The Girl from Krakow

by Alex Rosenberg

  “Is he still there?” Rita surprised herself by voicing the question.

  “Don’t you know?” She looked at him blankly. “He’s probably not forty kilometers down the road from here. In Gliewitz. I saw him a month ago in Kiev, and that’s where he was headed.”

  That night, without finding Dani at the Joint offices, Rita left for the east. She had to be as sure as she could that there was no trace of Stefan before thinking about the rest of her life. She spent an hour between trains at Krakow, wandering through the old university section again. But all her memories of the ’30s were now obliterated. The war, the German occupation, the ghettos, the drudgery of Lempke’s offices, the constant threat to her and to Dani—her lover, her partner contra mundum—these were what she remembered now. Not her life before the war.

  She started in Nowy Sacz, where there was a tracing office. She lodged the standard inquiry form about her parents and Stefan. As expected, parents transported to Auschwitz in 1942. No record of a child taken at the same time. The Germans had been methodical. The records were probably complete.

  On the third day out of Katowice, Rita was walking the streets of her birthplace. Gorlice was a town already rebuilding itself, as if after a whirlwind. There were new sheds—not really houses—now rising on the burned-out street where her family’s home had been located. But along the street where she had grown up, there was not a name or face she could recognize. Those houses she could recognize were occupied by new residents.

  Rita presented herself at the local constabulary. It was obvious that no one was much interested in the recent past or immediate future of Jews formerly living in Gorlice. The sole officer on duty was preoccupied or indifferent to everything except the cigarettes he was rolling, one after another, almost perfectly.

  “Sorry, miss, all inquires have to be made in Nowy Sacz, local district seat.” The policeman turned back to cigarette papers and loose tobacco.

  “Can you tell me anything about the Home Army hereabouts?”

  That got the man’s attention, and not in the way she had hoped. “Excuse me, comrade.” He was looking right through her. “We know nothing about terrorist fascist organizations here. This is a police station. You want to go to State Security. That’s Nowy Sacz too.”

  “Terrorism? I don’t understand.” Rita stood her ground. “I need to find out about a woman courier for the Home Army who operated in this area in 1942.” Then she added, “This woman couldn’t have been a fascist; she was fighting the Nazis.”

  “Home Army, terrorist organization, miss. Still out there in the hills, fighting the legitimate government. I advise you not to ask further, or I may have to inform the security organs about this inquiry.”

  “I’m sorry. I have been out of the country for many years. Can you just explain about the Home Army being a fascist terrorist organization?”

  Looking at Rita now, the officer turned avuncular. “Well, my dear, all I know is that last winter they attacked the provisional government’s prison at the Castle in Rzeszow, trying to rescue Home Army thugs arrested for resisting our Soviet allies. The scum were caught, and they’re in prison now. Enough said.” Rzeszow, she recalled, was the town they had been told Dani’s father was to be found in.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Piece of advice, sister. You’re such a pretty girl. I don’t want to see you in the slammer. Don’t make a lot of inquiries in Nowy Sacz. Jews, Home Army . . . well, the state organs of security don’t welcome questions about them.”

  Back to the tracing desk in Nowy Sacz, the district capital. The middle-aged Polish woman behind the desk had nothing new for Rita. She had not expected anything. “I have one more question. Is there a convent, orphanage, or children’s home here in Nowy Sacz or in the district?”

  “No. Unfortunately.” The woman, evidently a devout Catholic, launched into a historical lecture. “Not enough wealthy Catholic families to support a convent. Just the Dominican sisters’ school. All closed now. Never were enough unmarriageable girls to need a convent. A lot of the money hereabouts was Jewish, and most of the Christians were Ukrainian. The few girls who had a calling went to Krakow . . .”

  Rita was not listening anymore. Suddenly she wanted to be cured of the need to seek out Stefan. After the last three years, she finally had no emotional energy left for further struggle, danger, disappointment. He was dead and that was that, she told herself with finality, and began to search around in her thoughts for ways of making the conclusion stick.

