Lilac Girls (11 page)

“Lily Clifford, the youngest of the four, chimed in: ‘Just caught a glimpse of Mrs. Ferriday, arms around him there on the bed, saying, “I can't live without you, Henry,” sounding so sad and lonely I wanted to cry myself.'

“That evening, Mother told me the news. I just stared at Father's humidor, wondering what would happen to his cigars now that he was gone. Mother and I never spoke much of Father's death and she never cried in front of me or anyone else after that day.”

“What a terrible thing, Caroline,” Paul said. “You were so young.”

“I'm sorry to ruin our festive mood.”

“That's a heavy burden for a child.”

“Let's talk about happier things.”

“You have a kind heart, Caroline,” Paul said, as he reached over and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. I almost jumped, his touch a jolt of warmth.

“Enough death and dying,” I said. “What else can we talk about?”

We both stared into the fire for a while, listening to the logs crack and pop.

Paul turned to me. “Well, I do have a confession to make.”

“Don't good Catholics do that with a priest?”

He ran one finger down my stockinged foot. “It's just that, well, I can't be trusted around silk stockings.”

Did he understand the power he had in his fingertip?

“I'm afraid I was scarred for life by a school friend.”

I sat up straighter. “Maybe I'd better not know.”

“He had boxes of old photos under his bed.”

“Nature shots?”

“Well, in a way, yes. Mostly of women in silk stockings. Little else.” Paul swirled the amber in his snifter. “I've never been the same. It's something about the seams. After I saw Marlene Dietrich in
The Blue Angel
sing ‘Naughty Lola,' I had to wait until everyone else left the theater before I could stand up.”

“Marlene wore sheer black stockings in that.”

“Can we not talk about it? It still gets me a bit, well, overstimulated.”

“You brought it up.”

“Guess I've always been drawn to strong women,” Paul said.

“Have Mother introduce you to Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Paul smiled and placed his snifter on the floor. “You're unique, you know, Caroline. Something about you makes me want to bare my soul.” He looked at me, silent for a moment. “I get attached, you know. You may not be able to get rid of me.”

“Like a barnacle,” I said.

He smiled and leaned closer to me. “Yes, whatever that is.”

I stood, smoothing my dress. We needed to change gears before things became complicated.

“Wait here,” I said. “I have something for you. Nothing elaborate.”

“So mysterious, Caroline. Much like Marlene.”

I went to my bedroom. Was this a mistake? Did male and female friends give each other gifts? He had nothing for me, after all. I brought out the silver-papered package I'd wrapped and rewrapped to give it a casual appearance and handed it to Paul.

“What is this?” he said. Was the pink in his cheeks from embarrassment or the cognac?

“It's nothing,” I said and sat down next to him.

He slid his hand under the paper to break the cellophane tape.

“Really, it's just a friend gift,” I said. “Betty and I give each other gifts all the time. Just casual.”

He pulled back the folded ends and sat with the paper open on his lap, staring down at the folded rectangle, the color of aged claret, apparently struck mute.

“It was Father's,” I said. “He had dozens of them. Never wore them, of course. Maybe if he had—”

Paul lifted the scarf, merino wool backed in silk, and held it, working the fabric with his fingers.

“I don't know what to say,” he said.

My mouth went dry. Had I been too forward with such a personal gift?

“Won't your mother object?”

“She would have dispensed with all Father's things by now if I'd let her.”

“Maybe it is hard for her to see them now, with him gone.”

“She almost gave his vicuña coat to an underdressed delivery boy.”

He lifted one end of the scarf and slowly wound it around his neck, head bent. “This is too beautiful, Caroline.” He finished and opened his hands, palms up. “Well?”

He looked like one of the boys about to go out sledding on Bird Pond up in Bethlehem, high color in his cheeks. What would it be like to kiss him? Would we both regret it, seeing as he had a wife, incompatible or not, who would soon be waking up in France waiting for his call?

Of course.

I stood, a bit light-headed.

“Would you like to see them? Father's clothes, I mean.”

I led Paul down the hallway to Father's room. Mother and Father had kept separate bedrooms, as was the custom then. The desk lamp in the corner sent shadows up the wall. The maids still dusted the room, washed the organza curtains each spring, and laundered the Greek key linens, as if Father were expected back any day, ready to shout, “Hi-ho!” and throw his leather valise on the bed. A small sofa sat in the bay window alcove, slipcovered in relaxed, faded chintz that lost its waxy sheen long ago. I opened the door to Father's closet, releasing a wave of Vicks VapoRub and tobacco-scented air, and clicked on the light.

“Oh, Caroline,” Paul said.

Father's double-hung closet was almost as he'd left it, with rows of khaki, brown wool, and white flannel trousers folded over hangers; all manner of jackets, from belted Norfolks and worsted serge to a one-button cutaway. Legions of two-tone shoes and one pair of patent leather dress slippers, stuffed with tissue paper, lined up on the floor. Foulard ties shared rack space with belts, hung by their brass buckles. Mother's black bunting from the funeral lay in a heap on the top shelf. Not that I'd been at Saint Thomas Church that day, being only eleven.
The New York Times
had said,
The Woolsey women locked arms that day in the front pew.
I pulled on one belt and slipped the suede-lined sealskin leather through my fingers.

“He was very neat,” Paul said.

“Not really. Mother kept him together.”

