The Things We Cannot Say

by Kelly Rimmer

  He nodded silently. “Yes. She is coordinating the efforts for this region.”

  “And Jan was angry because she was helping Jews?” I guessed. Tomasz shook his head.

  “Do you remember the farmer I didn’t trust?”

  I gaped at him.

  “Jan is hiding Jewish people in his house?” I said incredulously. “This...that makes no sense, Tomasz.”

  “He has sealed himself off into the front half of the house because he is too stupid to see through the Nazi propaganda, so he is convinced my friends carry disease,” Tomasz said, his disgust evident. “And he allows Saul and Eva to use only the tiniest space at the back of the house, so there is a buffer between them. Make no mistake, Alina. He does this only for the gold. Nadia only approached him because we were desperate. We had to find somewhere safe for Eva to give birth.”

  “This is why Justyna and Ola left.”

  “Ola didn’t want any part of this. She was furious with Jan and Nadia for risking Justyna’s life.” Tomasz brushed his hand against my cheek.

  “Let me come with you tonight,” I pleaded.

  “No, Alina. Not when I must go into the township. If I was caught breaking the curfew it would be bad, but I would at least have a chance of talking my way out of danger. But you are too memorable, my love. You must stay here hidden for now.”

  “But what if you don’t come back?” I whispered. I pressed his hand to my jaw, trying to stop my teeth from chattering.

  “Do you think they could stop me coming back, Alina? After all we have survived? After all I have been through to get back here to you?” Tomasz whispered, then he brushed his lips against mine. “Not a chance, moje wszystko. But if I don’t come back as quickly as I plan to, just hide in here. You have food and water that will last for weeks, and I will make sure Nadia knows to come find you.”

  He packed his little rucksack with potatoes and a handful of eggs, then he climbed up out of the cellar, replaced the rug and the table, and then went on his way.

  CHAPTER 23

  Alina

  I heard the clock chime one hour, then two, then three. And all the while, I waited, and I rode the waves of panic and fear as they came. I wanted to howl at the injustice of it all—I wanted to be angry with Tomasz for leaving me in the cellar alone on the worst day of my life—I wanted to go back in time and bury my head under the pillow on my bed upstairs and pretend that none of this was happening at all.

  It was just past 5:00 a.m. when I heard a sound upstairs. I heard muffled movement above me, then the hatch lifted, and when I recognized Tomasz in the opening, I burst into tears. He waited until he’d set the hatch back in place before he comforted me. He was shaking too, from adrenaline and the cold, I guessed.

  “Did you find anything out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Where have they been taken?”

  “To Os´wie˛cim,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, then I exhaled with relief. “Okay. To the town, then?” That didn’t sound so bad at all. Os´wie˛cim was a nice enough place, a place much like Trzebinia with many factories and homes. I imagined for a moment them both taking a job on a factory line for the Nazis—it wasn’t ideal, but I felt confident that they could survive it.

  “No, Alina. Not in the town. They’ve been taken to the work camp,” Tomasz said, then he drew in a deep breath. “Although there are two there now, and I couldn’t find out which one.”

  The daydream of my parents on a factory line shattered, and now instead I saw them crammed in like sardines with the tens of thousands of farm workers Tomasz had warned me about. My heart sank all over again.

  “It does not matter which camp, does it?” I surmised, suddenly feeling very heavy. “We can’t rescue them anyway. Or does Nadia Nowak have the ability to circumvent the entire Nazi army?”

  “No. It does not matter which camp,” he conceded heavily.

  “But they will just wait out the war there. They will work hard and stay out of trouble, just as they always have,” I said with some determination, until a thought struck me. I stiffened a little. “Wait—these are the camps with the furnaces?”

  “Yes,” Tomasz whispered. “They call the smaller camp Auschwitz. The larger camp is called Birkenau.” He shifted on the bed, drawing me closer. “There are large furnaces at both camps, and—”

  “Mama said the furnaces are just to heat the water,” I interrupted him, but even to my own ears, I sounded slightly hysterical.

  “We don’t know for sure. No one outside the camps knows for sure,” he said, but then he drew in a sharp breath and his tone hardened. “But the Nazis have been seen transporting trucks full of ash to dump in the river, and there is some suspicion that this may be the remains of some of the prisoners. Perhaps your parents will be lucky...or perhaps they will manage to find a way to survive. But thousands of people have gone into the camps, thousands of Jewish people from many nations, thousands of Catholic Poles like your parents and thousands of political prisoners...but only recently have the Nazis needed to expand their accommodation. All of those prisoners are going somewhere, and whether they are murdered or worked to death—the most likely place they are ending up is in the furnace.”

  This was the new Tomasz—the man who was broken by hardship and remorse, the realist who had replaced my beautiful dreamer. He was giving me a verbal slap in the face because he believed that I needed a reality check. For just a moment, I hated him for it—until I remembered that none of this was his fault. I started to cry then, and he rained kisses down over my face.

  “They aren’t coming back, Alina.”

  “But maybe...”

  “They aren’t coming back,” he whispered. “If I can find a way out of Poland, we have to take it. Promise me you’ll come with me if I can find a way.”

