The Winter Guest (15 page)

“But...” Helena started to stand, unwilling to let him get away. She grabbed his sleeve, suddenly desperate and heedless who might hear. Alek looked down at her and there was something enigmatic about him that made her want to follow into his strange unknown world. “Please.”

He pressed his hand on hers, willing her to remain seated. There was a gentle forcefulness to his touch she had never before encountered. “One week. Come again in one week and that will give me enough time to investigate your story and figure out what to do.”

“And if I need you sooner?”

“You won’t. Coming here was either very brave or very stupid. You must love this soldier a lot. Go now,” he added before she could respond. “And you’d do well to avoid the checkpoint at Starowi´slna.” He bounded up the steps and out the door.

12

Helena watched Alek leave, fighting the urge to run after him and ask more questions. She looked uncertainly at the plate of fish that remained before her. If only she had a way to take it back to Sam or the children. She took another few bites and then stood, eyeing the table across the room where the man watching them had sat. He was gone, and she wondered if he had followed Alek, or perhaps he had not been interested in them at all.

She took care not to move too quickly and attract attention as she made her way down the street. A wave of energy surged through her. She had done it—made contact with the resistance and found out...what, exactly? She had no idea, though, if Alek would or could help. And she could not even see Sam again to tell him. But there was no time to worry. She needed to get to Mama and then back home.

She took Alek’s advice, rounding the block to avoid the cluster of military jeeps at the corner where Starowi´slna Street intersected with the
aleje.
Something was different, Helena noticed as she made her way through the backstreets on the way to the Jewish quarter. From the hill above the city a few hours earlier, Kazimierz had looked unchanged. But, closer now, she could see that the neighborhood was even emptier than usual. Great piles of broken furniture and other discarded household items sat at the curb in front of several of the buildings, as though it were garbage day. A curious burning smell filled her throat. Uneasiness seeped through her as she mentally scanned the calendar for a forgotten holiday, a reason for the change, and found nothing.

Two blocks farther, she could see the back of the hospital. Looking ahead down the eerily deserted street, Helena desperately wanted to turn and run in the other direction. Steeling herself, she pressed forward, clinging closely to the buildings.

As she crossed Miodowa Street, there was a deafening explosion. The force of the blast flung her through the air and slammed her against the pavement. For a moment, she lay motionless, too stunned to move. Then she crawled into a doorway for cover, the still-shaking ground rough beneath her palms. Nothing, not even the sound she had heard the night Sam’s plane crashed, had been anywhere near as loud. She wished desperately for the safety of the cellar back home, Ruth and the others warm beside her.

A clattering noise, rapid and repeated, reverberated off the buildings. Machine gunfire, she knew instinctively, though she had, of course, never heard it before. Helena ducked. The shots had come from the direction of the hospital. She broke into a run, heedless now of the need to blend in, not caring who might see her.

She stared to turn onto Estery Street to reach the front of the hospital. Then she froze. Here in the heart of the Jewish quarter, all pretense of normalcy had been abandoned. The street thronged with men in uniform. Trucks and jeeps stopped haphazardly in the middle of the street and parked across the sidewalks. From the far end of Szeroka Street a cloud of smoke rose ominously toward the sky.

Aktion.
The word formed slowly on her lips, though she did not know where she had learned it.

Helena crouched low behind a car, studying the front entrance to the hospital. Should she wait until it was safe, or flee and come back another day? But the less dangerous days were gone. She had to get to Mama now, or there might not be another chance. Not daring to step out onto the street, she retraced her steps, looking for another, less conspicuous way into the hospital.

She peered around the corner of the narrow alleyway that ran behind the hospital, then up at the windows of the tall apartment houses that rose on either side. The door to one of the buildings flew open. Helena leaped back. A family—mother and father, boy and girl—walked down the steps. Their unbuttoned coats were thrown on hastily and their feet were stockingless beneath their shoes. The girl clutched her brother’s arm. The father splayed his right hand across the back of his son’s head, as if to form a protective shield. The girl dropped something, a doll or toy perhaps, but her mother held her closely in place, forbidding her to reach for it.

Helena took a step toward them. Perhaps they knew what was happening here. But then she noticed that the father’s other hand was raised above his head in a way that made his stomach stick out oddly. A German officer appeared from the doorway behind them, gun fixed at the man’s back.

