by Kelly Rimmer
CHAPTER 39
Alina
Everything worked just as we’d hoped and just as we’d planned, except of course for the very important exception: Tomasz was not there to see it. Saul and I were taken directly to the US embassy in London. Word was sent to Henry’s brother in America, and we were told we’d have wait for his arrival.
In the meantime, we were offered comfort like we wouldn’t have dared to dream of during the years of the occupation—clean linen, hot baths, treatment for the lice, more food than we knew what to do with. The staff even arranged a translator for us—and sourced for us a hacksaw.
When the air hit my forearm for the first time in all of those months, I looked down and saw the wrinkled, pale skin left behind, and I sobbed with relief as I reached to scratch it freely.
The cast had fallen into two pieces on my lap, and nestled within the lining was a roll of film as expected—but also, right beneath it, a folded piece of leather—a texture and color I immediately recognized as cut from the corner of an old satchel my father had owned.
“What is this?” Saul murmured, but I shook my head, bewildered. “Did you see him put this in there?”
“I was distracted...” Saul carefully pried the film container from the plaster and handed it to the translator for safekeeping. But as soon as this was done, Saul returned his attention to the cast. He lifted one half, stared down the line of his cut, and smiled to himself.
“Well done, Tomasz,” Saul said softly, then he glanced at me. “He knew where we would cut the cast.”
He very gently pried the leather out from the layers of plastered bandage, peeled off some residual plaster, then unfolded it. But as soon as Saul took a look inside the makeshift pocket, he passed it to me.
“It’s for you,” he said softly. “A letter.”
He stood then, squeezed my shoulder gently in reassurance, and he left me alone. My hands shook as I opened the leather pocket, and a piece of paper fell out and onto my lap.
Alina,
Perhaps I’m sitting beside you as you open this, and you’re laughing at me for doubting for even a second that we’d make it. But war is unpredictable, and life itself these days is risk. I just don’t know what’s going to happen and I can’t bear the thought of us being separated without reminding you of who we are.
Moje wszystko, the love I feel for you has been the fire that fueled my desire to be a better man. Until we are reunited, I will be longing for you, and I won’t rest until you are back with me where you belong.
Till that day—be safe, my love.
Tomasz
As I read that letter for the very first time, all I felt was guilt—an immense wave of sadness and regret that threatened to swamp me. I should have waited for him. I should have stayed. I pressed my fists over my mouth and pressed hard against a scream that surged as I considered a series of unbearable possibilities: What if Tomasz had arrived at the camp in the hours since I’d been lounging here in luxury in London? What if he was waiting at the gates even as I left, locked outside because of the overcrowding? Why didn’t I think to double-check that? Why didn’t I wait just a little longer? Why didn’t we discuss what I should do if he didn’t arrive before the British soldiers?
But the letter had fallen onto my lap, beside the fragile curve of my stomach, and when I looked back down to it I was reminded of why I’d agreed to leave with Saul. It was a reality that did not yet feel real, one that I still forgot myself at times.
Our baby.
If Tomasz knew we had made a baby, he’d have wanted me to do anything within my power to reach for a safer life for that child, even if it meant we were separated for a little longer. And there was no doubt in my mind even then that Saul had been right—pregnancy in the camp was a tenuous prospect at best, and caring for a newborn in those conditions all but impossible.
I had done the right thing, I promised myself. It might be a few extra weeks or months before Tomasz found me, but I calmed myself by refocusing on his promise that he would.
* * *
In the week at the embassy as we waited for Judge Adamcwiz, Saul and I made a new plan. We would meet with the judge together, and we’d admit the truth about who we really were. It only made sense—there was no more need for subterfuge, and surely Saul’s testimony would be all the more powerful once the judge understood it was actually personal experience.
But beyond the judge’s visit, we knew we couldn’t stay at the embassy forever, so Saul and I were hopeful that someone would help us find accommodations elsewhere in Britain. Saul would try to reconnect with the Polish army eventually, but until Tomasz arrived, he’d stay to help me find some kind of life here during the waiting.
