The Winter Guest

by Pam Jenoff

  “I wasn’t expecting you, though with you one never knows what to expect,” the man said. “I wouldn’t be here on a Saturday, but they’ve given us six days to pack and move.” He gestured helplessly to the bookshelves.

  “So you’re going to the ghetto.” Alek’s voice was pained.

  “I need to be where the people need help.” It was not as if he had a choice, Helena reflected.

  “We won’t take much of your time, Uncle. This young woman is Helena Nowak, from Biekowice. Helena, this is Pan Izakowicz, head of the Jewish community. Helena has some questions. I’m hoping you can help her.”

  The man studied her. “You came all the way from the country?” His voice was curved with disbelief.

  “She’s stronger than she looks.” Alek’s tone was proud, almost proprietary. How did she look? Helena wondered. She had always considered herself to be sturdy, but now she saw herself compared to men like Alek and Sam as someone feminine and slight.

  Before she could respond, Alek disappeared through the door, leaving her alone with the older man. “I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this...”

  “Don’t be. There isn’t likely to be another sort of time.” He gestured for her to sit. “What can I do for you?”

  Helena glanced at the file cabinet behind him. Did she dare to ask? “The hospital that the Jewish community runs...”

  “Used to run.” A look of pain crossed his face.

  “Yes. Well, I was wondering if the records were destroyed or if you might have them.”

  “Why, may I ask, is it of interest?”

  “My mother, Ewa Nowak, was there.”

  “You are Jewish?” His voice was skeptical. It was more than just her appearance. He likely knew—or knew of—every Jewish family in the region. He did not know hers.

  “Yes. I mean, no. I don’t know,” she confessed finally. “My mother is half-Jewish. Was.” Would Helena ever get used to speaking about her in the past tense?

  “There are no Jews in Biekowice. At least, none that we know of.”

  “She wasn’t from Biekowice originally. She had kept her heritage a secret.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I suppose it’s not surprising. Jews and Poles have lived side by side for a thousand years in many places. They’ve become so intertwined that they scarcely have noticed. Take, for example, the crackers in the markets called matzah. That’s a Hebrew word, derived from the unleavened bread we eat for Passover each spring. You didn’t know, did you?” She shook her head. “For hundreds of years, our two peoples coexisted reasonably well.” Until now.

  He turned and riffled through the file cabinet behind him. A moment later he produced a sheet of paper. “There was a Nowak woman, from Biekowice no less, who came to be in the hospital last year. Younger than most.”

  “That’s her.” Helena’s eyes filled with tears. It was all true.

  Pan Izakowicz handed her the paper. She had hoped on some level that Wanda had been mistaken. But here it was in print, impossible to ignore: .Zyd. It was not so much that Helena minded being Jewish—it brought her closer to Sam in a way that she liked. But she hated the idea that it had all been a lie.

  She scanned the sheet. “It says here she was born in Krosno.”

  He nodded. “That is a few hours southwest from here.”

  “But...” Mama had always said she was from the far north—another lie. In fact, the whole truth had lain just a hundred miles from where they lived their entire lives.

  “That region was prone to violence, even before the war. There were a number of pogroms during the tsarist years, and then more recently some Poles turned violently on the Jews there.” Helena wondered if her father had saved Mama from danger, exactly as she had found Sam. Had Mama hidden the fact that she was Jewish from Tata, or had he known and loved her in spite of it?

  “Do you think there might be relatives there, cousins perhaps?” she asked. Though the five of them often seemed quite enough, perhaps too many, Helena had often wished for an older sibling—a brother ideally—to help care for them and share the load. A glimmer of hope arose in her then, the prospect of the children having someone else.

  But Pan Izakowicz shook his head. “The Jews from that village were among the first taken by the Germans—if any are still alive they might be in camps, but I don’t know where.”

