The Kommandant's Girl

by Pam Jenoff

  But in truth I know that the situation is deadly serious. By walking into the Nazi headquarters every day, I will be entering the lion’s den. It is not just my own safety I will be risking: if my true identity is discovered, it will put everyone around me, my parents, Lukasz, even Krysia, in grave danger. Krysia. I can see the look on her face as she urged me to take the Kommandant’s offer, the worried way she has watched me ever since. She, too, knows the stakes. She must have very good reasons for wanting me to do this. At last my eyes grow heavy and I finally doze off.

  After what seems like only minutes, I am awakened by the predawn sounds of the neighbors’ rooster crowing. I can tell by the way the early morning light falls through the maple tree outside my window that it is approximately five o’clock. I lie still for a moment, listening to the horses’ hoofs pound against the dirt road as they pull the farmers’ wagons down from the hills, carrying produce to the markets. Staring at the ceiling, I hesitate. Once I set that first foot on the floor, it will all begin. If I do not get out of bed, I think, perhaps I can stop time. It is a familiar game, one I played as a child when there was something I did not want to do. It did not work then, I remind myself, and it will not work now. And it will not do to be late my first day on the job. I take a deep breath and stand.

  I rise and wash quietly. Hoping not to wake Krysia or Lukasz, I tiptoe downstairs, trying not to let the soles of my shoes squeak on the hardwood steps. Krysia is already seated at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper over a cup of tea. I wonder if she slept at all last night. “Dzien dobry,” she greets me, her voice fresh. She rises and looks me up and down, appraising my outfit. I have chosen from among her castoffs a white shirtwaist and a gray skirt, belting the oversize shirt at the waist. The skirt, which was supposed to be knee-length, falls nearly to my ankles. “Very professional,” she remarks, gesturing for me to sit. She pushes a plate of steaming scrambled eggs across the table toward me. “Now eat.”

  I shake my head, nauseous at the smell. “I’m too nervous.” Even as I speak, my stomach jumps and a wave of queasiness washes over me. “And I should be going, I don’t want to be late.”

  Krysia hands me a small lunch pail and a light wool cloak. “Try to relax. You’ll be more likely to make mistakes if you’re nervous. Just stay quiet, observe as much as you can…and trust no one.” She pats my shoulder. “You’ll do fine. Lukasz and I will be here when you come home.”

  It is not quite seven o’clock when I set out. The residents of Chelmska are early risers; as I walk down the road, past the houses and farms, there seems to be someone out in every yard, gardening or tending livestock or sweeping their front porch. They look up as I pass, my presence at Krysia’s still a curiosity to them. I nod my head and try to smile as I go, as though it is perfectly normal for me to be heading into the city at this early hour. At the end of the road where it meets the roundabout, I pause and inhale deeply. I have grown to love early mornings since coming to Krysia’s house. There is a thin layer of fog hovering over the fields that I know will lift like a flock of birds by midmorning as the sun rises. The air smells of wet grass. As I take in the scene, my heart grows lighter, and for a second, I almost forget to be nervous.

  At the bus stop I wait without speaking beside an elderly woman carrying an assortment of garden herbs in her tattered basket. The bus arrives and I follow the woman aboard, passing one of the tokens Krysia has given me to the driver. The bus rumbles along the unevenly paved road, pulling over every half kilometer or so. The trees, bent toward the road with their heavy loads of leaves, brush the roof of the bus as it passes. When all of the seats are filled and still more passengers continue to board, I stand to give my place to an old man, who smiles toothlessly at me.

  Twenty minutes later, I step off the bus and, after a short walk, find myself standing at the foot of Wawel Castle. Looking up at the enormous stone fortress, I inhale sharply. I have not seen Wawel since I went to the ghetto last autumn. Now as I approach, its domes and spires seem even grander than I remembered. For the centuries that Kraków had been the capital of Poland, Wawel was the seat of kings, and many royal figures were buried in its cathedral. The actual capital had long since moved to Warsaw, and Wawel had become a museum—until eight months ago when it became the seat of the Nazi General Government. Compose yourself, I think, but my legs tremble and threaten to give out from under me as I walk up the long stone entranceway to the castle.