  No more Urs, no more Stefan. Just Dani. The three thoughts repeated themselves in a sequence whose rhythm matched the clicking of the wheels as they slid over the gaps in the rails. The train carrying her west, back to Katowice, was much fuller. Everywhere it was the same, the asymmetry of many going west and few going east. Everyone understood why. Rita hurried out of Katowice station eager to find Dani and tell her that she had finished trying to resurrect the dead and was ready to get on with their life together.

  She arrived in the dormitory room of the Joint residence where they had been provided with beds. There at the back, sitting on her bed, she saw Dani facing two others—men sitting on the opposite bed. The older was a burly figure, with graying curly hair above a well-lined and leathery face. Despite age, the man was strong, his shirtsleeves taut around arm muscles. There was a younger man next to him, tanned, fit, darkly attractive, almost handsome. As Rita approached, Dani said in a voice loud enough for Rita to hear, “There she is now.” She stood up from the bed. “Rita, this is my father, Michael . . .” She paused, obviously flustered. “And my fiancé, Paul Bernays.” As she said the words, she reached out for Rita’s right hand and squeezed it very hard. Rita recognized the meaning of the gesture, but she was reeling from the news.

  She forced a smile. “But, Dani, you never told me you were engaged. In all these months and years . . .” Rita had no idea how to continue, what to say, where to steer the conversation now.

  The young man decided to help. “Yes, well, she had no reason to think either of us were still alive. Tell her how we managed it, Michael.”

  Neither man appeared to notice Rita’s distress. The older man cleared his throat. “It was the last roll call Leideritz ordered in the Karpatyn ghetto. I wouldn’t be separated from Eve.”

  Dani volunteered, “My mother.”

  “Paul and I were able to escape out of one of the last Belzec cattle cars. One guy in the car had somehow gotten bolt cutters past the guards. He cut the lock on the sliding door as the train slowed for a bend. Twenty of us jumped and ran for it. They stopped the train to try to round us up, but the guy with the bolt cutters knew where he was going in those woods. We followed him. We traveled at night for a week or so to the Pripet Marshes north of Belzec. Impenetrable to German trucks or tanks, and full of partisans.”

  The shock of Dani’s fiancé was now replaced by Rita’s realization of who it was this man was talking about. “The man with the bolt cutters, who led you to the Pripet Marshes and the partisans. Did you ever learn his name?”

  “Oh yeah. We lived with him for another year. Strange bird. People respected him, but no one got close. Or at least no decent person. His name was Erich Klein. He was a feygele, a queer, a nancy boy.”

  Paul added, “One tough guy, but a homo. Lived with another guy in a bunker for almost the entire time we were together.”

  “What happened to him?” Rita demanded to know, looking from each of the men to the other.

  Paul volunteered. “He was killed in a fight with the Wehrmacht. Probably killed, along with his . . . buddy. No one was willing to go out for their bodies after the firefight. So we can’t be absolutely sure. There were some pretty violent Russians among the partisans with us. They didn’t like golubye—queers—any more than we did, and they didn’t mind acting on their likes and dislikes. So he might even have got it in the back during that skirmish.”

  Michael Cohen now interrupted, asking with a hint of suspicion, “Did you know him?”<
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  Rita was not going to dissimulate for a moment. “Yes. We were close friends in Karpatyn. In fact, he rented a room from me, and then we shared space in the ghetto. He saved my life. He was a wonderful man.”

  Neither man knew how to respond to this proud assertion. Michael finally said, “Well, I am sorry if he was a friend of yours, but he was a degenerate . . .”

  Rita was too tired and too bitter to deal with this attitude. She simply rose and walked out of the room. Out on the street, she was stopping to light a cigarette when Dani caught up with her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had a fiancé, that you were going to be married?” Rita accused.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were living with a homo in Karpatyn?” Dani responded.

