The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  The man is Polish, smoking cigarettes, with a pink nose and his collar turned up around his ears, his gun leaning against the farm gate. If I looked hard enough, I’d probably find a bottle of vodka nearby. I ask for Henek, but the guard isn’t much bothered whether I talk to the prisoners or not. He’s not very bothered to watch them, either. There’s nowhere for them to go.

  I find Henek and Danuta in a section of the barn that has been fitted with wooden beds stacked on top of one another, ladders going up their sides. Some of them are occupied, while other prisoners gather around a fire giving more smoke than warmth. I can smell cows.

  Henek jumps to his feet and kisses both my cheeks, which is a surprise. Danuta shakes my hand. It’s cold and dirty in the barn, and they both look thin, but not ghetto thin. And they don’t have the same look as the people in the ghetto, either. There’s something missing from their expressions.

  They’re not afraid.

  Henek takes me to sit on a cut log near the barn door, and I tell him what I’ve come to say. That Chaim is gone, and Max is hurt but alive and hidden with me. He frowns and rubs a hand along his head. Exactly like Max does. I’ve never noticed that before.

  “But we don’t know Chaim is dead, do we?” says Henek. “Max didn’t see …”

  “He didn’t jump, Henek. He stayed on the train.”

  “That’s what I mean,” he says. “It’s like Mame and Tate.”

  “So what is Max going to do now?” Danuta asks, cutting in.

  “We don’t know, but …” I lean close. I don’t see any guards, but I can see other prisoners trying to listen, and who knows which of them might decide that extra food or privileges are worth a betrayal to the Germans. “He says not to go back to the ghetto. Not if you can help it. And”—I glance around—“you could leave here easily enough. I think you could …”

  “Leave here?” says Henek. “It can’t be as bad as all that. Max is overreacting. The worst is probably over.”

  I feel my eyes widening. “Henek, they will kill you in the ghetto. Max says they want every Jew dead …”

  “And what does he want us to do? Live in the woods and starve? We have food here, and shelter, and the ghetto must be nearly empty now. We’d probably have an apartment to ourselves.”

  I sit on my log, too stunned to speak. How could Henek say that after what I’ve just told him? After his parents, two of his brothers, and probably his sister, too?

  Danuta takes my arm. “I’m glad you came, Fusia. I’ll walk with you as far as the guardhouse.”

  As soon as we’re out of the barn and away from the door, she turns to me. “Don’t be mad. He’s pretending. It’s the only way he can …” She bites a lip. “He didn’t see his mother and father go, and the things he did see, he pretends he didn’t. It’s easier for him like that.”

  I don’t understand. But I nod like I do.

  “Tell Max I’ll talk to Henek. We’re supposed to be sent back in three days, but maybe we can find a way to work here. Find something that needs doing …”

  “Danuta!” Henek calls from the barn.

  Danuta jumps. “I have to go,” she says. “What’s your address, so I can write and tell you where we are?”

  I give it to her, and a little wave as I walk past the guard and back through the gate. Danuta has a nice smile, an upturned nose, and curls that could use a brush. She doesn’t seem like a stupid girl. So I wonder what she could be doing with a Dummkopf like Henek.

  A man with a donkey and a cart offers me a ride on the way back to the city, but he’s going too slow. Every unlikely way the Gestapo could have found Max and my sister in the apartment is running through my head like a cinema film I’d never want to see. I cover the eleven kilometers back to the apartment like I’ve got a train to catch, and when I turn the lock on the front door, it’s silent. So completely silent my heart leaps in my chest, then falls straight down to my stomach.

  There’s no one here.

  They’ve been taken.

  They’re gone.

  I run into the bedroom.

  And there are Helena and Max, side by side, peaceful, Helena with her arms around his bruised neck. They’re asleep.

  If the Gestapo knocked on the door right now, I’d fight the Nazis with my fingernails just to let them stay that way.

  But three days later, it’s not the Gestapo that knocks. It’s Danuta.

  “I’ve run away,” she says. “From Henek!”

  She looks as surprised about it as I am.

