by Pam Jenoff
Maria’s anger rose. Whatever had happened to the girl was so bad that she would rather be on her own in the dark and cold than in her own home.
Maria tried again. “And your mother?”
“Mama won’t worry. She thinks I’m at the camp with the others.” Hannah looked over Maria’s shoulder. “This is your family’s house?”
“My husband’s family. He’s off fighting.”
“Do you miss him?”
Maria shifted, unaccustomed to having a light shined on her. “Yes.” The word came out with more feeling than she’d intended. She wished that Piotr was here to help her figure out what to do. What now? Hannah was a Jew and the penalty for helping her would surely be severe. Maria would be risking her own life—as well as her unborn child’s—for a girl she had just met. But she could not refuse her, this piteous creature so much like the child she would have soon. She had to find a safe place for the girl. She could not bring her in the house, and she would freeze to death in the barn.
“I can go,” the girl offered, sensing Maria’s dilemma.
Maria took her arm gently. “No.” The next house might have someone like her father who would turn the child into the police.
Maria scanned the landscape uneasily, looking for a solution. Janusz Slomir, her father’s cousin, popped improbably into Maria’s mind. She had not seen him in years, but he lived alone and his farm was on the edge of town, away from prying eyes.
“Come.” She held out a hand to Hannah, who took it reluctantly. Together they walked from the farm and started across the field. Their footsteps rang out as their shoes scraped against hard earth, breaking the silence.
As they neared the Slomir farm, Maria eyed the adjacent cottage guiltily. Ruth Nowak lived there with her brother and sisters. The Nowak twins were doing everything for themselves and their younger siblings without the help of parents or other family. Maria had so much by comparison. And she had taken Piotr from Ruth, too. Despite his assurances that his and Ruth’s relationship was well over, the uneasy feeling that she had stolen something that belonged to someone else persisted. She wondered if Ruth ever missed him, or whether she somehow felt better off.
They reached the Slomir front door and Maria knocked once, then louder when there was no response. The door opened a crack. “Tak?” Janusz scowled at her without recognition. Had she changed so much over the years? “What is it?” he asked, dispensing with formalities. He had once been a part of her life, a frequent visitor to the house and always present at holidays. But at some point he had stopped coming.
“I’m Maria, your cousin Feliks’s daughter.” She took a deep breath. “I need you to store something for me.”
“Store something? I don’t understand.”
Maria pulled the girl gently from behind her.
At the sight of Janusz, Hannah reared back, the terror she associated with men exposed before them. “It’s all right,” Maria said gently, wrapping both arms around the girl. “He’s my cousin.” The girl did not relax. Maria turned to Janusz. “Can you help us?”
Janusz did not reply but eyed the child coldly. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come here. Maria felt foolish having thought that a cousin she had not seen in a decade would be willing to help.
“I’m sorry. I should not have come.” She grasped Hannah’s shoulder and started to turn away, but Janusz reached out and pulled them roughly into the house. The girl yelped.
“Quiet!” he ordered. “Close the door quickly.” Maria followed his nervous gaze across the field that separated his farm from the cottage next door. “Those Nowak children are always out and about, traipsing over my land and poking around.” He wrinkled his nose.
“Now, now,” Maria said soothingly, her empathy for the neighboring family who had lost so much washing over her. She looked up at Janusz. He had always seemed old to her, but now the crinkles around his eyes that had once resembled streams had deepened to rivers and his beard was completely white except for where it had yellowed around the chin. His house was thick with the smell of pipe smoke and something meaty cooking.
“Has she eaten?” he asked, gesturing toward Hannah.
“A bit, but I’m sure she could do with more.” She turned to Hannah. “Couldn’t you?” The girl nodded meekly.
Janusz walked to the stove, which stood in the corner of the cottage. The room was too hot and Maria opened her coat. He returned with a steaming bowl of stew. “Here.” Hannah took it and sat down in the crude wooden chair he had indicated.
