The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  Or had one of us, one of his neighbors, gone to the Gestapo and sold eight lives?

  If they had, I couldn’t think of one reason why they wouldn’t do it to me.

  I tried to remember if I’d ever been careless. Mentioned how much food I was buying. If anyone had ever commented on my comings and goings. Had Helena said something to a friend on the stairs?

  What if those two Germans who had put guns to my head knew who I was? What if they’d followed me home, hoping to catch me at something worse than feeding Jews? What if they had let me go because they wanted my little sister, too?

  Fear comes with the dark when you’re lying still, waiting for the knock on the door. And fear is not always reasonable.

  I sat up in the blackness.

  Przemyśl had given me an education since that cart ride when I was twelve. It had taught me that people like to divvy up one another with names. Jew. Catholic. German. Pole. But these were the wrong names. They were the wrong dividing lines. Kindness. Cruelty. Love and hate. These were the borders that mattered.

  Przemyśl had shown me my place on the map.

  And the road ran straight and dark before me.

  I laid my head on the pillow, next to Helena’s sighing breath. Listening. Thinking. Trying to let myself sleep.

  Until I opened my eyes to the echo in the dark.

  To the knock on the door.

  Until I ran into the hallway and did not find the Gestapo.

  Did not find Izio.

  Until the night I found Max Diamant standing at my door.

  Max!”

  He stands blinking at me, the bulb above him flickering like it wants to go out. Both his eyes are blacked, skin missing from the side of his face. His shirt hangs ripped and streaked with browning blood. He has an arm across his middle. The other holds him upright against the doorjamb.

  “Fusia?” he whispers.

  I pull him into the apartment, and he nearly falls, stumbling as I get the door shut and locked behind him. He slides down the wall to the floor.

  “I need … a night. Just one night …”

  I kneel beside him. He’s shaking with cold.

  “Hela,” I say. My sister’s eyes are wide. “Go and see if there’s any warm water in the pot on the stove. If there isn’t, get more. But don’t switch on the lights. I’ll light an oil lamp. We don’t want to wake anybody up. Can you do that?”

  She nods, stares another second at Max, and flits away in her nightgown. I touch Max’s scabbed face. Most of his blood is dry. His eyes are closed.

  “Did anyone see you come up here?” I whisper. His head lolls against the bare wall. “Max, answer me! Did anyone see?”

  He shakes his head, wincing.

  “Are you alone?”

  His face contorts. And then he says, “I jumped.”

  “You jumped?”

  “Off the train.”

  “You jumped off a moving train?”

  His eyes open slowly. Deep, dark brown. Heavy-lidded. “I need … one night. Please, Fusia.”

  Okay, I think. Okay. What are you going to do, Stefania Stefi Stefusia Podgórska? What are you going to do?

  Get him warm. Get him clean. Get him fed.

  “Come with me,” I say. He doesn’t respond. “Up,” I tell him. “Just a little farther …”

  He groans as I help him to his feet, and we stagger together into the bedroom. Helena comes through the door holding out our soup pot like it’s full of holy water. She sets it carefully on top of the heater while I grab the towel we use for bathing and spread it on the bed. Max is filthy. I light the lamp and start unlacing his boots.

  “There was a little bit of hot water left,” Helena says, “so I poured it in the cup.”

  “Do you know how to make tea?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes are on Max.

  “Then make it. Please. And put in two spoonfuls of sugar. And you can throw a lump of coal in the fire, too.”

  Now she stares at me. These are extravagances. But she doesn’t say anything. Just puts coal in the stove and makes the tea.

  Max is either asleep sitting upright or almost unconscious. I unbutton his shirt and realize the ripped cloth is stiff with blood and sticking. Peeling it off wakes him up a little, and he hisses with pain. He’s missing a good bit of his skin down one side, not deep, but over a large area, and in the center of his chest is the worst bruise I’ve ever seen. A red, green, and purple flower, blooming from arm to arm and all the way down his stomach. I’d bet a week of bread that some of his ribs are broken.