  “Anna Lipowski,” I manage to say to the guard at the top of the ramp. He does not look at me, but checks my name off a list and summons a second guard, who escorts me into the castle through a stone archway. We proceed through a dizzying array of high-ceilinged hallways and marble staircases. The musty odor reminds me of the time when I visited the castle on a school trip as a child. But this is not the Wawel Castle of my childhood. The corridors are sterile now, the pictures of Polish kings removed. They are lined instead with endless red flags, each bearing a white circle with a large black swastika inside. Almost everyone we pass wears a Nazi military uniform and greets with a crisp, firm, “Heil Hitler!” I nod, unable to return the greeting. My escort, perhaps taking my silence as nervousness, answers loudly enough for both of us.

  When at last it seems that we can walk no farther or higher, the guard stops before an enormous oak door bearing a plaque with Kommandant Richwalder’s name on it. He raps sharply on the door twice, then, without waiting for a response, opens it and gestures for me to enter. The room is a reception area of some sort, windowless and too warm. A large-boned woman with a wide nose and bad skin sits at a small desk in the center of the room. Her head is bowed and her enormous brown coil of hair bobs as she works, filling in spaces on a lined graph with intensity. If she’s here, I wonder, then what am I to do? Hope rises within me. Perhaps some mistake has been made and there is no position available for me. Maybe I can just go home. But even as I think this, I know that it is impossible; Kommandant Richwalder is not the type of man to make that sort of mistake.

  I stand awkwardly by the door for several minutes. The woman does not look up. Helplessly, I turn around, but the guard who escorted me has disappeared into the hallway, leaving me alone. The woman behind the desk does not speak. “Przepraszam…” I finally say, excusing myself.

  “Ja?” she replies, and I can tell from her pronunciation that she does not speak German.

  “I am Anna Lipowski.” There is no reaction or response. “Kommandant Richwalder instructed me to report here….”

  “Oh, yes.” At last she stands, inspecting me from head to toe with a sweeping glance. “You are the Kommandant’s new personal assistant.” There is an inscrutable hint of disdain in the way that she pronounces my job title that makes me uneasy. She gestures for me to follow her through a second door behind her desk. “This is the anteroom.” I look around. The room is smaller than the reception area, but has nicer furnishings and a cool breeze coming from two large open windows on either side. “You will work here. The Kommandant’s office is through that door.” She waves her head in the direction of another door at the back of the room. “The Kommandant had a meeting this morning and apologizes for being unable to welcome you personally.” It is hard to imagine the imposing Kommandant apologizing for anything.

  The woman continues on as though giving a speech. “We are privileged to be working in the governor’s executive offices. Only the most senior officials and their staffs are located in Wawel. The rest of the General Government is located in the administrative building across town on Pomorskie Street.” I nod, trying to reconcile myself to the idea that working for the Nazis could somehow be construed as a privilege. “The Kommandant is the governor’s first deputy. All of the various directorates in southern Poland report to him. He will explain your duties to you in greater detail when he returns. For a start, you will keep his calendar and answer his correspondence.” She pronounces the word correspondence as though it were a matter of national security. “I am Malgorzata Turnau,” she conclu
des. “If I can help you at all, please let me know.”

  “Thank you.” I realize then that this woman’s position is subordinate to mine, and the strange look I saw cross her face when she said my job title was one of jealousy. She probably hoped to move up to the very position I am to fill. But any sympathy I might have had for her is dampened by the reverence with which she described our work and the fervent look in her eyes. She is obviously one of those Poles whose loyalties have been swayed to the Nazis, and I can tell right away she will do anything to curry favor with the Kommandant. When Krysia had said to trust no one, she clearly had the Malgorzatas of the world in mind. I knew she would be watching me.

