In the room where that morning he had stood with his neighbours watching the Wawel and drinking, Adam paced for a few minutes, feeling his pockets. He drew out his wallet and papers, laid them on the small desk, next to the newspapers and flowers. He took off his coat and felt in the lining for the cash, thumbed it through the fabric where Janie had sewn it in. He would need more once the family arrived and they had to try again; now that the chaos of the first day had waned, it would be harder to slip away. Or they might stay, he thought, glancing around the dark room, stripes of light from the shutters slicing across the paintings on the wall. All seemed well enough. Stefan was staying.
He was still holding the coat, and his left hand strayed to the inner pocket, stroked the roll there for a moment, the smoothness of the canvas almost like marble under his fingers. When he pulled her out she was a little crushed, bent in the middle. He unrolled her on the desk, Alicia’s little hand holding the handkerchief, the red of the dress hanging in its folds, the beginning of her hair falling over the shoulder. The clumsy crease he had made cut her in half, across her arm and Jozef’s pleats in paint, the darker streams of red. In the low light the colour was warming in the chill room and Adam began to think of lighting a fire in the grate. He’d already turned to look at the fireplace when he heard breaking glass, the sound travelling up the staircase, from where something had smashed the windows around the front door. The apartment shuddered as the door was wrenched open by force of something. Footsteps in the hallway and on the stairs. He strained for Anna’s voice, Karolina’s unmistakeable measured tread, Alicia’s quicker, stomping feet, but it was male voices that called to one another as they came up the stairs, laughter mixed with German.
He snatched the painting, rolled it up again. Some strange panic-pulse in his mind drew him to the fireplace as though he could ignore the crisis and light the fire; he even cast about for a match before crouching down to look up the chimney. He couldn’t fit; even so thin, he would be stuck at the waist and his legs would dangle. They’d laugh at him and pull him out and beat him on his own carpet.
He heard them rifling through the lower rooms as he took the stairs up to his daughters’ rooms, full of scattered clothes and Karolina’s books. He knew where Alicia’s hiding place was, the loose panel of the skirting board. It popped out with a tiny satisfying click, and he almost vomited from fear, hearing the sound travel across the room and stop at the door. Voices were carrying from the rooms below, laughter and the turning over of furniture. He thought he heard the clink and glug of wine in glasses.
As he fled down the back stairs, feeling every hair on his body on end, every nerve set alight, Adam couldn’t believe his own stupidity; it was just a thing made of canvas and paint. Still, he reasoned as he clambered through the back window: it was for Alicia; his little Alicia loved that painting, and she would want it kept safe until the world could be put right again.
Acknowledgements
Thank you: Ed Wilson, Anna Kelly, Helen Garnons-Williams, Alex Gingell, Naomi Mantin, Franciska Fabriczki, Jo Walker and all the brilliant team at 4th Estate.
Thank you, as ever, to my wonderful family and friends, and especially to my dad for not being annoyed with me for pillaging and mangling his family stories.
I’m grateful to Arts Council England for funding a research trip to Kraków in 2016 to see the real painting on which this work is based: Portrait of a Girl in a Red Dress (Józefa Oderfeldówna) by Józef Pankiewicz. Many thanks to Robert Kotowski, director of the Muzeum Narodowe in Kielce, for kindly meeting with me and sharing his vast knowledge of the painting and its subject. Józefa is my great aunt, and I’d like to thank her and my grandfather, Jerzy, for seemingly not minding that I have changed her name and her story as I pleased, since they have not haunted me about it. I’d also like to thank Janka Wasserberg, and Anna and Pietror, for being so generous with their time and stories.
Arts Council England also kindly funded a week at an Arvon writing retreat in Devon in 2016, where I wrote thousands of words, few of which have actually ended up in the book you have just read, but which sparked its story. Many thanks to the lovely writers I met there, and particularly to Laurence Scott and Romesh Gunesekera.
I’m grateful to everyone who read early drafts of this book and helped me batter it into shape, particularly my workshop group: Richard Lambert, Vicky Rangeley, Alex Ivey, Tom Benn, Tim Sykes, Gordon Collins and Birgit Larsson. Thank you also to Georgie Codd, Armando Celayo, Ruth Weyman, Leander Deeny and Kate Deeny for reading early drafts and giving me feedback, and also to my eagle-eyed parents for the same.
Thank you to Kate Muirhead at UEA Live, Martin Figura and Peter Goodrum at Café Writers, and Keith Packer at Future FM for opportunities to do readings of the novel in progress.
I’d like to thank my brilliantly supportive colleagues at Norwich School, and especially Maria Brown for discussing Polish swear words with me over morning break coffee.
The detail of Frank and his sister hiding behind the oven in Lwów is borrowed from the family history of my friend Emma Phillips. Sammy’s beating, and the sign he is forced to wear, was inspired by the treatment of Dr Michael Siegel. For many other details and stories, I’m indebted to the Schindler Museum in Kraków, the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive and Slawomir Grünberg’s film Saved by Deportation.
About the Author
Eleanor Wasserberg is a graduate of the Creative Writing Programme at the University of East Anglia. Originally from Staffordshire, she now lives in Norwich. Her first novel, Foxlowe, was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and shortlisted for the 2016 East Anglian Book Awards.
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The Light at the End of the Day Page 34