  “I think Max is right,” she says. “The ghetto is just a place to be killed. And …” She takes a shaky breath. “And my parents died, too, you know.”

  I open the door a little wider and let her walk through it.

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with her.

  * * *

  One bedroom is a small place for four people, and it takes exactly three days for someone to lose their temper. Helena kicks a table leg when I say she can’t go play with the children in the street, because how can we trust what she might say? And in retaliation, she eats all the butter. By the spoonful. By itself. And then I lose my temper. Max sits up stiff in the bed, shirtless until we can get him another one. He’s black and blue with angry red scabs that have a tendency to break open and bleed. But there’s no fever.

  “Come sit beside me, Hela,” he says. “I’ll tell you a story …”

  “I’m tired of stories!” she yells.

  Max has told her every story known to Poland at least twice. For the past day or so, he’s just been making them up. Some more successfully than others.

  “Do you know what I think?” asks Danuta. Since no one ever knows what Danuta thinks, this is interesting. “I think Hela knows how to keep a secret. Don’t you, Hela?”

  I shake my head. This secret is too much to ask of a six-year-old. Our lives are at stake. But Helena’s face has brightened. Danuta holds out her arms, and Helena climbs into her lap.

  “Now, what would you say if some person asks who lives in your apartment?” asks Danuta.

  “I’d say my sister,” Helena replies.

  “Anyone else?”

  She shakes her head.

  “And what if someone says, ‘But I have heard voices in your apartment, little girl …’ ” Danuta’s voice has taken on a ridiculous German accent, very accusing, which makes Helena giggle. I raise a brow. “ ‘Your sister, little Fräulein, does she have a man up there?’ What would you say to that?”

  “I’d say my sister tells good stories, and sometimes she does the man’s voice, and it’s funny.”

  I catch Max’s eye, and he lifts a shoulder. I have to admit, that was a good one. Danuta smiles.

  “And what if someone asks to come up to your apartment, just to see? What would you tell them, then, Hela?”

  “I’d say my sister has germs, and she’s catching. And then I’d tell them that I have germs, too, and try to give them a hug.”

  Danuta laughs, and Helena grins at me in triumph.

  “Oh, go and play, then.” I sigh. “We’ll try one hour, and if everything is good, we’ll try again tomorrow. Do you agree?”

  But Helena is already running down the hallway and opening the front door. I steady my breath. The fear has set in, like I knew it would. The breakfast dishes rattle when I stack them up.

  I hate being afraid.

  “Stefi?”

  We freeze, Danuta in the act of shaking out the bed blanket over Max. That voice came from my front door. The door no one locked after Helena left.

  “Fusia!” the voice calls again. There are footsteps coming down the hall.

  Max dives for the floor, rolls underneath the bed, and the bedroom door opens.

  “Hello,” says Emilika. “I saw Hela go down the stairs, so I thought you must be well. Finally.”

  I close my open mouth. Danuta is still holding the blanket in the air. Emilika looks back and forth between the two of us. “Who’s this?” she asks.

 
Danuta unfreezes and spreads the blanket over the bed, leaving it long on the front side to cover Max. Emilika looks at me expectantly.

  “This is my cousin,” I say quickly. “Danuta.”

  “Oh,” says Emilika, “your real cousin.” She winks. “Is there some reason you’re both hiding up here? Because you don’t look very sick.”

  Emilika is looking at me, but I can see Danuta over her shoulder, and she is the one who looks sick. I smile, set down the dishes, and close the door behind Emilika.

  “I should have known I can’t keep anything from you,” I say, sighing. “Yes, there’s a reason we’re hiding. But you can’t tell anyone, Emilika. Please.”

  Emilika shakes her head. Her eyes are eager. I think Danuta might actually vomit on the floor.

  “Danuta is hiding because she’s …”

  I watch Danuta take a breath.

  “Because she’s pregnant, and she can’t let her parents find out.”

  Danuta sits hard in the chair beside the bed.

  Coming up with quick lies must run in the family.