  Malgorzata walks over to the desk that sits to the left side of the room under one of the windows. “This is the Kommandant’s mail.” She picks up a clipboard and hands it to me. “Open each piece and log it on this chart by sender, date and subject.” She shows me then how to separate the mail into piles: one for those pieces of correspondence that require the Kommandant’s personal attention, another for those that can be answered with a form response, and a final stack for those that need to be routed to other offices. “And don’t open anything marked confidential,” she instructs before leaving the room, slamming the door behind her.

  Alone, I exhale, sitting down behind the desk. In addition to the letters, there is a small stack of office supplies that has been left on the desk for me, which I organize and place in the drawers. I pause to look around my new quarters. The anteroom is about three by five meters, with a small sofa located across from the desk. The windows, one each over the desk and sofa, are almost too high to see out of, but if I raise myself on my toes, I can just catch a glimpse of the river.

  I reach for the stack of mail and begin opening the envelopes. Remembering what Krysia had said, I try to read as much of it as possible, but it is remarkably mundane, mostly invitations to social functions and dry-looking, official reports comprised of German military terminology that I cannot comprehend. About a third of the way down the stack, there is one envelope emblazoned with the word Confidential in red ink across the seal. I pull it out and hold it up to the light, but it is impossible to see through the thick paper. I examine the seal of the envelope. Perhaps I can open it and then close it again, I think, working at the edge of the seal with my fingernail.

  The door swings open. I look up. The Kommandant strides into the anteroom, cloak flung over one shoulder. My breath catches. He is even more striking than I remembered. A smaller man, also in uniform, follows him, carrying two black leather briefcases. I rise to my feet. “Anna,” the Kommandant says, smiling and walking toward me. He takes my right hand and I half expect him to kiss it as he did the night we met at Krysia’s, but instead he simply shakes it in a businesslike manner. “Welcome.” He gestures to the other man. “This is Colonel Diedrichson, my military attaché.”

  Colonel Diedrichson sets down the briefcases. He is not smiling. “What are you doing with that?” he demands, pointing to my left hand.

  I freeze. I had forgotten that I am still holding the confidential envelope, the seal half open. “M-Malgorzata told me I was to open the mail,” I manage to say.

  “She didn’t tell you that confidential mail is not to be opened?” he demands. I shrug and shake my head slightly, praying that he will not ask her.

  “I’m sure it was just a mistake,” the Kommandant interjects.

  “This—” Colonel Diedrichson snatches the envelope from my hand “—is why I wanted to import the clerical staff from Berlin.”

  “Thank you, Colonel, that will be all,” the Kommandant says.

  Diedrichson raises his right hand. “Heil Hitler.” He picks up the briefcases before turning on one heel and leaving. When he has gone, the Kommandant turns back to me. He does not speak but opens the door at the rear of the anteroom and gestures for me to enter. My hands shaking, I pick up a notepad from my desk and follow him inside.

  The Kommandant’s office is like nothing I have ever seen. It is enormous, bigger than an entire floor of Krysia’s house. The office is like three rooms in one. Immediately by the door are a sofa and a half-dozen chairs arranged around a low table in the manner of a living room. At the far end of the room stands a conference table surrounded by at least fourteen chairs. In the center, between these two areas, is an enormous mahogany desk. A lone framed photograph sits on the corner of the desk. Across from the Kommandant’s desk, there is a towering grandfather clock. The thick red velvet curtains that cover the wall of windows behind the desk have been pulled back with gold ropes, revealing a stunning panoramic view of the river.

  The Kommandant gestures to the sofa by the door. “Please, sit down,” he says, walking toward the desk. I perch in the location he indicated and wait expectantly as he shuffles through a stack of papers. A moment later he looks up. “I’m sure Malgorzata informed you of your basic duties, correspondence and scheduling.” I nod. “If that was all I needed, I could have anyone do it, including Malgorzata. Anna,” he says, crossing the room to where I am seated. As he approaches, I shiver involuntarily.