  So all of this time she might have known the truth and now it was too late. Helena handed the paper back to him silently. “And your mother never told you about being Jewish?” Helena shook her head. “I’m sure it is quite a shock. You know what this means, don’t you, for your safety? I would forget about it, never speak of it again. I can even eliminate this record, though the Germans may have another in their central files. It is one thing for those of us who have been Jewish our whole lives to renounce our identity. But someone like you who never knew could hardly be blamed.”

  Helena considered this. She could just walk away. It would be understandable, even prudent under the circumstances, to obliterate any reference to their Jewish blood. But it would be a lie.

  “You are alone?”

  “No,” she said, feeling somehow guilty that she had not yet mentioned her siblings. “I have three sisters and a brother.” In that moment Ruth seemed like one of the younger children, her responsibility.

  “Then take care of them, as your mother would have wanted. And do not speak of this again—for all of our sakes.”

  She jumped as the door to the office opened and Alek appeared. “I’ve come to collect you. This old man has got more to do than chat all day.” But his voice was affable, tinged with a note of respect.

  “Stop making trouble,” Pan Izakowicz said. “And be careful. My brother would kill me if anything happened to you.” The two men embraced and clapped each other on the back, lingering a bit longer, as if this might be the last time they met.

  “Did he help you?” Alek asked when they had thanked Pan Izakowicz and walked from the building.

  She considered the question. Pan Izakowicz had not been able to tell her anything new, but he had confirmed what Wanda had told her, the undeniable truth about her Jewish heritage. She wasn’t sure, though, what she had been looking for in the first place—records would not tell the story of why Mama had come to hide. “I suppose.” Pan Izakowicz had not been unkind, just practical—a man who could only save a few of his people, drops of water in an ocean of despair.

  Alek led her away in a different direction than they had come. She looked back over her shoulder at the remains of the synagogue. Even if the war ended and the allies managed somehow to drive the Germans out of Poland, it would never return to what it had been.

  “The Jewish quarter is gone,” she observed as they passed the shell of the synagogue.

  He nodded grimly. “And the Jews in the ghetto will be, too, if the Americans don’t come soon.”

  She wanted to remind him that this was why getting Sam out was so important. But he already knew. “You make it sound hopeless. And yet you fight.” Admiration filled her then. People like Alek did more than simply survive—they rose up.

  “Some say it is madness to struggle in the face of such hopelessness,” he conceded with a nod. “My wife for one would probably rather I stay with her.” Wife. She had not imagined Alek married. Hearing it, she felt more than a twinge of regret. In other circumstances, she would have introduced him to Ruth. “But when you love someone, their struggle is yours.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “We aren’t going anywhere. I’m going to see you safely out of the city and get back to my work.”

  Helena bit her lip to keep from retorting that she could manage just fine on her own. “Wait, there’s one other thing.” She cleared her throat. “I’d like to sell this.” She pulled the silver cup from her bag.

  �
�You don’t ask much, do you?” Alek’s eyes widened. “You could be killed just for having that.”

  “I know.”

  His eyes narrowed. “How did you get it?”

  Remembering the piles of belongings at the hospital, she understood his suspicion. “I didn’t take it,” she said hastily. “It was my mother’s. Will you sell it for me?”

  Alek shook his head. “No, but I will show you where you can.”

  Turning left, he led her down another street through a gap in two buildings. Behind the remnants of an abandoned factory sat a market not visible from the street. The tarp-covered stalls were not unlike those at home, but the market was many times bigger, sprawling across the rubbish-strewn lot. They had real food here, Helena noticed with surprise, fresh cuts of meat and other vegetables that she had not seen back home since before the war. The smell of roasting nuts tickled her nose, and for a moment she thought of buying a few for the children. But the price listed was ten times what she might have imagined.