“She can’t stay,” he said to Maria quietly as the child ate. “There are people who come through, men with supplies for the resistance. They could be here at any time.” She was surprised. She would not have suspected her curmudgeonly cousin to be a traitor like her father, but neither had she imagined him to be a rebel opposing the Germans. She understood then his reclusiveness, his preference for solitude and distaste for the prying eyes of neighbors.
But Janusz’s bravery seemed a liability now, complicating her dilemma of where to keep Hannah rather than solving it. “I have nowhere else to take her.” A note of desperation crept into Maria’s voice. She could not abandon the child.
“When are you due?” he asked bluntly, changing the subject. Maria faltered, thrown off-guard. The bump beneath her dress was so slight that no one had noticed it until now. “May.”
“Your parents must be pleased.”
“They don’t know. That is, we’ve fallen out since...since I got married.” She faltered, then lowered her voice so Hannah could not hear. “My father, he’s been helping the Germans.” The story tumbled forth and it felt good to finally confide in someone. Janusz nodded, seeming to understand. “You don’t seem surprised,” she said.
His mouth pulled downward. “I had my suspicions. Your father always took the path of least resistance. And he isn’t a bad man, but in these difficult times...” Though he did not finish the thought, Maria understood: the war brought out the extremes in people, some better and some worse. Janusz was fighting on one side, while his cousin had allied himself with the other. Maria wondered fleetingly if that was the reason for their falling out, but the break in their relationship had come long before the war.
Janusz turned and knelt beside Hannah. “The scarf,” he said, gesturing. “Where did you get it?” Maria had not noticed the slash of red hidden beneath the girl’s brown coat. But when Hannah pulled back the collar, Maria could see the rich wool, tightly knitted. Hannah removed her coat. Beneath it, she was paper thin. Maria could see marks on her arm, bruises that traveled upward.
Hannah lifted the scarf. “It was my father’s.”
Janusz extended his hand. “May I?” he asked. The girl hesitated, then nodded. He ran his finger over a gold eagle embroidered at the edge of the scarf. “Your father was a soldier?”
“In the Great War,” she said simply. The Jews had always seemed so separate to Maria; she had not imagined them fighting alongside ordinary Poles.
“Me too.” Janusz’s own decades-old uniform hung in the corner, freshly pressed, as though he might be called up to service again at any moment.
He turned to Maria. “Why did you come to me?”
She hesitated. “My mother always spoke so well of you.” It was the truth. Even years after the contact had ceased between Maria’s father and Janusz, Mama had said his name with affection, laughter creeping in as she’d recounted something he had said or done. She often had been silenced by Papa’s stormy look. It was hard to reconcile the lively young man of her mother’s stories with the gruff old man who stood before her now.
“Did she?” A glimpse of boyish hopefulness crept into his eyes.
“Yes.” Watching him process the information with an undeniable flicker of excitement, everything seemed to come into focus: Janusz had written the love letters to Mama. The realization cras
hed down on Maria like a rock from above, knocking the breath from her chest. Papa must have found out at some point, and that was why he and Janusz no longer spoke. But there was still much she did not know: Was it an unrequited love, or was there something more? Had there been an actual love affair between them?
The ground seemed to shift as an idea came to her. “I know,” she blurted out. “I saw the letters.” His face seemed to crumble under the weight of the secret he had kept all these years, now exposed.
A silent exchange passed between the two of them and she wondered if he would deny it. “How long have you known?” he finally said.
Maria shrugged. “Long enough. Keep the girl and I won’t say another word about it.” She hated that the words came out sounding like a threat. He might have helped anyway, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Very well, but just tonight. I need her gone in the morning. I can’t have a young child here, seeing things.”
“She’ll be gone before first light,” Maria promised. He did not answer but disappeared into the bedroom.
A minute later he returned carrying some blankets and a lamp. “Come,” he said to Hannah, who had finished eating. He led them down a ladder to the cellar. Maria followed. In the flickering light of Janusz’s lamp, she was flooded with memories of playing in the cellar as a child.
