Januka tells this like a horror story, the kind you scare your friends with in the middle of the night.
But it’s too real for me. Much too real. I feel the pain behind my eyes.
Lubek watches me while he smokes.
I hurry home to Tatarska, thinking about what Januka said. Thinking that today could be the day the nurses climbed the ladder. Broke through the false wall, looking for rats. And then I’m stopped on the street by Mrs. Krajewska.
“How did you do it?” she says, her shopping over one arm. “I’ve been trying for the longest time, but those German girls just snapped their fingers and poof!”
“What are you talking about, Mrs. Krajewska?” I want to get home. I want to know who’s alive.
“Electricity!” she says. “They were getting ready to run the wires when I left a few minutes ago. I suppose you’ll enjoy having electric—”
“Run wires?” I say. “Run wires where?”
“Through the attic, I imagine …”
I sprint. Dash. Race down the street. Even if it’s to get there just in time to be shot.
And when I get to the top of the hill, I’m so out of breath, I can’t speak and I have a stitch in my side that makes me hobble. It’s just like Mrs. Krajewska said. There are two workers on my roof, right over the bunker in the attic, and a little crowd of neighbors in the yard, watching the spectacle. Including my two nurses, smiling with satisfaction. Including Mr. Krajewska, who I never see come out of the house for much of anything. I run up beside him.
“What’s going on?” I pant.
“They’re going to put a post through the attic to attach the wires,” he says. “Cutting a hole right through the roof. They’re going to ruin the walls, I say. This stonework is old …”
“Put a post through?” I ask.
“Yes. Into the attic …”
No. No. No. They can’t do that.
“… then they’ll go in and screw it down from the inside …”
No. No. No. They can’t go in.
“… and run the wires through from there.”
They’re going to cut that hole and look down into the faces of thirteen Jews.
The man is pulling out an auger, ready to drill.
No. He can’t. He can’t …
“Wait!” I shout at the roof. “You shouldn’t do that!”
The man on the roof pauses. My little crowd of nurses and neighbors waits to see what I’ll do next.
“We only need electricity in one room,” I yell. “And it’s freezing, and the light will be gone soon. Wouldn’t it be easier to just go through the window?”
“She’s right,” says Mr. Krajewska. “You’re going to tear up the walls.”
The man on the roof considers, then sets down his auger. “Coming down,” he says.
I feel one second of relief before I think what must be going on in the attic. They must have been hearing all the neighbors outside and that man getting ready to drill right above their heads. But they had to stay quiet.
I hurry into the house. Helena is in the corner of the living room, making herself small on the far side of the sofa.
“I’ve stopped them,” I tell her. “Go outside and let me tell them what’s going on in the attic.”
I fly up the ladder—the chickens are outside—and dart into the storage space and through the hidden door, moving the planks back into place just in case someone comes up after me. And when I turn around, my thirteen are huddled together in the corner, like Helena was. Only they are half-dressed and wild, with hay in their hair and baking soda on their skin, and Schillinger has his hand over Dziusia’s mouth, holding in the noise of her sobs. Max crouches in front of them with his hand out, telling them to be quiet.
I know what fear feels like. Now I know what it looks like.
“They’re not coming through the roof,” I whisper. “And not into the attic. They’re going through the wall downstairs right below you. No noise!”
I check through the peephole, and then slide out the false door, replace the planks, and hurry back down the ladder.
And when I open the door, Ilse is there, watching me come. We stare at each other and I smile, even while my stomach threatens to toss my one bite of Januka’s sandwich onto the floor.
“The roof is fine,” I say, pointing upward. “They didn’t hurt it.”
I don’t know if she can understand any of my Polish. But later I see her opening the door and looking at the ladder. The pain behind my eyes shoots from one side to the other.
And when the boyfriends come, I discover what was so important about the electricity. They have a radio. I sit on the bed and brush Helena’s hair while she plays with her doll, trying to listen while they find a station.
Isn’t it funny, I think, how worried we were about Ernst the SS man on the other side of the wall. Now there are four Nazis in the next bedroom, and I’m brushing Helena’s hair, hoping for the news.
I can’t hear it. Whatever they’re listening to, it’s a static blur beneath conversations I can’t understand. But I know it’s Ilse talking, with a little help from Karin, every now and then with a response from the men. And I hear one word I recognize. “Ratten.”
I lie down with the pain behind my eyes. I don’t like the way Ilse was looking at the ladder. I don’t like the feeling in my stomach.
And the next day, I stay home sick from work.
I’m not sick.
I’m afraid.
As soon as Karin and Ilse are gone, Helena goes to the well. And fights the Krajewska boys. I thought I’d put a stop to that. Their mother was supposed to have stopped it. I wish Helena would have said something. But she does win. And she brings in the water. And takes it up the ladder. And brings down the dirty bucket. Rung by rung. Over roosting chickens. Without a mess, and with a smell in her nose that would turn anyone’s stomach.
I ask a lot of Helena.
I stay in my nightgown so if one of the nurses comes, I can play sick, and I start porridge. A huge pot of porridge. And then Max comes down.
“Hela said you were staying home from work. Are you sick?”
