“The police knew someone was hiding Jews on Tatarska,” I tell him. “Somewhere between numbers 1 and 5. They’d heard ‘talk,’ but they weren’t sure it was true.”
Max nods, and he is angry. He looks at Siunek and Schillinger, and I know he’s going to ask them if they told. And then Helena comes running in.
“There’s an old man coming into the courtyard!”
Helena, evidently, is the only one who remembered to keep watch at the window.
We go into another scramble. Schillinger doesn’t even know where the bunker is. But there’s no time to hide. I’m still getting to my feet when Siunek looks out the window and yells, “My father! My father!”
He throws open the door, and I can only think it’s good that there’s no one walking to the toilets who could look back and see this crowd of Jews in my house.
Old Hirsch stumbles in, beardless, and Siunek tries to hug him.
“We are killed. We are killed,” mumbles Old Hirsch. “We are all killed!”
I get the door shut and locked, and Hirsch starts running from one end of the room to the other. “We are discovered! They are coming! We are killed! We are all killed!”
And then he throws up on the floor.
* * *
It’s a long time before we can get Old Hirsch calm enough to speak and the room quiet enough for safety. I have to send Helena for two buckets of water to clean the floor, and I can only hope Mrs. Krajewska thinks my supervisor and I are drinking cup after cup of tea. When the floor is clean, I let Helena and Dziusia each take a chicken and go play their new favorite game in the back bedroom. Silent chicken hopscotch.
Or at least, it’s their favorite game until someone needs to go to the toilet in the bucket.
I wash my hands and settle the rest of the chickens in the little hallway while the men gather around Hirsch. He did not get lost. He did not get separated from Schillinger. He got robbed.
“The thief pulled me into the alley, and he says, ‘Ha! I know you are a rich Jew out of the ghetto, and now I will have your money.’ And I say, ‘What money?’ And he puts a hand on my neck and feels in my pockets until he finds ten thousand zloty.”
“Ten thousand?” says Siunek. “Why would you carry so much?”
“Because ten thousand is the amount I was prepared for.”
Siunek frowns. “Prepared for what?”
“To be robbed!”
“You knew you would be robbed?” asks Max.
“I didn’t know. I was prepared! Because … this is the world.”
I shake my head while I dry my hands. If he hadn’t just vomited from fright, I would think Old Hirsch might be enjoying himself. And wouldn’t any thief have been happy with even a thousand zloty? I think how much bread nine thousand extra zloty would buy.
“So he finds the money I was prepared to give, but he does not find what I was not prepared to give, and then I think I am dead, because why not now collect what the Gestapo will give him, too? But he says, I am a thief, Mr. Jew, but I am a thief with honor. I am not a killer. Now come with me, and I will watch and tell you when the police have gone.”
“So the thief knew where you were going?” says Max.
“Yes! That is why I say we are all killed!”
Max shakes his head, and his anger is back. Someone might as well have printed a poster and put it up in the ghetto. Room for Jews on Tatarska Street.
“When I met with you all in the bunker on Kopernika,” Max says quietly, “we made a pact and an oath to God. That no one would mention Stefania’s name, her address, or that we were being hidden. It was the deepest secret we could ever have. The most solemn promise I could have asked for, because the promise meant our lives. Ours, and hers, and her sister’s. If anyone here has broken that oath, I’m asking that you say so. Whether it was an accident or on purpose. So we can know what to do and save ourselves if we can. If we can’t, then we need to give Stefania and her sister the chance to escape. Right now.”
Max looks at me. The other three men look at me. Then they all look at each other. Silence falls on the kitchen of Tatarska 3. And then there is a knock at the door that scares me out of my wits.
Why are we forgetting to watch the window?
Old Hirsch lifts his hands, ready to shout, and Siunek covers his mouth. Max stands up slowly, without a noise, and beckons for the rest of them to follow him into the bedroom. When they’ve tiptoed out and shut the door, the knock comes again, and I peek out the smaller window beside the door.
