The Light at the End of the Day

by Eleanor Wasserberg

  Janina looked at the child. Girl, little woman, whatever she was now. Her unnerving stillness, her thin face. Anna had dressed her in layers again, dress under dress with the coat she’d fled in, so, as on the way from Kraków, she looked like a fat swaddled baby, until you saw her face, the sharp eyes and set of her jaw which showed she was gritting her teeth hard together. Janina didn’t know if Alicia was angry or afraid. How she missed Karolina now, who could read the child as easily as any book. Still she felt a warmth for her, her calm so like Anna’s. Being with them in times like this, the nervous times, was like a cold flannel pressed to the forehead in a fever. She reached for Anna’s cool hand, but Anna wrenched her hand away with such force that Janina almost lost her footing.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, for the thousandth time. Anna only stared over her head. It was better than being screamed at, called a stupid old woman. Still Janina’s loneliness hollowed her out. She clasped her hands together, stroked her own thumbs against the back of her fingers. It was something she did for Aleks when he was afraid, something Laurie had done for her.

  Soldiers leaned against the railings and walls of the station, smoking, smiling to each other, talking in low voices that erupted into punchlines and laughter. The drivers of the peasant carts that had brought them this far had been the same: relaxed and friendly, talking to them in accented Polish, like overfamiliar cab drivers of their life before: Ah! You’re going home! How nice for you, you must be so happy! We’re happy too, fewer people to worry about! Ha ha ha!

  This along with a thousand other scraps of luck and bounty – the genteel fellow passengers, one of them from their very own neighbourhood, and he’d been living right on their street; the flecks of blue sky; the reassurance, from Sammy to the driver to the people on the cart, that Karolina would be released: It’s happening to everyone, a full pardon, an amnesty, whatever you want to call it, she’ll probably be there on the train with you – all made Janina feel the world had righted itself, and here was a day to balance out that first, terribly wrong, topsy-turvy day when they had left Kraków behind.

  Anna was scanning the crowd. ‘I can’t see her, can you see her?’ she called back to Alicia. ‘Should I ask, perhaps a guard, or at the ticket office? They must have lists somewhere.’ She went back to looking, pressing down on Alicia’s shoulders as she rose on her heels, rotating like a lighthouse beam to find her elder daughter.

  ‘It would be so lucky to meet her here, Anna,’ Janina tried. She had to strain her voice above the crowd. ‘She’ll be on a different train, perhaps, they’ll have sent all the arrested ones separately. There were so many. We’ll meet up with her in Kraków.’ The two women shared a look, the inability to imagine being home again. Who else would be back? What would life look like there now?

  ‘I don’t want to get on the train without Karolcia,’ Alicia said.

  ‘We might have to, Ala,’ her mother said, a shiver in her voice.

  ‘Without knowing where she is,’ Alicia bargained.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Anna said.

  But when she tried to speak to the leaning, laughing guards, they repelled her with benign force, Oh, it’s fine, it’s fine, everyone, yes, everyone is returning. There’s no need to check, everyone, everyone will be on the trains. Please don’t worry. It’s all over for you, you’re going home now. Please, back over there.

  ‘But I can’t go without knowing my daughter is safely on her way,’ Anna argued. ‘Please, just check the list, or tell me where to go and check.’

  They took up their song of soothing cheerfulness again, but when she didn’t move, one of them beckoned her, putting out his cigarette on a railing.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Karolina Oderfeldt. She worked at the library but then she was arrested for no reason at all—’

  ‘All right, that’s all over now,’ he said. He mouthed Karolina’s name to himself, memorising it, and strode off to a building next to the tracks. His comrades smiled, a little shyly, at Anna, and then at each other. She’d interrupted their easy chatter. They were all too young, she judged, to have any children.

  The first soldier came back quickly, a newly lit cigarette bobbing in his mouth. ‘Yes, she’s on the list,’ he said. The others gave her wider smiles, one of them said, ‘Hey, there you are!’ as though she’d found a lost earring.