Helena tried to shrink back against the building as the officer marched the family down the sidewalk toward her. As they neared, the boy’s eyes met hers, silently pleading for help. He was Michal’s age but much thinner, eyes wide against his bony skull. And his skin was a shade of gray, like Sam’s had been the day she found him, as if he had not seen the sun for a long time. She braced herself, terrified that he would say or do something to give away her presence. But he looked away, staring straight ahead, and a moment later they passed down the street and were gone.

Do something,
a voice seemed to say. But what? She could shout, but there was no one to help anymore.
Breathe,
she willed herself.
Get to Mama.
I’m sorry, she mouthed silently, though the boy was no longer there. She raced around the corner. A wide exposed gulf of pavement stood between her and the back door to the hospital. She studied the windows of the buildings above, but the gaping holes were shrouded in darkness, giving no indication if anyone might be watching. She started quickly across the street, certain that at any moment she would be caught.

Seconds later, she reached the back entrance to the hospital. Struggling to catch her breath, Helena pried open the knobless door. Inside, she stood in shock: the hospital had been ransacked. Mattresses and chairs were piled high on either side of the hallway. Gone were the rhythmic, whirring sounds of the machines and the incessant moans of patients.

She peered into the nearest ward. The once-occupied beds were now empty, their sheets torn off and thrown to the center of the room, revealing bloodstained mattresses. Helena raced to her mother’s ward, broken glass crunching under her boots. The beds nearest the door were also empty and stripped. Helena’s body went slack with relief seeing Mama still lying in her bed on the far side of the room as she had during each of Helena’s previous visits. Helena raced to her. A few patients still lay motionless in the other beds, wide swaths of blood marring their hospital gowns. Helena stifled a scream. A rasp of breath escaped from one of the beds. Someone was still alive.

But there was no time to help. “Mama!” she whispered loudly as she neared. Her mother showed no sign of harm. Her eyes were open, though, gazing toward the ceiling. Helena reached out, knowing before she touched her cheek that it would be cold. What had happened here? As she lowered her face, Helena smelled something chemical and foreign. A drop of clear liquid lingered at the corner of her mother’s lips, slightly parted in an almost-sigh. Mama had swallowed something before the Nazis could get to her. She was gone.

Helena buried her head in her mother’s lap. Mama’s arm hung limply from the edge of the bed. Helena replaced it at her side, then rubbed her mother’s shoulder, as if to bring her comfort. In reality it was for herself, and she sought to memorize every detail of the skin under her fingertips, holding on to the touch that she knew would be the last.

Helena looked up again. She had contemplated the end. Indeed there were times that she had thought it might be better for Mama for all of the suffering to end. But nothing had prepared her for the finality of it—all of the love and memories just gone, like an enormous gust of wind that had taken her very breath with it.

A hand clamped down on Helena’s shoulder from behind. She opened her mouth to scream. “Shh,” a female voice whispered. Helena turned to face the nurse Wanda. Her face was pale and the apron of her uniform smeared with blood. “You have to go.”

Helena stood. “What happened?”

“The Germans came to liquidate Kazimierz and move the rest of the Jews to the ghetto.” Helena remembered the nurse’s erroneous prediction weeks earlier that some Jews would remain. “Then they came here.” Wanda’s eyes were bloodshot, her face aged years in an instant. “They started shooting the patients— No more than a bullet for each, I heard one of them say. We...the nurses, had always planned to give them something, to spare them the suffering if this happened. But we had no notice—there wasn’t enough time to get to everyone.”

“Why? Why now?”

“Reprisals.” Wanda was sobbing openly now, cracking under the stress of what she has seen. Helena shifted uncomfortably. She had never been good with the tears of loved ones, much less a near-stranger. Regaining her composure, Wanda continued. “There are rumors that the Germans captured a foreign soldier, American maybe, or British. Whoever they caught killed a German in the struggle. So now we all pay. I took care of your mother first,” Wanda added.
Took care.
It was a funny way to describe killing someone, even out of mercy. So that was what the coin she’d given Wanda had bought. “If they had gotten to her, her suffering would have been much worse.”