It’s not the police or the Gestapo. It’s two little boys.
I open the door a crack.
“Yes?”
“A lady gave me a note for you,” a boy says. He can’t be more than ten.
“What lady?”
“Some lady,” says the smaller one. “She said we have to come back for an answer in an hour.”
“Bye,” says the older one, and they scamper off.
I shut and lock the door, then open the bedroom. “You can come out,” I whisper. The men file into the living room, not even having had time to get the floorboards away from the bunker. I think Dziusia and Helena are still playing hopscotch. I open the note and read it. And read it again. And read it again.
“What is it?” asks Max.
“We’re being blackmailed. That’s all.” I sit down in a chair.
“Blackmailed?”
“This woman says if I will not hide her and her two children, that in three days she will denounce us to the Nazis.”
“What?” Max snatches up the note. “Who is Mrs. Bessermann?”
“I don’t know! I’ve never even heard of—”
“Bessermann?” says Siunek. “Malwina Bessermann?” He spins his big body around the small room, finally catching sight of Old Hirsch, settling back down on the partly-put-together sofa. He looks shocked. “Father, isn’t that your girlfriend?”
“Your girlfriend?” says Max.
Schillinger shakes his head.
Old Hirsch looks cornered.
Your girlfriend.
Many, many things, I think, have just been explained.
* * *
“Send me away,” says Old Hirsch. “I am sorry! It was the folly of an old man!”
But he doesn’t look that sorry to me, now that he’s calmed down. He sits back on the sofa and lights up a cigarette. I don’t think he thinks we’ll really send him away.
Old Dr. Hirsch, I am beginning to learn, usually has a trick up his sleeve.
He points at me with the cigarette. “If the men are going to talk,” he says, “then the girl should leave.”
Oh, nice. Very nice.
“You are sitting in her house,” says Max. He looks close to hitting Old Hirsch. But I can see the old man is trying to distract. To turn the conversation from the real problem.
“Father,” Siunek is saying, “you realize you got this girl arrested.”
“She doesn’t look arrested.”
“You should have said!”
“What should I have said?”
“That you broke your oath and told Malwina Bessermann where you were going to hide!”
“And who was I supposed to tell this to?”
“Your son!” yells Siunek.
“Hirsch,” says Schillinger. His voice carries more authority than Siunek’s. “Stop toying with us. There are seven lives at stake. Who else have you told?”
Old Hirsch sighs and blows smoke. He looks older, somehow, without the beard. “I swear an oath to you now that I have told no one else. Only Malwina, for the sake of her children. But I cannot say who she has told.”
Anyone could know what I’m doing in this house. Absolutely anyone.
I read the note from Malwina Bessermann again, the open note she sent with strangers through the streets. I’m to send a response showing that her note was received, and then I have two days to decide. If she doesn’t hear a yes from me by the third, the Gestapo will know about all of us. By name.
&n
bsp; It’s a horrible way to ask someone to risk their life for you. Low. Selfish. Disgusting. The whole situation makes me angry. And certain. We are not going to live through this. Not all of us. I remember when Izio said that to me, the last night before he went to the camp.
And yet, if I were a mother in the ghetto, if I had lost a husband, parents, siblings to the trains—and that’s what Siunek said happened to Mrs. Bessermann—what would I do to get my children out? To save them from that same fate? What would I do for Helena?
Anything. That’s what I’d do.
I’d cheat and lie and be as low and selfish as I had to.
I tear off a piece of butcher paper, get my pen, and when I’m done writing, I fold the paper twice and walk outside. Like I’m going to the toilets. Really I’m waiting in the courtyard, looking for those boys. When they come, I slip them my note and go back inside, where the men are still arguing.
Later, when the girls are asleep, packed in my bed, and Old Hirsch is doing penance by taking first watch at the window, I go into the kitchen for water, past figures wrapped in blankets and soft breathing from the floor, to Old Hirsch’s jacket, left hanging by the window. I go through his pockets until I find his armband.
