The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  “I thought of her,” Max goes on, “but I haven’t heard from her once since the ghetto. I don’t think I will. She’d never risk it, not like …” His hand goes rubbing through his hair again. “I have no right to ask. But I am asking. Not for one night. I am asking you to hide me, and my brother, and Danuta, and the Hirsches and the Schillingers. Seven of us, until we die or the war ends.”

  He takes my hand.

  “I know what I am asking. It isn’t fair, and you have Hela to think of. I will understand if you say no.”

  I don’t know how to answer him. The question feels too big.

  “It would mean looking for an apartment where we could make a hiding place. Old Hirsch still has some money. He’s willing to finance. That’s why he’s in, but even then, it will be hard to feed nine on what he has and your pay. It would be easier, maybe, for two. If there were two together, with work. To buy food.”

  I look up.

  “I was thinking maybe your friend. Emilika.”

  “Emilika? I don’t know …”

  “Do you think she knew Danuta was a Jew? Because I think maybe she did. That she spread those rumors to protect her. And she has work that pays well.”

  I am not sure about this.

  “Do you think it would be safe to ask her? To see what she says?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know about any of it. He squeezes my hand.

  “Do you want me to go back under the bed?”

  I shake my head.

  “I could spend the war there.”

  I bite my lip.

  “Maybe you need seven beds.”

  And that comment gets him what he wants. I smile. Max has one eyebrow that tips up just a little farther than the other. A little quirk of a point that tells me when he’s joking. He was joking just then. But only a little.

  “I need time to think,” I say.

  “I know it.”

  We go to the ghetto arm in arm, chatting like there are no cares in the dark, dark world. Max is careful of policemen, since there is one who will not forget his face. I’m careful of policemen because of Officer Berdecki. We circle around the ghetto fence to a new place, near a small basement window. When there’s no one near, Max kisses my cheek, then scoots under the barbed wire and straight into the unlocked window.

  I have to think.

  I watch Helena sleeping that night, but what I see is the pistol of the demented SS man, pointing at Mr. Schwarzer. Pointing at the blue-eyed girl who was not much different from me. Pointing at the children. I see the blaze of fire coming out its end.

  And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to balance Max’s life—and six others—against the life of my sister.

  I ask God.

  But the sky is silent above me.

  At five-thirty the next morning, I walk to my new work in the deep, glowing blue of a late-winter dark. The world has forgotten about spring. But I barely notice the snow or the streets or the empty windows of what used to be Jewish shops. I’m worrying about Helena and how she will get along by herself all day. Worrying about doing a job in a factory that I know nothing about. And worrying about Max.

  I don’t know how to do what he’s asked of me.

  I don’t know how not to do it, either.

  I see the haze before I see the building. Smokestacks belching smog that can be tasted on the tongue. I cross an iron bridge over a ravine of railroad tracks, find the brick walls rising stories above me, go through a set of double doors, and then I am inside the factory.

  When I first came to Przemyśl, this place made mechanical toys. Windup cars and clowns and little dogs. I’d always thought of it as happy. Now the little office I’m standing in is dingy and smells of hot metal. There are fifteen or sixteen others with me, men and women looking as lost as I am, gathered around a desk with the inevitable German and the inevitable stack of folders and forms. I unwind the wool scarf from around my head, folding it to hide its ragged ends, and hand my papers to him. He checks me off his list.

  And I have begun my life as a factory worker.

  The Minerwa factory, says Herr Braun, our director, sweating in his suit while standing on a crate, is a system of rules and regulations, where we, the workers, will be valued. As long as we do not interfere with the system or a rule or a regulation. We are lucky to have been given this work. We are lucky because this work will keep us from starving. We are easily replaced, and those who are late, inefficient, tired, or stupid will be replaced. Immediately.

  Clear and to the point.

  My job is to operate six machines that make screws. The mechanic shows me how to do it, because while the work is mostly easy, the machines are delicate and prone to breaking down, and he can’t be coming across the floor every few minutes to help me. So he says. My quota is thirty thousand screws every shift, the difference to be taken from my pay.

