anyone’s mother. “I’m not taking you back to the farm, Hela.”

  “You don’t want me here!”

  “That’s not true!”

  But something guilty squirmed inside me when she said it. Something quickly squashed by the relief that my sister was alive. I sat beside her on the bed.

  She wiped her eyes and said, “I heard you last night.”

  “Heard me what?”

  “Crying. You wish I wasn’t here.”

  I let out a long breath. And then I thought about Helena alone in the farmhouse, alone before that with a man who had beaten and neglected her. Of Helena sick in a strange room in an unfamiliar city. Of what it must have been like to wake up this morning and find me gone, only to have a stranger waltz in and ruin her hair. I thought about that leftover piece of bread.

  I would not have my sister thinking she needed to starve to stay with me.

  I pulled on the string, freeing her bangs. “I am not Mama,” I said. “I won’t try to be. But I am your sister. If we all can’t be at home, then I’d rather have you with me than anywhere else in the world. So now we’re a team. I’m going to need you to do what I ask, even if sometimes you don’t understand, and in return I’m going to promise that I will tell you the truth. Always. Even if it’s bad.”

  She frowned at the bed.

  “And I’ll start right now. Last night I was crying because someone died whom I wish hadn’t. Okay? Nothing about you.”

  “Was it somebody I know?”

  I shook my head. Her bare feet bumped against the bed rail.

  “I’m not a baby,” she said. “I can stay by myself. I went to the farm by myself every day. Only … nobody ever came back again.”

  “Well, I will come back again. That’s another promise.” I hoped I wasn’t lying. “I will come back, Helena.”

  She didn’t look convinced.

  “Here. Come with me.”

  I took her to the front door and showed her how the lock worked, then showed her how a chair could be propped beneath the knob so it wouldn’t turn. We made up a special knock so she would know it was me. Then we looked at all the empty rooms of the apartment, locked the bedroom door, and put a chair underneath that one, too. Helena smiled, then smiled bigger when I gave her the skirt. She sat on one of our two remaining chairs and chewed her bread.

  “She called you Fusia,” Helena said with her mouth full. “And Michal did, too.” She was talking about our older brother. “I can’t remember what I call you. For fun.”

  I supposed she couldn’t. She had been a baby when I left home.

  “Can I call you Fusia?” she asked.

  Everyone else did. But I only said, “Call me whatever you want.”

  Helena thought hard, then she shrugged. “I’ll call you Stefi.”

  Later that evening, when I shut the front door, the Diamants’ food packages tucked inside my coat, I listened to the lock tumble into place behind me, the scrape of a chair on the other side.

  Part of me wanted to lock my sister in the apartment until the war was over.

  Part of me wanted to lock myself in with her.

  I got to the fence a little before seven. The sun was low behind the buildings, but it was still warm, making my heavy coat a strange choice. I waited around the corner, tapping a nervous toe
, a new DEATH TO THOSE WHO AID A JEW poster pasted above my head. I didn’t like it there. It was as if the Germans knew someone standing in this spot needed the warning. Then I heard a tango being whistled from the alley. From the other side of the fence.

  I ducked around the corner into the narrow passage with the fence post. Max was waiting, but instead of taking the packages, he lifted the fence post out of its hole and pulled me inside.

  “Shhh,” he said when I protested. “Do you have a handkerchief?” He found it in my pocket without waiting for my answer and tied it around my upper right arm. Then he took me to a door and opened it. There was an abandoned warehouse inside, a dark, dank sort of place where rats scuttled. He leaned close to my ear.

  “There will be an Aktion in the ghetto.”

  “What is a …”

  “Everyone without a work card will be taken to a labor camp.”

  I didn’t trust the words “labor camp.” “Why are you whispering?”

  “Because anyone will denounce anyone to the Germans. Even Jews, if they think it will save their life.”

  “Do you have a work card?”

  I felt his nod in the dark. “And Chaim, and Henek and his girlfriend. Our parents do not.”

