The Light at the End of the Day

by Eleanor Wasserberg

  ‘Stupid Polish bitch!’ a man yelled from the window as he sped away. Anna’s mouth dropped open, more from the hatred in the words than their meaning, which she took a few more seconds to unscramble.

  ‘That idiot boy,’ Margo said absently, pulling her towards home. It took a few more steps for Anna to realise the man in the car had been the young clerk from Sammy’s office.

  26

  ‘WHEN IS PAPA COMING?’ Alicia said, twisting around to look at her mother, who gave her a blank look that Alicia couldn’t decipher. ‘Isaac, Aunt Margo, aren’t you excited to see Papa? When did you last see him?’ Alicia went on. ‘Karolcia, can you believe it?’

  Karolina only smiled at her.

  ‘I’m sorry there was no time to ask about Jozef,’ Anna said.

  ‘Adam might have news of some of the neighbourhood,’ Janina said.

  ‘He’ll drive us home. We’ll find Jozef, and my painting,’ Alicia said, brutally cheerful in the face of Margo’s pale and tear-stained cheeks, Isaac’s silence. It was the latter that pierced her, after a few seconds, and she went to her cousin’s side, curled up next to him. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, ‘but Uncle Sammy is only working somewhere.’ Isaac clasped his hands together and gave her a vague, dismissing smile.

  And so it went on and on and on, while Anna sat fixed in place unable to speak. Time after time the words rose in her throat and crowded behind her teeth. He isn’t coming. He’s on his way to France, to be with his other, newer family. His lover and son. The last word pulled the others back with it, clawing back down her throat to sit in her stomach. She fell into a bitter daydream of a sunlit room, full of Provençal lavender, the very lavender he brought back for her wrapped in silk bundles, that Janie put into all of the drawers and hung in the wardrobes, the girl in a rocking chair, wearing a simple white sundress, showing a miraculously tiny waist, fresh-faced with long, un-styled hair falling across her face, cradling the boy, turning to Adam as he crossed the room with his quick, loping stride—

  ‘Anna!’ Janina repeated, having resorted to shaking her arm. ‘Could you ask Sammy’s office to telegram back to Adam, arrange a new telephone call? When it isn’t such a shock, and you are calmer, you can ask more questions about what’s happening.’

  ‘But Papa won’t be there any more, he’s travelling to us now,’ Alicia said.

  ‘I just thought maybe, my son, you know,’ Janina trailed off, before finding her breath again. ‘The newspapers here don’t cover the Polish troops so much, perhaps if he could pick up The Herald or even one of the cheaper dailies, there might be an address to write to.’

  In the small front room where the Oderfeldts and Janina slept, the dead of night knock at the door was absorbed at first into the soundscape of Alicia’s dream; she heard only the normal coming and going of what life had been in Kraków: Uncle Stefan, carrying books, or a neighbour coming to drink coffee and trade gossip with Mama. Janina and Karolina, already awake, sat up and gasped at the sound, some new threat, as Anna crossed the room to the door.

  The knocking continued, a rap rap rap, a pause, rap rap rap. Growing fainter. Margo came down the stairs, followed by her son. Isaac was alert and anxious, holding something hidden in his hand. As he came to stand by his mother’s side, Alicia saw it was a brick.

  Margo looked around at the others with a tutting sound.

  ‘What?’ Anna whispered. ‘You open it, then.’

  But the door handle was being tried, and this made them all freeze in place, frightened rabbits listening to their own heartbeats. At long last Isaac leapt forward, the brick still in his hand; Margo caught sight of it and snatched it from him just as he opened the door.

  ‘God, God,’ Isaac said. He moved as though he would close the door again, gripping the side of it, and this sent a current through them all, a quick rifle through the mind and where to run, hide, a fight-or-flight work of milliseconds, but then Isaac stepped back, and as he turned, pale and looking younger than before, Sammy shuffled in behind him.