I don’t know how to explain all the tiny things that are worrying me about the nurses. Worrying me enough to justify losing a day of pay. “Just pretending,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “I want to tell you something.”
He makes me smile. He’s got more energy than the last time I saw him. His bites are healed, his face bright like the Hanukkah lanterns we set on the table. Helena comes in to return the rinsed-out bucket, and Max bends down automatically, letting her ruffle his long hair and then scratch all through his beard and he makes noises like a well-petted dog. Helena giggles and says, “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
This must be some sort of attic ritual I didn’t know about.
“What are you doing down here, Max?” Helena asks.
“Being bad.”
“Okay.” She giggles again and chases out the chickens.
“It’s Monek and Sala’s turn, so I only have a minute, but I wanted to show you. Look.” He holds up a stethoscope.
“You’ve had a heart attack?”
“Not yet. But I can”—he pauses for drama—“listen through the floor.” He waggles the stethoscope.
Listen through the floor. To the radio. “What did you hear?”
“Bits and pieces. They only left the Polish translation on every now and then. But I can put pieces together. It’s not going well for them. Anywhere. The Russians are retaking the Ukraine. The Germans are retreating.”
“That’s close.”
“If they push west …”
“They might come here.”
“And if they do, we’re free,” says Max.
Hope is a beautiful thing to see on his face.
And then there are voices outside. In the courtyard.
No one has been watching the window.
Max vanishes up the ladder. But the door to the
little hallway is still open when both Karin and Ilse walk in. With Karin’s boyfriend.
The SS officer.
My hand creeps up to the neckline of my nightgown, holding it closed, making me hunch over a little. Which must, inadvertently, make me look a little sick.
Or maybe that’s the fear.
“You are not well, Fräulein?” says the SS man.
So he speaks Polish. That’s good to know.
I shake my head in answer, clutching at my nightgown, a spoon held over the porridge. Karin says something, pointing, telling him to ask me.
He says, “Where is your sister?”
My fear spikes so hard I can barely hold the spoon. Helena didn’t come back after she took out the chickens. She probably ran off to play.
Run, Hela. Run.
“My sister is gone to the market,” I say. “Why?”
“These ladies say there is something wrong in your house.”
I look at my two nurses. “What do you mean?”
“They want me to look in your attic.”
The man has his shoulders back, head up, standing ramrod straight. No expression. And yet he looks uncomfortable. They’ve talked him into this.
They’re trying to get me killed. And Helena. A little child.
And maybe that’s good, because it pushes my fear away. Far, far away into some deep place where I’ve put Izio and my babcia, and all those people I used to know, the faces in the ghetto that got on a train and didn’t come back again. A deep place where I don’t have to think about it right now. Where I can deal with it later.
Now I’m just mad.
“Fine,” I say. “Go look in my attic.” And I turn and stir the porridge.
The porridge I’ve made for fifteen people.
I can’t see their reactions. But I can hear them muttering.
Oh, please, Max. Please have the boards in place. Please God, help the children be quiet.
I hear boots walk across the kitchen. And start climbing the ladder. I put the lid on the porridge and walk over to watch him climb.
“Careful!” I tell him. Loudly. So Max can hear. “I think there might be rats.”
He steps up the rungs quickly when I say that. Probably to get his head through the hole and away from the floor level.
This member of the Gestapo, I realize, is afraid of rats.
“Do you see any?” I call. “I’ve been putting out traps.”
His boots have stopped on the second rung from the top. I see his body twisting to look around.
“It is a very small attic,” he says.
“The rest belongs to the house next door,” I tell him.
Karin calls up something in German, and he answers, looks for another few seconds, and then he says, “Was ist das?”
He’s asking a question. Like he’s seen something he doesn’t expect. My heart pounds so hard, I think the nurses must see it through my nightgown. I cross my arms and look past them as if I don’t care. But I am staring at my picture of Christ and the Virgin.
Please, God. Please.
Then the SS man comes down the ladder again, fast, brushing off his jacket and shaking his head. “Ratten,” he says.
I think he might have actually seen a rat.
Karin looks surprised. Ilse disappointed.
“You’ve seen enough?” I ask.
“Ja. Yes. Thank you, Fräulein.”
“Could I ask a favor of you, while you’re here? Since you speak Polish?”
The SS man nods, still straightening his jacket. He looks a little angry.
Not as angry as I am.
“Could you tell them that my father is dead, my mother and my brother are in a labor camp in Germany, and that it is up to me to care for my little sister?”
He does, his brows down.
“And could you tell them that my pay is barely enough?”
He does it. And he’s losing patience.
“And so when they take my food away and eat without asking, they are leaving my little sister hungry.”
He pauses, and then he translates. Karin starts to say something, but I cut her off.
“And also tell them that I think it’s very rude to bring guests into the house without asking. Through my bedroom. And to keep them there, with my little sister present.”
He looks uncomfortable again, but he says it.
“And Karin may understand this already, but if she hits my sister again, I will call the Gestapo myself.”
Now he doesn’t translate, he just yells at Karin, and Karin yells back, and so does Ilse. I wait. And eventually, they take their argument out the door.
