The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  Helena is home, her face red with cold and play. She wants to know what took me so long. I lift the edge of the window rug with a finger and draw in a breath. There is my policeman. In the courtyard, talking to Mrs. Wojcik and her little dog. He’s managed to follow me after all. And then I remember that I’m an idiot.

  My papers have my address on them.

  “Who is that man?” Helena asks, looking out from beneath my elbow.

  “No one.”

  The policeman and Mrs. Wojcik both turn their heads to my window, and I drop my finger, letting the rug fall back into place.

  “I’m hungry,” Helena says. “Stefi? Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Be right back, Hela.”

  I hear her sigh of frustration as I run out the door and down the stairs, waiting until I see the policeman leaving. He’s smiling. He has a dimple in his cheek. When he’s gone, I dart out the door and up to Mrs. Wojcik. She’s letting the dog do his business in the weeds. I cross my arms against the cold. I’ve forgotten my coat.

  “So it’s you, Miss Podgórska,” she says. “What have you been doing to the police?”

  “Nothing,” I say, checking to make sure the man hasn’t reappeared. “What did you tell him?”

  “That you live up there with your sister. No parents coming to see you, only that cousin. That you’re in and out a lot, you don’t have work, and that you spend most of your time selling in the market and the shops.”

  I had no idea that Mrs. Wojcik observed me that closely. I tighten my arms and shiver.

  “Now don’t look like that,” she says. “I know men. And the last thing that man has on his mind is police business.”

  “You don’t think I’m in trouble?”

  “He’s not the Pope, girl. He’ll be back. And the only trouble you’ll be in will come nine months after you let that one through the door.”

  She chuckles loudly, and I discover just how much I dislike Mrs. Wojcik. I leave her to her dog and its business and hurry back inside. And now I have a nervous squirm in my stomach that won’t go away.

  When Helena lets me back in, I pretend I’m cheerful. “Let’s clean the room,” I say. “Get everything put away.”

  “But I’m hungry!”

  “It won’t take long.”

  Helena grumbles, grabbing the broom while I put the extra food in the cupboards, out of sight, and stuff my armband into the hole in the mattress, looking for anything else a policeman shouldn’t see.

  I’m gathering up the magazine cuttings when I find two envelopes underneath the paper pieces. “What’s this?” I ask.

  “Oh! It’s the mail Mr. Dorlich brought while you were gone. I forgot …”

  I snatch up one of the envelopes and tear it open. It’s from Salzburg, Germany. From our mother. She doesn’t say much, except that she’s working in a factory, that she and my brother Stasiu are together, and to please go see Helena to make sure she’s all right and to tell her that her mama loves and misses her. Helena and I read this part together three more times. Then I tear open the second envelope, read the letter inside, and lay it on the table.

  It’s from the labor department. I have a job. A good job. Starting the day after tomorrow.

  My hard-won bribe has finally done its work.

  We celebrate with a can of tinned ham on toast, and Helena falls asleep early. I sit by the stove drinking tea, thinking about my new work, about Izio and Max and, every now and then, a very handsome policeman. And just when I’ve drained my cold tea and laid out my nightgown, there’s a knock on the door.

  It’s long after curfew. I think it’s after midnight. But maybe a policeman doesn’t have to be concerned about a curfew. The squirm in my stomach comes back. I smooth my hair without meaning to, and when I open the door, I’ve decided definitely, most certainly, that it would be wrong to let him in.

  Only it isn’t him.

  “Fusia,” Max says, breathing hard. “I’ve just tried to kill a policeman.”

  Who saw you come up?” I whisper, shutting the door and turning the lock.

  “No one, I swear it. I was careful. I waited in the basement …”

  “Max!” says Helena, opening her arms. She’s woken up, rumpled in her nightgown. He picks her up, letting her hug him, but he’s looking at me. Asking if he can stay.

  I give him bread and tea, and he tells Helena stories until she falls asleep again. We sit in front of the stove, and I wait. It takes a long time for him to talk. Finally, Max tells me he’s been leaving the ghetto. For no reason. That watching the people from inside the fence makes him feel like an animal in a cage. Like a specimen in a zoo.

  He’d rather be shot.

  I shift my position on the chilly floor, cupping the warmth from the hot water I’ve poured over the dregs of my tea, thinking of how close Max came to suicide on the train. But tonight, he says, he lost track of the time. He thought it was a few minutes past eight. It was a few minutes past nine. And a policeman stopped him on his way back to the fence.

  “I told him that I work in the salvage factory,” Max says. “That my shift had run late, that was all. I told him he could go back with me, that anyone there would vouch for who I was, but he knew I was lying. I didn’t look like I’d come from a factory. I wasn’t dressed for it. What I looked like was a filthy, starving Jew from the ghetto.”

  I look up sharply.

  “And so he asked me for my papers.”

  Max’s papers say “Jude” in big black letters right over his picture.

  “I said I forgot them, and he told me I was a spy.”

  “A spy?” I ask. “For who?”

  “I don’t know. But he pulled out his gun, arrested me, and said he was taking me to the Gestapo.”