  I’m just glad he isn’t shot.

  The water on the stove isn’t warm, but it’s not cold anymore, either, so I try to sponge away the dried blood and dirt from Max’s side and face. Here and there, it starts him bleeding again. Helena is standing still behind me, and when the cup rattles, I realize she has the tea but is afraid to come closer. She gives it to me instead.

  “Here,” I tell him. “Drink.”

  He tries, but his hands are stiff with scabbed skin, and he’s still shaking. I help him hold it, and he drains the cup. I set it aside and go on sponging, trying not to hurt him. And then I see that Max is crying. Tears coursing from beneath his closed eyes, down his unshaven face.

  Oh, Max.

  I want to know what’s happened to him. I want to know where everyone else is.

  But not in front of my sister.

  When I’ve got him as clean as he can be, I grab my dress from the corner and throw it over my head, get one, then two arms out of my nightgown and into the dress, letting the nightgown fall to the floor while I pull the dress down. Then I pull the nightgown over Max’s head, helping him get his sore hands through the sleeves. I’d rather get the nightgown bloody than the sheets. It isn’t a wonderful nightgown.

  “Take your pants off,” I tell him, “and we’ll lay you down.”

  He does, laying his head on the pillow gingerly—I know his side and his chest must hurt—slowly sliding his feet beneath the blanket. I cover him to his neck. He shivers for a minute or two, and then he’s asleep.

  Helena has been sitting on the floor beside the stove, legs crossed, feet tucked under her knees. Watching. “Stefi,” she says. “Who is he?”

  “His name is Max. He used to live here.” That seems like a long time ago.

  “Is he your friend? He called you Fusia.”

  I watch Max shudder as he lets out a deep breath. “Yes, he’s my friend. His family … they all called me that here.”

  “Is he a Jew?”

  I turn to look at her. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because he’s hurt.”

  Because in this place where my sister lives, Jews get hurt. She can’t remember another way. I go and kneel in front of her in the lantern light so she can look in my eyes.

  “Max is a secret,” I say. “A big one. One that we can’t tell to anyone else. Not Emilika, or any of your friends downstairs. If we did, Max could get hurt. Even more hurt,” I correct. “Do you understand?”

  She nods, very serious, and I think she does understand until she says, “Does he get the bed?”

  “Yes. He gets the bed.”

  She sighs, resigned. Her eyelids are heavy.

  I make Helena a nest on the floor beside the stove with my coat, her skirt rolled up for a pillow, and prop the chair beneath the front doorknob. She’s asleep when I come back, and the street below us is brooding. Empty. I put a chair beneath the bedroom doorknob, too, turn down the lamp, and bring another to the bed to sit beside Max.

  I look at his bruised, torn face. He’s alive. Breathing. Bleeding. Alive. And then I think maybe I don’t want to know what has happened, because knowing, I think, is going to hurt.

  And suddenly, I’m waking up. When I didn’t know I was asleep. I slide back upright in the chair, rubbing my eyes. Helena is still, peaceful, curled up in the coat. But Max is having a dream.

  No. He’s having a nightmare.

  His head thrashes from side to
side on the pillow, one of his hurt hands coming up to shield his closed eyes. “Mame,” he murmurs.

  “Shhhh,” I say, hand on his chest. He murmurs again, and I lean closer to hear, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. It might be “Ernestyna,” or something else. Until he says, “Jump.”

  “Jump!” Max yells, his eyes flying open. I get a hand over his mouth, and for a second, I think he’s going to fight me. Then his eyes focus, and he goes still. I let go of his mouth and shake my head.

  He nods, still panting.

  I wait another minute, letting him calm. “Can you eat?”

  He nods again. I give him a slice of bread, the rest of the butter, and a cup of water. He sits up enough to get it all down, and I perch on the edge of the bed beside him, trying not to move things that would hurt. And then I can’t stand it anymore. I have to know.

  “Max.”

  He goes still.

  “Where’s Chaim?”

  He doesn’t look at me. He lies back down, blinking, staring into the darkest corner of the room. “Is that your sister?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  I wait another minute.

