by Kelly Rimmer
“But... I can’t leave Poland,” I said uneasily. I flicked my gaze toward him. “My parents...even... Truda and Emilia are here. We need to stay here for Emilia.”
A sudden tension had arisen between us, and I didn’t like it one bit—especially when Tomasz tried to deflect away from that statement with another of his silly fairy tales.
“Maybe I’ll build you a gingerbread house,” he told me suddenly, his tone too light. “Then, if you’re ever hungry again, you can eat the house.”
“Maybe I’ll build you a church,” I told him, and he raised his eyebrows at the flatness of my tone.
“I thought the morning prayer was just a cover for us to meet. Don’t tell me you’re thinking of taking vows?”
He was still teasing me, but I was deadly serious now. I pulled my hands away from his and stood as I muttered, “You can’t lie in a church, Tomasz. If I build you a church, you’ll have to tell me the truth about all of the things that I don’t understand.”
He fell silent then, reaching only to pick up a twig from the dirt and twirling it through his fingers. His expression was somber, his gaze distant.
“I’m scared to tell you,” he admitted unevenly, then he looked right at me, and there was such breathtaking pain in his gaze that I forgot I was angry with him and took my place on the log again, just so I could reach down and take his hand. I saw shadows in his gaze, like he was staring off into a nightmare. But then he shook himself, looked at our hands and admitted, “I made terrible mistakes. I’m trying to undo them, so I can be a man of honor. All I want in this world is to be a man worthy of a woman like you. I’ll tell you in time, I promise. But now? You do know what’s at stake in this war, even though I am sure your parents still shelter you and treat you like a child sometimes.”
“They do!” I exclaimed in frustration. “They really do. And that’s why I can’t bear it when you do the same.”
“That is not what I’m doing,” he pleaded with me.
“That is exactly what you are doing,” I said flatly.
I could hear Mama calling me from the field, exasperation in her tone, so I disentangled myself from Tomasz, but I was reluctant to leave him after the surprisingly tense conversation we’d just had. I brushed my lips against his once more.
“Tomasz,” I said softly. “Tell me again. About us.”
A smile released the tension in his features.
“We are meant to be together,” he whispered, trailing his finger down the side of my face. “We were made for each other, and everything else in the world will just have to figure itself out, because we are going to be together. I love you.”
“I love you too.” I pressed one last kiss against his lips, then forced myself to stand. “Good night, Tomasz. I’ll see you in the morning?”
He stayed on the ground then, but he gave me a sad smile as he reluctantly released my fingers.
“Every minute till then, I’ll be thinking of you.”
I turned to walk away from him, but then I paused and glanced back over my shoulder.
“Tomasz?”
“Yes, Alina?”
“It is time, my love. It is time you told me the truth about your situation.” He swallowed, hard, but then he nodded. “I am strong, and our love is strong. Whatever it is you have to tell me, it will change nothing.”
“You can’t promise me that, moje wszystko,” he whispered.
“I can,” I said, raising my chin. “And I do. Tomorrow?”
He closed his eyes as he inhaled, but then when he opened them again, he nodded, and I knew that the next time I saw him, he would tell me the truth.
I just hoped I really was ready to hear it.
* * *
I found Tomasz sitting in the clearing the next day, out in the open for the first time since our reunion. When he saw me coming, he looked away, regret and guilt written on his face.
I walked silently to sit beside him, but he didn’t move to touch me.
“I watch Emilia come with her new family on Sundays,” he murmured absentmindedly. We sat for a little while, listening to the quiet sounds of the woods. “I sit in a tree near the path on Sundays just so I can watch her. She is always holding Truda’s hand.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Mateusz is always right behind them. He scans for danger as he walks. I can tell he is a good father to her too.”
“He is.”
“I have watched you also, sitting on the steps with her after your lunch,” he said, then he smiled softly. “I see that my sister still talks a lot.”
“She does.”
“What is the paper she always carries with her when she visits?”
“Drawings,” I murmured. “She draws for me and for Mama. Flowers, mostly.” I didn’t tell him how dark those pictures had become. He seemed to have plenty to worry about without that knowledge. “They are very good—she is quite the artist.”
“Clever girl. She is sad, and she is scared, but she is loved,” he added, then he looked right at me. “Most of the Jewish children in Trzebinia are gone now, Alina.”
I frowned at the abrupt shift in the direction of our conversation.
“Well, yes... I know.”
“Most have starved to death or been taken to a camp or worked to death or executed.”
I squinted at him, confused.
“I do know this, Tomasz. It is awful and it’s sad but I know.”
“Perhaps, but do you know what the difference is between Emilia and those Jewish children?”
I struggled to find an answer to that, and in the end, could only offer a somewhat helpless, “I... I don’t know?”
“They are both children of God, but also children of our great country. They are both our hope and our future as a nation and as a species...and...that is all that should matter.” He shifted on the rock, then rose and took my hand. “Let’s walk as we talk today. I know you can’t go far from the field, but I can’t bring myself to look at you while I tell you this.”