  “What? Are you going to take a high moral tone about men after being my lover for two years?” Dani was silent, so Rita continued, “You never told me anything about a fiancé, or even so much as a male friend.”

  “You never asked, and I had every reason to think he was dead.”

  Rita decided to cut this argument off. “Look, Dani, I have satisfied myself that Stefan is dead. I can’t stay in Poland. When can we head back west?”

  Dani took a breath. “I’m not . . . I can’t go back. I’m staying.” She began to cry, seeking Rita’s shoulder, but Rita held her away, glaring into her face.

  “I’ve been gone three, maybe four days. What’s happened? Is it that boy upstairs? Your father’s disapproval?”

  “No, no . . . he doesn’t know about you, about us.”

  “What? Didn’t you tell him about the last two years?”

  “I can’t talk with my father, with any man, with anyone at all about . . . about that.” Rita thought, You can’t even say “us.” Instead, what we had has turned into what we did—“that.” Dani was still talking. “You heard them upstairs.”

  “Yes.” Rita realized she would have been equally unwilling to talk about what she had done with Dani to them or anyone. “I understand, Dani. You don’t have to say anything to them. But you’re coming, aren’t you? Back to Frankfurt?”

  Dani shook her head. “No. I can’t. I am going to stay. I’ll try to make a life with Paul.”

  “But . . . I love you.” As she said it, Rita asked herself whether she believed it, whether it was true. They had never said these things to each other, even in the moments their bodies had responded to each other’s touch. What reticence could have come between their bodies to stop them saying it? Now as she said the words, Rita knew they were true.

  But Dani shook her head again. “It was the war, Rita. It was the fear, the loss, the abandonment we suffered. It was the need for a little pleasure in a world with none of it. It wasn’t really love, the kind you can build lives from.”

  Now Rita understood. “It’s not guilt, it’s shame that’s driving you away from me. You never felt guilty about lying in my arms, not for a moment. You did love me. You still do. It’s what other people will say, the shame they’ll extract from you, that is too much for you to bear.”

  Now Dani burst out, “Yes! It’s too much after all this. I just can’t keep living a secret anymore—with another woman, under another false identity. It would be a constant reminder of the horror. I can’t keep fighting against . . . everything. There’s a real life with Paul, with my father. With you, we’d spend our lives pretending we were something we aren’t.”

  It came to Rita: Dani couldn’t deal with her love for Rita because she suddenly had a family again. Rita had the luxury of being alone. There was no one to shame her. And she wasn’t really the kind of person who could be moved to shame by what others thought anyway. She had known this all the way back to when the bullyboys called her a whore for sitting on the ghetto benches in the lecture theater at the law fac’ in Krakow.

  Rita pulled Dani toward her, even as her thoughts were pushing Dani away. She knew that there was no reasoning with emotion, no inducement that could convert feelings. There was nothing to do but accept their reality and walk away. She might hope for a change in Dani later, but for now, there was nothing to do but cut her own losses. Rita thought she understood people well enough now not to delude herself about what moved them and what didn’t. And then these analytical thoughts were replaced by her own emotions—disdain and anger. “Very well. I understand. Good-bye.” She stood back and took a long pull at the cigarette in her hand, as though she were trying to draw a breath from it. Then Rita walked away, trying to control the turmoil inside her, trying both for the sake of her appearance to Dani and for the sake of her own mental balance. To finally lose the hope of Stefan without being able to find oblivion in love was so much to carry. All she wanted now was to sleep, alone, in a room by herself.

  If she was going back to Frankfurt, the Polish zlotys in her pocket wouldn’t be of much use. She decided to spend them on a hotel room all to herself.

  Late the next afternoon, kitted out in her UNRRA uniform, Rita was crossing the street from the Joint hostel to the Katowice railway station when an American jeep with a Red Army insignia pulled up beside her. Out from under the canvas top, an officer’s cap emerged. She heard the word, “Rita.” It was Urs. He called again, “Rita.” She stopped, putting down her bag. “Please get in, Rita. I have been waiting for you to get back for the last few days.”

