The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  In fifteen minutes, I’ve gathered what I want. I know what I can pay. I don’t know if he’ll give it all to me at that price.

  And then I see a box tucked in the corner. Odds and ends, from someone’s house, maybe. And to one side, there is a doll. Not a baby doll. A girl, with blonde braids and blue painted eyes and red lips. She has sawdust leaking out of one leg and stains on her clothes. I hesitate, then put the doll with the other items in the crate and bring it all up to the man in the knit cap.

  He looks at the items, does some addition in his head, and names a price. I shake my head and offer him what I have. He shakes his head.

  “I’m not giving things away, angel.”

  “If I was someone’s angel,” I reply, “I’d have more money than I do.”

  He grins and names another price. Still too high. I offer to halve the sugar. It’s cheaper here, but I can get it in the city. He shrugs. I take out two cans of pears. He shrugs again. I hesitate and take away one of the kilo sacks of fine flour—the kind I haven’t seen outside a bakery since 1941—and a bottle of aspirin. Then I hesitate again, take out the doll, and put back the aspirin. I paid half my wages for aspirin when Henek got typhus. The man watches me set the doll aside.

  “St. Nicholas Day has come and gone,” he says.

  “I know.” I’d told Helena that St. Nicholas would have a hard time getting to Przemyśl this year. He’d have to come right through the middle of a war. Which didn’t mean much when he managed to find the Krajewska boys.

  “Okay,” the man says. “I’ll find you a sack.”

  I don’t know why I’m so disappointed about the doll. It isn’t practical. And it could cause problems with Dziusia and Janek. Not that they would be expecting to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. Though I’m sure they remember treats at Hanukkah well enough.

  I pay him, and he packs up the items in a sack that can be tied on my back. It’s heavy. Very heavy, and the eight kilometers back to the city leave me sore and aching. But I am pleased. My thirteen are going to be so surprised. I go to the market on the way home, even though there are only a few booths selling on a Sunday, and get some cabbages and more potatoes to give some excuse for my absence. Then I haul everything up to Tatarska at once, so Helena won’t have to.

  I don’t know who’s at the window, watching me come, but I try to hold the crate in front of me as I come up the hill so they can’t see the sack on my back. And then Mrs. Krajewska is coming out her door to wave at me.

  “Miss Podgórska! There you are. You’ve been selling for your sister today, I see. You shouldn’t do that on a Sunday.”

  I stop in front of the well.

  “But I do understand about your mother. I knocked on your door, but no one answered …”

  My eyes dart to my curtained bedroom window, where I know someone is watching. Helena must be out.

  “… and I wanted to tell you that you need to be careful with that cat.”

  “What? Oh, the cat. Yes. Why?”

  “Because it’s after your chickens! I could hear it thumping around in there while they squawked …”

  That sounds like Siunek falling down the ladder in his sock feet. Mrs. Krajewska might be surprised to know that my cat is six feet tall, knits, and needs a shave.

  “… and I also wanted to tell you that we’ll be leaving over Christmas, going to my sister’s. So could you watch over the house?”

  “And what about your nephew?”

  “Ernst? He’s going with us, then rejoining his unit in Berlin. It’s a shame you never spent any proper time together …”

  She goes on for a while, and when I tell her my arms are aching, she finally gives me dates and times. I sneak around back to the toilets, leave the sack with my illegal items behind the building, and that night, when everyone is asleep, bring it back inside, covered in a blanket, and while Mrs. Bessermann is staring out the window, I shove it under my bed beneath a sleeping Helena.

  “What are you doing?” whispers Mrs. Bessermann, turning around at the noise.

  “I thought I heard a mouse.”

  I push the sack farther under the bed, but something falls out.

  It’s the doll.

  I smile.

  * * *

  I fly through my work that week, singing while I do it, and make my quota every day. During my breaks, I work on the doll. I sew up her leaks, wash her clothes, Januka rebraids her hair, and even brings me some tiny ribbon snips to tie at the ends. I use an inky pen to repair some spots on her eyebrows and lashes where the paint has come off, and when we’re done, she looks nearly new. Or new enough. She looks pretty.