  The room is loud. Unbelievably loud, with engines and pulleys running up and along the ceiling. My machines are hot, fast, and dangerous if I don’t get my fingers out of the way. I feed them stick after stick of metal, running back and forth, and by the middle of the day, I’ve learned how to repair a water pump. On my break, a young man smiles at me from behind his cigarette. He is yellow-haired and blue-eyed, though nothing like Berdecki the policeman. He’s still a boy. And I ignore him. I’ve had enough of smiles. A girl named Januka gives me a bite of her sandwich.

  When I walk home, feet and shoulders aching, ears ringing from the noise, the sun has already come and gone. Now the blue-black cold feels crisp and clean, soothing after the smoke. When I step into the apartment building, Emilika pokes her head out of her door.

  “There you are! I’ve just had Hela in here. I gave her some tea. You look like you could use tea.”

  I open my mouth to say no, I’m too tired, but Emilika holds up her sugar bowl.

  “Do you have sugar?”

  I shake my head.

  “Then you’d better come inside.”

  Emilika pours water that is already hot into a teapot and sits me at her kitchen table, talking nonstop about her boyfriend—not the old one, a new one, more handsome! And the German SS that come into the photography shop to have their pictures made. So vain!

  I look around me. She’s only one girl by herself, but she has a whole apartment, with a sofa and a lamp, a separate bedroom, and matching dishes. Heavy curtains hang over her windows instead of rugs, blocking the dangerous light.

  “And one comes in to get his prints,” Emilika is saying, “and the portraits are good, but he won’t pay because he says his nose is too wide. Not his whole face. Only his nose. Tell me, Fusia, how the camera can change the shape of a man’s nose? And now Mr. Markowski blames me for giving away portraits, only Mr. Markowski wouldn’t say no to an SS officer, either, would he? If he wants me to take on the Gestapo, he should provide the ammunition, that’s what I say.”

  She sets down her cup and sighs.

  “You know what I miss? Music. Remember how that little band at the restaurant across the street used to play outside in the summer? And when there were weddings at the club? We used to dance all night …”

  For one moment, I am upstairs, dancing with Izio before the open window in a dark apartment while the orchestra plays. Then I look at Emilika curiously. “Did you live here before? I don’t remember seeing you.”

  “Oh, no. I lived in Kraków. But I visited in the summer, with my grandmama’s sister. She lived in this apartment. But she’s gone now. To some camp somewhere. She married a Jew.”

  In all her talk, Emilika has never once mentioned this to me. I wonder if she understands that “some camp” probably means her grandmother’s sister is dead.

  “It’s terrible,” I say carefully, “what the Nazis are doing.”

  “I know. I don’t think Przemyśl will ever be the same. They disgust me, the Nazis.”

  I lean forward. “Have you ever thought about getting a new apartment, Emilika?”

  “A new apartme
nt? Why?”

  “A bigger place. Maybe to share with some … others.”

  Emilika tilts her head at me. “What sort of plan do you have in your head, Fusia?”

  I bite my lip, trying to decide how to say what I want to. To sway a girl like Emilika. “Do you remember the boy I wanted to see? When you took my picture?”

  She nods.

  “He asked me to marry him. And they killed him. In the work camp at Lwów. He was Jewish.”

  Emilika’s eyebrows go up and back down. Then she reaches across the table and pats my hand. “I thought it must be something like that. Oh, I’m sorry. Really.”

  “And now, his brothers …” The words come slow and difficult, like the secret wants to stay in my mouth. “Now his brothers are in the same danger. In the ghetto. And I’d … I’m thinking of doing something about it.”

  “Doing something? Doing what?”

  “I want to get a bigger apartment with someone … someone like you, maybe, and … I want to hide them.”

  I take a deep breath. There. I said it.

  Emilika sits back in her chair, her red lips open. She stares at me for a long, long minute.

