The Light at the End of the Day

by Eleanor Wasserberg

  ‘We’re not strangers,’ said Anna, with a small, tinkling laugh that told Janina and her daughters her disgust, but that Margo greeted with a face of pure confusion. ‘We’re Adam’s wife and daughters—’

  ‘I know who you are, my God, am I an idiot now?’

  ‘Then we are family,’ Anna said, ‘and we must stay, at least until my husband, your brother-in-law, arrives.’

  ‘Oh! Now I am the wicked woman who throws destitute refugees out onto the streets! I didn’t buy you bread, I didn’t have a fire ready for you all these nights, I didn’t make you soup! How you will be safe in such a place of evil I don’t know! Worse than German-occupied Kraków, I’m sure!’

  Margo threw the bread at her husband for him to catch, and squeezed her way past him, stomping up every step and calling for her son. As she clopped up the stairs she called back, ‘The Soviets are here.’

  ‘Ah,’ Sammy said, nodding, his brow furrowed, as though thinking through an interesting problem. The visitors stared at him.

  Sammy opened his mouth, taking in breaths to speak, but then only breathed out, seeming to choose and then discard many replies. He looked around at them all, then spoke to Anna.

  ‘They’ve been saying either the Soviets or the Germans will come, for weeks. The Germans were camped out in the suburbs.’ He moved to the small cheap radio that sat on the mantelpiece as Janina sagged against the wall. He added, almost cheerfully, ‘Better the Soviets, they say.’ The radio blurred between voices, before settling on a calm, emotionless man’s voice, speaking in Polish, announcing the end of the Battle of Lwów. The Soviets now occupied the city. Sammy nodded, a little pale.

  ‘There you are.’ He turned to them, offered a smile. ‘At least we know where we are.’

  ‘In Russia now?’ Anna snapped, but he didn’t catch her tone, and gave her a tired laugh. He peeled one of the papers from the table, right where they had slept in exhausted ignorance. ‘See?’ he added, gently. He passed one to Anna, who glanced at the screaming letters, War. She responded with irritation.

  ‘Yes, yes, this is all we’ve been hearing for months: war, war, war …’ There was something hideous in the endless expectation, a hunger for it, obsessing over the newspapers and the newsreels, ruining a day at the cinema with chanting and ugliness.

  ‘But it’s real now,’ Sammy said. Anna heard the faintest tinge of the excitement that so disgusted her. She turned away, to find her daughters watching her: Alicia with her narrowed, inscrutable eyes, Karolina with the far-seeing stare that told she was elsewhere in her mind, wherever Jozef might be, caught up in this war that had been coming, coming and now dropped on them all like a hunting net. Anna went to sit down again, ignoring the offered newspaper and its smug hysteria.

  ‘But it’s safe here?’ Janina said.

  ‘Well, certainly safer than Kraków,’ came the reassuring, calm reply, so like her husband’s voice, that Janina felt anchored where she stood, could have kissed Sammy’s face.

  ‘All right.’ Anna smoothed her skirt. ‘Is there some kind of centre, we should register, I don’t know? A place for the refugees?’

  ‘Anna, you aren’t refugees! You are—’

  ‘Just visiting until things calm down, yes,’ she said, while at the edge of her sight Janina was nodding, rejecting the word refugee.

  Sammy seemed about to say something else, but a gasp from Karolina stopped him. She had picked up another newspaper, begun turning the pages. It was from a week after they’d left the city. There was a photograph of the Wawel castle, taken from the other side of the river, so that to Karolina it seemed backwards. She searched the edges of it for the apartment, but it was blurred, and this distracted her from the image while her uncle had been talking, but then she looked properly, and the air burst into her lungs. She held it up for her mother to see. The shine of the sun on a black Cadillac, the sea of grainy flags, that they all coloured, in their minds’ eyes, in red. The sleek car was pulling right into the courtyard of the Wawel. Anna came closer, stared hard at the page.

  ‘No,’ she said, firmly, in answer to Karolina’s unvoiced question: Isn’t that our car?

  ‘It is, it is,’ Karolina said, flipping the page around with a rustle to look again.

  ‘Well we can’t see the plates to be certain,’ her mother argued.