My morning sickness had resurged since we arrived in London—partly because after years of a starvation diet, the heavy, rich foods on offer were both tempting and cruel to my fragile stomach. The night of the judge’s arrival, I was particularly sick, and in the end I spent the evening in our room riding the waves of nausea. Saul had to meet with the judge on his own—but this didn’t concern me. If the judge wanted to interview us about the suffering back in Poland, no one could give a better account of that than Saul Weiss.
Saul returned at our room very late that night, but he was unexpectedly pensive, his brow furrowed and his lips pinched. He fussed over me as he always did—tucked me into the blankets and checked that I’d been keeping up my water intake.
“I’m fine, Saul. Lost my dinner but no problem keeping water down,” I told him, but then I asked a little impatiently, “How was the meeting with the judge?”
“He is very interested in taking the information I gave him back to his government, but he said they seem determined to turn a blind eye. He’s hopeful Henry’s photographs will prove useful but...there have been other photos, other information from within Poland has found its way out, and they have been reluctant to act even with evidence...” He trailed off, then sat on the edge of the bed and started to rub his temples.
“Are we in trouble?” I asked him, my voice a bare whisper.
“No.”
“Saul,” I said, and then I sat up and rested my hand against his forearm. “Something is obviously wrong. Was he upset that we lied about our names?”
“Actually...” Saul hesitated, then he swallowed. He exhaled and looked at me almost pleadingly. “Alina, I didn’t tell him.”
I looked to him in shock—then searched his gaze, bewildered.
“But...”
“He said he’s arranged visas for us,” Saul blurted. “To America.”
“America?” I repeated incredulously. I sank back into the pillows and felt the room spin a little. America.
“It’s nearly impossible for Poles to get into America now, Alina—even for Judge Adamcwiz this was very difficult to organize. Their government is afraid the Nazis are sending spies disguised as refugees so they have all but shut the doors. Please understand—I just panicked when he said we already had passage. And Henry’s wife, Sally, has said she will let us live in her home until we find our feet. But the judge said it’s up to us—we can quite easily stay here, and there are people here who will help us too. But...America, Alina. Your baby could be an American—imagine the opportunities! And it is a world away from all this mess.” I nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to speak—instead, I stared down at my lap. Saul squeezed my shoulder. “We don’t have to decide right now. But the visas are not for Saul Weiss and Alina Dziak. They are for Tomasz and Hanna Slaski, so...”
He trailed off, and I looked up at him.
“You don’t even want to go to America,” I protested weakly. “You wanted to go back to the camp, right? To serve with the Polish army?”
He nodded, then he paused, and when he turned to me, his gaze was intensely serious.
“But...what I want does not matter in this moment, Alina. I am not proposing to
do this for myself. I made you a promise,” Saul said. “I told you that until Tomasz returned, I’d care for you and your baby as if you were my own. And there is no doubt in my mind that this is exactly what he would have wanted for you both.”
“But how will he ever find me?” I asked weakly.
“Do you really think a little thing like distance would stop him from coming for you? He walked across Poland for you once before. Finding his way to a boat to cross the Atlantic will be easy after that.”
* * *
Less than a month after we left the camp at Buzuluk, Saul and I stood with Frederick Adamcwiz on the deck of the biggest boat I’d ever seen, staring in wide-eyed wonder as Ellis Island loomed before us. I was dazzled and awed and, frankly, terrified.
All I knew about this country were the things that Tomasz had told me, and even at the time, I had hardly believed him. Now, Sally Adamcwiz would travel to pick us up, and we would make our home in a tropical place that had barely any winter, a house so close to the beach that we could walk there. I was excited about the possibilities of this new life, and so hopeful—because I knew that Tomasz would find me there, and until then, I had my dear friend Saul by my side. I glanced at Saul then, to find he was staring down into the water in silence.
