The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  I don’t want him to go. But at least Helena will be safe now. And the cupboard shelf is nearly bare.

  Maybe I’ve done all one person can.

  I’m the empty gourd.

  The next morning, I take Helena with me and go out looking for work. I find nothing, except for more girls like me, or women, or men, searching for the same thing. I even cross the train tracks, to the neighborhoods that used to be inside the ghetto, where new people are moving in, where there might be new shops that want help. But I find nothing.

  I wish I had the 340 zloty back.

  “Is that where Max lives?” Helena asks, pointing as we turn the corner. The gate to the ghetto is just down the street, a German policeman walking back and forth in front of it. People mill in a little crowd on the other side, waiting, but there will be no buying or selling today. I don’t think any of them is Max. And then I hear a shout.

  A boy, or a young man, I can’t tell from this distance, has dropped to his knees inside the fence, and a policeman is raising his rifle butt. I start to turn Helena around. And then I don’t. I let her see. When the butt of the gun hits the boy, he drops without a sound. No one on either side of the fence makes a move or lifts a hand. The guard doesn’t even break his stride.

  “Stefi?” Helena asks, though I don’t think she knows her real question.

  “Yes,” I say quietly, “that is where Max lives, and that is why we helped him. And it’s why he—and Danuta—will always be our secret.” Helena looks up at me. “The biggest, deepest secret we can ever have, even now that he’s gone. It would be dangerous for us if anyone knew. Just like the boy.”

  She nods and looks back to the gate. “Does it mean that we can’t help Max anymore?”

  I don’t want to tell her the answer is yes. I don’t want that to be the answer. Helena takes my hand, and we walk away.

  I buy two end-of-day discounted rolls from the bakery for our supper, and two weeks after that, I have to decide between bread for our stomachs and coal for the stove. I choose bread, and on cue, the temperature drops, the air turns bitter, and the wind whips down ice from the hills.

  We wear our coats to bed, huddling together beneath the blanket while the wind moans, drinking hot water for breakfast because there is no tea. I have nothing to sell, no money to buy something to resell, and we can’t even go to Emilika, because she’s with her mother in Kraków. And Helena is losing weight again. The skirt I sized down for her is loose around the waist, and when she sleeps, there’s a rattle in her chest.

  On the third night of this, I borrow a saw from Mr. Szymczak and cut our table in half. It makes my arm ache and a mess on the floor, but the table is still usable, if propped just right against the wall, and now there’s wood in the stove. We use it sparingly, and Helena sweeps up the dust to burn.

  We climb into bed, and I keep Helena warm until she falls asleep. Then I consider our options. If we barely eat, we have two days of food left—at best—no money, and half a table. I haven’t seen Max or Danuta since they went back to the ghetto, and they’re sure to be worse off than we are. I can go out and try to find work again tomorrow. Or would anyone in our building pay me to do laundry? Even if they did, I haven’t got any soap. We could go back to the farm, but we couldn’t heat that big house, and I don’t know how we would eat. Not in winter. Not with everything taken.

  I put a hand on Helena’s hair and think of my mother’s friends in Bircza, anyone who might take Helena in. When Mama had the choice, she left her with the Zielinskis, but even the thought of taking Helena back there is a betrayal. But I can’t let my sister starve. I lay my head beside hers on the pillow.

  If I can’t find work tomorrow, then something must be done.

  I do not find work when the sun rises. I don’t find it when the sun sets. And I still don’t know what the “something to be done” should be. I only know I have failed my sister. In every way.

  I save my share of food for the next day.

  And then I remember that it’s Christmas Eve, and I give it to Helena and hope she doesn’t remember what day it is.

  The temperature is not as low as the night before, so we decide not to burn the rest of the table. We just shiver, my stomach grumbling, and as soon as Helena is asleep, I let myself cry. Hard. For everyone who’s gone. The boy hit with the rifle, the blue-eyed girl shot in the street, and Ernestyna Diamant, whom I never even met. I cry for Max and Danuta, and for Henek, because grief takes all forms. But the truth is, I’m mostly crying for myself. Because I’m sad, frustrated, hungry, and defeated. Because failure is something I don’t know how to do.