  ‘Can I see the list?’

  ‘Please, madam, just go back to your people. It’s all right now. You’re going home.’

  The Polish crowd chattered away to itself, just as it had on the way here, different voices but finding the same old rhythm, an incessant chatter of stories – mostly between women, there were few men there – soothing and lightly self-mocking: I would never behave so rashly, usually, but wasn’t it an extraordinary week? Remember how the radio whipped everyone up – my sister is in Warsaw, she said it’s practically as normal, except for, you know, perhaps the Jews, she’s still going to work, I mean people will always need shoes … Janina joined this hive conversation: My son is with the army in France, he wrote to ask me to leave, of course I should have gone there to him, but then it was all so chaotic, you remember, and it will be easier to get to him from Kraków, where I know everyone, I know where to go … while Anna and Alicia were part of a larger, silent group, exchanging glances and nervous smiles, those who felt worry welling inside them, those whose family or friends had disappeared. Some were simply exhausted.

  Janina found herself next to a sharp-eyed woman with a pinched look that told Janina she was trying not to cry. Janina touched her arm. ‘Polish?’

  The woman nodded. ‘Warsaw.’

  ‘Beautiful city.’

  ‘Yes.’ She sniffed. ‘You?’

  ‘Kraków.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  Janina smiled at her, feeling more at ease every moment; they might be in line at the bakery, or younger, walking prams in the park.

  ‘Have you … much news?’ Janina ventured.

  ‘The letters are so slow—’

  ‘Oh! I know. What are they doing? Do they read them all?’

  ‘It’s a shambles. Remember how quick the post used to be?’

  ‘When my husband was away I had a letter every week, without fail.’

  ‘My sister writes, she’s still in Warsaw, she thought I was crazy to leave.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’ve been moved to a new house, I’ll— oh!’

  Whether chattering or silent, the crowds were such that the trains weren’t clearly visible until they were up close. Janina heard Anna’s unmistakeable ‘My God,’ and realised she and Alicia were just behind her. She turned, and she and Anna shared an appalled glance.

  ‘Oh, oh dear,’ the woman from Warsaw said.

  ‘Well, this is no good,’ Janina echoed her new friend’s tone. ‘We should speak to someone.’

  Anna put her arms around Alicia’s shoulders again. She closed her eyes against the lurch of realignment, reimagining. When she opened them, saw again the dirty, rickety cattle carts, she laughed. A few around her did too.

  ‘Now I feel foolish,’ the woman from Warsaw confided to no one in particular. ‘I thought it would be a proper train, like to Berlin or the French coast.’

  ‘I was planning to order breakfast—’ Anna stuttered, shocked laughter still clogging her words.

  ‘Well, I’m not going in there,’ the woman announced, and turned her heel. She gave Janina a polite nod as she left, her hat bobbing above the crowd. Alone again, Janina moved back to Anna’s side.

  Alicia looked up at her mother. ‘We’ll go back to Margo’s house then?’ The thought depressed her, keeping them stuck in Lwów like insects pinned to card, but there would be Isaac, and Margo to protect them from Sammy’s fear. They would have to write to Papa, explain he must come to Lwów after all, and bring the dogs and her painting with him.

  ‘But Karolina …’ Anna felt a helpless, dull panic. What else wasn’t true, in her ridiculous fantasy?


  People started to step up into the cars, arrange themselves around the edges, spread blankets. The three of them were jostled and pushed.

  ‘We’ll be left behind,’ Janina said. ‘I’ll … I’ll see what it’s like.’ She held out a hand to a man in the closest car, and he pulled her up with difficulty, her long skirt catching on the edge. The floor was uneven and wooden. She could see the tracks through the slats. She dusted off her skirt and looked down at Anna and Alicia, then around the car, like a box on its side. It was filling quickly, and she pushed back to the front.

  ‘It’s … just wood, but …’ she said, ‘I don’t know.’ She looked beyond them, to the crowd surging behind. ‘Well, you come up or I’ll get down! We’ll be separated!’ she called.

