Stop it, Fusia.
Just stop it.
I sit up in bed, and Siunek waves like we just bumped into each other at the park.
Then I remember that it’s Sunday. I swing my feet to the floor.
Max is wrong about Officer Berdecki. Even if he’s right, he’s wrong, because I can’t live with the uncertainty.
I get out of bed, tell Siunek to give me a few minutes to myself, and shut the door behind him. I strip off my crumpled dress, dip a cloth in the chipped bowl we use for wash water, and scrub everything I can reach until it tingles. Then I brush my hair and braid it—no time for curls—pulling it back smooth from my face, the way it suits me, and when I’m done, I tiptoe to the bed, slide my hand beneath the blanket, and pull out a carefully folded blouse. Soft, pale blue, with a fraying edge around the bottom that will never show, bought yesterday in the market with what should have been the egg money.
I can always sell it later.
I tuck the blouse into the only other decent thing I own, my brown wool skirt, and from the bottom of my brush bag, I fish out the tiny little compact of lip rouge that had once been Marysia’s. There’s only a bit left around the edges, and I hesitate, wondering if I should. But when I step out the bedroom door, my lips are blushing red.
Siunek is at the table, watching the yard as best he can from the window, while Max has Helena in his lap. Telling her a story that I think must be about the ocean since I hear him say the word “shark.” He looks up. And stares.
“Fusia! You look pretty!” says Helena. “You got a new shirt.”
“No, I didn’t,” I say. “This is my old one. The one I never wear.”
My sister is smart enough not to say anything else.
“Where are you going?” asks Max. His voice is quiet.
“Some of the girls at work are having a party.”
It sounds ridiculous when I say it. Dangerous and irresponsible.
Especially since it’s a lie.
“Have a good time,” he says. But his eyes don’t leave mine.
Helena puts her arms around his neck.
And then I walk out the front door and listen to it lock behind me.
Guilty. I am so, so guilty. But I have to know what the policeman knows.
I walk down the lane and turn the corner from Tatarska Street.
Officer Berdecki’s house is on the other side of the San, where Przemyśl was German while we were still Russian. I don’t have to actually find the address, because he’s there, waiting for me near the bridge. In case I got lost, maybe, or changed my mind.
“Stefania,” he says, coming up quickly to kiss my hand. “You are very beautiful.”
And so is he. I’ve never seen him out of uniform. He looks strong and healthy and freshly shaved. I realize I’m staring.
“Come,” he says, “and we will talk.” He puts my arm in his, taking me down the street and around the corner to a row of stone apartments that are more like cottages, like Tatarska, but with new roofs, new paint, and new windows. He watches me look them up and down. “This place was hit by Russian artillery when the war started,” he says, “but they’re as good as new now. Many of the Polish police live here.”
He smiles, unlocking the door, and I’m wondering if I’ve been tricked and he’s arresting me after all, but there are no other policemen inside. The house is simple. Comfortable. It smells nice. And it’s very quiet.
“Do you live alone?” I ask, surprised.
“Of course.”
I don’t know why I’d imagined him with a mother, a sister, four or five brothers. What would someone do with a whole house to themselves?
Maybe he’s lonely.
“Let me take your coat,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind, but I made you a meal. This is my usual time to eat, so …”
“Officer Berdecki …”
“Please. It’s Markus.”
“You said yesterday that you knew something about me.”
“Yes,” he says. And now his handsome face is serious. “We do need to talk. Please, sit down.”
I’m standing beside a table laid out with a cloth and cut glass and matching china. Officer Berdecki is holding out a chair for me. It feels rude to say no.
“You are right to get straight to our business,” he says. He strikes a match and lights a candle, even though the sun is still up. “But as I said, this is my usual time to eat, and the plates are warm. Do you mind?”
“But you said you knew a—”
“Dinner first.” He dimples, his hair shining in the light of the candles.
I fold my hands in my lap, feeling out of place and five years old.