“I’m sorry she has to stay down here,” Janusz said, laying the blankets atop a thin layer of straw and setting the lamp beside it. “But people come unexpectedly sometimes.”
“I love it,” Hannah exclaimed, surprising Maria. She had liked exploring the cellar as a girl, but now it just seemed damp and dirty, cluttered with old junk and mouse droppings in the corners. “It’s so peaceful,” Hannah looking about her with wonder. Maria shuddered inwardly, imagining a home life so terrifying that a dark, strange cellar felt like a refuge.
Janusz heaved himself up the ladder again and a moment later handed down a blue nightgown to Maria. It still carried the faint scent of his wife, Elzbieta, though she had passed nearly two decades earlier. Sadness flickered across his face. He had not, Maria felt certain, been unfaithful to his wife. Rather, he had turned to Mama after his wife was already gone.
Maria passed the nightgown to Hannah. She looked away to let the girl change in private and peered up at the cottage through the cellar opening. Her mother had gone for long walks most days when Maria was younger—to breathe the fresh air, or so Maria had thought. Maria had wished to come along, too, but Mama had not taken her. At some point, the walks had stopped. Had her mother and Janusz met here or somewhere else? Images appeared in her mind of the two of them together. Suddenly eager to escape, she turned back to Hannah. “You rest. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“You aren’t staying?” The fear, which lay just below the surface, reappeared full force on the girl’s face.
Maria wavered. She wanted to sit down beside Hannah and hold her until she knew peace. But she could not be gone from her in-laws all night. “I can’t. You’ll be safe here with my cousin. I’ll be back first thing,” she promised. The apprehension on Hannah’s face did not wane. “I’ll stay until you’re sleeping,” Maria relented. Placated, Hannah lay down and Maria sat beside her. She pulled the blanket up and a maternal wave, unfamiliar and warm, washed over her. “You close your eyes now. I’ll be back at first light,” she repeated, turning down the lamp.
“And then what?” Hannah asked. Maria bit her lip as she tried to summon the answers she did not have.
“We’ll think of something,” Janusz interjected, calling down softly from above. We. They were suddenly a unit. Maria felt stronger than she had in months. But she still did not have answers.
“Thank you.” Hannah’s voice was full of appreciation.
“You rest. It will be all right.” She was making assurances that were not hers to give. Suddenly she had an idea. “If your father was gone, what then? Would you go back?”
Hannah did not answer, but Maria could see that she was unable to fathom a world where home was safe. Finally the girl shook her head.
“Perhaps in the morning you’ll feel differently,” Maria said.
“No.” The resolute look in Hannah’s eyes suggested that nothing would change in one day or one year. Anyway, Maria reflected, the question of Hannah’s father being gone was a moot one. “Maybe things would be different if I was strong like you,” the girl added wistfully. Maria was surprised—she had not thought of herself in that way before. She opened her mouth to tell Hannah that she was the brave one, running away on her own. But the girl had closed her eyes and was breathing evenly.
Watching Hannah sleep, her face innocent and soft, Maria’s anguish deepened. Who could harm such a girl? Her hand rested protectively on her stomach. She had already despaired of bringing a child into this world of fighting and hardship. But how could she ever hope to protect her baby from such things?
Maria rose, climbed the ladder and joined Janusz in the cottage. “You’ll keep an eye on her?” she asked him in a low voice. He nodded. She wanted to ask Janusz if he could use his contacts to help the girl, but it seemed unwise to push. “I’m not sure what to do with her,” she offered instead.
“We’ll figure it out in the morning. You should go now before you are missed.”
Maria went to the front door, assaulted by the cold as she opened it. Buttoning her coat, she turned back to Janusz. There was something in the shape of his eyes beneath the bushy brows that reminded her of the face she saw when she looked in the mirror. She pushed aside the thought. “Good night.”