  “Oh,” says Emilika, turning to Danuta. “Oh! Sad little mouse! You do look sick …”

  Emilika goes and sits on the bed, patting Danuta’s hand. “Do you need …” She eyes me again, then Danuta. “Do you need some … advice?”

  I look at Danuta. She looks at me. We all look at one another.

  “Because if you need advice,” Emilika says, “I can tell you exactly what to do.”

  “I think we would love your advice,” I say, and as soon as Emilika’s eyes are off me, I wave a hand at Danuta, telling her to participate. Danuta gives Emilika a nod and a weak smile.

  “You need a pot,” says Emilika. “A big pot, and we’re going to fill it with water as hot as you can take, okay? And you’re going to sit in this pot for thirty minutes …”

  Oh, poor Max, I think.

  “… and after thirty minutes, you’re going to run up and down the stairs, just as hard as you can. All three flights, until you’re really sweating, and then we’ll sit you in the pot again …”

  Danuta is nodding.

  “We should start right now. I have a pot downstairs,” Emilika says. “Fusia doesn’t have anything near big enough.” She pats Danuta’s knee. “I’ll be right back!”

  And she dashes out the door.

  Danuta jumps to her feet and turns on me. “What do you think you’re—”

  “She’s saving your life,” says Max, his head sticking out from under the bed.

  “You,” I whisper, “turn to the wall and close your eyes. And don’t sneeze. Or stretch, or stick your feet out. Don’t even breathe. And don’t listen!”

  Max disappears beneath the bed.

  “I may kill you,” Danuta whispers as footsteps come running back up the stairs.

  “Or maybe the Gestapo will beat you to it,” I reply.

  She closes her mouth.

  After two bouts of Danuta boiling her lower regions in a pot and one vigorous run up and down the stairs, I ask Emilika what time she’s supposed to be at the photography shop. Emilika says, “Oh!” then kisses both our cheeks, says to keep going, and runs out the door. Danuta struggles upright, and I hand her a towel. She dries off, pink with heat, exercise, and embarrassment.

  “Do you think this would really work?” she asks, getting her dress adjusted.

  I shrug. My mother was a midwife, and I think she would have laughed. I give Danuta a raised brow.

  “Why, do you need it?”

  “Please!” says Max’s voice, muffled under the bed.

  Danuta smacks my arm once and smiles.

  Then Helena comes bounding up the stairs, also with her cheeks blushing, because the air is brisk. She’s breathless and happy.

  “I didn’t say anything,” she says as I lock the door behind her. “I told you I wouldn’t. Where’s Max?”

  She lifts up the blanket and crawls under the bed.

  * * *

  Emilika knocks at the door three more times in the next two days, asking if her advice has solved Danuta’s problem. We tell her it has. And it’s a little bit true. Thanks to Emilika, everyone in the building now thinks Danuta is my corrupt cousin from Bircza. And while I can’t send her to the shops, she can at least hang the laundry in the attic without fear and doesn’t have to scramble beneath the bed every time a neighbor knocks for the linen key.

  So Danuta is standing in the hall right behind me the next time I answer the door. Only it’s not one of our neighbors. Or even Emilika. This is a man. A stranger in a threadbare coat, and he doesn’t say hello or ask a question. He just points over my shoulder and says, “That’s the Jew I’m looking for.”

  * * *

  I lean against the door, watching the stranger like he’s a devil I’ve just locked myself in with. The man fidgets, twisting a hat in his hands while Danuta sits at the table, reading the letter he’s brought. He doesn’t look like the secret police. But that could be the point, couldn’t it? I settle on Emilika’s laundry pot as the best weapon in the room. Then Danuta sniffs and sets down the letter.

  “Henek,” she says. “He’s back in the ghetto, and he wants me with him. He met this man at the fence and said he’d pay him to bring me back. He’s waiting there now. Oh, he really does love me. What should I do?”

  What she can do, I think, is go to Henek and kick him as hard as she can. What was he thinking, giving some stranger at the fence my address and telling him there are Jews in my apartment? And then he writes it all down in a letter for this man to carry around on the streets.