  ‘If this’ – Karolina scanned the page – ‘this new “King of Kraków”—’

  ‘King of Kraków?’ Janina and Anna parroted back, their voices matched in eager outrage. ‘These people,’ Janina muttered, and Anna joined her, ‘Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous—’

  ‘—So vulgar!’

  ‘I suppose his wife will call herself Queen of Kraków, my God!’ Anna cried.

  Janina hurried to Anna’s side. ‘What will the silly bitch do, parade around Glowny with a crown?’ she asked.

  This was better, this was safer, the old ways of bitching and gossiping in scandalised delight; Anna found herself casting around for the others: Marta Hartmann, Hannah Friel, even Janie and Dorothea, even Stefan, who loved a gossip and delighted in the ridiculous, but glancing around the cold little room she found only Janina, and her daughters and brother-in-law, watching her.

  ‘Mama, if Papa has given his car to this, king—’

  ‘I’m sure this pretender-king has his own car, Karolcia,’ Anna said.

  ‘Hans Frank,’ Sammy said. ‘And, he isn’t really calling himself that, but the papers – it’s Governor, I think.’

  This earned a sniff and a haughty, ‘Nonsense,’ from Janina, but Anna had been pulled into the newspaper, where Alicia and Karolina were already absorbed. Karolina kept turning the pages; photograph after photograph of their world was there. There was a photograph of the Glowny, seeming unchanged, but full of the same foreign soldiers and the same flags, as though they had simply dressed their city in a silly costume.

  ‘They say they’ll rename it Adolf Hitler Platz,’ said Sammy, softly.

  ‘He’s like a schoolboy writing his name all over everything,’ Janina said, making the others laugh, except Alicia, who was stone-faced. In truth, though she knew it was the fashionable thing, Janina didn’t hate Hitler in the way she ought to. He didn’t seem a real person at all, but a figure in a fairy tale, made of smoke and a disembodied, tantrumming voice. She felt it wasn’t Hitler who had dislodged her from her apartment at all, stolen her son and her life. It was her own fault: stumbling, afraid and slow, she should have read more, listened more, to the radio and to her own heart’s terror, which knew months, years before, and prodded her and prodded her until she was walking out into the streets on the day of the invasion, towards the Oderfeldts and their steadier, richer lives, in the hope they might save her.

  Karolina turned a page: there was the Wawel and its mock coronation ceremony. Another page: lines of Polish soldiers, their heads bowed. There were images of the strange world of the journey, too, already seeming like another life, carts and streams of people, carrying everything they could piled on their backs and in bulging coats. Anna felt a jolt, as when she caught her own tired, un-made face in a mirror, on waking. Had she too looked like that, like a broken, small, frightened victim in a newspaper photograph, to be tutted at over breakfast across Europe?

  22

  THE KRAKóW REFUGEES had imagined Isaac as a young boy, a precious child to be kept safe. Anna had sent cards and presents when he was born, then every year, prompted by the calendar on the desk in the study, filled in every new year with her best pen, her mother’s habit. She’d seen an old photograph of him from a visit Adam had made to Lwów on business: a skinny, happy child, with a ball under his arm. She was surprised by the sullen young man who came down the stairs, stretching to touch the beams of the ceiling in the little room.

  He was all Margo, thin and sharp all over. His eyes were quick too, darting and taking in the four newcomers, and giving staccato polite nods to each as a kind of welcome. It seemed there was none of Sammy’s bumbling bear-like gen
tleness about him.

  ‘Your mother bought bread. Are you hungry?’ Sammy asked.

  ‘Give it to my aunt and cousins,’ came the reply, and his voice was like his father’s, low and lilting. He spoke such a gentle expression of kind, good manners that all four from Kraków felt a leap of warmth for him. Janina and Anna gave the boy approving smiles, but both waved away the offer of bread.

  ‘Is she coming down?’ Sammy called after Isaac as he went to the kitchen. In answer the boy came in with a plate of newly sliced bread, brow furrowed and shaking his head.

  ‘She’s very proud,’ Sammy said to Anna, by way of apology, as he buttoned his coat. Seeing he was about to leave for the office, Anna stood, smiling a refusal as Isaac offered her a slice.

