Spring Will Be Ours

by Sue Gee

  Teresa was struggling to remain calm. ‘I can’t possibly know what she would have wanted for you, Anna. I just know that you’re only seventeen, and I – I must forbid you to join. I can’t bear to think of you taking such a risk for nothing.’

  ‘For nothing?‘

  ‘I mean – if they shoot you, Anna, it will change nothing. Will it?’ Anna pushed back her chair and stood up. ‘How can you think like this? Do you think we’re ever going to have a life any better than this miserable bloody life if we don’t fight back? Don’t you know what everyone’s saying? “Better to die on our feet than to live on our knees!” Do you want to live on your knees? Do you? Do you think Tata would have wanted us to? I think he would have wanted us to fight!’

  ‘Anna, Anna, please…’ Teresa’s hands on the table were trembling.

  ‘What? Wiktoria’s joined, I’m sure she has.’

  ‘She has only herself to think of.’

  ‘And we have to think of you,’ Anna said bitterly, before she could stop herself. ‘Isn’t it enough that we’ve had to do that all these years?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Teresa stared at her.

  ‘What do you think I mean?’ Anna took a deep breath and plunged in, her words tumbling over one another. ‘Forgive me, Teresa, but the ghetto is empty now, isn’t it? They’re all gone. Do you still have to hide away?’

  Teresa sat absolutely still, her thin face whiter than white as she looked at Anna with an expression unfathomable. Terror. Fury. Disbelief.

  ‘What are you saying?’ she whispered.

  ‘I… I…’ Anna gripped the back of the rickety chair.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I…’ Anna began to cry. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it…’

  ‘Mean what?’ Teresa was on her feet now, too, shaking and shaking her. ‘Mean what?’

  ‘Stop it, stop it!’

  ‘Tell me what you mean. Tell me!’

  ‘That you’re a Jew!’ Anna screamed, and broke away, sobbing.

  ‘What? You’ve … you’ve thought that all these years?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes!’

  Teresa’s hands fell to her sides. As if she were sleepwalking, she made her way back to the table, and sank into her chair. Anna went on crying, leaning against the damp wall by the windows on to the balcony. What will she do to me now? she thought. And suddenly she was as terrified as if the discovery had been made of her, by Teresa.

  ‘Anna, come and sit down.’ Teresa spoke dully. ‘Please.’

  She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, but did not move. Against her hot face, the damp wall felt almost soothing.

  ‘Please.’

  She went, sitting in the rickety chair and staring at the scratches and gouges on the table. There was a long silence.

  At last Teresa-said: ‘I – I suppose I must be grateful that you did nothing. You kept your secret. Did Jerzy … think the same?’

  ‘He thought it was possible.’

  ‘You thought it was certain. Anna?’

  ‘No. I mean – I didn’t know. I just found myself thinking it, and … and the thought wouldn’t go away.’ She still couldn’t look at her.

  Teresa gave a long, deep sigh. ‘Will you believe me if I tell you that it is absolutely untrue? Now you’ve told me – it explains almost everything about you that I’ve never been able to understand. And about Jerzy. But I swear to you, on my life – you must believe me, Anna – you have nothing to hide, or to be afraid of because of me. Anna?’

  She slowly raised her head. Teresa was looking at her with utter seriousness. ‘I am not a Jew,’ she said.

  ‘All right.’ Anna felt suddenly completely exhausted, drained. And very ashamed. ‘All right.’

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Impossible to say no. Impossible to know whether she did or not. After all, if her suspicions were true, Teresa would never admit it now, would she? Did that mean she didn’t trust her and Jerzy not to betray it? Did she really think they would betray her? And oh God, oh God, she could talk about fighting, and courage, but would she have been brave enough, if the Gestapo had come, to lie, and risk her own life? I hate myself, she thought miserably, and tears poured down her face again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she wept. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’

  And then they both jumped, and grabbed each other’s hands across the table, as footsteps came running along the landing to the apartment door, and someone began to pound on it, again and again.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Anna whimpered. Someone had heard her screaming – ‘You’re a Jew!’ They must have, how could she have done it? And now what would happen to them? They clung to each other, as the pounding on the door grew louder. Then it stopped, and they heard a voice call hoarsely, urgently:

  ‘Anna! Anna!’

