The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  “Registration?”

  “Affidavit,” I replied. I handed him a paper saying Emilika was my cousin with all the feigned confidence in the world.

  He did more peering at me, at the paper, at my photograph, and then at Emilika, standing behind my chair. “And this is your signature, Fräulein?” he asked.

  “Of course it is.” She smiled lazily.

  And two hours later, I was on the train to Lwów.

  * * *

  It took another four hours to get there, and by the time I found the camp, at the end of a side street right in the center of the city, it was after seven o’clock. A factory stood on a hill to one side, the field below filled with flimsy buildings arranged in a square, fencing and razor wire strung around the perimeter. I couldn’t see beyond. I went to the only building with a door and stepped inside.

  People waited in a line. Whether they were trying to find friends and family, like I was, or doing business with the Germans, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t want to know. The woman in front of me was having a long, low conversation with whoever was sitting behind the desk. She turned abruptly and left, giving me a swift view of her face. Whoever she was looking for—friend, brother, sister, parent, or child—wasn’t here. Or wasn’t here anymore.

  Or maybe they just weren’t living anymore.

  And suddenly, I was terrified. I shuffled up to the desk with concrete feet, to yet another pair of wire-rimmed glasses. Did they sell no other kind in Germany?

  “Nein,” the man said.

  I hadn’t even asked him a question.

  “Nein, nein, nein!” He shouted at the whole room in a broken mix of German and Polish. “There are no visitors. You may not bring food, and I will not tell you the names of any prisoners in this camp!” His chair screeched on its back legs as he stood, stuffing his stack of papers into a folder. “Heil Hitler!” he said, and was gone.

  We all stared at one another, then filed back outside like obedient sheep. I had two hours before the next train, and the German-run trains, I had noticed, always kept to schedule. I could hear the workers somewhere inside that square of buildings. Shouts and grunts and the sounds of machines, and oddly, an orchestra playing somewhere inside. The summer sun was still hot, and most of the flock of people had gone to stand in the shadow of the building.

  And then I wasn’t terrified anymore. I was angry. I hadn’t lied to the Nazis for nothing. And a train ticket for no reason was food straight out of the Diamants’ mouths.

  A guard appeared, taking up a position outside the door of the little office. I eyed his uniform. Not the SS. This man was dusty and a little crumpled, machine gun limp in his hands. He looked almost as dejected as the rest of us.

  Fear got me nowhere. I knew that. And neither would anger. I wiped them from my face and sidled up to the guard. His eyes darted right and left before fixing on me.

  “They’ve given you door duty,” I said. “That’s bad luck.”

  “There’s worse luck,” he replied.

  I was pleased to hear good Polish, even if it was with a German accent. I smiled. “What’s the best way to get into the camp?”

  “There is no good way into the camp,” he said. “You don’t want to get into the camp. I would not let my girlfriend within ten kilometers of this camp.”

  “But … there is someone inside, a friend …”

  I could see his jaw going stubborn. I lowered my eyes.

  “And his wife, my sister, she has had a baby. A little boy …”

  The lies rolled across my tongue like currant wine.

  “… and I only want to tell him that he is a father. That his wife and his son are well. Surely that is not so difficult? And don’t you think,” I went on, “that a man who knows he is a father will work so much harder, will be so careful to obey every rule, so that he can see his wife and son one day? Isn’t it a good … motivation? And look”—I fished a small parcel from my bag, the bread and cheese I’d packed for the journey. Grease stains were beginning to seep through the wrapping—“there’s even dinner in it for you.”

  The guard’s mouth twitched. I smiled even bigger. I think he might have blushed.

  “What is your brother-in-law’s name?” he asked, voice low.

  “Izydor Diamant.”

  “I will bring him. But you must give me something in return. Something that is not your food.”

  My stomach twisted.

  “One kiss,” he said. “On the cheek.”

  I could feel the stares of the other people in the shade, gazes drilling holes in my back like bullets. I held my grin in place, stretched onto my toes, and kissed his Nazi face.