  “Your sister will be so excited!” says Januka. “I wish I had a little sister.”

  Lubek watches us work in silence, smoking, waiting for Januka to be done. He leaves the factory with her these days.

  I wrap the doll in butcher paper and hide it in the rafters of the storage room next to the toilet block. That night, I can’t sleep. I’m tossing under the covers. Max turns in his chair beside the window.

  “What are you up to?” he whispers.

  It’s the first time he’s started a conversation just for us since that night he kissed my forehead. He’s been avoiding me, and I’ve been afraid of what that means. I don’t know what I want it to mean. Tonight, I don’t care. I tiptoe through the cold in my nightgown and sit on the floor.

  “So, Fusia,” he says. “Back at the window.”

  He’s staring out through the curtain crack to the little pool of light on Tatarska Street, arms crossed, pushing the chair onto its back legs. He gives me a glance.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s happening?”

  I shake my head. Hiding my smile. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “Actually, I’m a very good liar. Just only to the right people.”

  “So I’m not the right people?”

  “If you want to be lied to, no.”

  He seems to take offense to this, though I can’t imagine why. “I thought maybe you were so happy because you were in love.”

  “With who?”

  “How can I keep up with your loves?”

  There is anger in those words, and it hurts. I feel sure I made up that feeling with the kiss on the forehead.

  Then he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

  I watch his dark head, his dark eyes, staring at the little bit of light outside. He used to risk getting shot just to leave the cage of the ghetto. Now he can’t leave these three rooms and an attic.

  He must be going out of his mind.

  “I was thinking of Mame,” he says. “And lighting the candles. And challah. And how she was always cooking and cooking and used to send me out at the last minute for the little things she forgot. I’d run fast down the sidewalk, because she said if I didn’t get the jam, there wouldn’t be any jelly doughnuts. But really, I just liked the wind in my hair.”

  I can imagine that. Small Max darting like a fish through the current of Mickiewicza. “What day of Hanukkah is it?” I ask.

  “Two.”

  I only spent one night of Hanukkah with the Diamants, since usually I’d gone back to the farm for Advent and Christmas by then. But I remember the doughnuts. And the candles.

  “I’ve been thinking about gingerbread,” I say. “This whole week, Mama would have been making gingerbread, and all the desserts for Christmas Eve.”

  “More than one dessert?”

  “There were twelve courses, for the twelve apostles, so half of them were usually desserts. But I loved the gingerbread. Mama would always make one into the shape of a star for each of us.”

  Max stares out the window.

  “We’ll never get them back,” he says. “Even if the war ends. I didn’t know I was living in days that I could never get back.”

  I wish I could give them to him. Wrapped in paper and tied with a ribbon.

  “We’re always living days we can never get back,” I say.
“So we make new ones. That’s all.”

  “Are we talking?” mumbles Dziusia from her blanket. In an effort to get her to sleep quietly, her father has told her that people don’t talk at night. Max smiles at Dziusia’s curled-up form, and then he smiles at me.

  I don’t know who reaches out first. Maybe it’s both of us. But suddenly, Max has my hand in both of his.

  “Will you stay with me, Fusia? While I watch?”

  I do. I stay with him until the moon has set and my eyes are drooping and Schillinger takes over at the window.

  And in the morning, when Schillinger is still at the window and everyone else is asleep, I very gently wake Helena. It takes a few seconds for her eyes to focus. Then I whisper in her ear, covering it with my hands. She nods and creeps out of bed. Sleepily. Like she’s going out to the toilet. But I see when Schillinger sees her, darting across the courtyard in the frost. His back stiffens.

  “What’s she doing?” he mutters. I creep up behind him and watch through the curtain. I had meant for her to put on her coat. And her shoes. She knocks on Mrs. Krajewska’s door. She looks through the windows. Then she comes running back into our side of Tatarska.

  “She’s gone!” Helena yells. At the top of her lungs.