  “They’re going?”

  I felt his nod again.

  “When?”

  “In the next few days. So we’re giving this to them …” He held up the food packages. “Or as much as they can carry.”

  This was all happening so quickly it was hard to register the emotions. I would deal with them later.

  “Can you bring more,” he said, “for after?”

  “Do you have anything to sell?” And then I told him quickly about Helena, and the lack of work, except for German jobs that required money to get.

  “Okay. I’ll ask. And, Fusia …” I think he was rubbing his fingers over his head. “I wanted to know …”

  We both stopped to listen. There were boots going down the alley at a sharp clip. They passed our door, the barbed wire rattled, and then they passed by again, fading out of hearing.

  “I think they know about the fence,” I whispered.

  “I think you are right. Meet me here tomorrow, inside, and after that, we’ll find a new place.” He rubbed his head again. “I have to ask you. About your letter.”

  Something inside me seized. Max’s words could barely be heard.

  “It was a lie, wasn’t it? About it being … quick.”

  It felt impossible to speak. If I had gotten there on time, maybe none of it would have happened. Maybe Izio would be with us now. But if anyone understood this pain, it was Max. Izio had taken his place. I gritted my teeth, and I nodded.

  “Okay,” Max said. “Okay.” We stood for a few minutes in the dripping dark, and then he listened at the door. “I think the alley is empty. Be careful, and …” He caught my hand and kissed it. “Thank you for lying to Mame.”

  I slipped through the fence as quick as I could, and when I rounded the corner with the poster, there was no one there. And there was no one there the next night, either, when Max handed me two shirts, a watch, and a brooch that had been stowed safely inside Mrs. Diamant’s girdle.

  “Use it to get work,” Max said. “We’ll be hungry now, but we’ll eat for longer if you have regular pay.”

  I put the treasures under my coat, but this time, as I set the fence post back in its hole, I heard the sharp bark of a German order from the street in front of the empty warehouse. And then Max was talking, telling them he wasn’t doing anything, only looking for an uncle, who …

  I made it around the corner and stood beneath the poster, breathing hard, closing my eyes to the sound of fists hitting flesh.

  Please, God, don’t let them kill Max.

  I couldn’t sleep that night.

  But in the morning, right on time, there was Max, looking up at my window as he was marched to the coal yards. He had a bruise on his face and a swollen lip, but he was whole. I spent the day making bargains, and the next day, I had 340 zloty.

  I had to hope it was enough.

  I was in line at the labor department early.

  Chuztpah. Mrs. Diamant always said I had it. And today, it was what I needed.

  I shifted from foot to foot in the line, arms across my grumbling middle, hair neat and mouth smeared just the tiniest bit red. By midmorning, I’d made it inside the building. By midafternoon, it was my turn. I straightened my back and walked briskly to the desk, smiling as if the German sitting behind it were the only person in the world I’d ever wanted to sell something to.

  This man did not have wire-rimmed glasses. He had a mole on his chin.

  “Hello,” I said. “I hope you’re well today.”

  The man glanced from my overbright face to the line behind me. He almost faltered. “Papers,” he said wearily. I sat myself in a chair.

  “I was hoping to get work,” I said. “And I was hoping to get it quickly. You see …” I leaned forward. “I have a little sister. She’s six years old, and she’s without her mother. Our mother and brother are away at the moment, working hard for the Fatherland, like you are …”

  The man sighed and wiped his nose on his uniform sleeve. I could have been spreading on this jam a little thick.

  “And while they’re away, I will need to feed her …”

  “Papers,” he said again, holding out his hand.

  “So I was hoping,” I went on, “that you would be understanding and put my name at the top of your list.” I gave him my papers, watching his face as he unfolded them. Trying to read his expression when he saw the money tucked between the pages. There was a little silence.

  “I’m a very good worker,” I said quickly. “I’ve had a job since I was twelve. I’m always on time.”