  I set down my tea.

  “I didn’t think he would really take me there. I told myself he was trying to scare me, that he would teach me a lesson and let me go. Until I could see the lights in the windows of the police station. And then I asked him why he would do this. He’s Polish, I’m Polish. But he wouldn’t answer. And I was so angry and scared, and there was no one on the street, and so I hit him in the face as hard as I could. The man dropped before he could even think of shooting …”

  I watch Max’s face.

  “And when he was down, I hit him again. And again. I could have gotten away, but I just … I got my hands around his neck … and he begged me, he was begging me not to kill him.”

  Max stares at his hands like they don’t belong to him. His knuckles are bruised.

  “And what happened next?” I whisper.

  He shrugs. “Nothing. I ran away. I left him in a gutter, and I ran away.”

  To me.

  He stretches out on the floor in front of the stove, hands behind his head. “You should put me out the door, Fusia,” he says, his eyes closing. “You shouldn’t let me stay here …”

  I think he is going to say it is because he is Jew. Because he is a danger to me.

  But he only says, “Because I’m not any better than they are.”

  He’s so tired, I catch the moment he falls asleep. Max needs a shave and a bath and a month of meals, but he doesn’t look like a starving Jew to me.

  He looks like a survivor.

  I put the cups on the table, lay Mrs. Diamant’s old coat over Max, and crawl into bed with Helena. But I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about what Max said. Because what he said is wrong. So wrong.

  He chose life.

  And that makes him nothing like them at all.

  * * *

  Helena wakes Max early, wanting to show him the string game I taught her, before he goes back to the ghetto. She teaches Max to sing the song while I slice the bread and boil the eggs. And then someone knocks on the front door.

  Max and Helena’s song stops like the radio was switched off, and when I turn around, there is no Max, only Helena with her hand over her mouth, pointing at the dark space beneath the bed. I motion for her to pull the blanket farther do
wn, and she pushes the potato sack in front of Max before she does it. For good measure. I put a finger to my lips, she nods, and I run on my toes down the hall.

  The knock comes again. Not the harsh clamor of the Gestapo, and it’s not Emilika, either. This is sharp. Official. I hesitate in front of the door and finally call, “Yes?”

  “Miss Podgórska?”

  And I know exactly who is on the other side of my door.

  “Miss Podgórska, may I speak with you, please?”

  I unlock the door and open it a crack. It’s the blond policeman. He tucks his cap under his arm and smiles.

  “Hello, again,” he says.

  This time my nervousness has nothing to do with blue eyes and a dimple.

  “May I come in?”

  I tighten my grip on the knob. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “You are right, of course. That’s why I have brought a friend with me.”

  Another policeman, also Polish and also all smiles, steps into view. My stomach drops into my shoes.

  “May I?”

  The blond policeman steps forward, palm on the door, leaving me with the choice to either let him in or smash his arm. I let him in, his friend following, and we stand awkwardly in the empty hall. Neither one of them has a bruise on his cheek or a black eye, so hopefully Max did not attack them. Mr. Blond Policeman wanders to the open door of my room.

  “Is this where you live?” he asks. And then, “And who is this?”

  I dash up behind him, but it’s only Helena looking back at us through the doorway, her eyes wide. She doesn’t trust policemen. She doesn’t like them. He saunters into the room, and she backs away, sticks out her lip, and sits on the bed, hard. Defiant. Like she will defend that bed to the death.

  “This is my sister, Helena,” I say quickly. “Hela, this is … a man I met yesterday.”

  “What do you want with my sister?” says Helena. The other man chuckles, following me through the door while Mr. Blond Policeman goes to Helena and squats down in front of her. His feet must be inches from Max’s face.

  “I only want to talk to your sister,” he says. “Tell her some things. We don’t want her getting into trouble …”

  Mrs. Wojcik’s words come unfortunately to my mind.

  “You won’t mind if I try to help your sister, will you?”

  Helena bites her lip, screws up her face, and I have no idea what is about to come out of her mouth.

  Do something, Fusia. Do something right now.

  “Why don’t you sit down,” I say, smiling and pulling out a chair. Mr. Blond Policeman does, and he seems pleased about it. I’m pleased he’s no longer close enough to hear Max breathe. “Can I make you some tea? Some bread?”

  “No, thank you.” He is all teeth and dimple, this man. He nods toward the bed. “Where are your parents?”

  “My father is dead, and my mother is in a labor camp in Salzburg.” I glance at her letter still sitting on the table in the bread crumbs, and he picks it up. I wait, patient, demure, watching his eyes rove all over the contents of my letter. But I am boiling inside. Who does he think he is, coming to my house, telling me what I should and shouldn’t do? Helena, I can see, is not feeling much better. And then I hope that she swept under the bed like she was supposed to, and that Max will not sneeze. Mr. Blond Policeman tosses down the letter.

  “Miss Podgórska … or may I call you Stefania?”

  If you do, I think, you’ll be the only one.

  I smile at him. “Don’t you think that would be unfair?”

  “Unfair?”

  “Because you know two of my names and I don’t know even one of yours.”