  And in the middle of my tears, a calm steals over me. A warmth in the cold. Like an arm coming around my middle. A cheek pressing next to mine. It reminds me of Izio and the night he told me he wanted to live. I think of rude tangos and how he used to walk me to Marysia’s apartment in the snow. How we laughed, trying to get out the front door without Regina and Rosa knowing, creeping up the attic stairs so Mrs. Pohler wouldn’t hear, our arms full of …

  I open my eyes. And sit straight up in bed. I must have been asleep. Dreaming. But I was dreaming of real things. The mattress springs protest as I slide out of bed, but Helena doesn’t stir. I tuck the blanket in tight around her, wiggle my feet into my icy shoes—I already have my coat on—and reach up to the high shelf of the mantelpiece to find the linen key. The empty apartment is silent as I tiptoe out of the bedroom and close the front door behind me.

  I still don’t want the neighbors to hear.

  The stairs to the attic are an ink puddle in shadows, but I know exactly how to avoid the creaks. I unlock the attic door. The moon is out, shining through the window at one end, silvering the laundry ropes, making ghost gray shapes on the dusty floor. The roof slopes down on one side to a brick chimney, and that is where I kneel, at the eaves, where the rafters meet the floor.

  I remember kneeling here with Izio, all those months ago. We’d taken too long because we were kissing instead of doing our task, and Mrs. Diamant had fussed when we got back. I think she knew. But we did do what she’d asked of us. “No one would think to look here,” Izio had said that day, his breath in my ear. “Not even you …”

  Because it doesn’t look like there’s a hole. But the shadows are deceptive. The eaves go on for a long way, and if you get on your stomach and reach all the way to the end …

  I grit my teeth and stick my hand into the hole, and now there’s sweat breaking on my forehead in the cold. The Diamant boys used to tell me stories about the attic, when I was young and teasable, about the dead bodies hidden in the eaves by the previous landlord. I don’t really think I’m about to touch a dead body. I think I’m about to touch a mouse. Or a rat. Or get bitten. Or hear something scurry. But when I do touch fur, it’s cold, and it doesn’t move. I pull it out.

  Mr. Diamant’s fox fur hat. And Mrs. Diamant’s fur collar and cuffs. And there’s more in the next eave. The lining of a jacket. A stole in the next. An armful of furs I’d forgotten existed. Until I dreamed of them again.

  Or until Izio came back and reminded me that he wanted me to live.

  Helena laughs when she wakes up because she’s warm and cozy, covered in furs. She stays in bed a long time, listening while I explain what I need to do next.

  I have a cousin, a real one. In Lezajsk. I don’t know him well, but maybe well enough to get a bed for one night and do some business. And he lives fifty kilometers away, far enough from a city that buying furs might be difficult. A luxury. And I need as much money as I can possibly get for our assets. Helena snuggles deeper, the stole wrapped around her neck.

  “Are you sure you have to sell them, Stefi?”

  I smile. “You help me decide. Do you like furs best or a full stomach?”

  She chooses her stomach. Because she really is a smart little girl.

  I will need her to be smart. Emilika is still gone, so Helena will have to be on her own, feeding herself, keeping the doors locked, and staying
warm without burning down the apartment building.

  “So you won’t go out, not even to play, not until I get back? You understand how important that is?”

  She nods.

  “And if there’s an emergency, you’ll go downstairs to Mr. Szymczak, yes?”

  “Don’t worry, Stefi. I can take care of myself.”

  And the silly thing is, I believe her. I leave her two days of food, the little bit of table wood we have left, and some old magazines I found in a rubbish heap that she can cut up with scissors to make a collage. She promises it will be beautiful when I get back, and when the winter sun rises, I’m five kilometers down the road from Przemyśl.

  I get lucky and catch a ride on a farmer’s wagon for more than twenty kilometers. I’m half-frozen when I get off, but the forests are beautiful, sparkling like diamond dust, mist lifting off the fields and the hills. Walking the rest of the way warms me up.

  My cousin’s wife answers the door in Lezajsk, surprised and a little suspicious, but within thirty minutes I’ve made double what I could have gotten at the secondhand shops in Przemyśl. And traded for more food than I can carry. My cousin’s wife asks what I’m going to do with so much food, and when I tell her “sell it again,” she laughs and promises to bring the rest on the train next week, because she’s traveling to visit her sister anyway and can stop on the way.