He brings out two plates with slices of sugared ham—real slices, from a farm—potatoes fried in oil and salt, cheese with little crackers, a salad made with pickled carrots, and of all things, a dish of tinned pears. Where did he get tinned pears? Wine sparkles purple into my glass, and it is sweet and delicious. This can’t be his normal dinner. He must have made all this for me.
It feels like Christmas. Before the war.
Markus talks about little things, nothing things, and he makes jokes that aren’t all that funny, but I laugh anyway. I laugh, and then I wonder why. My cheeks are flushed.
He pours more wine. I eat all my ham. I eat everything, and when he sees how much I like them, he gives me his tinned pears. He’s really very sweet.
Markus never takes his eyes off me. He compliments me. And he doesn’t ask me to do anything difficult or dangerous or unpleasant. I feel warm, happy. Special. And a little dizzy. I remember there’s something I want to know from him.
“We’ve eaten dinner,” I say. It’s a little hard to get the words out. “And you said … you said you knew a secret …”
Somewhere in my mind, I know this is important.
He dimples. “I do know something about you. More wine?”
I shake my head. He pours me a little anyway, tipping up the bottle.
Yes, that’s right. I have been keeping a secret.
“Come sit on the sofa,” he says.
Does Markus know my secret? That’s what I’m supposed to find out.
“Come sit with me,” Markus says again, “and we can talk about what I know.” He takes me by the hand, picking up my glass for me with the other.
The sun has gone down, and the room is dim from the candles on the table. The sofa is soft. Cozy. I lean my head back. “Tell me what you know.”
I think I’m supposed to be afraid, but I can’t seem to feel it.
“One kiss,” Markus whispers, “and I will tell you.”
He kisses me, and once he does, I think he might as well do it again. I feel beautiful. He is beautiful. His weight pins me to the sofa, but I don’t want to move. My braids are coming down. And that same little corner of my mind remembers.
“What about … our business,” I manage while his lips are on my neck. “What secret … do you know?”
“Secret?” he murmurs. His face hovers over mine. “The secret I know about you, my Stefania, is that you need to be kissed.”
He kisses me again. And I am thinking, thinking, remembering through the purple haze of the wine. He thinks I need to be kissed. That is my secret.
He doesn’t know about Max. Or the others. He never knew about them at all.
He made me think he knew something. He wanted me to be afraid.
He just wanted me on this sofa.
All at once I bring up a leg and push to one side as hard as I can. Officer Berdecki rolls off the sofa and hits the floor with a thud.
“Hey. Hey!” He scrambles to his feet while I get to mine. “What was that for?”
“You ask me what that was for? You dare to ask me that? I ought to cut you up into a thousand pieces, you snake. You … skunk!” I tuck in my blouse, looking frantically for my shoes. “Skunk!” I say again.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy?” These words are harsh, made harsher by the fact that his soft, flatt
ering voice is gone. “Stop acting like a little girl, Stefania. You’re more grown up than that.”
Am I?
“You and your cousin …”
My cousin? He means Danuta. My corrupt cousin from Bircza. What did Mrs. Wojcik tell him?
“Don’t play innocent. You knew why you were here!”
Only I didn’t. I probably should have. Max even told me. Almost. I’m the stupidest girl in Przemyśl, but I didn’t know.
“I came because you said you knew something about me. But you were lying!”
“That was a game!”
“Not to me!”
I grab the empty wine bottle and throw it, and it misses his head by the width of a hair. The bottle explodes into little green chunks, leaving a small splash of purple on the wall.
“You’re crazy,” he says, and he’s not even handsome anymore. His hair is mussed, his clothes all tangled, and there’s lip rouge on his face. But that isn’t what’s making him ugly. The ugliness is in the cold blue of his eyes. “I could make life hard for you. And for your little sister. I could still arrest you. Is that what you want?”
We look at each other, and he smiles. It’s not pretty.