  Anna gave her a complicated look, both eager to be rid of her and bound to her by their months together, the simple need for the familiar in the world of strangeness. She gave one more frantic glare behind her, towards where the guards had reassured her about Karolina, then pushed Alicia towards Janina’s waiting hand. With help from others in the car they pulled both of them up. People were taking off their shoes, and lining them up along the back of the car. ‘We’ll have this section,’ a woman was saying, drawing an invisible line on the floor with her finger, and a man was folding his arms, preparing to argue with her.

  Janina was aware her breath was laboured and tried to slow it, counting so that her lungs would fill more deeply. She looked up. The roof was made of the same slats as the floor, with a small square of glassless window covered with iron bars. Other gaps at the top of the walls were covered with the same bars. Janina tried to reach one and felt sick with claustrophobia when she realised she couldn’t. But the front of the car, where they had come in, was completely open.

  ‘Won’t it be terribly cold?’ she murmured. She moved towards the edge again, where soldiers were now leading lines of people along the tracks, towards emptier cars. She sat with her legs hanging over the edge, her ears tuning in to Anna and Alicia’s low conversation.

  ‘Why did you let her come in here with us?’

  ‘Shush.’

  ‘She’s the reason Karolcia was taken.’

  ‘Karolina did that to herself, too,’ Anna said, shocking herself.

  ‘Because the stupid old woman made so much noise!’

  ‘Be quiet. You don’t know everything.’

  ‘You hate her too. You don’t speak to her anymore.’

  Janina tried to ignore her churning stomach. She pointed and flexed her toes, her faithful boots placed with the others. She watched the line of stragglers, unsure if she should feel superior to any who couldn’t fit into the cars. She noticed the woman from Warsaw among them, red-cheeked, clutching her bag, a soldier’s hand on her shoulder.

  Anna copied the woman drawing invisible lines, found a space near the edge, where there would be air. ‘My daughter and I will have this part,’ she said, ignoring Janina as she swung her legs back, moved to the other side of the car.

  It went dark.

  Alicia felt it as a painting covered in black cloth. Anna, panicking, tried to picture Karolina’s face, but in a nightmarish way couldn’t find it for a few seconds, in the new darkness. Janina felt only cold, and a second’s wild relief that perhaps it was all over at last: she waited for Laurie to come and find her. The darkness plunged them all into a silent individual confusion, locked in their own heads, unsure if their eyes were open, and then they reached out to touch each other, strangers and family alike. Then came the screeching sound of the locks, a clunk of metal and wood, and people began to cry out. Someone started to scream. Janina pitied her, and then checked her own mouth and throat with her fingers.

  When they began to move, the light adjusted again, or their eyes did. The square on the roof let in some air and light, and as the train of cattle cars moved strips of sun and gloom began to ripple across their faces, calming them. They lifted their faces to it, wanting the cooler air and the slice of sky the windows promised.

  Anna couldn’t speak. She was frightened that someone would agree this had been a terrible mistake, a poor move in a game that couldn’t be taken back, a catastrophe. But she looked around at the strangers, thought of the others, in car after car. They had all made the same choice, this was what everyone had chosen, it wasn’t just her stupidity. She stretched out her legs, accidentally nudging another woman with her hip.

  ‘How long is the journey home?’ Alicia whispered, for the people in the car hadn’t yet started speaking, only descended into a shocked kind of calm, now that the screams had stopped. Whispers had begun to rise in small groups, wind through a forest.

  Anna found her daughter’s hand. ‘Maybe a week?’ she whispered back.

  ‘So we’ll stop for food and walks in the air.’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said, arching her back to breathe the fresh air that floated above their heads.

  ‘Papa will meet us at the station.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Or at the house?’

  ‘I don’t know, Alicia.’

  ‘And Karolina too.’