  The man opened a desk drawer, tilted my papers, and let the zloty drop neatly inside before slamming it shut again. He handed back my papers, then slid a form and pencil across the desk. “Fill this out, Fräulein.”

  I did, my stomach twisting into knots. The money was gone. But I smiled at the man again when I’d finished the form.

  “And the job?”

  “You will receive a letter.”

  “But …”

  “You will be contacted, Fräulein.”

  “But …”

  “Next!”

  I clutched my papers and walked away from the desk. The watch. The brooch. They were sacrifices, and I’d just gambled them away to a Nazi. For nothing.

  It made me sick to think about it.

  I woke up in the night. Worrying about Max and the failure of my chutzpah. And then I realized what had woken me. A scream. A woman’s scream in the distance.

  And I knew that voice.

  The mattress creaked and popped as I kicked back the covers, left Helena sleeping, and ran out of the bedroom and through the empty apartment to Mr. and Mrs. Diamant’s old room. I threw up the window sash and leaned out as far into the cool night as I dared.

  And I saw lights in the ghetto, spotlights blazing, leaving the other places inky in the dark. Train cars were lined up, people thronging so thick it was impossible to make out individual bodies. But I could hear them. Sharp shouts, children crying. Dogs barked. Gunfire popped, sometimes pistols, sometimes the spurt of a machine gun, and then, at the end of the line, I saw that people were being pushed onto the trains. One by one into cars that were too high to step into. Going in on their stomachs, their backs. Sometimes they fell. Sometimes the dogs pulled them down. The din made me want to cover my ears. I wanted to cover my eyes.

  But above it all, I heard the voice again. A woman’s cry.

  It was my babcia. I knew it. Mrs. Diamant was being put on one of those trains.

  I stood at the window until the crowd was mostly gone and the trains had started moving, steam billowing up from their stacks.

  And I was waiting for Max as he was marched to work the next morning, barely able to stand still on the sidewalk. The usual guard glared at me, bu
t when his glare didn’t work, he gave up. I stepped into line beside Max. But I didn’t speak. Max was pale. His dark eyes shadowed. He marched in time, step by step, and he looked ready to fight. To explode. And then he started talking, slow. Measured.

  Henek and his girlfriend, Danuta, were gone. But only to a farm, to work the fields until the harvest. But his parents. He’d begged them to hide. Pleaded. They had said that it was only a work camp. A work camp might be all right. If they hid and they were found, it meant death. But then the trains had come, and the SS officer had laughed when Max tried to bring his parents tea. His parents did not need tea, the man said. His parents would never need tea. Because the trains were going to place called Bełżec, and Bełżec was not a work camp, you stupid Jew.

  Bełżec was one great killing machine.

  Max stopped talking, staring straight ahead, and I stepped out of line and stood in the traffic of the sidewalk. We were nearly to the coal yard.

  Mr. and Mrs. Diamant. They were dead. All those men, women, and children I had seen being put on the trains. They were dead.

  We were still living. But we must have been living in hell.

  They made the ghetto smaller after that first Aktion, drawing in the fences like a noose. My loose post wasn’t even along the border anymore. I arranged a new meeting place with Max, though if the right policeman was on duty, we could just meet near the gate and trade through the fence. Like everyone else was doing. The Jews inside were selling anything and everything for food, and for those of us outside, there was a bargain to be had, German laws or not. Sometimes I had to find Max through a crowd. Other times the SS were on duty and the only noise at the ghetto gate was the rustle of a newspaper blowing down the street to stick against the barbed wire.

  Max and Chaim had to go to a different apartment in the smaller ghetto, sharing a former kitchen with Dr. Schillinger, the dentist Max had assisted in Nizankowice; his young daughter, Dziusia; and another older man, a Dr. Hirsch, and his grown son, Siunek. They began pooling resources, and Max brought me four gold buttons, some earrings, and two coats to sell.