The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

  I hold my coat closed tight to keep my hands from shaking, even though it isn’t that cold, and walk at a leisurely pace toward Tatarska 3. And then I quicken my steps. There’s a policeman coming down a side street, turning my way around the corner.

  I don’t dare look back. I’m supposed to distract a policeman. That’s why I’m here. To keep the policeman’s attention on me, and not the workers who aren’t workers just a few steps behind.

  But my brain is not coming up with the first way to do it.

  And then I hear a voice say, “Stefania?”

  I stop in my tracks. It’s him. Officer Berdecki. Officer Markus Berdecki of the Polish police, with his blue eyes, his dimple, and a square chin. The man who is everywhere I never want him to be.

  Distraction managed.

  He takes off his hat.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Stefania. Are you coming from your work?”

  “Yes,” I say, telling my feet to get moving again. “And I need to hurry home. My sister is by herself, and …”

  Officer Berdecki falls into step beside me. “That would be your new home, then?”

  I glance up at his dimple. Two workers with grease on their faces pass us, moving on up the street.

  “You see, I’ve been keeping up with you,” he says. “I knew you had moved, but none of your neighbors seemed to know where. Where is your new apartment? Can I walk you home now?”

  “No, thank you,” I say.

  “Stefania,” he says, tugging me to a stop. His voice has lost some of its too-sweet syrup. “Why do you treat me so badly when all I’ve ever wanted is to be your friend?”

  I open my mouth and can’t think of a thing to say. What has this man ever actually done to me? Let me go instead of arresting me, asked me to a café, and been a little too aware that he’s handsome. It’s not his fault that I’ve always got Jews under my bed or following me down the street, or that I’m always afraid and too full of cares to enjoy one second of my life. And he hasn’t mentioned finding me at the ghetto fence. Again.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. He looks surprised. “Really. I’m just worried about my sister.”

  “Helena?”

  He remembers her name.

  “Then let me call you a car and get you home quickly …”

  “No!” He looks surprised again. I glance up the road, and Max and Siunek are barely a shadow. “I mean, no thank you. It would just make it worse. You see, my sister, she’s afraid of men in uniforms. Very afraid. She was so upset after you left last time, it took a long time to calm her. I’m sure she’ll grow out of it, but …”

  “I’m glad you told me. Then I won’t walk you all the way, and you can tell me when to stop, yes?”

  I can’t think of why he shouldn’t. So we walk.

  “There is a reason, you know, Stefania, that I looked for you at your old apartment.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  I can’t see Max and Siunek at all now. They’re on their own. My stomach wrenches. We’ve crossed the market square and started up the hill. But not the hill that leads to Tatarska.

  “There’s something very serious I want to discuss with you. Though it’s not something I want to bring up on the street …”

  I’m hoping Max remembers the way. That Helena remembers to unlock the door.

  What if Helena doesn’t remember to unlock the door?

  What if Mrs. Krajewska is looking out her window, like she always does, and sees the man who was supposed to be my brother sneaking like a thief into my house? She might call the police. She might call the Gestapo.

  “You see, I know a secret about you, Stefania Podgórska.”

  Now I stop my stride, and look up into his blue, blue eyes. He stops beside me. “I don’t have any secrets,” I whisper.

  He smiles. “You know that isn’t true. You have a very special secret, don’t you, Stefania?”

  I stare at Officer Berdecki. He knows.

  He knows. He knows. He knows.

  “But like I said,” he whispers, looking around at the empty street. “This is not the place to talk about serious things. Come to my house on Sunday, when you don’t have work. We can talk there. Here is my address …”

  He pulls paper and pencil out of his pocket, using the low stone wall of the Orthodox church to write.

  I look back across the hills toward Tatarska. If there was shooting, would I hear it from here? Or will I be taken on Sunday instead?

  I feel sick.

  “Four o’clock?” he asks.

  I take the piece of paper with the address and nod.

  “You remember that I said I wanted to help you? In any way I could?”

  I nod again.

  “That is what I plan to do now. Do you believe me?”

  I nod for a third time. He’s like an actor in a film. Perfection that no human should be able to reach.

  “You are such a serious girl, Stefania.” He reaches out and straightens the lapel of my coat. “We will talk more on Sunday. At four.”

  He backs away down the street, his dimples showing in both cheeks, and tips his hat. It takes him a long time to get down the hill. He keeps looking back and waving. I lift my hand. And finally, he rounds the corner toward the market.

  Maybe he’s not going to turn me in, I think. Maybe he’s just going to blackmail me first. Take everything I have, then give me and Helena, Max and Siunek to the SS.

  Unless Max and Siunek never got there.

  Unless the Gestapo is there now, waiting for them.

  I turn and look across the cathedral steeples and up the hilly lane toward Tatarska. And then I run.

  And by the time I come careening around the curve of the lane and see the house, sitting by itself near the top of the hill, the sun is fully up. And Mrs. Krajewska will be awake and making her coffee. Peeking out her windows.

  What has she already seen?

  At least the Gestapo isn’t here.

  Unless they’ve already gone. And taken Max and Siunek.

  Helena.