  “What are you talking about,” she says slowly, “you stupid, stupid little girl? Do you want to die? Do you think you’ve lived long enough? Well, I haven’t. I plan to be around years from now, and I won’t throw my life away for some Jew I’ve never even heard of! You might as well ask me to jump out your window. And you can jump out of it, too. It might be quicker than being shot.”

  There’s a clock somewhere in Emilika’s nice kitchen. Tick, tick, tick. My hands are shaking. I trusted her. I just put my life in her hands.

  Maybe I’ve just killed us.

  I push back my chair, and Emilika says, “Wait. Fusia, wait.”

  She blows out a breath and lowers her voice.

  “The secret police are everywhere. You know that, don’t you? Pretending to be beggars, shopkeepers, workers, anyone. They offer help to Jews, or to help someone else help Jews, and when that person says yes, they arrest them and the Jews they were trying to help. You can’t trust anyone …”

  “Do you think I’m spying for the Germans?”

  Emilika smiles. She almost laughs. “No, Stefania Podgórska, I do not think you are a spy for the Germans. But how do you know that I am not?”

  I suppose I don’t. “Are you?”

  “No. Which means you are very lucky.” She leans forward. “What you’re suggesting is a one in a million chance, and that means there are nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand other chances to die.”

  “But it’s not zero,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Not zero in a million. It could work.”

  “It’s suicide. And what about Hela?”

  I don’t have an answer for that.

  “These people, Fusia. It’s awful. It’s sad. But you didn’t make these things happen, and it’s not something you can fix. They’re not your responsibility. Hela is your responsibility. If you won’t think of yourself, think of her.”

  This time she lets me scoot my chair back. I leave my cup half-full on the table. “I’m sorry. It was a silly idea.”

  She waves a hand and smiles. “You’re sad about your boy, that’s all. I understand.”

  “I hope you won’t mention this … our conversation to anyone?”

  “What? What conversation? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I must have amnesia …”

  I trudge slowly up the stairs while Emilika’s door clicks shut behind me. I feel sore inside. And the soreness, I realize, is disappointment.

  Not her responsibility, and not mine. Whose responsibility is it then, Emilika?

  Helena hugs me and hugs me, and brings me some toast with butter. I fall into bed while I’m still chewing the last bite, and she tugs off my shoes and snuggles in beside me. And before I even know I’m asleep, I’m dreaming.

  Of a dark forest, where the trees are as tall as buildings. The moss and leaves are hard like cement beneath my feet, the moon hanging big and low, beams streaming down like searchlights. I push my way through limbs that scratch my face like broken glass, faster and faster, because I can hear screaming. A man, a grandmother, a baby, so many people, hundreds of them, a gibberish of different words that are all the same because they all mean the same thing. Mercy. Mercy.

  And then the shots begin. I run and run, let the branches cut my face, because I have to stop the shooting. But the faster I run, the fainter the noise, the slower the shots, until there is no more sound and no more people and no more trees, and I am running in blackness, a void that feels like death …

  I open my eyes, panting, sucking in air like I really have been running. But I am only in bed with Helena, still in my dress, the stove making little ticking sounds as it cools. Like Emilika’s clock. Helena pats my hand.

  “Someone was shooting in the street,” she whispers sleepily. “But they’re done now …”

  I close my eyes, and Max is in the forest with me.

  “Go,” he says. “Run!” But he’s not talking to me, he’s talking to Henek and Danuta. He takes them each by the hand, forcing them to go when they don’t want to, dragging them in a zigzag path through trees that are now made of brick and stone. Planes whine like birds above our heads. I chase after them, a sharp pain in my side, and there are other people with us, little shadows darting on my right and my left and up ahead. They stumble and they fall and they do not get up, and when I look down, the pain in my side is not from running. Blood spurts through my fingers.

  “I’m shot,” I say. Max slows and turns. Danuta’s eyes go wide. The shadows are flitting by, leaving us behind. “Hurry!” I yell. “Save yourselves!”