  He smiled. “Come with me.”

  The guard led me back through the door to the now-empty office and through another door behind the desk. There was a plain room behind it, with only a table and one chair, and another door in the opposite wall. It smelled like cigarettes and sweat. “Wait here,” he said.

  And he locked the door behind him.

  I stood alone in that room and decided then and there that I was just as foolish as Mrs. Diamant had said. And very, very naive. These men cared nothing for right or wrong. They were predators, and I had just made myself prey. Mama would have slapped me for not having any sense, and so, I think, would Mrs. Diamant.

  The other door was locked when I tried it, and there were no windows. But a floorboard was loose, the nails having missed their targets underneath. A hole in the floor was something. And a board with nails in it might be something else. I was trying to get my fingers underneath it when a key rattled in the door, the one I hadn’t come through. It swung open, and a stranger in loose gray clothing shuffled in.

  “Ten minutes,” said the guard, poking his head around the jamb before he shut and locked the door. The stranger tried to move toward me, but he was slow. His ankles were chained.

  “Fusia,” he said, and then he wasn’t a stranger at all. He was Izio. I ran across the room and threw my arms around his neck.

  His head had been shaved, and he was covered in dust, and filth under that. I could feel every bone in his back. He’d aged thirty years in four weeks, and I’d never known a human could smell so bad. But he was still Izio.

  “Fusia,” he said again, then backed off to look at me. “The man said I was … a father?”

  I could see why he was confused, considering the rules of biology. I waved away my lie and gave him my food instead. We sat in the two chairs, and I watched him wolf down the sandwich without stopping for breath. He was tense. Jumpy. His hands shook a little.

  “Do you have water?” he asked. I didn’t. And then he whispered, “You have to get me out.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it. He took my hands.

  “You have to get me out of here! I can’t stay … They’re going to kill me. Us. Everybody. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t. He squeezed his eyes closed. The skin stretched thin across his skull.

  “Get me out, Fusia. Please. Please.”

  Something broke inside me. I think it was my heart. But broken hearts wouldn’t help us survive any more than my temper. I said, “Tell me what to do.”

  * * *

  The train ride back to Przemyśl was much shorter than the one that had brought me. At least in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking.

  “They’re going to kill every Jew,” Izio had said. “Every communist. The Romanies. But especially the Jews …”

  Kill us, kill us, kill us, the train engine chugged. I closed my eyes, trying not to hear.

  “They know you’re going to die, so they play with you. Like a toy. Beat and starve. Humiliate. Torture. They shoot men in the woods, then crush their bones so they can’t be found. They have an orchestra, all prisoners, and they write special songs for every execution, for every beating …”

  Kill us, said the train wheels.

  “It’s not random. It’s a plan. It’s what they want …”

  Like the SS man with his rifle butt in the g
hetto.

  Izio had said the guards were often lax. That the prisoners were unchained at night. That if he walked away after the evening work session, he might not be missed until the night ration. He needed street clothes, soap, shoes, a cap, a pair of glasses. A train ticket. I could come to him like I had today. Hide the clothes beneath a bush near the officers’ latrines, walk with him away from the camp once he’d changed, then wait with him at the platform until the train came. No one would notice, not once he was out of his prison clothes, not once he was with me. We could disappear into Przemyśl, and maybe even Russia after that.

  “Help me, Fusia,” he’d said. He had tears running down his face.

  I sold everything. What else could I do? I bought in secondhand shops and sold to other secondhand shops for a few coins more. I saved money, and I saved more money. My last two dresses hung loose around my waist. I met Max at the fence and fed the Diamants. Maybe not as well as I had, but I fed them.

  I told Max I had seen Izio. That he was alive and working. I did not tell him about his condition.

  And I did not tell Max about the plan.