And so we walked in silence, off the path, along the rocky outcrops where the slope was steep. After a moment or two, he squeezed my hand and he said softly, “If Emilia was a Jewish child in Warsaw, she would be in a ghetto today. I know food is scarce here, but the children in the ghetto have been eating sawdust and rocks to fill their empty little stomachs because after a while, hunger and pain feel the same and they just need relief. And I know people have been getting sick here, but the children in the ghetto have been dying at such a rate that the authorities can’t keep up with all of the bodies. And I know that Emilia is scared here, but she still smiles. The children in the ghetto do not smile, because there are no longer any glimpses of joy in that life. There is only fear and pain and hunger. And...” He drew in a shuddering breath, then he said miserably, “Alina, if Emilia was a Jewish child in Warsaw, she would be in that ghetto. And maybe she would be there because of me.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. I had tried to prepare myself for something shameful, but I was so horrified at that statement that I couldn’t hide my reaction to it.
“What?” I croaked. I could feel the blood draining from my face. Tomasz too looked much paler even than usual. He exhaled a heavy breath and began to rub the back of his neck. He kept glancing at me, like he was trying to figure out if there was a way to avoid honesty with me even in that moment, or perhaps he was sizing me up to see if I could handle the truth after all. The silence was stretching too long, and I couldn’t stand another second of it. I hardened my gaze and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Explain yourself,” I whispered fiercely. He closed his eyes and I raised my voice. “Explain yourself, Tomasz!”
His eyes dulled, and then his shoulders slumped forward.
“Do you remember when I told you that I want to become a pediatrician?” he whispered.
&n
bsp; “Of course,” I said, stiffly.
“I...there was...the surgeon. Remember I told you about the surgeon?”
I softened then—just a little, because I recognized the struggle in Tomasz’s voice and I realized that I was about to hear a new kind of story from him—a story he didn’t know how to tell. I stared at him, and in that moment, I had to force myself to focus on the knowledge that I had known this man for our entire lives. He was a good man. This might not be a good story, but the man telling it to me was essentially good. If what he had said just now was true, there would be a rationale for it, even if in that moment, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was.
But I did trust him, at least enough to give him the chance to explain. I reached for his hand and he looked at me in surprise.
“It’s okay, Tomasz,” I said gently. “Just tell me. I’m not going anywhere.”
I started to walk again, his hand tightly in mine. He fell into step beside me, drew in a deep breath, and then he released it in a rush with a tumble of words.
“I fought with the Polish army in Warsaw until they had overpowered us. We put up a Hell of a fight but we were no match for them, not in the end. The Nazis captured me and a group of my friends from the college, and we were given a choice—join the Wehrmacht, or they’d kill our families and put us into prison. They said they had intelligence on us all and they knew where our families were—and I thought if I did what they asked, I could save my father and Emilia and maybe even you, darling Alina, because what if they already knew we were engaged? I felt I had no choice. I didn’t know what else to do, so I joined the Wehrmacht.” He spat the word out bitterly. “I wore the filthy uniform and I did everything I was instructed to.”
I remembered my brothers telling me that students from Warsaw had been conscripted to the Wehrmacht, and how I’d scoffed at them—because I’d been so certain that Tomasz would never comply with such an order. But one thing I knew all too well about Tomasz was how deep the love he had for his family was—how deep his love for me was. They had found the only leverage that would have convinced him to betray his country.
“Did you kill people?” I asked unevenly.
“There are worse things than murder, Alina,” he whispered. “I betrayed our countrymen, and one day...one day when Poland is whole, you can bet there will be an accounting for cowards like me. Especially me. I went to Warsaw to learn to heal, and instead, I enforced their ideology. They liked me because I spoke some German from summers on vacation. They liked me because I was strong and fast—and because...” He broke off altogether now, and I heard the sob he tried to muffle. “The commander said I had a way about me that put people at ease. They assigned my unit to moving families to the Jewish area. The little children were so scared, and their mothers were so frightened, but I told them it was going to be okay. They just had to do what we told them to do and they’d be okay. But it wasn’t okay, not even in the early days, because there wasn’t enough room or food and it was just a way to corral them all into one place to make it easier to hurt them. They built a wall around that ghetto. It is Hell on earth and there is no escaping it, and I marched those children in there and I promised them that they’d be okay.”
He could no longer muffle the sobs, and I could no longer stand to hear this story without holding him. I stopped, turned to him and threw my arms around his waist. I pressed my face against his chest and I listened to the beat of his heart, the thumps coming faster and harder as the memories and his shame surfaced. I struggled in that moment—horror and revulsion at his actions, but also, growing understanding.
Because it finally made sense—the darkness I glimpsed in him from time to time. It was rooted in mortification and regret of the deepest kind; he had made decisions that betrayed the very values that made Tomasz Slaski the man he was.
He sank to the ground at one point, but I followed him, and then pushed him until he was resting against a tree trunk. Tomasz still couldn’t look at me, so I straddled his lap and I cupped his face in my hands.