  ‘Oh God, that’s Andrzej.’ Anna scrambled to her feet, and ran along the corridor. She flung the door open, and saw him, huge and fair in the doorway, panting, the dim light from the landing behind him showing beads of sweat on his face.

  He came quickly inside, closed the door, and told her.

  ‘But where is he?’ Anna asked, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Andrzej said bleakly. He sat at the table looking suddenly much more of a boy than he had ever looked – even before the war, when he and Jerzy were in the same class at the gimnazium, he had always appeared older and more adult than any of the others, and particularly than Jerzy. It was partly because he was so tall and large-framed, but more than that – he had always seemed a leader. Now, much thinner, and without Jerzy, whom Anna realized was always with him, he looked younger and awkward, fiddling nervously with a loose button on his jacket.

  ‘I – I have a feeling they didn’t shoot them, I don’t know why. I’ve been waiting all day until I could talk to our officer.’ Teresa and Anna avoided each other’s eyes. ‘He’s going to do everything he can to find out, but … he thinks they’ll all be in Pawiak.’

  ‘Have you … have you ever heard of anyone escape from Pawkiak?’ Anna asked.

  Andrzej bit his lip. ‘No.’

  She watched his miserable face, and couldn’t help it: she had to ask. ‘Why didn’t they take you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Who knows? Perhaps they only wanted four today. I’m sure they weren’t looking for any particular man. Or – well, perhaps they were, and Jerzy looks like him.’

  Teresa cleared her throat; she still looked shaken, almost dazed. ‘How long have you been in AK?’

  He turned to her. ‘About eighteen months. I’m sorry, Pani Kurowska – I don’t like to upset you.’

  She shook her head. ‘And when … when did Jerzy join?’

  ‘He was sworn in last November. He kept putting it off, he was worried in case anything happened to you two. In the end, I think he decided there was almost as much risk just in going out of his own apartment. Which is true.’ He made a move towards the kitchen door. ‘I’ll go now, but if I hear anything at all, I’ll come and tell you. I’m … I’m very sorry.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Teresa. She didn’t get up.

  Anna followed him down past the peeling walls of the corridor to the front door.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t had to come for such a reason. Your stepmother … she looks very distressed.’

  ‘It’s not just because of Jerzy … We – we had a sort of quarrel. Just before you came.’

  ‘Oh.’ Again, the awkward fiddling with his jacket button, embarrassed. Family things. She didn’t think he had much of a family left, just his mother and that uncle. She wanted suddenly to comfort him, to tell him she was sure Jerzy was all right, but she didn’t know how to start. Andrzej had been like an aloof older brother all her life – it must be humiliating for him to be seen unnerved.

  ‘I’d better go now,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She opened the door. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye, Anna.’ He took her hand and raised
it to his lips so swiftly, and kissed it so briefly, that she was barely certain he had done so. Then he stumbled too fast down the unlit stone steps, his feet echoing off the damp walls until he reached the first floor and she could no longer hear him.

  She closed the door and leaned against it.

  Andrzej, she thought. Andrzej.

  ‘Anna?’

  She took a deep breath, and pulled herself away from the door.

  ‘Coming, Teresa.’

  Tata was home again, although it wasn’t here, in dark Senatorska, nor in Praga, but somewhere by a river, winding away into a distant lake. He was reading, on the bank, and looked up as she walked over to him, and smiled. ‘Let me read you some of this,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘Where’s Jerzy?’

  ‘Oh, we never see him now,’ she said. ‘He’s lost, you know.’

  He looked at her, puzzled. ‘Lost?’

  ‘I’ll have to write it down.’ She began to scribble on a piece of paper from her pocket, kneeling, and pressing on the ground: He has gone to visit Mama’s grave in Pawiak. No, that wasn’t right. The pencil slipped, stabbing the paper, and blades of grass poked through.