I move the porridge off the heat. The huge pot of porridge for fifteen that none of them even noticed. And I know I’ll pay for this later. Even if Karin and Ilse never come back.
Because I know the fear will be back.
Przemyśl taught me long ago not to divide people by their country, their religion, or even their preferences in politics. The city taught me how to put people in their proper places on the map.
And I know exactly where to place my nurses.
Someone is following me to work.
I notice for the first time in the morning, with the spring mists rising up from the hills around Przemyśl, the sun coming up earlier and earlier in a watery sky. There’s a man looking at a newspaper near the market stalls being set up in the square. He has a thin face and heavy brows that have nearly grown into one. And later, when I’m getting ready to cross the iron bridge to the factory, there’s a man standing near the tracks below with a long heavy brow and a newspaper underneath his arm. When I change shifts with the evening workers, he’s leaning against a wooden pole for a telephone wire.
I don’t look back. I don’t do anything different. But I do wander by the market as it’s closing. I pause, looking at the wares, turning to hold them up in the fading light. And every time, somewhere in the thinning crowd, he’s there.
And it’s the same the next day. And the next.
I’m scared to leave the house.
I’m scared not to.
Even though the nurses are nicer to me now. Not long after the incident with the SS boyfriend, Ilse manages to ask me how old I am. I show her eighteen fingers. I might be nineteen, I can’t remember. She seems surprised, and it occurs to me that maybe they thought Helena was not my sister. Or maybe they’re just afraid of the SS, too. But they say thank you, and they don’t eat our food. They still bring their boyfriends home, though Karin’s is a different one now. But at least they’re more polite about it.
Or maybe they’re more polite because they still suspect me, and they’re just having me followed instead.
Hoping the man with one eyebrow will forget me, or lose interest, I stay home from work for two days and help Danuta, Siunek, and Sala knit sweaters to make up for the lost pay. We lock the door and let everyone down from the attic before they lose their minds.
Some of my thirteen are unrecognizable. Wild hair. No color. Frown lines where they shouldn’t be. Schillinger is weak. Jan Dorlich is a fence post on legs. And Dziusia has learned to go away into her own head. She just sits. And sits. Janek is having trouble walking. They are on top of one another up there. They can’t move, or the floor creaks above the nurses. They can’t speak, or someone will hear. They are hungry and cannot groan. They are angry and cannot react. They can’t cough. They can’t sneeze. Or snore. They let the rats crawl over them.
I think some of them blame me.
I think some of them blame Max.
I think they need someone to blame.
It feels like this might go on forever.
It must have been Karin’s previous SS man who wanted to listen to the news broadcasts, because now the only thing coming through the stethoscope is dance tunes. We’ve heard nothing about Russia. We know nothing about the war. Mrs. Krajewska took her boys to visit her sister again, and at some point, I realize that she never came back. But we can still hear Mr. Krajewska. Max says his
footsteps go back and forth on the other side of the wall. There isn’t as much food coming into the market, and what does come is expensive. The hope that was so lovely on Max’s face has dried up and gone.
Maybe the Nazis have taken over the world after all.
And when I go to work the next day, my single-browed friend trailing faithfully behind me, I discover that I am being deported. To Germany.
The whole Minerwa factory is being moved to Berlin, along with its staff. We are to leave at the end of April.
I go straight to Herr Braun, who tells me to go and talk to the director and leave him alone.
I go to the director, who is sitting behind his desk wearing the inevitable wire-rimmed glasses. And he tells me that yes, my name is on the list. I know my name is on the list, I say, that’s why I am here. Because I have a little sister who cannot be left without support. And he says that is no problem, because Berlin contains many nice boarding schools, to which he will be glad to recommend her.
But I am not qualified to go because I don’t understand my work, I tell him.
He says I am practically a mechanic because I fix all the water pumps.
I sigh. The real reason I can’t go, I say, is because I’ve been sick.
He looks at my days away from work, for which I have written the excuse “woman’s problems.” He shuffles the papers away. This is not sickness.
Yes, it is sickness.
It is not sickness. Not unless a doctor says it is. So I am going.
If I go to Germany, my thirteen are dead.
The one-brow man follows me to the doctor. After a long wait, the doctor pushes around on my stomach, and I tell him all sorts of lies about my symptoms. But I don’t know the right things to say.
“Girls your age often have little difficulties like this,” he says, writing in his notebook. “It’s very normal, and everything will regulate as you get older.”
“But I’m in pain,” I lie. “It’s hard to work.”
“Yes. I’m sure it feels very hard. But you will need to learn to bear up, if you want to be a mother.”
What I want is to kick him. But I smile instead, like I’d really like for him to buy me some chocolate. His face goes sympathetic. And then I look worried.
“I have another problem. You see, I have charge of my little sister. She’s eight years old, and my factory is being transferred to Germany. They’re going to take her away and put her in a school, and my work really is very tiring, and I don’t feel well enough for the journey. It would be better if I could get a medical card saying I am too ill to travel, so I can keep my sister in Poland and work here. Don’t you agree that would be better?”
The Light in Hidden Places Page 28