Maria recrossed the field, feeling strangely lonely without the girl beside her. The images of her mother and Janusz at the cabin seeped into her mind once more. There had been a last letter, shorter and sadder than the others. Little Bird, I’m setting you free. “Little Bird” must have been his nickname for Mama, dainty and petite. Mama always seemed so sweet and loyal, simple. It was hard to picture her as the object of passion described in the letters, even less so now that Maria knew her portly, scruff-bearded cousin was the author. She was suddenly angry at her mother’s betrayal. But who was she to judge? Perhaps Mama had been bereft over Marek’s death, and Papa had not been there for her in the way she had needed. Maria hadn’t been old enough to know. Once she had thought her home life idyllic. Now her father had proven to be a traitor, her mother unfaithful. How could this sleepy little village—and the house where she had spent nearly her whole life—harbor so many secrets?
As she reached the edge of the village, she turned back to look at Janusz’s farm, the windows now dark. Her thoughts turned to Hannah. The child would not return to her home and Maria could not force her. If Maria took her to the police, they would only turn her in to the Germans. Could she take her to an orphanage in the city? Perhaps Piotr might be persuaded to let her keep the child and raise her as their own. Her in-laws, though, would never agree.
She started walking again, this time east, taking a different path skirting the edge of the village. It was not until she neared her parents’ house that she realized where her feet were taking her. Without stopping, she walked determinedly to the door and knocked.
A second later the door swung open and her father’s large frame filled the doorway, silhouetted against the light within. In the corner by the fireplace, she could just glimpse his violin case, and she wondered when he had last played. The familiar smell of her mother’s cooking sent her reeling back to childhood. For a second she wanted to step inside and pretend that their estangement and her leavinghad never happened.
Her father’s eyes widened. “Marishu,” he said, using his pet name for her and forgetting the acrimony. Then his brow furrowed. “What’s wrong? Have they been unkind to you?” Something in Maria softened. For all of their differences, he still cared about her. Things might be mended between them if only she could accept what he had done.
But too much had happened for that—he was not the father she had once idolized. Had he found Hannah, he surely would have turned her in, even though she was a girl just like Maria herself had once been. “No,” she replied quickly, her tone cold and brisk. “Everything is fine. I only wanted to tell you that I’ve heard of a Jew over in Lipnik who is hoarding. He’s called Stein.” Doubt flashed through her. She had come here on impulse, trying to find a way to save Hannah from her cruel father. But what if they punished not just the man, but his wife as well? This way was such a crude way to exact justice
“How did you find this out?” he demanded. “And why are you telling me?”
“I just am.” She considered telling him that he would soon be a grandfather, then decided against it. “How’s Mama?”
“Fine. She’s sleeping.” He did not offer to wake her. She waited for the invitation inside that did not come.
“I have to get home,” she said finally. This had been her home once, but it wasn’t anymore. “Goodbye, Papa,” she added because there was nothing else left to say. She turned and walked away, feeling him watch her as she crossed the field to ensure she made it safely. That he still cared was something.
Maria hurried to Piotr’s house, her footsteps lighter. In the morning she would tell Hannah that she had made things safe—that her father would not be able to hurt her anymore and she could go home. The house was dark and Maria slipped into bed quietly. She lay awake in the darkness, imagining how this might go. She would have to find a place for Hannah, temporarily, until her father was gone. Perhaps she could ask Father Dominik to help find a family to take her in. If not, Piotr’s family would have to let her stay. There was enough room. Hannah could work, be useful. It would be good to have a friend, Maria reflected as her eyes grew heavy. Someone she could talk to in this cold, quiet house.
Maria slept roughly over the next few hours, awakening well before dawn. She dressed hurriedly and set out for Janusz’s cottage. When she arrived, she paused, not wanting to wake him. The key was hidden beneath the windowsill, just as it had been when she was a girl. She quietly pushed the door open and climbed the ladder down into the cellar. Then she let out a soft gasp. Hannah was gone.