  “Are you cold?” he asks.

  “N-no, Herr Kommandant,” I stammer, cursing inwardly at my nervousness. I must do a better job of concealing it.

  “Oh, good.” He sits down in the chair beside me. As he draws closer, I suddenly notice a swastika pin fastened to his collar. Had he been wearing it last time? I had not noticed. Then again, last time I had not known what Sachsenhausen was. He continues, “Anna, I am the Governor’s first deputy. That fool Ludwig was not entirely mistaken in what he said the night of the dinner party—I am charged with carrying out all of the governor’s orders. All of them.” His eyebrows rise, as if to emphasize his words. “A great many others would like to have my position.” He stands up again, pacing the floor in front of me. “The General Government is full of vipers who, for all of their lip service to the ideals of the Reich, would gladly stab me in the back while shaking my hand.” His voice is lower now. “As such, I need a personal assistant who is discreet, versatile and, above all, loyal. You are not just my assistant, but my eyes and ears.” He stops, standing squarely before me once more. His eyes lock squarely with mine. “Do you understand?”

  “Y-yes, Herr Kommandant,” I stammer, marveling over the fact that he thinks I am loyal.

  “Good. I chose you not only because you are exceptionally smart and speak German, but because I sense that you can be trusted.”

  “Thank you, Herr Kommandant.” Trust. My stomach twists.

  He continues pacing again. “Every morning you and I will meet to go over my schedule and any tasks I would like you to complete that day. For now, you can simply catch up on the backlog of correspondence. I have not had a personal assistant for more than a month, and I did not want anyone else to handle it.” I wonder then what became of my predecessor. “And as you discerned from Colonel Diedrichson, you are not to open any correspondence marked ‘confidential.’ Understood?” I nod. “Good. You have been given the highest clearance for a Pole, but there are still some things that are off-limits.” My heart sinks. Confidential correspondence would undoubtedly contain the information most valuable to the resistance.

  “I will ask Colonel Diedrichson to stop by to see you later this morning. He can provide you with whatever you need, including guidance in my absence.” The Kommandant turns and walks toward his desk then, and I realize that I have been dismissed. I stand and turn to leave. “Anna,” he calls when I am at the door. I face him again. He is looking at me intensely, his expression deadly serious. “My door is always open to you.”

  “Thank you, Herr Kommandant.” I retreat to the anteroom and collapse into my chair, shaking.

  My first day of work at headquarters passes quickly after my meeting with the Kommandant. I spend the remainder of the morning opening the mail until Colonel Diedrichson returns to take me around the executive offices and introduce me to the staff. I can tell by the way that the secretaries and ai
des seem to be sizing me up that my arrival as the Kommandant’s personal assistant has aroused great interest. Finally, Diedrichson takes me to the security office, where I am given a building pass. On our way back to the Kommandant’s office we pass another set of large oak doors marked with a brass seal. “The governor’s office,” Diedrichson says solemnly without stopping. His voice sounds almost reverent.

  I spend the afternoon reorganizing file drawers in the anteroom. The files are in such complete disarray that it seems hard to believe that my predecessor left only a month ago. The librarian in me takes over, dividing the files first geographically, one section for Kraków and another for each of the outlying regions. Two hours later, I am finished, but I still have not seen any documents that seem significant. I wonder if the Kommandant receives materials through other channels.

  I do not see the Kommandant for the remainder of that day. At five o’clock, I gather my belongings and walk to the bus stop. Once on the bus, I slump in my seat, my throbbing head pressed against the window. I am exhausted, more so from nerves than anything else. But I have made it through my first day.

  I barely walk through the front door of Krysia’s and set down my things when Lukasz wraps himself around my knees. “He missed you all day today,” Krysia says as I pick him up and carry him upstairs. “I took him to the park and tried to play with him, but he just kept looking for you.”