  The black market, she realized. She had heard of goods being traded, and had seen it peripherally when she had gone to the Mariacki Cathedral looking for Alek. The trading activity was everywhere. One woman unbuttoned her blouse without modesty to pull out the sausages she’d smuggled in an overstuffed brassiere. Another hitched her skirts to tuck her purchases in her stockings and hem. Helena shuddered. It didn’t matter if one was caught smuggling one ounce or one hundred—the penalty would be the same: swift and severe.

  A truck pulled up and began unloading boxes off the back and people ran to grab them. “What’s that?”

  “I’ve no idea. And they don’t know, either. People will buy anything just to have it these days.”

  Helena hung back, watching uncertainly. “You haven’t done this before, have you?” Alek asked. She shook her head, feeling her cheeks burn. “That’s understandable. None of us were born to this life.” He gestured across the market. “Go to the silver merchants there in the corner. Take it to Trojecki, not Lempe—he’s a crook. Hand it to him still in the sack. And whatever he offers you, turn it down, take the cup back and walk away.”

  “But I want to sell it.”

  “Trust me. It’s going to be too low. And he’ll come after you. He isn’t going to let an object like that get away.”

  Helena walked to the corner he indicated, feeling his eyes on her. “Pan Trojecki?” She turned back, helplessly, looking to Alek for guidance, but he had disappeared.

  The yellow-toothed man sitting on a low stool lifted his head. “Tak?”

  She handed him the bag, then wiped the clamminess from her palms. He peered inside and though his expression remained impassive his eyes flickered. She realized that even the attempt to sell it brought its own danger. “I found this by the riverbank,” she lied clumsily, hoping to ward off questions.

  “What am I to do with that Jew metal?” the man asked. She was seized with the urge to reach out and slap him. But it was a bluff—she could see the glint in his eye as he appraised the quality of the workmanship, the thickness of the silver.

  “Twenty,” Trojecki said finally.

  Her breath caught. Twenty was more than she had ever seen. It would buy food for weeks.

  Then she remembered Alek’s words. “No, thank you.” She took the sack from his hands and started away, hoping she had not made a mistake.

  “Wait! Twenty-five.”

  “Zlotys?”

  “You were thinking dollars?” the man mocked.

  Helena shook her head, ignoring his sarcasm. She cringed as he fingered the cup with crude, unappreciative hands. Though she had only seen it once before in her life, never even known its name, it seemed part of her, the link to Mama and the past and all of the secrets she could no longer explain. Her mother’s Jewish background, though secret, had meant something to her, enough to keep the cup despite the dangers it might bring.

  Helena snatched it back. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “If you’re trying to haggle...”

  “I’m not.” She put the Kiddush cup underneath her coat and turned to leave before the man could speak further. Around the corner, she stopped, shaking. She had wanted to get rid of the object to sever herself from this sudden unwanted history. But it seemed forged to her now, hot against her skin as if screaming out its presence to passersby, betraying her. She slipped it back into her bag.

  Alek reappeared at the entrance to the market. “So you did it?”

  She shook her head. “The price was too low.” She was too embarrassed to tell him the truth—not being able to sell the cup felt sentimental and weak, and she did not want him to think less of her for it.

  “That’s too bad. I was hoping for a commission.” She cocked her head. “Five zlotys. Standard practice. Anyone else and I would have taken ten. It’s not for me. The money would buy food and supplies for the troops.”

  The troops. He sounded as if he was talking about a real army. “You won’t win.” She did not mean to be rude. “The Germans have rolled over half of Europe. How can a few boys—”

  “Men,” he interrupted correcting her, “and women.”

  “Make a difference?” she finished.

  He started walking again. “So we should just lie down and die?” She did not answer. “We are showing the Germans, and our people, that as long as there is spirit in the heart, we are not defeated.”

  “You’re a patriot.”

  “Don’t make too much of me, or any one person,” he cautioned, and she knew he was speaking of Sam. Helena blushed, feeling rebuked. “I’m just an ordinary man, dispensable as any other.” There was a note of foreboding to his voice. “It’s what we do when we find ourselves in such times that counts. Some will help the Germans, and that is unforgivable treason. Others will hide in their basements and that is okay, too.” He did not sound as if he believed this last part. Would she have simply hidden, she wondered, if she had not found Sam and learned the truth about Mama?