  This pleases him even more. I think he knows that dimple is handsome.

  “My apologies. I am Officer Berdecki. But you should call me Markus.” He drums his fingers on the table while the other policeman examines Helena’s magazine cuttings on the wall beside the bed. Then he says, “You ran away from me yesterday, Stefania.”

  “I thought you ran away from me.”

  “We’ll say we got separated, then.” He looks around my room. “It must be difficult to make money in your circumstance. I can understand why you would need to be … creative and earn money how you can. Why you would risk, maybe, doing things that are not right.”

  Suddenly I wonder if this man thinks I am a prostitute.

  “But I came to tell you seriously that you should not go back to the ghetto. And since your parents are not here, I feel it’s my duty to say that anything could happen to you in there. It is not a place for young girls.”

  “The ghetto is not a place for anyone,” I say sweetly. “Even you.”

  Markus shares an amused glance with his fellow policeman.

  “Do you need help? With money? Do you need to find work? I could help you find work that pays, so you would not need to go into the ghetto anymore.”

  “I have work.”

  His brows rise over blue eyes.

  “In the Minerwa building. I start tomorrow.”

  “That is a relief to me.”

  Though I’m not sure how relieved he really is.

  “Maybe you would not object to my coming by another day and seeing if your work is going well?” He dimples.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I say, smiling right back. “My neighbors are all eyes, and men coming in and out of my apartment … Well, you can see how that would look.”

  “Then perhaps you would like to meet me sometime, after your work. In a café.”

  “Perhaps you would like me to bring my little sister with me. She loves a café.”

  I stand up, waiting for him to do the same. It takes him a few seconds to take the hint. The other policeman is red in the face, and I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed for his friend or trying not to laugh.

  “We shall see each other soon, then. Good luck with your work, Stefania.”

  “Goodbye, Officer Berdecki.”

  I shuffle them both out the door, and when I come back into the bedroom, Helena is curled up on the bed, her knees to her chest. Shaking.

  “Everything is okay now,” I tell her. I sit beside her and pull her to my chest. “Really, it’s okay …” Max sticks his head out from under the bed. He has a cobweb threading his dark hair.

  “Do you always have policemen coming first thing in the morning to flirt with you?”

  “Why don’t you go back under the bed,” I tell him.

  Relief is making me snappish.

  Max stays longer than he had intended, in case Officer Berdecki or his friend is watching the house. I send Helena out into the courtyard to play, hoping her friends will help her forget her fright, and take a walk around the block. I see nothing. No policemen, and no one approaches me, so I tell Max it’s time. But he stays still, sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees.

  He says, “You didn’t tell me about your job, Fusia.”

  I hadn’t had a chance.

  “I was thinking, under the bed. I’ve been thinking for a while. You’ll have an income now. You could apply for more rooms.”

  “You mean the rest of your apartment?” This place would always belong to Max in my mind.

  “No. You don’t understand …”

  I watch him struggle. With memory, or indecision, or something inside himself, I don’t know. But I don’t like it when he looks like that. I sit down beside him. He rubs a hand through his hair.

  “I don’t know how it will come. The Gestapo. Typhus. Dogs or starvation or the trains, I don’t know. But they will not stop until there are no Jews left. Henek doesn’t believe it. But I have heard them. I’ve seen what they do. They will use us for goulash. They will use us for soap. They will use us for shoe leather …”

  I don’t want to hear this.

  “And we just sit and sit in our cage, and we wait for it. And I can’t sit anymore. So for a long time, I have thought, who could I ask? Who would help me, now that I am nothing …�
�

  “You are not nothing!”

  Max shakes his head. “When you watch little children being murdered while you hide in a hole in the ground, too afraid to come out, you know that you are nothing. When whole countries want you dead, when thousands cheer for speeches about your destruction, when the dogs of the guards are treated better than you are, then it’s not a question, Stefania. You know you are nothing.”

  My eyes dart toward the door, because his voice is far too loud. He grimaces. “I’m sorry, Fusia. But I’m looking death in the face, and I don’t like what I see.”

  I want to tell him to stop it. That it’s not true. Not to talk that way. That the war will end. Something will change. And then I remember after the first bombing, how I didn’t believe the stories of the Jews shot in the cemetery. I didn’t believe it because I didn’t want to. Maybe I’m not so different from Henek after all.

  Max says, “So I’ve thought, who could I go to? My old boss, maybe. A boy I knew once in school, but he has a wife and child now. I thought of Elzbeta, or her mother …”

  “Who is Elzbeta?”

  He looks up. “Elzbeta. My girlfriend in Nizankowice.”

  “Your girlfriend? You never said anything.”

  He shrugs.

  “Is she Jewish?”

  “No.”

  I wonder what my babcia would have thought of that. Both Max and Izio with Gentiles. I wonder what I think of it. And then I study Max. He must be twenty-three, twenty-four now? About the same age as Officer Berdecki. Funny that I don’t really know. It is easy to forget he was grown even before the war, that he had another life, outside Przemyśl. Then again, I think I turned seventeen last year, and I hadn’t noticed that, either.