  On the day I’d set with Izio, I bought a train ticket, one men’s shoe hidden beneath each armpit under a coat that was much too warm for July, a shirt stuffed inside my dress, a cap, pants, and one pair of slightly bent glasses I’d found in the street all rolled into a little package that could pass as my lunch.

  I sat sweating on the swaying, jolting train, then went to the hole that was the lavatory and threw up the tea I’d had for breakfast. I felt better for it, went back to my seat, and let the window glass down, concentrating on the air in my face and what would happen when this was over. The war would end. Izio would finish medical school and get his job in the hospital. We’d have a new apartment with pale cream carpets that never got dirty and modern wallpaper with no flowers. Two children, with jackets and ribbons and birthdays written down.

  My nerves rattled inside me like the train wheels.

  And then the wind in my face slowed. The swaying seat slowed, and the train wheels chugged to a stop. I craned my neck out the window. Far ahead there were tanks crossing the tracks, guns poking out of their turrets, jeeps with swastikas driving along by their side. And then came men, line after line of them.

  No one spoke in the train car. There wasn’t any point. We just sat, waiting for the German Army to pass.

  We waited for five hours.

  The train jolted forward. A sigh of relief went up from the passengers. We moved for maybe twenty minutes and stopped again.

  For three and a half hours. And when I finally got to Lwów, the moon was up and the camp was shut down.

  I’d missed Izio.

  I found a woman who would give me a room for the night, though it meant I wouldn’t have money for food the next day.

  I hoped he hadn’t waited for me. Surely when he hadn’t seen me beside the latrines, he hadn’t come. Surely he hadn’t done what we’d planned.

  The woman would only let me stay in my room until lunchtime, and since there was no lunch, I put on my hot coat and wandered Lwów until it was evening and time for the imprisoned workers to shuffle back into Janowska. They came into the camp in stooped lines, and I took my post near the latrines, tying a bright red scarf around my hair. Waiting. I didn’t see Izio, but it was difficult in the crowd of men with their shaved heads and gray cloth. I, on the other hand, was easy to spot. Conspicuous in the twilight.

  I waited.

  And I waited.

  The summer dark came late and reluctant. If Izio didn’t appear soon, we would miss the last train. If he didn’t come at all, I would have to sleep in some field and do this all over again tomorrow. The guard in the front of the office door changed. And then I heard a “pssst.”

  I looked around. The new guard was beckoning. I came slowly while he peered at me through the dim. It was the German soldier whose cheek I’d kissed. He shook his head.

  “It’s you,” he said. And he didn’t sound happy about it. “I thought it was you. Looking for your ‘brother-in-law’?”

  I didn’t answer. There was something awful about the way he was speaking. He slurred like he was drunk, but I wasn’t sure he was. There was a look on his face I didn’t understand.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you in. I should never …” He said words in German that were foreign but ugly and spit on the ground at my feet.

  I looked up. “Why are you angry with me?”

  “Because you got him killed, didn’t you, Liebchen? Because one of the officer’s wives went to use the latrine, and he thought it was you. Only it wasn’t you. He made a plan with you, and you didn’t come. That’s the way it was, wasn’t it?”

  There was a noise inside my head. A soft, rumbling roar. It made it hard to concentrate. Hard to hear.

  “That’s what he said to us, in the end. But he would have said anything in the end, wouldn’t he? I never should have …” The man grimaced, spat again, and muttered, “Damned orchestra.”

  “You’re lying to me.”

  The man laughed. “You’re a Pole, and you say I’m the liar? I grew up in Poland, and I say all Poles are liars.” He took a sudden step forward, grabbed me by the hair, and pulled my face to his. And he whispered in my ear all the things they’d done to Izio. I shook my head, cried out that it wasn’t true, but he wouldn’t stop. And then he shoved me so hard I stumbled back.

  “Go away,” he said. “Before I call the commandant.”

  I stood there, panting. Frozen.

  Dead. Dead. Izio was dead.

  “Get out!” the man yelled.