I really thought I was done sneaking into the ghetto.
And then I jump when Max whispers behind me, “Fusia, what are you doing?”
The rules of the ghetto always seem to be changing. Bigger. Smaller. No doing business at the fence. This section for workers. This section for nonworkers. Go wherever you want. Go the wrong way and we’ll kill you. And today, we’ll look the other way while you do business at the fence. It can be hard to know where you are. Right now it seems to be heavy guard on the gate, no more crossing of the bridge. But once you get inside, we’re not going to pay much attention to you.
I’m careful anyway. I’ve mussed my hair, dirtied up my face, hidden my purse, and I have a real armband on my coat instead of one that will only bear a glance. Max begged me not to go last night, and I understand why. If something happens to me, they’re all dead. But I think I have to look Mrs. Bessermann over.
It could be a trap. But I don’t know why it would be.
I go to our spot, the one we’ve always gone to, where Max kept loosening the barbed wire. It’s still loose. And from there, it’s just a short walk to Kopernika Street. I slip inside number 5 without attracting attention, then move to the back of the hall, where there’s a brick chimney going up from the basement, heating the different rooms, and beside that, a door to a closet beneath the stairs. Only it isn’t really a closet. There’s a false wall. And when you move a plank and step inside, there is the door to the cellar.
Max was clever, the way he built this. He’s always clever.
I go down the steps, and there’s a lantern already lit, Henek and a woman with sleek, dark hair sitting on crates on either side of it. Exactly as my note asked them to. I hadn’t realized how much I would hate this place. It’s dark and dank, and I don’t like the way it smells.
Or maybe it’s just because I remember Max, tears running down the scabbed skin on his face, telling me what happened here.
Henek stands, and he kisses my cheek, but he doesn’t smile. I sit down, he sits down, and we face Mrs. Bessermann.
She’s a lovely woman, in her late thirties, maybe early forties. Much too young for Old Hirsch. I wonder what Old Hirsch promised her. I wonder what she promised him. She sits composed. Perfectly straight.
“Why, Mrs. Bessermann, instead of asking me to help you, did you decide to threaten my life, the lives of five other people, and my seven-year-old sister?”
“And if a stranger had asked politely, Miss Podgórska, of course you would have helped.” Her sarcasm could peel the jacket off a potato.
“That’s what the others did, Mrs. Bessermann.”
Her lips press together. I wait. She folds and unfolds her hands. The water drips. Then she sits up even straighter, elegant on a crate in a dirty basement where people lost their lives. “Then I am asking you, Miss Podgórska. I am begging for your help. For me and my two children.”
Henek’s brows go up. I look down at my hands.
“I have seven people to feed already in a very small space. Nine when Henek and Danuta come.” I can hear her breathe in the dark. “So at this point, three more can’t make that much difference.”
She sits completely still, taking in my words. Then her smooth face crumples, and she begins to cry.
We sit silent, listening to her sobs.
Who else is there, I think, if not me?
Henek pulls me aside before I leave the basement, glancing back at Mrs. Bessermann. “Are you sure, Fusia?”
“Sadness can become cruelty,” I whisper, thinking of my babcia. Henek shakes his head.
“This is a mistake,” he says.
“I don’t think it’s a mistake.”
“But are you sure? Because a mistake will kill you. And my brother.”
I look at Henek closely. It’s the first time I’ve heard him admit he’s in danger. He’s thin, of course, like everyone. But he looks strong enough, even after the typhus. He’s trimmed his mustache.
“When are you and Danuta coming?”
“We’re not ready yet. We’re both working. We’re okay.”
That’s the Henek I know.
“You should come soon. The Judenrat told me that it needs to be soon.” I see his confusion, but there’s no time for stories, and he knows it.
“We’ve got plenty of time to sit in your bunker, Fusia. If there’s danger, the people in the ghetto will be the first to know.”
“But you’ll come soon?” I ask again.