  I can’t get enough breath. My legs and arms tingle, I have a sharp pain behind my left eye, and my chest feels like it might explode. I want to scream. But I slow down, make myself trudge past the well and into the courtyard, shoulders hunched, like I’ve had a long night at work. I go slowly around the back, and as soon as I’m out of sight of Mrs. Krajewska’s window, I run for the door and bang my fist on it.

  The lock clicks, and the door opens so fast I nearly fall through, stumbling into the kitchen. I straighten up, panting.

  A thickset young man with heavy dark eyebrows and grease on his face is wearing my apron and slicing bread at the table while Helena kicks her heels in a chair with a glass of milk. She has her ball in her lap. The one we left rolling beside the fence. I don’t know how Max got that ball. I can’t believe he’s hauled it all the way across Przemyśl. The three of them are looking at me in surprise, and then the door shuts behind me.

  “Is there trouble?” Max says as he turns the lock. “Fusia?”

  I burst into tears.

  He puts his arms around me and lets me cry on his neck. “What’s wrong? Did something happen with that policeman?”

  The policeman. Officer Berdecki with his lovely dimples. Who knows our secret.

  Because someone has been talking.

  If I don’t pull myself together, we’re all going to get killed.

  “Max.” I step back, brushing the tears from my face. “Can I talk to you?”

  He nods. “Siunek, would you watch the window?”

  The young man wipes his hands on my apron and goes to the curtained window of my bedroom, where there’s a full view of the street and anyone who might approach the courtyard. Max pulls out a chair for me, like we’re in a restaurant or the club.

  “Hela,” he says. “Would you get some water? I think your sister might want tea.” He looks at me. “Do you have tea?”

  I nod, still drying my face, and Hel
ena grabs the bucket and goes out the door without an argument or the smallest noise. She’s happy, I think, to have Max here.

  And then I tell Max everything. What happened with the Judenrat, and what they said, and how they let me go. About Officer Berdecki. When I’m done, I’m calmer, but Max is rubbing his head so hard I’m afraid he’s going to lose hair.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says. “I don’t believe it. We stood together, Schillinger, the Hirsches, Henek and Danuta, and we swore an oath to God to never speak of this to anyone who wasn’t in that room. They knew what it meant, to talk …”

  “What about Dziusia?”

  Max shakes his head. “She wasn’t there.”

  “Where, then?” I ask. “Where were you meeting?”

  “In the bunker. The one from before. There was no one … anyone else who knew the place … they’re all gone now. And it’s belowground.”

  I lower my voice. “Are you sure about Siunek?”

  “I’d stake my life on it.”

  He already has.

  “But what about you and me?” he says. “In the basement? Could there have been someone else down there?”

  I shake my head. That wouldn’t explain how they knew the names. The names were already written down in the file.

  Helena comes in slowly with the heavy bucket of water and locks the door without being asked.

  “Here’s what I think,” Max says. “The Judenrat have people all over the ghetto, just like the one who arrested you. Maybe some of our people talked, but only to each other, and they were overheard. But if the Gestapo knew, I don’t think they would have let it go this far …”

  I thought this, too.

  “They would have stopped us. Shot us in our beds. And you would have been arrested already. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary on the way here, other than your policeman. No one gave us a second look. And we came around the back, over the wall, so we didn’t pass any of the windows …”

  That is a relief.

  “And what about the policeman?” I ask. “He knows something.”

  Max shakes his head. “Fusia. He doesn’t know anything. Don’t you know when a man is flirting with you?”

  That stings coming from him. Like I’m a little girl. “You didn’t hear him talk …”

  “I heard him talk last time, and that was enough. He’s not going to ask you for money. He knows you don’t have any. And if he wasn’t going to ask you for something, why talk to you at all? We’d all already be shot or with the Gestapo. They pay pretty quick, I hear, and the word of your policeman is all they’d need.”

  I noted the emphasis on “your.” “So don’t you think that’s more of a reason for me to go and find out what he knows?”

  Max’s big eyes narrow just a bit. “Do you want to go over there and find out what he knows?”

  “No.” And if a tiny part of me disagrees with this, I’m not telling Max. “If I don’t, we’re leaving a lot to chance. It’s a matter of life and …”

  Helena puts a cup of tea in front of me.

  “It’s life or … not.” I don’t want to talk like this in front of her.

  “Dziusia is supposed to come in two days,” Max says.

  I didn’t know that.

  “And Schillinger and Old Hirsch a few days after that. I can’t stop them now. Not without one of us going back to the ghetto, and I do not want that to be you.”

  It’s dangerous for us both. I sip my tea, which is perfect.

  “Fusia, you need to say right now. Do you want us to go back? You can end it, if that’s what you want.”

  I think of living without the fear I just experienced, and for one awful second, I am tempted.

  “No, Max!” says Helena. We’d both forgotten she was there.

  And then I look at Max and remember the alternatives. “No, Max,” I say, like Helena did.

  He smiles, but it’s sad. And then he says, “Does that policeman know where you live now?”

  I shake my head.

  “Good. Because if he comes here, I might have to kill him.” His one pointed eyebrow quirks, like he’s joking.