“Tell me everything, my love,” I whispered. The tears rolled down his face into his beard, and he raised his eyes to the forest canopy above us.
“Your father would kill me if he knew what I’d done.”
“Perhaps not if he knew why, Tomasz.”
“Your father is a good man. He would have resisted.”
“He won’t judge you, Tomasz, and neither do I.”
“The Poles will kill me one day, if the Nazis don’t get me first. Good men like your father will find me and kill me for what I’ve done.”
I shook my head fiercely, then I kissed him, hard—the best thing I could think to do to stop such talk. He swallowed, then met my gaze again.
“Tomasz,” I said firmly. “Tell me the rest.”
He drew in a shuddering breath, then sighed.
“One day, I was patrolling the ghetto, and I saw him. Saul Weiss.”
“Your surgeon friend?”
“Yes. He and his wife, Eva, had been taken there too. They’d been dragged from a nice apartment near the hospital to a pathetic room in the ghetto they had to share with two other families. I pretended I didn’t recognize him at first, because I was so ashamed to be a part of what was happening to him. I looked away from him, and I walked some more, and then I glanced back, and do you know what he did? He smiled at me. Kindly, Alina. He smiled at me.” I could barely understand the words leaving Tomasz’s mouth because he was weeping again. I started to cry too, and I bent and kissed the tears away from his cheeks, then nuzzled my nose against his.
“I’m still here, my love,” I whispered. “Keep talking to me.”
“But he should have hated me, only he refused to debase himself with hatred. We had a shared history—a friendship—and even in those circumstances he extended warmth to me. Saul Weiss had lost everything because of people like me; people who didn’t have the courage to take a stand, and still? He chose to smile. That was the day that I broke inside and I knew I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“How did you get out of Warsaw?”
“The sewers,” he said, then he pressed his forehead against mine and paused for a moment, collecting himself. “We waded through the sewer. Me, Saul and his wife, Eva.”
“You let them escape with you?”
“No,” he laughed bitterly, then sadness crept over him. “You still think I am the hero of this story, Alina, but I am trying to tell you that I’m the villain. They let me escape with them. I went back to apologize to Saul. I dragged him into an empty shop front because I had to play the part, but once we were alone—it was me who wept, and a few days later when it was time to go, he trusted me enough to invite me to come with them. They had used the last of their money to pay a guide to lead them through the sewers. Honestly, I thought it was a suicide mission—that’s actually why I agreed to go. I had no thoughts of what I’d do if we made it, because it didn’t even seem a possibility, and death seemed far better than staying there in that uniform and dying of the rot inside. No one was more surprised than me when we climbed into daylight in the outskirts of Warsaw. Saul and Eva had no plan from there, so we started on foot—we lived under bridges and in barns for months on the way back here.”
“But...how? Did you come the whole way on foot? It is hundreds of miles, Tomasz. It’s...”
“Close to impossible, right?” he said sadly. “You see my point, then. We had so many close calls I kept thinking that anytime soon it would all be over...but luck or God or fate was on our side, because we eventually encountered a sympathetic farmer who connected us to the Zegota network—it is an underground council to help the Jews, supported by the government in exile. We would never have been able to cross over from the General Government area without their help.”
We fell into a bruised silence for a while. Eventually, I shifted onto the ground beside him, and wrapped my arms around h
is waist, then rested my head against his chest. I let my mind conjure images of all that he’d told me—even the parts that I didn’t want to imagine, because they were a part of Tomasz now, and I wanted to know and understand all of him.
After a while, he cleared his throat.
“You need to understand, Alina. Saul and Eva saved my life, and I have made it my mission to help them. They are hidden nearby and until I can repay them, I will do whatever I can to help them hide.”
“You steal food for them?”
“Yes, if I can find it. I capture birds sometimes, sometimes squirrels. I steal from farmers when I can—only because I know the Nazis take it all anyway so I’m really stealing from them. I’ve taken eggs from your own hen yard, but only because you have so many chickens I thought they wouldn’t be missed...only when I was truly desperate.”
I felt like I had to say the words aloud—just to put a name to it all. It took me another few minutes to find the courage to say the words, and even then, I whispered them.
“You are aiding Jews in hiding. Yes?”
“I have three groups of friends in hiding in the miles around your farm, including Saul and Eva. Many others are hidden in houses in the township and from time to time I help them too—but others working with Zegota usually bring them food. Sneaking round in the town is incredibly dangerous.”
“Everything you have just said is incredibly dangerous!” I exclaimed, drawing away from him. “Don’t you understand? The Nazis have made a decree that if you assist a Jewish person with so much as a glass of water, they will kill you and your whole family! How could you not even tell me about this? I am your family, Tomasz—but so is Emilia. You could have just gone into hiding alone without them and that would have been so much less dangerous—”
“Saul and Eva have a newborn,” Tomasz interrupted me, his expression suddenly hard. I blinked at him.