  I sleep that night on their sofa, and by the next night, I’m back in the apartment, warming my fingers and soaking my cold, sore feet. Helena squeals with excitement at the bounty in my knapsack. We have eggs, buttered toast, and a glass of milk each for dinner; there’s a small sack of coal in the corner, and magazine cuttings pinned all over the wall. I have no idea where she got the pins, but it doesn’t matter. If we’re careful, we can eat for four, maybe five weeks, and feed Max and Henek and Danuta.

  I don’t know what we’ll do after that. But for now, it feels like the first night Emilika came. Like I’m the queen of my own little kingdom.

  When I go to sleep, I dream of Izio. But he’s far, far away from me.

  * * *

  My cousin visits us a week later with two crates of potatoes, more butter and eggs, beets, dried apples, turnips, and three braids of onions, and four weeks after that, I’m tying the strings in my coat sleeves and filling my purse and pockets with the last of the supplies for the ghetto. It’s more than I can pass to Max through the fence, because I need it to last. I’ve been trading, collecting things to sell in the secondhand shops and sometimes in the rubbish bins outside the nicer houses, washing and sewing and repairing what I find. Now that the food is running low, I’m going to have to walk again, to get the best price. Two, maybe even four days.

  And I can’t have them starving in the meantime.

  I fish out my white armband from where I have it hidden in a little slit in the mattress, and tell Helena she can play in the field down the street until she’s too cold or until I get back. The sun is warm for the last day of February, like the world is remembering spring, and when I get to the ghetto gate, it’s the Polish rather than the German police on patrol. A few people are trying their luck selling food at the fence, but I take the back alleys to our spot, where the loose barbed wire will let me into the ghetto.

  And out of nowhere, my light mood evaporates. My heart slams against my rib cage. I hear German voices, and I can feel the end of a gun barrel press against my neck. It’s hard to breathe. It’s hard to think. I put a hand to my neck, to push away the cold metal.

  I know the gun is not there.

  But I can’t make my eyes open. I’m afraid to look at the fence. I’m afraid of what might be standing on the other side.

  And then I wonder if I’m actually going to let Max and Danuta and Henek go hungry because I’m scared of a fence.

  I open my eyes. And all I see is barbed wire and an old tomato tin, blown by the wind. I scoot beneath the sticking barbs, stand up, brush myself off, and pull the armband up over my right sleeve. And start walking.

  There are eyes on me in the ghetto. Stares that run away rather than meet my gaze. Different from the last time I was here. I’m not sure where Max is living now, if it’s the same place or a different one, or if it’s safe to say his name. I’m also scared to knock on the wrong door. So I ask for Henek instead, and the woman who gives me the direction has a sharp jaw and collarbones jutting out on either side of her neck. It’s so quiet when she slips away, I can hear her footsteps, soft shuffles on the pavement. There’s a cough from a doorway. No one is talking, not even among themselves.

  I don’t see any children.

  The address is the same as before, on Kopernika in the center of the ghetto, and it’s Danuta who answers my knock. She kisses my cheeks, scolding me for taking such a risk, leading me into the old kitchen where they live. She doesn’t scold anymore when she sees the food. Dr. Schillinger, a stern man, kisses my hand, and Dziusia waves from the bed, where she’s using one of her father’s shirts for a blanket. I’m glad to see them. I wasn’t sure they were alive.

  I wish I’d brought a little more food.

  “Where’s Max?” I ask.

  “Out with Siunek. He can’t stand to stay indoors.” Danuta’s brows come down. “Waiting for the boots on the stairs.”

  I understand. Too well. “And Old Mr. Hirsch?”

  “Alive.”

  And grumpy about it, based on Danuta’s wrinkled nose.

  “And Henek?” I ask.

  “He’s fine.” And then Danuta blushes so red I know she’s forgiven him. Probably thoroughly. I wonder how often she has to forgive Henek. Then I look at her rosy face and little nose and hope she has to forgive Henek many, many times in the future.