“I didn’t think so,” he says. “Now come back over here, and you and your sister can sleep safe in your own bed.” His dimples get deeper. “It’s not as if you won’t enjoy yourself.”
I’m so angry the room spins like my head.
I take two steps forward and snatch my coat from the chair. “I think you’d better arrest me, Officer. Do it, and while I’m being arrested, I’ll tell your commander that you like to let criminals go when you think there’s a possibility of getting them over to your house for … dinner.”
The threat hits its mark.
“Don’t you ever come near me again,” I say. And this time I’m not yelling. My voice is low and smooth. “Don’t speak to me. If you see me on the street, you’re going to turn and walk the other way. Disappear. Or I will go to your commanding officer. Maybe I will anyway.”
I cross the room while he stands there and wrench open the door. “And if you even look at my sister, I will cut you into ten thousand pieces, you lying, stinking, filthy little pig.”
And I slam the man’s door.
I walk as fast as I can down the street. The air is chilly, but I don’t stop to put on my coat. I do stop to tie my shoes, and I’m wobbly while I do it because my head is still dizzy. A woman passing by with shopping on her arm gives me and my half-braided hair a long look.
I wonder if I have lip rouge on my face. Like him.
No. I just have tears pouring down my cheeks.
Why did I go over there? Was it really because I was afraid?
It was. Mostly.
But it had also been nice, hadn’t it? To imagine that a good-looking policeman would seek me out. To imagine that there were possibilities after Izio and this war, even if they were possibilities I wouldn’t really want. It had been … nice.
And I hate how stupid that makes me feel.
I stop well before Tatarska Street and rebraid my hair in the dim, mirrored glass of a shop window beneath a streetlight. I can’t see any lip rouge. I make sure I’m neat and buttoned before walking up the hill. One of them, I know, will be watching me come. And then I feel the familiar little flutter of fear that there’s no one left to watch me come at all, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose all that wine I just drank.
I don’t lose it. I walk into the courtyard.
I will save them, I think. For as long as I can.
When I open the door to Tatarska Street, I can hear the scrape of the shovel from the bedroom. Someone is shoveling hard. There’s a lamp lit in the kitchen. I don’t often see the kitchen by lamplight, and it looks softer, prettier than in the day. I should buy some furniture, I think. When I’m trading and reselling. Something cheap that could be painted or repaired. Maybe a shelf for food and dishes, an armoire for the bedroom. A whole table and a sofa.
Maybe not a sofa. I’ll get a soft chair.
Or a bench.
The sound of the shovel stops, and Max comes through from the bedroom. He’s shirtless again, streaked with sweat and black soil, carrying two buckets of dirt.
“You’re back,” he says. “How was your party?”
I’m fairly sure Max knows I wasn’t at a party. “Fine,” I reply.
“You didn’t stay very long.”
“It wasn’t that good of a party.”
“Oh.” I see something cross his face, but I don’t know what it is.
“Is Hela asleep?”
“Yes.”
“And you all ate?”
“Siunek cooked.”
“And how is the bunker?”
“Done. Except for the floorboards.”
He must have shoveled every second I was gone. I open up the door to the attic, and the floor in the back of the little hall is at least two feet higher than it should be. I really will have to find a way to cover that up.
“Hela took out the last few loads and dumped them behind the toilets,” Max says. “It was dark. Nobody saw her.”
He’s being careful of me. I can’t blame him.
“Go clean up and give me your clothes,” I tell him. “I’ll wash them.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t mind. I can’t sleep. I’m on the wrong schedule.”
I set the biggest pot I have on the stove and start pouring in the contents of the water bucket.
“Really, you don’t have to,” he says.
“Your clothes are dirty.”
“Fusia, I don’t have anything else to put on.”
He’s still standing in the doorway of the bedroom beside his buckets, dirty, unshaven, and in need of a haircut.
“There are blankets in there. Or are you afraid of me seeing your skin?”
