The Winter Guest

by Pam Jenoff

  “I guess it just never came up.” She could hear the defensiveness in her own voice. It wasn’t as if she had deliberately kept Ruth from him. But for once in her life she’d enjoyed being known as herself, not one of a set. “You’d like her.” More than me, she added silently. Because everyone liked sweet, pretty Ruth more.

  Helena pressed against him, eager to hide in the warmth of his embrace. Soon her breathing matched his and her eyes grew heavy as she drifted off into the deepest sleep she had ever known.

  14

  Chirping birds awakened Helena, signaling a dawn that had not yet broken through the thickness of the pine trees. Sam snored lightly beside her and she slipped reluctantly from beneath the warmth of his arm without waking him. A cold hollowness settled over her immediately. She lingered, wanting to see his eyes once more. But he needed his rest. Her mind whirled back to the previous night’s kiss outside the chapel. There had been an intensity to his embrace that said he was barely able to contain himself, that he also wanted more. Should she have taken the moment further? Something had stopped her, saying that this was too big and important, and that if they crossed the line it would change everything in a way that neither of them wanted. Yet she wondered now if they had been wrong to hold back on the moment, the only one they might have.

  She looked back at him once more, then stole quietly from the chapel and started for home, still thinking about their kiss. Her connection with Sam had not been imagined or one-sided. He wanted them to be together, to share a life beyond anything she had ever contemplated. But it was impossible—she could not go without Ruth.

  Ruth. She shivered. Her sister did not know yet about Mama. The pain of yesterday’s events rained down upon Helena like shards of glass. Mama was dead, and their attempts to keep her safe and well had failed. Each step home was heavy as lead as she dreaded the inevitability of telling Ruth what had happened. Perhaps she should not tell her at all. Helena stopped, considering the idea. She could keep going to the city each week and maintain the pretense to spare her sister the grief—and if Ruth did not know, Helena could keep going to see Sam. But sparing Ruth little realities was one thing—the truth about Mama quite another. She could never keep something like that from her sister.

  Forty minutes later, Helena emerged from the forest. Smoke puffed faintly from the chimney of the cottage below. As she neared, the mule whinnied in greeting. The usual breakfast smells wafted from beneath the doorway. Helena grasped the doorknob, then paused, imagining for a second that things might be as they always had. Once she stepped through the door, that illusion would be shattered forever.

  Ruth appeared from the bedroom, carrying Karolina. “Where have you been?” she demanded as she set the child down by the fire. Ruth was wearing one of Mama’s sweaters, just weeks after forbidding Helena to take the same clothes.

  From behind the house came the sound of the other children, laughing as they played. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t get back. The Germans were everywhere in the city, and I had to hide in the hospital until they were gone.” Helena cringed inwardly as her sister’s eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the explanation that was just short of a lie.

  “The Germans were in the hospital?” Ruth asked, imagining horrors so far short of the truth.

  Helena knew then that she could not hide what had happened from her twin. “Ruti...” she began, but the words stuck in her throat. She shook her head. And with that single look, Ruth knew.

  Ruth’s face caved and for a moment she appeared as though she would break down. “Mama’s gone.” She spoke the words that Helena could not, her tone unquestioning.

  Helena nodded, then waited for her sister to collapse into the tears that she always shed so readily. Ruth dropped into a chair and closed her eyes, then rocked back and forth. “How?”

  “I don’t know...in her sleep, I think.” Not entirely a lie, for surely the poison Wanda had given their mother had first made her drowsy. “She died before the Germans got there.” Helena wanted to spare Ruth from all that she had seen. “She’s at peace.”

  Karolina toddled to Ruth, who picked her up and held her close. “You just left her there?”

  “You don’t understand, I had no choice.” Helena stifled the urge to lash out. “The hospital is in ruins, and most of the nurses are gone. When the Germans left, I had to run. You have to believe I did everything I could to help her.” She was begging now, pleading for Ruth to understand, not just about their mother’s passing but that Helena had tried, really tried, to help her these past months.

  Helena braced herself, waiting for Ruth to berate her further. But her sister sat numbly, staring through her fingers at the floor. “Ruti, there’s something else...” Helena lowered her voice. “The soldier at the chapel thinks he can get us passes to leave.” She held her breath, waiting for Ruth to rebuke her for breaking her promise and seeing him again, but she did not.

  Ruth lifted her head. “Leave? I don’t understand.”

  She nodded. “He believes that the Germans are coming to the villages, and if it’s anything like the city, it won’t be safe to stay here.”

  “Where would we go?” The perennial question was a refrain of their conversation just days earlier.

  “Over the border.” Karolina looked from Helena to Ruth and then back again, listening somberly.

  “And then?”

  “Away.” Helena faltered, the incompleteness of the plan suddenly evident. “We can go to America with the soldier.”

  Ruth’s eyes darted back and forth as she contemplated the magnitude of the journey. “He can get passes for all of us?”

  “Yes, of course,” Helena replied, too quickly. She had not intended to mention Sam’s idea to her sister at all, but in her desperation to comfort Ruth, it had seemed like something. “There’s a kinder transport for the children. And then you and I can get papers and go separately.” She watched as Ruth processed the information, considering the idea.