Helena slumped to the edge of the bed. “But she wasn’t even Jewish.”

Wanda shook her head. “They don’t care. Half-Jewish or whole, it’s all the same to them.”

“Half-Jewish... I don’t understand.” Helena noticed a strange expression on the nurse’s face. “What is it?”

“Your mother... Surely you knew.”

The ground seemed to wobble as it had from the explosion outside. “Knew what?”

“Your mother’s mother was Jewish. I saw it once in the file.”

Helena stared at her in disbelief. “That isn’t possible. My grandparents...” She paused, remembering the photograph of Mama’s mother and father taken years earlier. She searched for a reason that one of them could not have been Jewish, but found nothing. “Surely I would have known.”

Wanda shrugged slightly. “I didn’t ask her about it. It never occurred to me that you didn’t know. But it’s in her records.”

Helena looked down at her mother’s lifeless face, which seemed to have grown waxy. Why hadn’t Mama ever said anything? To spare them the difficulty, the baggage that went with Jewish heritage in a time and place such as this. Suddenly she understood why Tata had been so closed off and suspicious of outsiders, Mama’s dogged insistence that they go to church. It was a means of self-defense, protecting their family from prying eyes that might discover the truth.

“She isn’t here anymore,” Wanda added gently. She squeezed Helena’s hand. “You need to go now.”

Helena hesitated. She couldn’t bear to leave Mama like this, but there was no other choice. “What about you?”

The nurse shook her head slightly. “There are others to help.” Helena remembered the gasp of life she had heard from the bodies in the other ward. Wanda would not abandon her post until she had finished with the grim task of making sure no one was left behind to suffer.

Suddenly there came a noise, footsteps on the floor above. Wanda gripped her fingers hard. “Hide!” she whispered, pushing Helena beneath one of the empty beds. Helena lay flat against the ground, cheek pressed against the cold tile.

Seconds later, a pair of black boots came into view and neared the bed. Helena held her breath, bracing for certain discovery. Above her, Wanda let out a sharp yelp as the man flung her to the bed. Helena heard more muffled cries, and the sounds of cruel male laughter, of fabric ripping. Wanda’s feet hung off the bed at a strange angle, her sturdy white shoes flailing. The mattress pressed lower, pinning Helena painfully to the floor with every horrid thrust, making her part of the assault.

Soon the bed went still and the black boots disappeared from sight. Helena waited for Wanda to recover and signal the all-clear. Her neck throbbed. She wanted to check on the nurse and make sure she was all right, but she did not dare move. Thirty minutes passed, then an hour. Finally, Helena untangled herself and slid out from beneath the bed. Wanda was gone. What had become of her? But there was no time to find out. The ward was now empty, but there were still men in the hallway, speaking in dispassionate tones as they moved the bodies about, finishing their vicious task.

Helena scanned the room, desperate for a means of escape. She crept to the nearest window and pulled hard on the latch, but it had been painted over and sealed shut. The voices grew louder now and she opened the door to the tiny supply closet and slipped inside.

Helena hid behind the door that she did not dare close fully, certain she would be discovered at any moment. Gestapo soldiers spoke crudely to one another as they walked through the ward, checking to make sure the few patients that remained were dead. She peered through the crack where the door met the frame. One of the Germans neared Mama’s bed. She reached for the knife she carried, ready to leap out and protect her mother’s body from any shame. Helena willed herself to remain hidden as the man inspected Mama with coarse hands, ransacked the drawer beside her bed for the valuables she did not possess. There was nothing she could do for Mama now, and it was more important than ever that Helena make it back home.

With nothing more to pilfer, the Germans finally left the ward. Breathing a slight sigh of relief, Helena leaned against the wall of the supply closet. Overhead bottles of laudanum sat high on the shelf. Her anger grew once more. The medicines her mother needed were not in short supply at all—that had simply been kept from the people who needed them most. Had Wanda known? Impulsively, she took two fistfuls of the vials that could not help Mama now and tucked them into her dress.

She peered out of the closet. Though the men had left the ward once more, there were voices in the hallway still, blocking her one route of departure and showing no signs of leaving. She looked around the tiny storeroom, fighting the urge to scream in frustration, grief and fear. The air was suddenly too thick to breathe.

She was trapped.