  Maybe his eyebrow is lying.

  I don’t think Max Diamant is seeing very clearly where Officer Berdecki is concerned.

  The last thing in this world I want to do is talk about Officer Berdecki with Max.

  “I’m tired,” I murmur. And it’s true. My eyes are closing on their own.

  “Go to bed,” Max says.

  “Drink my tea,” I tell him.

  “I’ll wake you up before work.”

  I push myself to my feet, make it to the next room, and practically fall onto the bed in my clothes.

  I’ve forgotten there’s a man sitting at the window, watching the street and the yard through the crack in the curtains.

  “I’m Siunek,” he says. He’s still wearing my apron.

  “Stefania,” I murmur. “But you can call me Fusia.”

  “I already do. Did your sister really bite an SS officer’s leg?”

  I’m asleep before I can answer.

  And then Max is shaking me. The sun has gone away like someone blew out a candle.

  “Fusia,” Max whispers. “Fusia!”

  I pry open my eyes.

  “Did you buy that shovel?”

  I give him the shovel before I go to work, and every time the blades of my machine cut the groove of a screw, I wonder what Max is doing. And what Helena is doing. And Siunek. If they’re safe. Or if they’re caught and I’ll come home to find them dead. I make my quota, and by the time I put my key to the lock at Tatarska 3, my stomach is cramping with dread. There’s no one in the kitchen.

  “Hello?” I call.

  No answer.

  I burst through the door to the bedroom, and Siunek is at the window again, finger to his lips, while Max is up to his knees in a hole where my bed used to be, shirtless and sweaty and covered with dirt. The floorboards are stacked neatly against the wall. Max sticks the shovel in the ground and hops light as a cat from the hole.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “Where’s Helena?” I look to the other door, the one that leads to the empty second bedroom.

  “I wouldn’t go in there,” Max says, eyeing the door. “We’ve been using it for a toilet. There’s a bucket!” he says, responding to what must have been a look of disgust on my face. “And not the water bucket. What do you take me for?”

  “Shhh!” Siunek warns. Max leads me back into the kitchen.

  “We’ve realized we can hear your neighbor in there,” Max says, his voice still low. “The one I met the night we looked at the apartment. Her second floor is right above us, and that means she can hear us, too. I thought it would be better if she didn’t hear men in your apartment all day.” He starts wiping the sweat and dirt from his chest with the bath towel, watching me think all this over. Watching me make sure the water bucket is in place. “Well, what did you think we were going to do, Fusia? Hold it until the war ends? We can’t take a stroll out to the toilets.”

  I’m not sure why this thought has never occurred to me, but it hasn’t.

  “Where’s Hela?” I ask again.

  “I told her she could go play. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “And what are you doing?”

  “Building a bunker. So we can hide when someone comes to your door. Right now there’s only the attic, and if someone climbs the ladder, we’re caught.”

  I haven’t thought of this yet, either.

  “You’re sleepy, Fusia,” he comments.

  I am. To the bone. And he’s full of energy, like a bird building its nest. “But … what are you doing with all the dirt?”

  Max grins. “Come and see.”

  He opens the door to the little hallway, where the ladder goes up to the attic. This room never had a wooden floor, just soil packed hard and smooth. Only now the soil is several inches higher than it was, sloping upward behind the ladder.

  And who, I wonder
, told him he could do that? If Mrs. Krajewska sees this floor, she’ll know something is wrong. She could make a complaint. Get me kicked out of my apartment.

  “Hela’s been tramping it down all day to pack it tight,” Max says, still watching me closely. “And I thought maybe you could get some garbage or old junk to cover up the back, so it won’t show …”

  So now, I think, they need me to run out and collect some garbage. Or some junk. And while I’m doing that, I can go to the market and spend half my pay and the rest of my day hauling food up the hill. Then I can sweep the floor, wipe that layer of dust from Max’s digging off the stove, cook the dinner, and wash it all up again, then catch a few hours of sleep that are less than I need in a house that smells like sweaty men and an open grave—a house where it’s too dangerous to open a window—before I get up to do it all over again and spend another twelve hours making screws.

  And that bucket in the second bedroom probably needs emptying, too.

  “You’re mad,” Max says, brows coming down.

  “I’m not mad,” I lie.

  I’m scared.

  I do most of the things on my list. Only when I get back from the market, out of breath from the heavy bags, the floor has already been swept and the stove is wiped clean, and Siunek takes the bags and says he will make something for dinner.

  I still have to empty the bucket.

  When I lie down, I’m so tired that I ache. I sleep with my bed on the wrong side of the room, though always with either Max or Siunek at the window, and when I dream, it’s of Izio, and everything the guard told me they did to him. When my eyes open, I’m sick to my stomach and sweating, the afternoon sun streaming around the edges of the curtains and Siunek’s heavy frame.

  And the first thought in my head is that I don’t know where Helena is, and if I don’t know where she is, then she might be dead. My next thought is that Max and Siunek have a bunker, but I don’t know where I will run if the Gestapo comes. When the Gestapo comes.

  Death to Jews. I hear the man’s voice in my head. I count the shots. One, two, three …