“Are there Jews here?” I blurted. Frederick gave me a patient gentle smile.
“Oh yes, Hanna. There are many Jews in America.”
“And it’s safe for them here?” I asked him hesitantly.
“Well, we have some problems...” Frederick admitted. “Especially here in New York, where I live. There have been some issues in recent years with gangs of youths harassing our Jewish people—a few incidents of businesses being vandalized, a cemetery desecrated... But, of course, nothing like what you saw in your homeland. America is a peaceful place, I assure you.”
I watched Saul as Frederick spoke. I watched as the blood drained from my friend’s face. I watched as his hands against the rail began to shake until he clutched it tightly in his fist to hide the tremble. I watched when he closed his eyes on what I knew was an intense wave of déjà vu.
His calm wisdom had impressed me until that moment, but I had just discovered that Frederick Adamcwiz was incredibly naive. I knew with absolute certainty that small problems in a country can become immense tragedies when left unchecked. It started small in Germany. It even started small in Poland, long before the occupation. It started with a small group of people harassing and vandalizing and desecrating, and it ended with trainloads of my countrymen shipped to furnaces and dumped into a river.
I reached for Saul’s hand then, and I squeezed it hard. As soon as Frederick left us to go pack up his luggage, I turned to Saul and I shook my head fiercely.
“You have had your lifetime’s share of persecution and suffering, Saul Weiss. Until we are absolutely sure this is a safe place for you, we need to keep your secret.”
“I can’t go through it again. God forgive me, I can’t.”
“We will keep it to ourselves until we know this place is safe,” I promised him. “It may be some time until Tomasz arrives. You deserve a few months’ rest.”
We embraced there on the deck—witnesses to a vow to hold on to a secret that we thought we could simply reveal one day. We had no idea of the gravity of that lie. We didn’t realize that time has a way of racing past you—that the long hard days sometimes make for very short years. Before we knew it, I was holding my daughter, who was always somehow our daughter because Saul took his vow to care for her very seriously from the moment of her birth. And as soon as his English was up to the challenge, Julita’s beloved “Da-da” was studying and certifying and working so damned hard to support us all, and he was doing it all under Tomasz’s name.
The day Saul was recertified as a physician in the American medical system was the day he applied to complete a program to become a pediatric surgeon. We didn’t talk about the twist on the specialty he’d achieved at home, but we both knew why he’d chosen it. And by then, we were hopelessly trapped within the prison of a lie that had seemed so sensible and so altruistic at the time. My false name was one thing—a small detail I’d eventually adjusted to, something I could have undone at any time if the need arose. Saul’s situation was so much more complicated.
It was Tomasz’s name on his certificates—Tomasz who was employed, Tomasz who held a lease for our home and later the finance arrangement for the car we purchased.
Tomasz who took a residency at the hospital as a pediatric surgeon.
Tomasz who climbed the ranks at the hospital until he was a consultant, and he was training dozens of medical students, saving hundreds of lives a year.
Only Saul and I knew that the real Tomasz was the man with the laughing eyes, the man captured in the photo I found while helping Sally in the days after Henry’s death, when we sorted through the enormous collection of duplications she’d amassed from the film he sent home over the years.
And only I knew that the tiny shoe Saul kept hidden in the top of our cupboard had actually belonged to his first daughter, his desperately loved Tikva Weiss.
It was Saul I shared my home with, Saul I shared my parenting highs and lows with. Saul who shared my bed, because we had grown so used to sleeping side by side since our “wedding” at Buzuluk. The few times we tried to establish separate bedrooms I’d wake to hear him shouting and sobbing in his sleep. Eventually, we accepted the reality of our situation. In some absolutely unique way, we were bonded to one another in spirit, if not in body.