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Sammy seemed stricken by this idea, first gabbling about safety and let’s see how the land lies, which Anna prepared to ignore, rising to button her coat, but then she caught Sammy glancing over her unmade hair and dirty dress, her torn stockings, and flushing. Anna realised she would embarrass him. She sat down, smoothed her skirt.

  ‘When you make the calls, telephone to Bernardyńska, you have the number?’ Anna asked. ‘Robert might be there, he might have gone back to check on the apartment, so he can take a message for you, or he might already know where Adam is.’

  ‘Yes, yes, so the factory, the—’

  ‘The factory, the office, the apartment building, and Stefan’s office at the Jagiellonian,’ Anna said, counting off on her fingers. ‘And the message is—’

  ‘Anna, I know, I will tell him his family are here with us and safe—’

  ‘And that he must come to us,’ Alicia added.

  ‘Yes, Ala.’

  The rest of the day was spent in more suspended strangeness; the same bubble of held breath Alicia felt they had lived in since they left home. The streets too had quietened, as though the city held its breath with them. Margo stayed upstairs, her sulk seeping through the floorboards, making the visitors tense, but her son seemed at ease, if a little shy. He sat with the visitors, his legs sprawled over a chair like a sunbathing cat, brewed endless carafes of weak tea. Alicia drank tepid water that tasted different from home, chalky and sweet.

  Isaac gently asked about Kraków, the journey, Adam.

  ‘Why did you decide to leave, Aunt Anna? Lots have stayed. Lots of Mother’s friends.’

  ‘It was your uncle’s decision. It was a matter of safety for the children.’

  ‘Did you see any bombs or dead bodies?’ He asked this with such artless simplicity that Anna felt she couldn’t reprimand him for ghoulishness.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, I think there aren’t any bombs there. There are lots everywhere else.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No, but lots of fighting just outside the city. Did you see any arrests and beatings and murders?’

  Janina and Anna gave each other a helpless look. ‘We thought it would be safer here,’ Janina said.

  ‘It is safer. The Soviets will protect the population. We don’t want the Germans here.’ Isaac saw his aunt’s face had a small smile of surprise. ‘Father says,’ he added, with a small embarrassed shrug. ‘Did they arrest people there? Father says—’

  ‘Yes, I am sure there have been arrests, but we left just before the Germans came into the city,’ Janina said. ‘Of course, Adam …’ She trailed off as the Oderfeldts stiffened.

  Soon visitors began to arrive, neighbours, full of news: And so Kraków is in Germany now … They say that Russia and Germany will take over the world between them now and carve it up like a pie … They are putting up notices in the Kraków streets … The shuls there are closed and the markets … And here? We’re all Russian now. Is it better? Hitler won’t last, but Stalin might. Are you going into work? No, no, not yet. Let’s see how the land lies.

  The visitors offered kind smiles and shaking heads in sympathy, muttering, terrible, terrible. They brought blankets and clothes from their wives and daughters, extra food. Isaac offered them coffee, explained his mother was unwell upstairs.

  Anna longed for women, to discuss things properly.

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked a respectable-looking man, his beard well trimmed and smelling of good cologne. He smiled at her with kind grey eyes.

  ‘We’re just two doors down.’

  ‘Oh.’ This was a poorer neighbourhood; she had hoped for better. She held out her hand. ‘Anna Oderfeldt.’

  ‘Theo Skliar,’ he said, taking it gently. She was conscious of the state of her nails, the un-moisturised skin. ‘You’re the sister-in-law then?’

  She nodded. ‘What do you do?’ she asked, and they both laughed a little, and she grimaced at the stupidity of making small talk as though at a dinner party.

  ‘I’m a doctor. I was researching childhood diseases. Measles mostly.’

  ‘Your research will stop?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. Now that the siege is over, and the Soviets are here, we will have to reapply for funding perhaps.’

  ‘Will your wife visit? What’s her name? Sorry,’ she continued, blushing as he blinked at her, ‘I was just hoping—’

  ‘She’s been very active, she’s very busy organising help for the refugees, donations, that kind of thing, through her work at the university and so on.’