  “Out of Poland?” I repeated through my sobs. “That’s not even possible. How would we get out of Poland?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Not yet,” he admitted. “I met a photographer a few months ago. He was documenting the work of Zegota and I know he was using couriers to smuggle film out of the country. He asked me then if I would make a journey for him. I was tempted, Alina, I will be honest with you. It was just before we reunited and I nearly went, I thought I would try to flee, and then maybe you could have followed me after, but I couldn’t make myself leave you. Now...well, I don’t even know if he’s still nearby but Nadia is trying to find him. If we can find him and he will help us, moje wszystko, there is no other option. Not for us, not now. We have no choice but to try to get out.”

  “But we could stay!” I whispered. “We could live undercover as you’ve been doing—”

  “I don’t want that life for you, Alina.”

  “But we could stay here—”

  “The food will eventually run out—and if the fence is built before then, we’d be trapped inside this zone.”

  “We could try to get into the city—”

  “I do not want this life for us, Alina,” Tomasz repeated—raising his voice, hardening the tone again, until I pulled away from him. “Yes, there may be ways we could survive here—perhaps we could get false identity papers. We could shift into Krakow or Warsaw and try to live in plain sight. Maybe we’d be caught and we’d be killed. Maybe we’d survive and suffer through however many more years of starvation and abuse the war would inflict upon us. But there is no way for us to live here. And there is no way for us to build the life we’d planned. Not if we stay.” He sighed heavily, then pulled me close again. “I need for you to be safe.”

  “But this is home,” I said. “Poland is our home. What else is there for us?”

  “Home is not the country we stand in—it’s us. Home is the future we have been planning and dreaming of. We can build it anywhere. And yes, you are a tiny waif of a thing—” I grunted in protest, and he laughed softly “—bu
t you are tough, Alina, and I think you know it too now. I can see it in you—a fire to survive—a fire to have a better life. It is the fierce flash of indignation in your eyes when you think you are out of the loop on a secret. It is the strength you showed when you decided to stand by me, knowing that doing so could get you killed. And if we can get out of this place together?” His tone softened again, until he was gently pleading with me. “Just imagine it, moje wszystko. I could start studying again and finally become a doctor, maybe you could study. We could get jobs...a house...have children one day and give them a future too. Don’t you see? To stay is to accept death at the hands of these monsters, and they have taken enough from us both already. Our only choice is to try to run.”

  “What if we try and fail?”

  “Then...” He paused, and for a moment, fumbled for words, then he whispered, “Well, Alina? At least we will fail together. That’s worth something, isn’t it?”

  I squeezed his hand, drew in a shaky breath, and then closed my eyes. In some ways I felt like I had nothing left to lose—but I did have something left to lose, and he was sitting right there with me, begging me to try to run.

  I was beyond scared. But if Tomasz was going, I didn’t really have a choice, because staying behind wasn’t even an option anymore.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Alice

  I spend the next thirty-six hours in a panicked marathon of desperate organizing that amuses my daughter and confuses my son. Eddie watches me silently as I search the web for ways to communicate to him that Mommy is going away. In the end, I write a social script that Wade can give him each day to remind Eddie where I am, then create a calendar of days he can count down. I write strict instructions to Wade to mark off a day each morning so Eddie can see how many sleeps are left. I print out a photo of myself and stick it at the end, then color all around it in bright green highlighter for emphasis.

  When I’m done, I look into my son’s beautiful green eyes and I burst into tears. Eddie ponders this for a moment, then he silently walks away. He returns a few minutes later with his iPad in his hand and asks:

  Mommy hurt?

  I calm myself down, assure him that I’m okay, set him in front of Thomas the Tank Engine and start documenting his routine for Wade. I try to strike a balance between wanting Wade to do everything just right, and just giving him the basics so that he can get through each day. The problem is, with Eddie, there’s not really such a thing as “just good enough.” Everything does have to be just right. I know Wade doesn’t get that, so I know he won’t respect it. I have no idea what’s going to happen with my son while I’m away.

  In the seven years since he was born, the whole world has changed for me. I joined a club I never wanted to be a part of—the autism mom’s club—and its membership cost was the life I’d planned until then. Someone once told me that having a child with autism was like taking a trip to another country where you don’t speak the language, and at the time, I thought that analogy was clever and fitting. But over the last few years as the extent of Eddie’s disability really became apparent, I’ve wondered if instead of being in a whole other country, I’m on a whole new planet.

  Now I’m leaving Eddie for six whole nights. I’m traveling through time, back to a phase in my life when I didn’t have a son who commanded the vast bulk of my focus. Will I miss him? Will I fret for him? Or the most frightening possibility of all—will I feel relief to be unburdened of the responsibility for his care? I love Eddie—God, I adore him. But so often when I think about the life I have with my son, I feel completely alone and endlessly overwhelmed.

  The spiteful part of me hopes that in the next six days, Wade gets a taste of what that’s like. That’s the part of me that knows all of this documentation I’m doing about Eddie’s routine is pointless, because my husband is far too arrogant to bother to follow it.

  I have a PhD, Ally. I can handle a few days with two kids.