I could not be Eva for Saul, and despite what every person in our lives thought, Saul would never be Tomasz for me. Instead, we were the very best of friends—partners in every way except that one which usually defines a marriage. We pined in company somehow—each of us eternally dedicated to our lost loves. And we were happy, and the life we built never stopped astounding me. I reveled in providing my daughter a life where she never had to learn what hunger or oppression meant. I watched as Judge Frederick’s yearly visits with books and toys at Christmastime spawned hero worship in Julita. By the time he passed away, she hadn’t yet hit puberty, but she’d already announced her intention to go to law school one day—and even more miraculous than that, she had the opportunities to make that dream a reality.
But as blessed as Saul and I were, I always waited. Every night, I’d look to the window as I fell asleep, and I’d let the hope flicker for just a second, like the flare of a match that doesn’t quite take. I’d imagine some unlikely scenario where Tomasz had been imprisoned somewhere, but even after all of these months then years and then decades, he would soon be free and would come for me like he’d promised. Perhaps he’d lost his memory? Perhaps he’d been injured and could not travel.
In my heart of hearts, the only thing that I knew to be true was that Tomasz had promised me we’d always find each other. Distance, time—these things were surely irrelevant against a love as big as ours—one day, he’d appear without warning just like he did last time, and life would begin again in earnest.
I never stopped longing, and I never, ever stopped waiting.
Perhaps it sounds foolish, but the strength of hope I held in Tomasz deceived me. I didn’t even think of Saul and I as old until we were very old indeed. I had an adult daughter—a strong-willed, furiously ambitious daughter—but in some ways, I felt like through all of the hard years and all of the hard work, I had clung to the last artifact of that childish version of myself, and the innocent girl inside me was still waiting for her hero to return.
Saul stopped working as a surgeon when his passport said he was seventy, but he and I knew he was seventy-five. He taught at the university for another decade. He loved his work with a passion—that’s why I was bewildered when he suddenly decided to retire. He’d hidden the signs so well, but as we climbed into bed after his retirement celebrations, he asked me to join him for a neurological consult. Just a few da
ys later, we had the diagnosis: vascular dementia.
We wept together, and then he took my hands and he asked me to go to the synagogue with him.
“It would be an honor,” I whispered, and he smiled sadly at me.
“Thank you, Alina,” he whispered, because he had always called me that when we were alone.
“What do you want to tell Julita and Alice?” I asked him. A shadow crossed his face, a glimmer of uncertainty that almost broke my heart to see.
“They are mine, aren’t they, Alina?”
“How could they not be?”
He smiled then, a relieved, grateful smile.
“We will tell them the truth, then.”
“They will understand.”
“How could anyone understand?”
“Then they will, at least, forgive us.”
But Julita is a busy woman, and she’d just started on the district court bench. Saul’s degeneration happened so fast from there—as if he had held off his demise until he retired, but then it became very real in such a rush. For a few frantic months, I was focused on trying to convince Julita or Alice to join me on a trip back to Poland while I could still go. Then, by the time I realized we really needed to tell Julita the truth, Saul was no longer up to such a conversation, and I simply could not bear to do it alone.
Tomasz’s last instructions to me were to care for Saul Weiss, and to Saul’s very last breath, I honored that promise. I came to love him very deeply—and I know he loved me too. That very different kind of love was inevitably the foundation of my life in America, and it was a beautiful life indeed. Even if, to my very last breath, I will long for Tomasz—my first love.
My true love.
I’m near to that final breath now, locked helplessly here within my own thoughts—which is why it’s utterly shocking that all I really feel in these hours is an astounding peace. It’s all because of my beautiful Alice, with those laughing green eyes she inherited from my Tomasz—those eyes that she has passed on to our special, perfect Eddie. It is somehow fitting that it was Alice who found Tomasz for me, because she has always reminded me of her grandfather, the one she would never meet. She shares that same love of learning and knowledge and story, the same sense of compassion, the same ability to dream big despite her circumstances—even if she sometimes forgets she’s allowed to do just that.