  “Max, where is Chaim?”

  “Gone,” he whispers. “He didn’t jump. He told me he would jump, and then he didn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  He blinks again, looking at nothing, and I think he isn’t going to answer, but then he says, “We built a bunker. A hiding place in a basement. There was a door to the cellar, and we built a wall over it so you couldn’t see, and we put bags of sand and straw in the cellar windows. And when the Aktion started there were fifty, maybe sixty of us in there, waiting in the dark …”

  I remember how that felt, after the bombings. “What about the Hirsches? And the Schillingers?”

  He shakes his head. “They weren’t on the list. The Gestapo, they were going from apartment to apartment, and if you were on the list and you weren’t at the collection point, they shot you right there. We could hear. Shot after shot. Over and over. Maybe it would have been better, maybe …”

  “Were you on the list?”

  “Yes. And Chaim. So we hid. All day, and I looked through a hole between the sandbags, just a tiny hole, but I could see …” His eyes squeeze shut. “I could see what they did … I could see … the babies. Why, Fusia? Why?”

  I don’t know. I give him my hand, and he grips it hard.

  “We were silent all day, even the children, and the Aktion was almost over, and then a rifle poked through some of the straw and sandbags and let in some light. It was an Ordner, and he said if anyone was in there, to come out, or he would throw in a grenade. And I waved a hand, telling them all to stay quiet. He didn’t know we were there. He was going to move on. They wouldn’t find us. But there was a mother near the window, and she lost her head and tore away the sandbags before I could stop her, and she pushed her little girl out, telling her to run, to save her life, and the Ordner, the stupid Ordner, he took the girl to the Gestapo, and they beat her until she showed them the way in …”

  I put my other hand over his. He talks faster and faster.

  “And the Gestapo came and pulled us out of the basement, and they were hitting us with rifles, and if you fell down, you were shot. And the rest of us, they lined us up, and Chaim told me … he told me to turn and aim my chest at the guns, because they would not shoot us twice. But an SS man came and said there was room on the train, that they needed fat Jews … for soap. I didn’t want to be soap, Fusia.”

  I shake my head.

  “There were so many people on the train, I couldn’t move my arms, I couldn’t breathe, and a man, he hung himself with his own belt, and I thought …” Tears were rolling down his face again. “I thought it would be better to die before they could kill me. And I still had my dental pliers hidden in my pants, and I cut the wires from the window, and Chaim promised … he promised to jump right after me, so we would both die, and the people, they lifted me, and they pushed me out the window. Only it was headfirst, and it’s so stupid, but I couldn’t go headfirst, because I would be crushed by the train. Even though I wanted to die. And I made them pull me in again and push me feetfirst through the window. The train took a curve and I hung there, by one arm, and then I went down the embankment and hit a fence post, and when I woke up, the train was nearly gone, and I wasn’t dead. I looked, but I couldn’t find my brother, and I said to God, why is this happening?”

  Because you are supposed to be alive, Max, I think, holding his hand with both of mine. You are supposed to be alive right now. But I can’t say this. Being alive is no comfort when your family is dead.

  “I found two others who jumped after me. A broken hand, a broken collarbone, and one of them said that Chaim, he didn’t jump, because he saw me not moving and thought I was dead already and that he could not help me anymore … He wanted his blood on German hands, instead of his own …”

  He stops here, because he has to cry. I am crying with him. Chaim, who only ever wanted to heal.

  “And so we found shelter with my friend, who runs the coffee shop, where we used to ski …”

  I remember Izio talking about the man at the coffee shop.

  “… and he gave me a place to sleep, but I couldn’t stay, because his wife was afraid, and so he smuggled me into the city in a wagon, beneath a blanket, under his feet, and I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know where to go …”

  He didn’t know where to go, and so he came home. To his old apartment. Max is shivering now like he’s been plunged into a cold bath. Except he’s also sweating. I put a hand on his damp forehead, where the skin is whole. He’s too hot.