  Only it’s Izio’s voice that comes out of my mouth. Not my own. Max starts walking, but it’s the wrong way. He’s left Henek and Danuta. He’s walking toward me.

  And then Helena is shaking me, telling me that the cathedral bells have rung. It’s after five o’clock.

  On the way to the factory, I see two bodies hanging stiff and frozen from the ghetto fence. Killed, says the sign, for doing business with the Jews. I go to work and make 28,208 screws. The inspector, who is Polish, writes down 30,208. I go to the market on the way home, buy what they have left, and sleep. And have nightmares. I have nightmares every night that week.

  “Max came today,” Helena says on Friday night. “He gave the special knock, so I let him in. He wanted to know if you had anything to tell him, but I didn’t know. I gave him the rest of the bread. Then that policeman came, but I didn’t let him in. I told him to go away …”

  “The one who came before?”

  Helena nods.

  “Did he come when Max was here?”

  She shakes her head.

  But what if he had? I imagine Max and Officer Berdecki, both standing at my door, and my stomach feels sick. Max shouldn’t be out of the ghetto. He has to stop taking risks. The other policeman, the one he choked, might find him. Or one of the neighbors. Or Emilika.

  Or maybe Max never made it back to the ghetto at all. Maybe Max is already dead.

  Maybe I don’t have a decision to make at all.

  “Fusia, what’s wrong?” says Helena, tugging at my skirt.

  I try to smile at her, to cover up my fear, but I’m in a sweat. And then I say, “You called me Fusia.”

  “I know,” Helena says. “I gave up.”

  By Saturday morning, my eyes are bleary, and I am so stupid from lack of sleep, I forget to ignore the boy at work. I smile absentmindedly when he tells me hello, and I stumble through my shift, barely paying attention, which is a good way to lose a hand.

  “Stefania! Stefi!”

  I look up, startled to hear my name in the noise. It’s the mechanic, and smoke is drifting up from the knives in my machine. The water pump has stopped working.

  “What is wrong with you!” the mechanic shouts. He shuts down the machine. “Your head is in the clouds tod
ay! Are you sick or in love?”

  If this man knew my loves, he’d run a hundred kilometers in the other direction.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I say, and then remember who I’m talking to. “I mean … I don’t feel well. I’m dizzy …”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” the man says. He looks me over. “Okay, come with me.”

  He leads me to the repair area, where a large wooden table is covered with tools and parts and metal bits and oil stains. He points underneath, and when I bend down to look, the table has a shelf, person-sized, just a few inches from the floor. Someone has left a pillow on it.

  “Get under there and have a nap,” he says. “I’ll fix your machines and wake you up in half an hour.”

  I believe I thank the man, but I’m so tired I’m not sure I’ve actually said the words. I crawl onto the shelf and settle my head on the pillow.

  And in the noise of the factory, I dream.

  We’re in the forest again, only now the trees are square, the branches growing out between windows in the trunks. Max is running hand in hand with Henek and Danuta, and I have Helena on one side of me and Dziusia Schillinger on the other. The leaves we kick aside clatter like tin cans.

  And I know there is something behind us. Closer and closer. I can feel it creeping like the tiger I saw in one of my tata’s books when I was small.

  “We’re almost there,” Max says. And then I see what we’re running for. A hole in the ground. An underground bunker. A shelter from the Nazis.

  They won’t find us there.

  “Go, Dziusia,” I whisper, letting go of her hand, pushing her toward the hole. She slides in after Max and Henek and Danuta, then Helena tugs on my arm. I turn around, and two soldiers are behind us, skulls grinning on their hats. The skulls have tiny little mustaches, and so do the men.

  “Vu zenen zey gegangen?” says one of the skulls, and I think how strange it is that an SS hat would speak Yiddish. Then it says, “Where did they go?” in Polish.

  Ah, I think. That’s better.

  “Where did they go?” the skull demands. “Where are the Jews?” And now I am afraid. Helena raises her arm and points. In the opposite direction.