  “No,” Ruth replied. “We can’t put the children on a train without us.”

  “It won’t be safe here. We would just send them ahead and meet them as soon as we are able. The children are strong.”

  “The children are children. We promised Mama we would stay together.”

  “But she couldn’t possibly have known how things would change, how horrible circumstances would become.”

  Ruth shook her head, angrily swiping at a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “But think about all of the things you could do in America. You could meet someone and get married.” Ruth’s face twisted at the mention of the painful dream, now abandoned. Helena continued quickly. “Or you could become a teacher.”

  “It isn’t safe,” Ruth persisted. “Those transports are intended for the Jews. If the Nazis find out they will become a target.”

  Helena hesitated, considering whether to tell Ruth the truth about Mama’s Jewish heritage. Surely it would help her to understand the heightened danger for them here, the need to risk leaving. But Ruth was the most religious of them all, embracing Catholicism like a mantle, as though the church and its teachings might shield them from whatever transpired in the outside world. Helena could not possibly destroy the framework that had kept her sister going, not now when she had already lost so much else.

  “You can’t keep your head in the sand,” she persisted instead.

  “I’m not!”

  “You saw it when the policeman came.” Watching Ruth blanch, Helena felt a twinge of guilt for involving the painful memory. But she did not have a choice. “Don’t you see, that one of these days there will be another knock on the door, only this time it won’t be about hoarding?”

  “I’m not in denial,” Ruth replied again, this time with surprising force. “I’m not ignoring how bad things are, or what might happen. I just don’t ag
ree with you. Perhaps Father Dominik...”

  “No!” Helena interjected loudly. The church had been a point of contention between them since Helena had discovered Ruth leaving mass one morning months earlier, head low beneath the hood of her cape. The church had always felt hostile to Helena, a place where she did not belong. Now she understood better why. And Father Dominik hated the Jews, spewing bile toward them in his sermons long before the Germans had come. He was the last person they could trust.

  “I don’t understand. If there’s really trouble coming, then surely the church can help.” Watching Ruth’s face, Helena recognized even further then the depths of her sister’s belief system, the elaborate world she had constructed to keep going. As the life she knew eroded around her, Ruth was clinging desperately to bare rock face, trying to find something to which she could hold.

  Helena hesitated, not wanting to say too much, but unwilling to back off. “I just don’t think we can count on anyone but ourselves anymore.”

  Several seconds of silence passed between them. “I have nightmares about it,” Ruth confessed. “Running away.” Helena was surprised—Ruth had always slept so soundly, it had not occurred to her to ask what she dreamed about.

  “We could hide,” Ruth added, her voice soft, almost sheepish. Helena opened her mouth to reject the idea, then thought better of it. Hiding was the other side of the coin, the one she’d tried not to think about. They could not hide in their own house, of course, but perhaps in the city. She remembered the now-deserted Kazimierz streets, the abandoned attic rooms beneath vaulted ceilings.

  Before she could respond, Ruth took a deep breath and stood. She passed Karolina to Helena, then smoothed her apron with trembling hands. “Come,” she said, putting her arms around Helena, signaling that the conversation was over. To Helena’s surprise, Ruth led her to the armoire where their mother’s clothing hung and began to riffle through the dresses. As she set Karolina down on the bed. Helena wanted to tell her that it was too soon, that there was no need to destroy the closet that she’d kept as a shrine for so long. But it was, Helena realized, Ruth’s own form of grieving. She handed Helena a simple blue dress to replace her own filthy one.

  When she had finished putting it on, Helena looked up. Ruth was holding Mama’s pink church frock, staring at it. A hint of sage wafted from the collar. “I’ll try this one.” She tried to pull the dress over her head but, unlike the loose sweater she had already donned, it was too narrow for her round, full figure. Her face grew red with effort.

  “Ruth...” One of the buttons burst and clattered to the floor. Ruth dove after it, but it fell between the floorboards and disappeared. She kept trying to reach for it, her fingers clawing at the coarse wood. “Shh.” Helena dropped to the ground beside Ruth and folded her sister’s scraped fingers into her own. She cradled Ruth’s head as Ruth finally allowed herself to weep.

  “I thought I could fit.” Ruth was talking, it seemed, about something more than the dress.

  “There, there,” Helena soothed as her sister sobbed. “We’re going to figure this out.” But would they really? No one expected to find themselves in these circumstances, parentless with a household of children to care for. People in other times grew up and got married and had families, planning for life to carry on as it had for centuries. It was all different now, though—some of them would make it and some not, and it all came down to chance.

  “It’s not fair,” Ruth sobbed, gesturing toward the window at the children. Helena nodded. But for Michal, the younger children scarcely had the chance to know Mama at all. “They should have so much more,” Ruth added.

  Helena thought of the spoiled blond girl eating chestnuts on the square. “They have us,” she replied firmly, pushing the image aside. There was an unexpected moment of solidarity between them, a fleeting instant when their common goals outweighed their differences. Helena slipped her hand into Ruth’s and suddenly they were six again, two girls in tattered dresses walking into school, them against the world.