  “I just got in last night. What do you want?”

  “I want to take you somewhere.” Rita waited. “Not far. Forty kilometers . . . Gleiwitz, if you must know.” Now she understood.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Urs stopped in front of the Polyclinic door. “Go in and ask for Tadeusz. He knows you’re coming. I’ll be in the café.” He pointed across the street.

  “How does he know I’m coming?”

  “I told him I’d bring you.”

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry. What I told him was that I would try.”

  Rita thought, Well, you didn’t have to try very hard. She had been thinking things through all the way across the rutted roads as mud splattered into the jeep, finding its way between the metal and the canvas top and sides. She recognized that she was worried about how she looked. She couldn’t deny the hints of arousal she was feeling. Was it the hard seats and the jostling vehicle? Or was it memories of languid afternoons long ago? Was she so variable in her sexual attractions? I suppose I am, she thought with feelings of candor and satisfaction. Think back to Erich . . . You might have loved him, and let him slake his appetites without possessiveness.

  The real question wasn’t whether she could have with a man what she had with Dani. She understood herself well enough to know that she could. The real question was whether she wanted to start again with someone else, so soon, with a man or a woman? And if so, was this the right person? Could there be real . . . compatibility, chemistry, partnership, love, between this man and Rita? Once, in what seemed another world, she had thought so. Well, she said to herself, these questions will soon sort themselves out, thanks to Urs of all people.

  She walked into the clinic and asked for Dr. Sommermann.

  “Appointment?”

  Rita thought briefly. “I suppose so.”

  “What name?” The nurse looked up at her, holding the receiver.

  Good question, she thought. Feuerstahl, Guildenstern, Trushenko? “Just tell him it’s Rita, please.”

  At least the chemistry was there. She could feel it grow even as he walked down the hall toward her, grinning, then smiling, finally laughing with delight. It was infectious, and despite the admonitions of caution she had imposed on herself, she too began to smile, rather sheepishly.

  “You are alive! You are here!” He repeated it three times. But he didn’t reach out to touch her, as though fearing she would dissolve, disappear, evaporate, evanesce.

  “So are you.” She said it quietly. Finally she reached out, and their hands met.

  “How did you make it?” Was he asking or exclaiming?

 
; “Same as you, I think. A great deal of chance and not much foresight.”

  He turned to the receptionist. “I’m finished for the day, Nurse.” He took off the white coat and pulled a suit jacket from the closet at the desk. Turning to Rita he said, “There’s a café across the street.”

  “Urs is there, waiting to take me back to Katowice.”

  “Should we tell him to wait?”

  “No.” Her emphatic reply surprised both of them.

  She and Tadeusz were two hours in the café, getting slightly drunk on Romanian wine, telling each other a few half-truths, several three-quarter truths, but only a few complete truths about their respective trajectories through the years since 1938.

  It was dark long before they noticed. Tadeusz looked up at the gloom. “Dinner?”

  “Can we get a good meal anywhere in Gleiwitz?”

  “Only at my place,” he replied. She agreed with alacrity.

  They walked arm in arm. Rita searched her feelings as they did so. I did this last with Dani, when she was still Dani to the world. Does it feel as natural now? Yes. I don’t understand it, but I can live with it.

  “I’d like to make you a Barcelona paella, but I just ran out of saffron.” Rita missed his joke, and Tadeusz decided that explaining it would be a mistake. “I got a half dozen real eggs from a grateful patient yesterday. I am going to make you a Spanish treat, a tortilla de patatas.”

  Dinner over, Rita offered Tadeusz an American cigarette. He lit hers and then his. Both leaned back, exhaling smoke through their nostrils. Watching Rita do this aroused Tadeusz. Remembering their afternoons eight years ago, Rita immediately realized its effect on him.

  “Rita, will you marry me?”