I think he might laugh, since he doesn’t have a shirt on anyway. And because we’ve lived in the same house, and none of the Diamant boys were ever very modest. I was always the little sister. Except with Izio. But Max doesn’t laugh.
“I like your shirt,” he says.
“I’m going to sell it.”
“You shouldn’t sell it. It’s a nice color on you.”
I’m not sure why this makes me want to cry.
I throw another piece of coal on the fire, give Max some of the warm water to clean up with, heat more, and wash his clothes. He falls asleep on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, while I hang his clothes up to dry and start on Siunek’s. It couldn’t hurt to look for some men’s clothes, either, I think, so I won’t have naked boys shivering all over the house every time I wash. And we need another bed, too. And more soap. And I think Helena might have eaten the butter.
Maybe I won’t mind. Never having a life.
I stay up while the house is quiet, drying clothes by the fire and sewing a rip in Helena’s skirt where I didn’t sew it very well in the first place. Siunek is at the window, but he’s lost in thought. Like I am.
I wonder what he’s lost because of this war.
Probably more than me.
I wake Max before I go to work so he can watch the window and let Siunek get some sleep. He’s been asleep most of the day. He rubs his eyes and sits up in the blanket, then he rubs his arms. Between the floor and shoveling, I know he must be sore.
“Don’t forget,” he says. “Dziusia comes tomorrow.”
I hadn’t. “How are they getting her out?”
“They’re going to push her through a hole Schillinger made in the bricks, on the back side of the ghetto where there’s no fence, where it’s just the buildings with the windows filled in. They’re going to do it at five, and you’re supposed to meet her at the bridge over the train tracks before you go to work. Once she’s safe, walk past the ghetto fence until you see Dr. Schillinger and sneeze. That will mean we have her.”
Little Dziusia, with her mass of curly hair.
I can’t believe they’re sendi
ng her alone.
“They won’t pay attention to a child,” Max says, like I’ve spoken out loud.
That’s what we thought about Helena.
I can feel Max’s eyes on me all the way down Tatarska Street.
I work a full shift during which I just make my quota, and I’m feeling the sleep I missed during the day. At a quarter until six in the morning, when my feet are aching and my shoulders are stiff from the laundry and screws, Herr Braun comes to the factory floor and informs me that I have been switched to the day shift.
Right now.
I can work. Or lose my job.
This man really doesn’t like me.
I go back to my machines and start the brisk trot required to keep them fed with metal. To keep the water pumps working. In two hours, I’m dead on my feet and once again in danger of losing a hand. The blades whine, and the engines chug in a rhythm.
Dziusia. Dziusia. Dziusia.
They’re pushing her out of the wall at five. I can’t leave here until six. Herr Braun strolls by, watching me work. Maybe I should just lose my job.
Maybe we’ll starve.
Herr Braun watches me all day. On our break, I go stand outside on the iron bridge, slapping my own face to wake up. I’m nauseated with worry, so tired I can’t think, and no one on Tatarska Street knows where I am. Januka brings me a cup of strong coffee.
“From the mechanic,” she says, and hands over a bite of her sandwich. The blond boy joins us, lighting up a cigarette. Except for the cigarette, the air out here smells new. Like spring.
“Braun doesn’t like you,” comments the blond boy.
“What gave you that impression?” Januka laughs.
I rub my eyes. “What time does he leave now? Herr Braun?”
“Five o’clock. Usually,” says Januka.
Five. It might be just enough.
“I need a favor. Do you think between the two of you, you could finish my shift?”
Januka wrinkles her forehead.
“I’ve got an appointment,” I say.
Januka says, “Can’t you just miss it and do it another day?”
The blond boy blows out a puff of smoke. “What’s so important?”
“It’s …” My sluggish brain jumps into gear. “It’s with the police. The Germans. I’m supposed to be there, and … you know they don’t care anything about my job.”
The Light in Hidden Places Page 19