  Siunek, Janek, and Jan Dorlich are up from the sitting room floor, Old Hirsch, who has the sofa, still struggling to get free of the cushions. Mrs. Bessermann appears in the doorway, Cesia and Dziusia with her, and I even see Monek and Sala, and Danuta’s sleepy face following Henek, coming out of the second bedroom. Max has been on his feet since Helena ran out of the house. His mouth is tight. He’s afraid.

  “Do you want to tell them?” I ask.

  Helena nods. She’s bouncing on her feet. About to burst.

  “Mrs. Krajewska,” she announces, “has gone on a trip!”

  I see blank faces all around. Old Hirsch waves a hand and lies back down on the sofa.

  “And she took her husband, and her boys, and her ugly SS man with her! And her ugly SS man isn’t coming back!”

  Old Hirsch sits back up again.

  “So for one week,” Helena says, “we can make noise. Like this!” And she jumps up and down, waving her arms and squealing.

  There’s a moment when my thirteen don’t know what to do.

  Then Janek says, “I want to make noise!” He runs into the room, fast, in case anyone might try and stop him, whooping and jumping with Helena. Mrs. Bessermann laughs. Jan Dorlich laughs, loudly, then Danuta takes Dziusia by the hand and skips her in circles, singing an old marching song.

  Hey! Whoever is a Pole, to your bayonets!

  Either we win, or we are ready

  To build a barrier with our corpses,

  To slow down the giant that brings chains to the world.

  Hey! Whoever is a Pole, to your bayonets!

  Which is maybe a little violent for Christmas, but the children are enjoying it. Monek and Sala, who only got married the week before they left the ghetto, dance a waltz to it, and Siunek gets Cesia to join in, stepping over Helena and Janek, who are now rolling across the floor. And Max is laughing.

  It’s like a cloudy day in the mountains, when the water is flat as the metal of a tank. And then the sun comes out and makes everything sparkle.

  We’re in danger of breaking our furniture.

  I dodge my way through the chaos to the bedroom and drag my sack from beneath the bed, bringing it out to the kitchen while everyone is occupied. I poke up the fire. I’ve got the water ready to heat, and then I fish a tin out of my sack.

  Mrs. Bessermann, who always watches everything, comes straight across the room. “That’s not …” She takes the tin from me. “Coffee!”

  “Surprise!” I say.

  This brings Old Hirsch from the sofa, to supervise its making, and the smell is such a relaxation, such a memory of home that the room settles into a happy buzz of conversation. I slice the rest of the bread with a scraping of butter for the children and call the women to the kitchen. Max comes, too, because he’s curious, and I empty my sack with a flourish. A warrior with her trophies. Sala reaches out and touches the flour like she can’t believe it’s there. Max quirks his brow.

  “Now,” I say, “who knows how to make challah?”

  The cooking and baking become a group effort, with Siunek and Max and even Schillinger sometimes lending a hand, since he had always been the one to peel the potatoes for his wife. Mrs. Bessermann will let no one help with the challah. I leave Max chopping beets and take Helena out to the storage shed, where we can’t be seen by whoever is on watch at the window. And I unwrap the doll.

  “Oh,” says Helena. “Oh, oh.”

  “St. Nicholas was a little late.”

  “That’s okay,” she whispers.

  “I thought maybe when I’m at work, she could keep you company.”

  Helena nods. She touches the braids, the red lips, and moves the doll’s arms. Then she looks up at me. Worried. “But what about Dziusia and Janek?”

  “They don’t celebrate St. Nicholas the same way,” I say, feeling guilty. “But maybe we should keep her hidden, just for now.”

  Helena nods, kisses the doll, and wraps her back up. We go inside, and while I’m rolling out the dough for the cookies and Monek Hirsch is telling a loud story about a fish he once caught—with heavy corrections from his uncle—I hear a whoop from the bedroom. Helena has presented Dziusia and Janek with her ball, the one Mr. Szymczak patched, that Max brought on his back to Tatarska while trying not to be shot. The three of them devise a game that involves kicking the ball through one doorway or the other, and we’re lucky it never lands in the slop bucket or the soup.

  Tatarska 3 smells like Christmas all day.