  ‘Alicia, please.’ Anna felt the tiny vibrations in her chest and throat, the pain around her jaw that threatened rare tears. She hadn’t cried since the night they had arrived in Lwów, in Margo’s arms. She pushed the homesick thought of Margo away, how desperately she missed her. Sophia too was gone: all her helpers and protectors. They would have known what to say.

  Alicia found her mother’s hand. ‘They’ll both be there.’ It could have been a statement or a question. Anna squeezed.

  A rhythm of movement and sound was quick to establish itself in the car. Rattles and clinks ran through it like a talentless child practising a musical scale. The group shared shy smiles and nods, adjusted themselves. Voices from other cars were carried on the wind, wordless shouts and sometimes what sounded like names. Those who had prepared them brought out canisters of water and offered them around. Conversations sprouted, discussing the heart of their fears like small talk.

  ‘Do you think it was a mistake?’

  ‘I wasn’t expecting them to lock the doors.’

  ‘I thought it would be a proper train.’

  One of the women stood, tall and graceful, and hooked a foot on a metal rivet, pulling herself up to look out of the window. She looked like a tourist taking in the view, relaxed, holding her blonde hair out of her face as the breeze played with it. Everyone watched her, hoping she would report what she could see, but she only laid her head on the cushion of her arm, and watched. Just as Anna was beginning to despise her, the woman curled herself back down to the floor and said, in a low voice, ‘We’re moving north. We aren’t going to Poland.’

  30

  SOME PEOPLE IN the car were like saturated ground, full of too much change and shock already. The fact they were not going back to Poland after all simply sat on the surface like more heavy rain.

  ‘My garden will be so neglected,’ a woman said. ‘I’ve been away for months now, and you can be certain none of my selfish neighbours have bothered with it, even though they promised they would.’ She was the one who had drawn lines on the floor, in a family of young women. They all had the same beautiful thick black hair, and nodded along to the woman’s words, murmuring about her garden: I remember your lawn, Aunt Riane; don’t you have an apple tree?

  ‘Didn’t you hear what she said?’ a man called out to them. ‘Blathering on about lawns! North, she said! Didn’t you hear?’

  ‘And?’ someone else snapped. ‘There’s a war on, in case you hadn’t noticed! Don’t you think there are broken rails, bombed bridges, detours?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman who had stood up to look at the sky.

  The currents of argument died down quickly and everyone returned to their little whispering groups, reassuring themselves, or sat in silence, if alone, like Janina and the man who had shouted at Riane. Soon they knocked on the adjoining walls, called through the windows to the other cars, listened t
o the voices in return. Hey, what are you doing about a toilet? Hey, what did they say to you? Yes, Russia, it has to be Russia. Do you have a pipe at the back of the car? It goes directly onto the tracks … They found it, erected sheets around it which they tucked into the wooden slats. Riane hung more blankets around her little set, their bare feet sticking out.

  The sun was setting. Alicia watched the roof-square, the size of a sketch, turn twilight blue, then there was the warmth of that rosy light she so loved to paint in. Amid the whispering of the car, Jozef’s voice came to her, to her younger self standing at the window in the apartment at home, the Wawel behind her, yesterday and a lifetime before.

  ‘It’s best at dawn, a cleaner light. Paintings made in twilight skew the colours too much,’ Jozef said, but smiling, and mixing up the touches of gold for her hair or the bright red for her dress and the roses. Karolina said something in reply, something about writing in the early hours, ‘Yes, clean is how I think of morning work too, the evening is for reading and editing …’ That was probably too much, Alicia realised, but she liked to extend the sound of her sister’s voice in her head.

  ‘But we need the warmth,’ Alicia had insisted. ‘Dawn light is too cold,’ and Jozef stopped and looked out of the window at the fading day, murmured to Karolina, ‘Yes, I see what she means,’ before Alicia lost him for a while as he gazed between Karolina’s face, the fading light and her painting.

  ‘Papa’s waiting for us there,’ she said now to her mother. ‘He’s in the apartment, with Janie … we have to get to him and to Karolcia. We’ll get my painting back and then—’