  He has gone to a country called Katyń, she wrote, in a fever. You know where that is. She looked up to pass the note to him, but he had turned his head away.

  ‘Tata? Tata? Tata!’

  She tore the paper into tiny pieces and threw them into the air, watching them swirl in the breeze across the river, then settle on the water, and float away, towards the distant lake.

  She woke, confused, in the small dark room; heard Teresa, in her bed, groan as she turned in her sleep. ‘I couldn’t explain …’ she said aloud, and heard her voice break. She saw Jerzy, his head bent, locked in a cell somewhere deep in the grim fortress of Pawiak, and she began to howl.

  They were taken out almost every day, to work on clearing the ghetto ruins. In single file, each carrying a pickaxe or spade, they were marched out of the prison and along the dawn-lit streets to the nearby ghetto wall. An armed guard was at the head and tail of the column; two more paced alongside. Inside the gate, they were divided into groups of three or four, and set to work on the heaps of rubble and the twisted pipes of plumbing – mostly it was salvage work. Anything which might be re-used, girders or piping, was piled on to a heap, taken out every few days by lorry.

  The overalls they had been issued with were no protection against the cold of the early morning, and they had no gloves. Within a couple of days his fingers were bleeding from cuts and chaps, his palms raw with blisters. They did not speak: in the grey light the only sounds were the metallic scraping of the tools and dull thud of falling brickwork, and the boots of the guards as they paced up and down, stamping to try to keep warm themselves, even though they wore caps and greatcoats. As the day went on, they changed shifts, and the prisoners were allowed a short break and given hunks of dark bread and water from tin mugs. Sometimes, at these moments, it was possible to walk away for a minute, relieving yourself behind the mounds of fallen masonry and taking a quick look around: he had his eye on a high, burned-out voltage point. But you didn’t risk staying longer than a few moments.

  By the seventh week he was so exhausted and weakened that he could barely hold up his head. As he stumbled along in the column, the pavement began to sway beneath him, and he began to sway with it.

  ‘March!’ snapped the guard, suddenly beside him.

  He jerked up, felt dizzy, stumbled again and would have fallen except that the guard grabbed him and shook him hard. Behind, in the column, the sound of boots stopped abruptly.

  ‘March!’ said the guard again, releasing him, and when he fell bent down and hauled him by the collar of his overalls to his feet and struck him across the mouth. Jerzy yelped, tasting blood on his lips, then forced himself to follow the man in front, his eyes fixed on a patch on the man’s overalls. The boots sounded behind him again, and then they were through the gate and once more facing the desolation of the ghetto.

  That night, in the airless cell, closing his eyes against naked bulb and spyhole, he listened to the breathing of his three companions and traced in his mind the outline of the high, burned-out voltage point, with its gaping hole and just room enough inside to hide a man.

  The next day, as the two guards talked in the change of shift, he moved step by step closer to the edge of the mound of rubble behind which it stood. He was at the corner, they were sharing a cigarette, and then he was past, half-crawling towards it, smelling rust and pushing stubs of wire aside as he squeezed inside. He crouched, listening to the roar of his heartbeat and then to the sudden question in the voices of the guards, the shout, and the click of a rifle. He held his hand over his swollen lip to stop himself crying out, and waited to be found.

  The dressmakers’school was in a street not far from Wiktoria’s apartment. Very little sewing instruction went on there: the girls might have unravelled sweaters from 1938 and reknitted them, or unpicked dresses and cut them down into skirts, but almost every teacher was in AK; the murmur of conversation above the gentle sounds of scissors and rustling paper patterns was of meetings, bulletins, sabotage, assassination.

  Anna was required to attend there soon after Jerzy’s arrest. She had a pink attendance card, to be stamped each month, and went every morning, working in the hospital in the afternoons. Natalia was also there, and had already taken the oath.

  ‘Are you going to join?’ she asked softly one morning, as they bent over the long table, straightening out a pattern.

  Anna shook her head, her mouth full of pins. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Why?’