“Soon,” he replies.
* * *
“This is a mistake,” whispers Max when I tell him. “I don’t think she can be trusted.”
“She says she was the one who made the mistake. She didn’t know what else to do. I think she’s desperate. She has two children.”
“Oh, Fusia.” He sighs.
I hand him a slice of bread, and when he thinks I’m not looking, he breaks off a corner and crumbles it on the floor for the chickens. I smack his arm, and Old Hirsch sits back on the sofa, watching while he smokes.
The next day after work, I go to the little market not far from the tracks, the Fish Place, where Cesia Bessermann, fifteen, and her brother, Janek, who is ten, are waiting for a young lady with a bright red scarf buying potatoes. They follow me to Tatarska 3.
And I’m sure it’s not a mistake.
Two days after that, Max calls me to the window curtain, and I cover my mouth to stop my gasp of horror. Mrs. Bessermann is in the courtyard, nicely dressed with a bag over one arm, having a friendly conversation with Mrs. Krajewska.
“She wasn’t supposed to come until next week!” I whisper.
Max shakes his head as Mrs. Krajewska waves goodbye, and Mrs. Bessermann steps gingerly through the dirt to my door.
He doesn’t have to say it. I think this was a mistake.
Two weeks after that, I’m dumping a bucket of water in the pot, warming it up to wash the dishes, when Dr. Schillinger comes from his watch at the window and whispers, “People in the courtyard.”
Not one person speaks. They move in perfect silence to the bunker, because no one is allowed to wear shoes and because Max has made them practice a hundred times. Each person is responsible for their own belongings. No cigarette stubs, no jackets or combs—especially male ones—can be left behind. If you’re eating, you take the food with you. Max removes the boards, and the children—Cesia, Janek, and Dziusia—along with Schillinger, and Old Hirsch, and Max, according to today’s rotation, go inside the bunker. Once the boards are back in place, Mrs. Bessermann slides under that bed, while Siunek crawls beneath the new one I bought off a junk cart five days ago. It’s a tight fit. I make sure the food is put away, Helena checks the house for mistakes, and my people have disappeared in less than a minute.
I haven’t even seen who�
��s coming to the door. There’s a knock, and a deep voice from the other side.
“Miss Podgórska!”
It’s a fake deep voice.
“Have you got a man in there?”
I open the door a crack.
“Surprise!” says Januka. “We found you! And it’s your day off!” She’s holding up a bottle of vodka and a case of cigarettes. The extra ration we get for working in the factory.
“Stefi! Aren’t you going to let us in?” she says.
I open the door, and there’s Lubek, three girls I don’t know but recognize from the factory floor, and two more couples I’ve never seen in my life. They pour into my little living room and kitchen.
“What … what are you doing here?” I ask.
“We always get together the Sunday after rations, you know that!”
Someone is cranking up a phonograph on my half of a kitchen table, next to a plate of cookies.
“But how did you …”
“We were going up to Anna’s …” says Lubek.
I don’t know which one Anna is.
“… and Januka spotted you at the well.”
“Isn’t this sweet?” says Januka, peeking her head into the bedroom. “Such pretty curtains!”
I know my people are hidden, but I want to run and slam the door shut anyway.
Januka is in high spirits. A little flushed. I think the vodka must be open.
“Ahhh!” she squeals. “Look, everybody! Chickens!”
Much is made over my little hall full of chickens. As if I like to keep chickens for pets. Helena thinks we do. I look around and find her in the corner, wide-eyed and shaky.
“Is this your sister?” asks a stranger. Her lips are ruby red.
“Hela,” I say, and hold out my hand. She comes to me, and I bend down to whisper. Then the record starts playing, and I have to talk louder.
“Why don’t you go out and play? You don’t have to be close by …” In case something goes wrong. “Just until I can get rid of them.”
“Will you make them go?” she whispers, glancing at the bedroom.
“Yes. But it may take a few minutes. Okay?”
The Light in Hidden Places Page 21