  It’s the casual dismissal of the complexity of my role in our family that goads me—rarely spoken so explicitly, but implicit in so many of our interactions over the last few years. Even now, when Wade is very much in my good books for how supportive he’s being, I know he’s underestimating the difficulty of what he’s signed up for in this coming week.

  And I’m chiefly concerned about Eddie, but Callie factors into this equation too. She’s a beautiful little girl, but her giftedness is a challenge of its own sometimes. She’s a terror when she’s understimulated so her schedule is jam-packed, and her mind runs at a million miles an hour all of the time. That needs careful monitoring, because when it all overwhelms her, she tends to melt down. Wade’s never really had to deal with that side of her. What would he even do if she was upset?

  I draw in a deep breath and promise myself that whatever happens, they will survive. They will all survive. And so will I.

  * * *

  I’ve organized everything I can organize, I’ve emailed the tour guide everything she needed, and I’ve packed with military precision—but the minute we step into the airport, the enormity of what I’m leaving behind settles around me like a heavy fog, and suddenly, that’s all I can think about. I feel only dread and anxiety and regret—what a stupid, impulsive thing I’ve done! What if something happens to Eddie or Callie and I’m on the other side of the planet? It would take me days to get home. And—my God—what if something happens to Babcia? What do I really think I’m going to find for her, anyway? I don’t even know what she’s looking for.

  “Alice,” Wade says suddenly.

  I turn to him, and I’m suddenly aware that I’m audibly hyperventilating. He grips my upper arms, and he stares down at me.

  “I will not let you down,” he says softly. “The kids will be fine. I promise you.”

  “This was a mistake,” I breathe. “I was impulsive and angry and I’m upset—”

  “No,” he interrupts me, but he does so gently, carefully. I’m struck by the tenderness in his voice, and I trail off my protestations to let him take his time before he explains. He draws in a deep breath, then he lifts his hand from my upper arm to cup my face gently between his palms. “In these past few years, you’ve lived and breathed our family. You’re a wonderful wife. A brilliant mother. But... Ally...” He draws in another soft breath, then his gaze grows pleading. “As great as that is, that’s not all you wanted to be, honey. I know this trip is for Babcia. But... I also... I kind of hope it’s also for you. A chance for you to drop some of the heaviness of our family life and for me to catch it, so you can pick up something else too. I’ve been doing some thinking since we talked the other night. Never for a second of our life together have you asked me to put my stuff second. Well, this week I want you to know what that feels like, so you can know that I do appreciate it. Maybe...we can figure all of this out and share the load of it better one day. I don’t know what that looks like, or how we do it, but I want to be a better husband for you. A better Dad...for...for Eddie.”

  That’s the first time in years he’s called Eddie by his nickname. It’s also the closest Wade has ever come to admitting he’s failed our son, and in doing so, he’s failed me. I should probably be upset at this acknowledgment—that he does, in fact, know exactly what he’s done to us in these years of neglect of his emotional obligations.

  But I’m not upset.

  Because this is not news to me, and it’s not news to Wade, and now it’s not unspoken. There’s something exceptional about having this awful thing out in the open between us, and just like that, I can breathe again. I know it’s going to be hard to get on that plane. I can’t even imagine how I’m going to sleep tonight, knowing I’m so far away from them, knowing I’m all on my own.

  But Wade is right. There’s a chance here for me. Somehow it’s simultaneously a chance he’s giving me and a chance I’m taking greedily all for myself, and that’s ki
nd of how a partnership should work—we are both making this happen, for Babcia and for me.

  I have no idea what waits for me in Poland. I have no idea how I’m going to find answers when I don’t even know the questions but the challenge of that goal suddenly seems divine.

  “Go,” Wade says, and he kisses my forehead gently. “I love you. I won’t let you down. Go on your trip...and try to have some fun too, okay?”

  I have to turn away before the tears overwhelm me, so I do—I spin away from him and I grasp my suitcase tightly in my hand and I march to the check-in counter.

  CHAPTER 25

  Alice

  I’ve been worried about the language barrier, given the only Polish words I know are Jen dobry—hello—and, somehow during my many hours being babysat by Babcia as a toddler, I picked up the phrase Is´c´ potty—go potty—neither of which seem likely to be very useful in all of the steps I need to take before I meet with Zofia tomorrow. But as soon as I clear customs, I find the driver from the hotel waiting, holding an iPad that displays the logo of the hotel and my name. He introduces himself in lightly accented English.

  “Nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m Martyn. Long trip? Let’s get you to the hotel.”

  I settle into the back of the late-model luxury car and stare out the window as the city flies past. Everything is much more modern than I’d expected, with seemingly endless construction work and block after block of modern buildings as we move through the city. The traffic is heavily congested, worse even than the traffic I’m accustomed to when I drive at home. Some single-lane roads manage to house simultaneous modes of transport—cars and buses, a tramway and the surprisingly heavy foot and bicycle traffic. At the outskirts of the city, other than the plentiful advertising being in Polish, I could almost be at home. But as we get deeper in, the modernity fades from the facades of the buildings that line the streets—until I am surrounded by stone and brick buildings that wouldn’t have looked much different even a hundred years ago.