  He was still wearing the same suit from the day he’d left, but it had been ripped off at the knees, exposing his thick shins, and the jacket was torn at the elbows; the effect was like seeing a grown man in a schoolboy uniform, humiliating. There was dried blood on his shirt, and he cradled one arm with the other. His left eye was swollen and purple, and pulled his cheek towards it, making his whole face a permanent wince. He held out his hands, impotently filling the room with an I don’t know, I don’t understand it before any questions could be asked. Margo darted to her husband, about to put her arms around him, but stopped when they were face to face, her hands hovering in the air between them, moving first towards his eye, then his arm, then curling back on themselves as she folded her arms, hugging herself. Isaac began pacing back and forth, chewing on a thumb and throwing glances at his parents.

  Margo led Sammy to a chair. His throat was working, swallowing. Alicia thought of a summer with strep throat, every swallow a task. She reached for and found Karolina’s hand. Her sister began to steer Alicia out of the room, but she resisted.

  ‘Schmuel?’ Margo prompted.

  ‘They …’ Sammy began, faltering. He swallowed again, and they all felt a wave of collective, reflected humiliation. Weak, Alicia thought savagely, before a horrified sob threatened to erupt. She swallowed it away, looked at the floor with its thin carpet and faded colours.

  Anna caught Margo’s eye. She mouthed, ‘Shall we leave?’ but Margo waved a hand in dismissal of the idea.

  ‘Why is your suit torn?’ Isaac asked, in his gentle, open way. ‘Why would they …’

  ‘They made me wear a sign.’

  ‘A sign?’ Margo echoed.

  ‘Around my neck,’ he gestured, circling with the fingers of his good hand. ‘I left it in the street outside.’

  ‘What did it say?’ Margo pressed.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Karolina said quickly, squeezing her sister’s hand.

  Margo cleaned and dressed Sammy’s wounds, used a mirror to look in his mouth.

  ‘You’ve lost three teeth at the back,’ she said matter-of-factly, wiping her hand on her dress.

  ‘Oh,’ Alicia let out a tiny sound. That explained the strange way his mouth looked, and how his voice was different.

  ‘No, it was many more,’ he mumbled. ‘I remember swallowing them.’ He looked around at them all. ‘I was walking along swallowing my own teeth and blood, I remember the feel of it trickling down my throat,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘They were slapping me around the head like a child—’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Margo said.

  ‘They beat me,’ Sammy said in a tiny voice. ‘There are procedures, they can’t do that, I was asking for the paperwork, insisting, they have to, there are laws. They made me wear a sign,’ he mumbled, as Margo lifted his legs and he curled up, his huge frame stuffed onto the small chair, his face on an armrest. ‘I swallowed my teeth …’

  Margo cupped her husband’s face with her hands, whispered something and kissed his nose, shrinking the world to the two of them, and they all looked away. As she broke away from him, Sammy seemed to relax.

  ‘You have to leave,’ he said.

  Margo’s mouth opened as though to argue, then closed again, and she joined the others in just staring at him.

  Anna was the first to react, picking up her rage where she had let it trail at the sight of Margo’s tenderness and Sammy’s bowed head.

  ‘I hope Adam is dead,’ she began, satisfied to hear them all draw sharp breaths and to see Sammy’s head snap up in surprise. ‘Yes, so he never has to hear how you have treated us. It would break his heart straight in two, cracked—’ Anna sliced the air, and Sammy jumped, ‘right in two!’

  Sammy stood in open-mouthed horror, but Anna found she was only flaying the skin of her rage and there were still layers and layers of disgust beneath; she almost laughed with the release of her temper after days, weeks, longer, of sniping frustration. She filled her lungs and
let her voice hit Sammy full force.

  ‘How can you be so useless, so immoral? Have you forgotten Adam? What would your parents say? Throwing his wife and daughters into the streets! You’re a hypocrite! This ludicrous act you put on, to impress your friends, oh! What a good man! So charitable! So kind! Welcome, oh!’

  She went to strike him, now, hit his shoulder as he stood staring at his shoes, Margo’s arms around him, though her face was grimly inscrutable as she heard Anna’s abuse. ‘Stay as long as you like!’ She said, hitting him again, then pulled back, elated and horrified at how her whole body had willed her to fall on him and rip him to pieces. ‘But when it’s really time to act, to help, it’s you have to leave! You weak, pathetic man! I hope your brother is dead so he never knows how you’ve failed him!’