  ‘I can help, we’d love to help,’ Anna said. To be one of those busy, capable women, to make lists and pack boxes, to be occupied …

  ‘What would you like? Sophia keeps sending me with these blankets, that’s what everyone seems to be sending, but it’s rather warm in here by the fire anyway. She thought books – you must be bored? Some games for the youngest? Cards? It’s hard to know what refugees need, you see.’

  ‘But where is Mrs Skliar—’

  ‘Sophia, please—’

  ‘Where is Sophia active with the donations and so on? Is there somewhere we should go?’

  Janina, sitting in perplexed boredom trying to follow a conversation about the Battle of Lwów on the other side of Anna, turned her head. ‘Anna really, you must correct people when they call us that. We aren’t refugees, really,’ Janina directed this over Anna’s lap to Theo. ‘I have a beautiful apartment in Kraków,’ she added, ‘and I have plenty of money, I should be able to access my account here, I have my identification papers – and you too, Anna.’ She turned to Theo again, ‘We aren’t homeless, you know, just as soon as everything is calmer we’ll go home again.’

  ‘My apologies,’ Theo smiled at them both, rising.

  ‘Please have Sophia visit,’ Anna called after him. ‘I’m sure Margo won’t mind. Or we’ll come to her, please have her leave a card …’

  From her spot curled up in a chair by the window, taking peeks through the curtains, which Sammy insisted stay drawn, just in case, Alicia watched her mother flicking dirt from her skirt, patting her hair, noticing the stains and holes on her stockings and crossing her ankles to try to hide them.

  As the afternoon died, the visitors left and Margo came to stand in the doorway of the main room with her hands on her hips. She let out a sharp breath from her nose, like an angry horse, Alicia thought, and began drumming her fingernails on the doorframe.

  ‘Are you going to stick to my furniture like honey all day?’ she said.

  Anna glared at her, then softened her face. ‘Can we help?’ She and Janina slowly sat up straighter. Isaac turned a page of his book. His mother tutted and cast her head back, rolling her eyes as though appealing to God himself, muttered something under her breath.

  ‘I’m talking to my son,’ she said.

  ‘You said I wasn’t to go to school—’ Isaac started to protest.

  ‘Anna,’ Margo said, her voice blade-sharp. Alicia’s heart gave a rare lurch as her mother turned, and she caught her face, bleak with misery. Margo paused as she looked at her too, and seemed to forget what she was going to say. When she spoke, her voice was softer, more hesitant. ‘Would – would you a
nd the girls like to wash?’ she asked. ‘Clean clothes, Isaac, why didn’t you offer before?’

  ‘Father said they should rest.’

  ‘My God, poor things, sitting in your own filth! Anna? You’ll go first,’ Margo said, taking her by the elbow and drawing her gently to her feet. She placed her hands either side of Anna’s face, and Anna let her. ‘Come on,’ she said, almost a whisper. She stroked Anna’s hair and kissed her forehead, radiating kindness until she’d cracked Anna open like a nut. Alicia turned away as her mother crumpled into Margo’s bird-like arms and sobbed, not in the pretty way she had cried on the road, not gentle streams of tears, but in a guttural wail, from the belly. Alicia took the chance to open the curtains a crack, look at the street, as footsteps told her that her mother was being led away. The crying continued to come through the ceiling, and the slosh and hush of water as Margo, sitting on a little stool by the tub and shushing, poured water over Anna’s back from a small jug, smoothing soap through her hair. Later, that would be Alicia’s memory of Margo’s house in Lwów: the sound of crying through the floorboards, magnified in the bathtub’s echoing tin.

  23

  THE NEXT MORNING Margo buttoned her coat, tutted as she noticed one missing, its threads trailing.

  ‘You’re not going out?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Yes, for bread and news. What? You don’t want to eat?’ She crossed the small room where the visitors had slept, swept open the curtains as Anna whispered, ‘Wait!’ The others were still asleep, or pretending to be, taking refuge in closed eyes. Margo stood by the open curtains, eyebrows raised in a triumphant question. Anna didn’t know what she’d been expecting.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ she said. ‘What if they arrest you?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Anna admitted lamely. ‘They arrested Adam for, well, I suppose they didn’t arrest him, just took the car.’ She faded back into the chair as she trailed off, speaking more to herself.