  Helena held up the dress that Ruth had thrown down. “We can cut this one down and make a dress for Dorie.”

  Ruth straightened and dabbed at her eyes. “The children, Michal and Dorie...should we tell them about Mama?”

  “No, not yet, anyway.” Ruth dipped her chin in silent agreement. They both knew it was best not to say anything. The children had accepted the status quo of Mama’s absence and their parentless life. Why add to their grief with a loss they would otherwise never miss?

  “I’m going to market,” Ruth announced, walking to the mirror and blotting beneath her eyes. “I need a piece of carp, if there’s one to be had.”

  “I can go for you.”

  “No,” Ruth snapped, as if fearful to let Helena leave once more. They exchanged uneasy glances as the chill between them returned. They were not the same allies they had been when they were six. There was a kind of acrimony between them now, sharper than the rivalry of young girls vying for attention and space. They wanted different things, a conflict that brought with it an uneasy sense of distrust. “You’ve been gone all night and I can use the fresh air. Mind the children.” Helena braced for the litany of instructions that Ruth always seemed to give, as if she were not an equal partner in their caretaking who could figure these things out for herself.

  Ruth did not speak further, but simply donned her blue cape and slipped from the house. She needed time, Helena reflected, to process what had happened to Mama. “Come,” Helena said to Karolina, who toddled after her. Helena walked to the window and looked up the hill longingly. Though she had returned from seeing Sam just hours earlier, she felt the desire to go to the chapel once more and be with him.

  She turned to gaze out over the horizon—unseen beyond the tree line were the fog-clad peaks of the High Tatras. Once they had seemed to her a fortress, designed to keep trouble out. But now they were imposing, their high peaks an impenetrable barrier to escape. Helena’s stomach twisted. It was only a matter of time before the Germans combed through the hospital records and learned the truth that Mama had kept so well for a lifetime. Then they would come looking for the family.

  Helena peered around the corner of the house where Dorie and Michal played. She was seized with the urge to grab the children and run. But where? They would never survive winter in the forest. And the massive field behind the house was an open expanse, naked and exposed, with no refuge to be found. Hide, Ruth had suggested. Remembering the close stuffy closet at the hospital in which she had been trapped, Helena knew she could not do that.

  She thought of Papa’s rifle, high on the shelf. If the worst happened, and the Germans came, she would sooner shoot the children herself, rather than let them suffer. The handful of remaining bullets would be just enough. Shame welled up in her. She couldn’t do that, not really. Who knew when all hope was truly gone?

  She looked up at the yellowed photograph of her parents on their wedding day, their faces shining. Suddenly, the earth beneath Helena’s feet, which she had walked for a lifetime, seemed alien and full of secrets. She understood now why Mama always preferred sweet, unquestioning Ruth, willing to take an explanation at face value.

  What if people had known? Being a Jew would have been awkward in the village before the war, but not altogether problematic. People would have whispered about it for a time and then forgotten, or maybe remained a shade colder to the family than they already were. But Mama’s secrecy ran much deeper, as if she sensed that things which had never been good for the Jews would worsen, and the animosity bubbling beneath the surface would suddenly boil over. Her anonymity, the fact that people did not know she was a Jew, was a gift that she could give to her family to protect them.

  An image flashed through Helena’s mind. She’d been seven or eight and rummaging through her mother’s cedar trunk idly. The clothes did not interest her as they did Ruth, but she was curious what else migh
t be there, a bit of string perhaps, or some felt. Her hand had closed around something metal and cold and she pulled it out to discover a cup, more of a chalice, really. Though it was tarnished she could tell that it was made of real silver. Mama had come up behind her and snatched it from her hands. “You should not go through a person’s belongings without permission,” she’d scolded. Helena had wanted to point out that Ruth rummaged through the armoire for clothes regularly without rebuke. But her mother was already gone and the next time she snuck back to the trunk, the cup was nowhere to be found.

  Helena recalled now the ornate engravings on the cup, strange letters and symbols that she recognized now from the front of the hospital and other signs around Kazimierz to be Hebrew. The cup was the one tangible link between her Mama and the life she had tried so hard to keep a secret. Yet she had clung to it, despite the risks its discovery might have brought. And she had not sold it, even when the money had been sorely needed. It must have meant a great deal to her.

  But what had become of the cup? “Wait here,” she instructed Karolina, who now played contentedly by the warmth of the fire. Helena went to Mama’s trunk, which sat at the foot of the bed, flinging open the lid. A mix of camphor and lavender wafted forth in an invisible cloud. She lifted a communion dress, rosary beads on top of it. Funny what people thought to save, the things that they thought would be meaningful a lifetime from now. Beneath it lay Mama’s wedding veil. Helena thought of the wedding photo, the background dark and nondescript. She’d always assumed it had been taken at the parish church, but now the questions swirled—had it been somewhere else and, if so, where? Not that it mattered, but there were so many things she did not, could not, know—one little piece of certainty, no matter how remote, would help to ground her. She continued digging to the bottom of the trunk, tearing the clothes aside like pieces of earth until her hands scraped against the cedar wood. Nothing else.