  He’s going to get us killed.

  Or I’m going to kill him first.

  “If I won’t go back now,” Danuta says, “he wants me to sign, to show I read his letter. Should I go back now, Fusia? What should I—”

  “You can’t go to the ghetto now,” I snap. “We’d have to plan, make sure there’s a safe way in …”

  “But this man won’t leave without me or a signature.”

  The stranger clears his throat. “The Jewish boy said he’d pay me more if I brought it back signed, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  I don’t know what else this man could need for the Gestapo.

  “I’m no killer,” he says. “I just want my money.”

  I give Danuta my only pen, so angry that it slaps a little against her palm. The man snatches the letter as soon as she’s signed it.

  “I’m no killer,” he says again, turns the lock, and darts out the door.

  Max’s head pops out from under the bed. “Maybe Henek is right, and the man just wants to get paid.”

  And we, I think, have no way of knowing that.

  “What a yutz,” Max says from the floor. He means his brother.

  I couldn’t agree more.

  Max and Danuta have a long talk in the empty living room of the Diamant apartment, and when they come back, Max says that he asked me for one night. I gave him two weeks. And in return, they’re endangering my life and my sister’s. I’ve done enough. They’re going back to the ghetto.

  I don’t want Max to go back. He has nightmares almost every night. And I’m so frightened that none of them will ever come back out again that it leaves me sick. Part of me is relieved that Helena will be safe. And another small part of me just feels lost. Empty. The rattling gourd.

  They’re ready as soon as the sun is down, and Helena is crying because Max is going away. Max kisses her head and says that when the war is over, he’s going to take her to a beach, where she can feel the sand and play in the wide and salty ocean. There must have been a story told about a beach sometime, while I was out or at the market, because Helena’s face lights up like a lamp.

  “Do you promise, Max?”

  He smiles. “I promise.”

  I wish Max wouldn’t make promises. Especially when his face is barely healed.

  We lock Helena inside, and I go partway down the stairs, making sure there are no neighbors to see a man coming ou
t of my apartment. The longer I think about this decision, the worse it seems. Max won’t have a ration in the ghetto, because the Germans think he’s dead. And what will happen to him if they find out he isn’t? Danuta tries to reassure me that he will stay out of the Nazis’ way. And the Ordners’. And the Poles’. That she has a little money to share.

  But this feeling is terrible. Like the last time I saw my babcia. Like seeing the look on the German soldier’s face when I came walking up to the labor camp at Janowska.

  It makes me doubt everything.

  This fear, I think, is Hitler’s best weapon.

  We each take Max by an arm and walk down the street.

  We make small talk as we go, and Max nods and smiles, wearing a hat and coat I found in a trash heap and washed four times. It passes well enough in the dark, and he keeps his head down, but we slip into the side streets at the first opportunity, across the tracks, skirting the lights until we come to that section of fence where Max loosened the barbed wire all those weeks ago. Where the Germans decided not to shoot me.

  Henek is waiting there, all smiles when he sees us coming around the corner with Danuta. There’s not a gun or a uniform to be seen. But I remember the feel of metal against my neck, the certainty that I’m about to be shot. Sweat breaks out on my forehead.

  I see Max looking at me.

  Danuta scrambles under the fence, gets to her feet, and hits Henek as hard she can in the stomach.

  I really did not think Danuta had that in her.

  “Coward!” she whispers. “Giving Fusia’s address to a stranger! You could’ve come yourself if you’d had any guts …”

  Henek has an arm around his middle. “But they said … They told me he’s reliable! He does business at the fence!”

  “And how do you know he doesn’t do business with the Gestapo?”

  Max turns to me. “This should be a good time.” He tries to smile, but he can’t quite do it. “Thank you, Fusia.” He kisses my cheek, holding his own cheek there for just a moment, and then he slips under the fence, waving a hand. Telling me to run away.

  And only when he held his cheek to mine did I realize that I’m not the only one scared for him to go back into the ghetto. He’s scared. Of course he is. After everything that happened there.