  When the sun is setting, I bring all three of our lamps to the table for the third day of Hanukkah, Old Hirsch sprinkles salt on the challah, and we eat borscht and latkes and tinned pears and one of the chickens, sacrificed while Helena was safely playing ball. Then there are the cookies, cut into rather awkward stars because I don’t have a cookie cutter. And after we’ve eaten our fill and the dishes are stacked up and the children are sleepy, I have everyone gather in the living room and bring out my last surprise.

  Vodka. And a whole case of cigarettes. My unsold ration. Old Hirsch kisses both my cheeks, Monek hurries for glasses, and half the room lights up.

  We play Guess What I Am. And Jan Dorlich, we discover, is a dark horse as an actor. But after the vodka has gone around, the whole thing devolves into Max with a soup pot on his head, talking when he’s supposed to be silent, taunting Hitler in what I think is supposed to be a British accent, only it isn’t. He’s obviously being Churchill, but no one will guess it, just to make him keep on. I laugh so hard I cry, and when Henek, who has no sense of humor, finally yells, “Churchill, Churchill! God save us all!” I laugh even harder, and Siunek actually ends up on the floor.

  Max takes off his soup pot and sits next to me on the sofa. “I was good, yes?”

  “You were good, no!” I giggle. He grins and puts his arm around me.

  And the sofa feels warm and cozy, and I love everyone.

  The good feeling lasts for a long time. While the children play ball in the bedroom and Helena sleeps with her doll and I sit with Max on his nights at the window. Even when Mrs. Krajewska returns and we have to go back to being quiet again. When the cigarettes are gone, and the sweaters need knitting, the laundry is dirty, and we’re back to eating cabbages. When the weather turns bitter and I go to work in the snow and Helena struggles up the hill with the food bags and there’s just not money to buy enough coal.

  Until a day when Sala Hirsch calls the warning from the window and my thirteen disappear into the attic. When I answer the door and find the Gestapo.

  When the SS man looks at his list and says, “Fräulein, we require your house.”

  I stare at the SS man. He has two more Gestapo with him. They look irritated. Bored. And I can only say, “What?”

  The man’
s brows come down below his cap. “We require your house,” he says again, in very distinct, German-accented Polish. As if I might be stupid. And then he pushes his way inside, the other two officers following after.

  They walk through the empty rooms. They look in all the corners, and the first officer makes notes on his list. And my nerves are tingling, ready to burst through my skin.

  They want my house. The Nazis want my house.

  Please, Helena. Don’t come home.

  Then the officer opens the door to the ladder, stepping back and making a noise of disgust at the chickens. He looks at me. “Where does this ladder go?”

  My throat is dry. Closed up.

  “Where does the ladder go?” he barks.

  “Attic,” I whisper. And I watch his shiny boots step one rung at a time up the ladder. He goes all the way up. His boots disappear. The other two officers watch me closely, the picture of Mary and the Christ just behind them, while the boots make the ceiling creak over my head.

  Please, God. Please, God. Please, God.

  The attic is quiet. The sky is quiet. The man comes down the ladder and makes a note on his clipboard. He says. “The empty building across the street will now be a German hospital …”

  I’d seen workmen going into the old college last week, doing repairs. I hadn’t guessed what it meant.

  “… and the staff must have housing. The new tenants will arrive in two hours. Take your personal belongings and leave the furniture.”

  Two hours. The Nazis want my house in two hours.

  “But … I can’t pack …”

  I can’t leave here at all.

  “Leave or be shot,” the man says.

  I stare at him.

  “If you are here, we will shoot you. Do you understand, Fräulein?”

  I understand. Too well.

  “We will be back in two hours,” says the SS man. He ticks his list, and the other Gestapo follow him out the door.

  I lean on a chair and suck in one long, gasping breath. And then I jump over the chickens and scurry up the ladder, pushing aside the loose planks and crawling through the little door.

  Danuta lets out a tiny scream, but other than that, it’s silent. Even the ones who are crying. I can’t imagine how they felt when they knew the Gestapo was coming up the ladder.