  She took the pins out. ‘Teresa is too afraid … we’ve had a dreadful misunderstanding, I don’t want to talk about it, but I don’t want to upset her any more. Not without some news of Jerzy.’

  ‘You’ve heard nothing?’

  ‘Nothing. You know I’d tell you if there was.’

  ‘I’m so sorry …’

  ‘I know. Thank you.’ She slid pins into blue cloth, blindly following the arrows on the paper.

  On a wintry Sunday morning some weeks later, she took the tram to visit Wiktoria, deliberately making the same journey Jerzy had made with Andrzej: to relive it felt as if it were the only opportunity she had to be close to him now. She climbed on at the back, felt the vibration as the doors swung to and closed, and looked along at a fixed point above the driver’s head. The car was half-empty: only a few old men and women in black travelling to mass because it was too cold for them to walk, and a couple with children. She was not going to be arrested here, but the risk made her feel like a pilgrim of whom a sacrifice might be asked. They approached the intersection with Jerozolimskie Avenue, where the Germans had stopped the tram, and she looked out of the window at the leafless trees, at the few people hurrying along in the winter air, past closed shops with nothing in the windows.

  What were they doing to him now? A·thin flurry of snow stung her cheeks as she got off the tram in Hoza and she began to run, slipping once on the uneven pavement. As she reached Wiktoria’s building, and climbed the stairs to her door, she thought of the approaching winter, in the dark and bitter cold of Senatorska, without Tata, without Jerzy, with only Teresa and her sadness, and the awful silences between them now, and she thought: I will go mad. She rang the bell once, twice, in a sudden fury of frustration, heard Wiktoria hurrying to the door and hardly cared if she had frightened her.

  Then she heard her ask in a steady voice: ‘Who is it?’ and answered quickly ‘Anna,’ feeling a little ashamed. When the chain inside slid back, and Wiktoria opened the door, she burst into tears, shivering.

  ‘Anna, Anna … sssh. Come and see who’s here.’

  ‘Who?’ She let herself be led along the passage by the hand, and into the sitting room, lit by the whiteness of the falling snow, where Jerzy sat at the table, very thin, in filthy overalls, with a bruised and swollen mouth, his hands round a glass of tea. She ran to him, and knocked it flying.

&n
bsp; He had stayed hidden until it was dark, and the voices had gone away. Perhaps they thought he had fallen in the ruins: there were plenty of places where you might trip and plunge into the crater of a bombed-out building, and no one would ever find you. There was no point in trying to get out while the curfew was on, so he waited all night in the shelter of a half-destroyed house, huddled against a wall in the cold. In the first light, before the working parties returned, he paced the walls until he found a place with a great heap of rubble piled up beside it. He scaled it carefully, managed to heave himself to the top, and leap down on the other side. He’d sprained his ankle when he landed, but at least nothing was broken. Then he limped along the deserted back streets where most people were still asleep and where if he were asked he might – just – be a workman on an early shift. It was too dangerous to go back to Elektoralna, to Teresa and Anna: that was the address on his papers, and the first place they would go to. So he made for Wiktoria’s apartment, alarming her with a ring on the door at half-past six in the morning, and stumbled inside, almost blue with cold and exhaustion.

  Anna listened, as Wiktoria made more tea and a dish of pierogi.

  ‘I missed you so much,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d never see you again.’

  ‘Perhaps Tata had his eye on me.’

  ‘I dreamt I was trying to tell him where you were, and I couldn’t.’

  He took her hand. ‘I’m sorry – it must have been horrible for you. I missed you, too. But I can’t stay here, it’s much too dangerous for Wiktoria, and I’d never be able to go out. I’ll have to get in touch with Andrzej today, and try to arrange false papers or something.’

  She said: ‘Andrzej was frantic, I think.’ She didn’t say: ‘He kissed my hand,’ or that she had thought about that brief, clumsy touch quite often since. ‘I’ll have to go back and tell Teresa, she’ll be so pleased.’ She hesitated. ‘Jerzy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I … I told her.’

  ‘What? Told her what?’