  The room quietened; the only sound was Anna’s hard breaths and the rustle of Sammy’s sleeve where Margo was stroking it.

  Isaac went to his aunt, put his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘They’re your brother’s wife and children,’ Margo said, gently.

  Sammy wouldn’t look at any of them as he left the room without a word, closing the door softly behind him.

  Anna went to the Skliars’, banging on their bright blue door. The house stayed dark and quiet. She knocked on the window, cupping her hands around her face to see inside. There was the beautiful furniture and the piles of books, half-drunk cups and piles of papers and half-written protest signs and banners rolled up and leaned against the wall.

  She stepped back, her skin only now feeling the freeze of the street in the early hours. How mad she must look, having run out without coat or shoes. Hugging Margo’s housecoat around her, she turned and watched the wind blowing leaves across the cobbles, heard barking dogs. She picked her way back to Margo’s house, her toes stabbed by the cold and sharp cobbles. Blowing in the wind just outside their front door was a placard, made of thick white paper and tied with a string. The same message was written on both sides, one in Polish, one in Ukrainian. Jew. I will be quiet.

  27

  THE POUNDING at the door became a rash of knocks around the window. Fumbling with the locks, Anna found Sophia panting and red.

  ‘Come …’ Sophia faltered, catching her breath. ‘No, listen,’ she added, as Anna waved her in.

  ‘Well, what is it? Come in!’

  Sophia darted into the front room. It was the afternoon; Isaac was at school, Sammy and Karolina at work. As Sophia spoke, Janina gave little cries, shushed by the other women, who moved together, Margo holding Anna by the waist. Alicia came in from the kitchen, where she’d been secretly painting sheets with beetroot juice, and stared at the spectacle.

  ‘They’re, they’re arresting Poles street by street. Theo got a message to me. They’ve started at the university and they’re going through the whole city.’

  ‘Karolcia?’ Anna said.

  ‘I – she’s still at work …’ Sophia quietened at Anna’s face. ‘She’s safe there,’ she added. ‘I’m sure it’s fine—’

  ‘Did you tell her about Theo’s message, will she know what to—’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sorry, I came to warn the family at my house, I had to run. Theo and I, we’re all, trying to – we have a basement at ours, you can hide there with the others. You don’t have one, do you?’

  ‘But we’re here legally,’ Janina tried again. She went to her little box under the chair by the fireplace. ‘We’re just waiting for the bank accounts to be accessed.’

  ‘Forget about that, do you want to risk it? Something’s changed,’ Sophia said.

  ‘Yes, that doesn’t matter now,’ Margo said, as Janina produced her papers, holding them out for Margo as though she were a guard.

  ‘You have to go,’ Margo added, and it wasn’t clear if they were being dismissed from the house, or urged to flee.

  ‘Come on, then,’ Sophia said.

  ‘We’ll wait for Karolcia,’ Alicia said.

  Margo hesitated, looking from Anna to Sophia. ‘Wait, wait. Let’s think about this,’ she said.

  ‘I’m telling you, come on,’ Sophia said.

  ‘But surely they’ll search the basements,’ Margo said. ‘They’ll find them.’

  Sophia paced, all eyes following her stunted march to and fro across the tiny room. She pressed a hand against the far wall and turned like a swimmer, plunged back to the window, back again. ‘The church?’ she offered.

  ‘Your church is the first place they’ll go, all that noise you’ve been making,’ Margo muttered.

  Sophia gripped her hands together and whispered a prayer into them. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I know where I can take you. But the others – oh, Margo, do you think they’ll really search – of course they will, so stupid, Sophia. All right.’ She rushed out again, leaving the family staring after her.

  ‘Come on, Janina,’ Anna snapped, fear making her spiteful, ‘you’ll slow us down on the way there as it is, so don’t make it any worse by fumbling around for your coat. They were at the university,’ Anna went on, gabbling as Janina buttoned her coat and handed gloves to Alicia, who was watching Margo, watching the window. ‘How far away do you think they are? Oh God, but what about Karolina?’