  Danuta hustles me out the door as soon as she has the food hidden, giving me plenty of advice about keeping my head down and not starting conversations. About never drawing the attention of the police. She smiles when she hugs me, but her eyes are shadowed. Anxious.

  I go quickly down the steps, a rat scrambling out of my way, thinking how good it would feel to drive a tank through the ghetto fence.

  On the street, I can feel the eyes again. Thin as I am, I think I’m too healthy. I still have a coat and a purse. My hair is clean. Backs turn just a little as I pass, and I realize that I might as well be walking down the ghetto street with a bright gold crown on my head. I hear a yell.

  “You. You there!”

  It’s Polish. Native Polish. I keep walking.

  “Stop!”

  I don’t stop until a hand pulls me to a halt, and I look up into the face of a policeman. A handsome policeman with a chiseled chin and blue eyes. If I hadn’t heard it in his voice, I can see from his uniform that he’s not German, and it makes me mad. Or maybe it’s Danuta’s anxious eyes that have me angry, or Max’s fear, or the man lying in the gutter behind this policeman’s feet, a man who may or may not be dead. A man who is Polish as well as a Jew. I jerk my arm away.

  “What do you want?”

  The policeman looks surprised. Not surprisingly.

  “I want to know what you are doing.” He eyes my armband and frowns. “You don’t belong in here, do you?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Where are your papers?”

  I don’t move.

  “Give me your papers!”

  I hand them over. Reluctantly. And watch him read. My papers do not have the word “Jude” on them.

  “You should be ashamed,” he says, handing them back. “A pretty girl like you, wandering through the ghetto.”

  He’s the one who should be ashamed, and he must see this in my face, because the heavy blond brows beneath his cap drop down into a scowl.

  “Tell me what you’re doing, or I’ll arrest you.”

  “I sold some food. What of it?”

  “Supporting Jews is against the law.”

  “I’m not supporting Jews. The Jews are supporting me. They need food, I need money. Now how can there be a law against that?”

 
For one second, I think my insolence is going to make this policeman smile. But I’m wrong.

  “I’m supposed to arrest you,” he says. “Do you know that? Any policeman should arrest you and take you to the Gestapo. This is a dangerous place.”

  He doesn’t have to tell me that.

  “And the Gestapo, they won’t be kind to you because you’re a pretty girl. In fact, I don’t think a girl like you would leave their office at all.”

  He’s trying to scare me, and it doesn’t work. And not because I’m brave or because I don’t believe him. I’m just already as full of fear as a person can be.

  And I’m still mad.

  I give him a long glare. His mouth twitches.

  “Okay,” he says. “Have it your way. I’m arresting you. Come with me.” And the policeman takes off at a fast clip down the sidewalk.

  I trot behind him. I don’t even know why. He doesn’t have his gun out. He isn’t touching me. He glances back, giving me a glimpse of blue eyes, and speeds up. I slow down, and he speeds up more.

  It’s a very strange arrest.

  I reach a corner and stop. The policeman doesn’t slow. He’s half a block ahead. I wait, then take one giant step sideways. Now I’m on a different street, out of sight. I don’t hear a shout. Not even a whistle. And so I run. As hard as I can down the sidewalk and around the next corner, leaning flat against the building. And when I get one eye at the edge of the bricks to see if I’m being followed, I catch a flash of a policeman’s dark blue hat with the gold around its brim. Peeking around the opposite corner.

  It’s taken me this long to realize he’s trying to let me go.

  I take a circuitous route through the ghetto, and when I can’t see a Jew or a German or a Pole, I slide beneath the barbed wire, get the armband off my coat, run across the bridge, take a turn through an alley, and come out on Mickiewicza Street. And three blocks behind me, bobbing through the people on the sidewalk, is the police hat.

  He’s not letting me go. He’s following me.

  I walk quickly, threading my way to the most crowded place I can find. The market. But even that’s not as crowded as it used to be. I try to mix with the bodies and the smoke of fires and the women shouting prices over the din, and then I duck behind a booth, threading my way around the rubbish that litters the back of the market stalls. I watch for a long time from behind a pile of rubble still left from a German bomb, but I don’t see the policeman. I hurry away, double back again, slip through the passage at Mickiewicza 7, skirt the overgrown courtyard, and pass through the front door of my apartment building.