  “Shhh,” I tell him. “Don’t talk any more. You need to sleep …”

  What he needs is a doctor. Medicine. More food than there is and a safe place to hide. What he’s going to get is the two aspirin I saved from Dr. Becker, the rest of the kasha, and me.

  I get him water and the aspirin, and when he finally calms enough to sleep, I perch in the chair beside the bed. And I cry for all of them. Izio. Mr. Diamant and my lovely babcia. Chaim. And especially Max, who now has to live without them. If he can live.

  He has to live.

  The sun lightens the world behind the window rug. I blow out the lamp. Helena stirs, sighing in her sleep.

  I have to make some decisions.

  The first thing I do is watch the street. No extra patrols, no eyes down like the night Mr. Schwarzer died. Then I go up to the attic and cut down one of the ropes for the laundry, bring it into the apartment, and tie it to the heater in Mr. and Mrs. Diamant’s empty bedroom. There’s enough rope to go out the window, nearly to the ground. If the Gestapo come again, Helena can go down the rope, if she’s brave enough. I think she would be brave enough.

  When I go back into our bedroom, I find Helena awake, in my spot in the chair, watching Max sleep. She turns to look at me, her eyes large, hand across her mouth. Then I realize she’s giggling.

  “He’s wearing a nightgown!” she says through her fingers.

  “Maybe you thought I was your sister,” Max murmurs from the bed, his swollen eyes barely opening. “I am a surprise.”

  Helena laughs, and in a world where death is a shadow at the edge of every light, I discover that I have to smile.

  I give the special knock when I come back from the market, and when the chair scrapes away and Helena opens the door, she’s bouncing on her toes. I lock the door again before I let her speak, and then the words burst out of her.

  “Did Emilika see you going up the stairs?”

  “I don’t think so. What happened?” My stomach twists into a knot. “Did she come up here?”

  “She knocked on the door, and I said you couldn’t come, and she asked why, and I said because you were sick, and she wanted to come in anyway, in case you needed help, and I said she couldn’t, because you said your germs were catching.”

  Helena says this in one long breath. I wish she’d just told he
r I was out and to come back later, but Emilika might have tried to come in anyway. Emilika is going to be a problem, until we can …

  Do whatever it is we’re going to do.

  I look at Helena, waiting for my verdict, and kiss her on the head. “I’ll make sure I’m sick.”

  She really is a smart little girl.

  Max is sitting up in the bed when I come in, and from the empty cup, I see Helena has made him tea. He looks terrible, but at least he seems less feverish.

  “Fusia,” he says, eyes on the bed, “I need to ask you a favor.”

  I set the parcels on the table. If we’re careful and eat only two small meals a day, there’s enough here for three days. After that, I don’t know what we’re going to do. If we haven’t been shot first.

  I’m wondering what more Max could possibly want from me.

  “My brother,” he says. “Henek. He doesn’t know …”

  His last brother. And Henek doesn’t know who’s alive and who isn’t.

  “I don’t know what he can do,” Max says, “but he should not go back to the ghetto. He should escape, if he has the chance. He doesn’t know … how it’s been. He didn’t see our parents go. And what could I write him?”

  He couldn’t. The Germans would read the letter, and Henek would pay. I sigh.

  “I’ll go today,” I tell him. “I’m supposed to be sick anyway.”

  * * *

  The farm being worked by the Jews of the Przemyśl ghetto once belonged to a Jew. Now it belongs to the Germans, confiscated for their Fatherland. It’s an eleven-kilometer walk from the city. I take the road past the castle, a fairy-tale place of turrets and etched stone where my sisters used to eat picnics, but those memories are like old photographs faded by the sun. The air is gray today, the wind spitting ice, and it’s hard to remember a time when I wasn’t afraid of death.

  Leaving Helena alone to hide a Jew in our apartment is probably the worst thing I’ve ever done.

  I walk faster. The land here is flat and open, not even a hill to hide behind, and when I see the barn roofs rising up from the bare fields in the distance, they’re farther away than I think. I trot, out of breath by the time I reach the guard.