  They reached the corner where the aleje intersected with the road she took out of town and she knew they were to part ways. “You can manage from here?”

  “Yes, but about Sam...” She blurted his name aloud without meaning to. “That is, the soldier. You didn’t say how you were going to help him.”

  Alek’s mouth pulled downward. “I wish I could. You did as you promised and proved I can trust you. But things have gotten much worse and this is a critical moment for our cause.” His face grew stormy. “I can’t do anything now that might compromise our entire southern operation.”

  She felt a painful thud, a kick to the chest. “But you said if I proved trustworthy you would help.”

  “Under normal circumstances, with fighting and weather, it would have been hard enough. But right now, it is impossible.” He shook his head, unwilling to give her false hope.

  She stood motionless. Alek had seemed so strong and confident that she just assumed he would be able to help Sam. “Are people getting out anymore? Ordinary people, I mean.”

  “There are no more transits. Better to wait it out here and hope for the best.” He sounded oddly like Ruth then. “The war has to end sometime.”

  Does it? she wanted to ask. War had become such a default state she could not remember life before. And even if it did end, then what? Things could not go back to the way they had been.

  “Here,” he said, holding out a small parcel to her. The smell of sausage tickled her nose like a forgotten dream. “It’s all I can spare.” Helena hesitated. Had her hunger been so apparent? She did not want to take charity from him, but she could not let pride interfere with her getting additional nourishment for the children.

  “I’m afraid,” she confessed, more openly than she should have to this man she barely knew.

  “You are wise to fear. Only the fool doesn’t. But do
n’t hide from your fear. Wear it like a cloak of armor.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She wanted to ask him if there was anything else that might be done, so that she would have some morsel of information for Sam, some hope to give him.

  Sirens whirred, growing louder in the distance. Helena turned toward the sound. “Run!” Alek hissed behind her. When she turned back, he was gone and she could not tell in which direction he had fled. It was as if he had disappeared before her eyes. The wailing grew louder, filling her ears, the danger almost upon her. Then obeying his words, she ran, too. The pounding of her soles echoed against the pavement and she kept going, heedless of who heard, desperate to get away. She ran until the city disappeared and the sirens faded into the wind behind her.

  17

  Ruth breathed in deeply as she walked past the barn, taking in the crispness of the air. Tonight was Christmas Eve and Helena was home, instead of traipsing off into the woods. Her muscles relaxed slightly, as they always did when they were all together and in one place. It was nearly noon, though, and market would be closing early for the holiday. She quickened her pace. She needed a bit of smoked trout, and some dill, if there was any to be had.

  Then she stopped and cried aloud, her voice echoing into the emptiness of the field ahead. Mama was dead. Yet here she was planning Wigilia dinner, as though it still mattered. Suddenly her own breathing, carrying on when Mama could not, seemed disloyal. She looked upward at the sky, wondering where Mama really was now. Once she might have thought she knew the answer, but her faith, everything she once believed, felt shattered into pieces too small to reassemble. Perhaps they should not have the holiday at all. But she thought of Dorie’s face, so excited as she explained to Karolina the tiny gifts that would be coming that evening. The children needed Christmas, and so she would keep going for them.

  Fifteen minutes later, Ruth neared the village. At the corner by the school, she stopped, raising her hand to her mouth to stifle a cry. Hanging from the wooden frame where the children’s swings had once been was a rope—a man dangled from the end, neck curved in a grotesque angle. Though his face was twisted, she recognized him vaguely as someone she had seen at market. She had always imagined death to be peaceful and slumberlike, but the man who hung from the makeshift gallows here had his mouth open and contorted in a silent scream. His pants were soiled front and back, perhaps the greatest indignity.