  ‘We’re going to her,’ Sophia said from the door. ‘Come on. The refugees at my house won’t move,’ she called to Margo. ‘Keep an eye out, won’t you? I’m going to take your family myself.’

  ‘Are you sure, Sophia? If they find them – I’m sorry, Anna, don’t look at me that way, but there are risks—’

  ‘I know.’ Gone was all Sophia’s girlish excitement. She was a little pale, kept touching the tiny cross at her neck. Anna wanted to shove her child at Sophia, say, Take her, take her, look after her for the rest of all of this. Margo squeezed Anna’s hand in apology and she gave her a small smile in return.

  ‘Are you bringing the car to the front here?’ Anna asked, checking the window again.

  ‘Theo has it. He’s picking up souls all over the city to hide at the university. We won’t get the message to him in time. We’ll have to walk.’

  They walked at the edge of flight, just at the point of breaking into a run. Sophia went ahead, scouting for soldiers, waving them forwards. She held up a palm for them to stop, and like well-trained dancers they all turned at this cue to look in a shop window. Anna saw reflected in the glass first a truck full of Soviets roar past, her own blank face, Alicia’s closed one, Janina’s almost-gibbering terror. She took Janina’s hand. ‘Come on, we’ve got this far,’ she said. ‘Even if they do arrest us,’ she spoke to Janina’s reflection, and then broadened her gaze to Alicia, ‘so what? They aren’t the Germans. Your Papa is coming, Alicia, and he’ll explain everything, and so we spend a night on a prison bench instead of on a chair.’ Anna had closed her eyes now, and had taken Janina’s other hand. Alicia nodded along to her mother’s words, rose up on the balls of her feet at Papa, as though he was before them and she was rising for a kiss or to be swept up into his arms.

  In the hush and cool of the library lobby Anna felt soothed, as though the wooden doors were a magical barrier, as though decency and decorum would protect them here, among readers and scholars and people preparing for legal cases, researching papers. The rustle of pages and scratch of pens, the clunk and echo of heavy bags full of books placed on the gleaming floors, the musty scent mixed with beeswax, all of it made Anna feel stupidly safe.

  The front desk was manned by two women, Dora and Paulina, bickering cousins who spent their days completing word puzzles and rating the men they could see from the front desk in a complicated system of ranks of face, body, voice and manners. They threw up their arms in unison at the sight of Sophia, and Paulina theatrically looked at the giant clock that hung on the wall behind the desk. The others hung back awkwardly as Sophia approached. She still had Anna by the hand, pulled her with her. The cousins, sensing drama, leaned in, and began to whisper furiously:

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘We though
t you’d, you know … dis-a-ppeare-d,’ Dora said, her bright lipstick bleeding onto her teeth as she spoke the syllables with relish. ‘Are you in trouble?’ She directed this last question to Anna.

  ‘This is Karolina’s mother,’ Sophia said, and the girls gave her polite nods.

  ‘Karolina’s down in the stacks,’ Dora said, as Anna almost bit through her own tongue not to cry out in relief.

  ‘They say that they’re arresting Poles street by street,’ Sophia said.

  ‘What? No! That’s awful!’ the cousins whispered, in the same tones they used for an errant husband, or a ruined party.

  ‘Have they been here?’ Sophia breathed, not even a whisper.

  The women, wide-eyed, shook their heads.

  The Polish books were kept in the stacks on the ground floor. The cool and silence of upstairs was deeper, richer here; all of them relaxed, feeling the floors above them as a shield, as though the room were a secret.

  Karolina sat cross-legged against a shelf, surrounded by piles of books, writing on a spine, her hair spilling around her shoulders. She started as Alicia flew to her.

  ‘Oh! Hello … what’s this? Look, Alicia, this is an art book, I was going to bring it back for you …’ She trailed off as Sophia shushed her.

  Anna leaned her forehead against the cool painted wall that ran in a circle around the stacks, while Janina scurried around the edges of the room like a trapped mouse, whispering to herself. Sophia and Karolina took Alicia to see how the wheels at the ends of the shelves could be turned to make the stacks move.