  I took a step back, and another, and then I ran, straight into the field beside the camp. The roaring in my head was the sound of a low-flying plane. It surrounded me. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t think. I could barely see. I staggered and tripped my way over the uneven ground, took out Izio’s shoes from beneath the coat and threw them in two directions. Then I threw the package with the cap and glasses as hard as I could, yelling as it disappeared into the night. I nearly fell over a pile of stacked stones, bruised my shin, and sat on them instead.

  And then I cried. Great, wracking sobs that must have been heard in the streets and maybe even in the camp.

  He’d wanted to live. Tried to live, and they hadn’t let him. The Nazis had killed him. They had made him suffer.

  Something twisted inside me. Burning. Sick.

  There was a tugging at my sleeve, and I realized a woman was standing in the dark in front of me, four or five other people-shaped figures behind her. One of them raised a flashlight. I saw my dirty shoes and crumpled dress, my wet coat lying on the dewy grass.

  “Are you ill, child?” said the woman.

  I put out a hand, steadying myself against the cold stone I was sitting on. The rock was smooth, flat, and now that there was light, I could see writing chiseled on it. I wasn’t on rocks. I was sitting on a pile of discarded tombstones. I looked back at the soft and lumpy ground. This was a cemetery.

  Maybe Izio was here.

  “Have you eaten?”

  I realized for the second time that a woman stood beside me, and now she was holding out a cracker. I took it and ate like the child she obviously thought I was.

  “You’ve lost someone?” another voice asked.

  I nodded.

  “Poor girl.”

  “Can we take you home?”

  Their kindness hurt almost like cruelty, because there had been no kindness for Izio.

  “The train station,” I whispered.

  They bundled me off and got me to the station in a cart, making sure I had a ticket and a whole package of saltines in my hands before they left. I don’t know how many there were. I don’t even remember what they looked like.

  I got to Przemyśl after curfew, but I went home anyway. To my empty grave of an apartment building. And I didn’t see one policeman or German patrol on the way. Emilika had left me a note. She’d gone to visit her mother in Kraków
. I drank some water and lay down on my bed. Had it really been that long since he was here?

  It had. Because that had been a different world.

  I got up with the sun, found paper and pen, and wrote a letter to the Diamants. I told them Izydor had died in the camp. That he had been shot, quickly. That he had been buried in Lwów and maybe they could visit the grave after the war.

  Lies.

  Except that he was dead.

  I gave the letter to our mailman, Mr. Dorlich. He tipped his cap. He was Jewish, but he was still allowed to run the mail, as long as he showed up in the ghetto afterward. The SS men waited for him at the gate. I watched him drive his horse and cart and my letter away down the paving stones, then hoisted a packed knapsack onto my back.

  I wanted my mother.

  I wanted my sisters.

  I wanted to go home.

  I didn’t have any money.

  So I started walking.

  I walked like a machine. An echoing shell made of metal and mechanical parts. And twenty-five kilometers and one short wagon ride later, I was walking down the lane to our farm.

  The sun was low, sending bright orange beams over the hills and curving fields. But there was nobody in them. Oats rippled alone in the wind, branches waving at the edge of the forest, and when I got near the house, I knew something was wrong. There was no sound of chickens. There were no chickens at all, and no cows, either. No whoosh and nicker from the horses. The barn was empty. And the back door of the house stood open.

  I stepped slowly, warily inside.

  The kitchen had shrunk since the last time I was in it. The table was lower, the fireplace smaller, and the place was a mess. Chairs overturned, a cabinet door hanging from its hinges, the shelves inside dusty and bare. The air was stale. Unlived in. Unloved.

  “Mama?” I whispered. “Stasiu? Is anyone here?”

  I went from room to room, asking the same questions, but the house had no answers. Everything of value that could be carried was gone, down to the pillows off the beds. Some of Mama’s oldest clothes were still in the closet, and one or two of Tata’s jackets, but her jewelry was missing, along with my grandmother’s gilded egg that opened like a box.