Paul lifted a gray fedora, stuffed tight with yellowed tissue paper, from the top shelf. He turned it in his hands, like a scientist examining a rare meteorite, and put it back. He seemed somber all at once. Why had I spoiled the mood?

“Father was color-blind, you see,” I said.

Paul just looked at me. If only I could stop blathering.

“And to make matters worse, he refused to be dressed by a valet.”

Paul made no attempt to stop me, just watched with a look I couldn't place. Pity for a poor spinster who missed her dead father?

“Father insisted on dressing himself. So Mother bought him only basic colors. Browns and navys.” I clicked off the closet light. “Before that, you should have
seen
his outfits.”

As I closed the closet door, I felt tears coming but held them back.

“One morning at breakfast, he appeared in a yellow jacket, purple tie, burnt-orange trousers, and red socks. Mother almost choked, she laughed so hard.”

I turned my face to the closet door, forehead against the cool paint. “I'm sorry, Paul. I'll get myself together.”

Paul took my shoulders and turned me to face him and then pulled me close. He smoothed back my hair, and his lips found my cheek. They lingered in the little dip there under my eye and then traveled across my face. He took the long way to my mouth, and once there, tasted of coq au vin and French cigarettes.

Paul unwound the scarf from his neck and released a wave of Sumare.

Pine. Leather. Musk.

We made our way to the sofa as icy snow pelted the windows above us like sand in a hurricane. My heart skipped a beat as his hand brushed the inside of my thigh on the way to release a stocking. He sent two fingers into the silk and drew it down. I unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Then another. I slipped my hands inside his open shirt, down his sides, smooth as the inside of a conch shell.

“I think maybe you had more than the angel's share of the cognac,” Paul said in my ear.

He unfastened the top button of my dress. In the low light, his face was especially beautiful, so serious. We were really doing this…I pushed away thoughts of him with Rena.

The second and third buttons went, so slowly.

He pulled my dress down off my shoulder and kissed my bare skin. “I can't believe how beautiful you are,” he said, working his lips down to my chest, in no hurry at all.

“Perhaps a bed would be a good idea.”

I could only nod. My canopy bed with the pink satin bedspread? That bed had never seen anything like Paul Rodierre.

We zigzagged to my bedroom, leaving my underthings along the way.

“Arms up,” Paul said once we made it to the bed.

I raised my arms as if ready to dive, and he slipped my slip and dress up and off in one motion. He slid out of his jacket and brought me to him. My fingers shook as I felt for his belt. He kissed me as I pulled the end free from the buckle and slid the whole thing through the loops. The zipper purred down. He stepped out of his pants and brought us both to the bed. We fell onto smooth satin, the slats surprised by the sudden weight.

“Are you still wearing your socks?” I said.

He kissed the base of my throat.

“What is that sound?” Paul asked, working his way downward.

“What?” I propped myself up on one elbow. “Is someone here?”

He pulled me back down, lips close to my ear. “It's nothing.” His sandpapery chin grazed my cheek in a good way. “Don't worry about it.”

It was lovely having Paul in my bed, all to myself. I sank deeper into the pink satin as he rolled on top of me and kissed my mouth, now urgently.

I heard the sound this time. Someone knocking. How had someone gotten past the doorman? I froze, as Paul's lips traveled downward.

“Someone's here,” I said, shaking in the darkness.

W
hat you must understand is how social the Polish underground was for a young person. After the Germans invaded and deemed Girl Guides and Scouts criminal organizations, we just continued clandestinely and became known as the Szare Szeregi, or Gray Ranks. We answered to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and most of the Girl Guides joined. This group was my only source of companionship, since Zuzanna worked long hours at the Lublin Ambulance Corps and was never home. Plus, it was a good way to vent our frustration at being occupied by the Germans.

We'd had excellent first aid training in Girl Guides, but in the Gray Ranks, we continued educating ourselves and attended secret medical courses. The older girls fought alongside the boys or worked as nurses and seamstresses and managed orphanages. Some even helped free people from German prisons, blow up bridges, and steal German military plans.

We younger girls in my seven-person squad saved Polish books from being destroyed by German soldiers and taught secret classes. We trained as decoders and delivered fake identity cards and messages. We did our part to sabotage the Nazis, rearranging street signs to make sure the SS got lost. At night we connected to German broadcast speakers in the streets and played the Polish national anthem. The more we got away with, the more we wanted it, as if it were a drug. We had to be careful, though, since not only had the Nazis chosen Lublin as their Polish headquarters, but all across Poland, German spies had started identifying our former Girl Guide leaders and arresting them.

Plus,
lapanka
were occurring more frequently. A
lapanka
was something Matka lived in fear of for us—a sudden, wild manhunt executed by the SS. No longer did the authorities wait for the cover of night. They took their prey, random Polish citizens, in daylight in the most unexpected places: Churches. Train stations. Ration lines. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught was seized and taken to a confinement center. Most were sent to Germany to be worked to death. Aryan-looking Polish children were at risk too. They started disappearing in great numbers from the cities. One day a whole train of them was rounded up and taken. The German guards shot the mothers as they ran after the train. In the country, if too few laborers reported, whole villages were burned.

Though Pietrik wouldn't speak of it, his father, a captain in our Polish army, had been arrested along with his fellow officers, leaving Pietrik the only man in his house. Before the war every man who'd graduated from university had been required to join the military as a reserve officer, so it was easy for the authorities to eliminate our most educated by arresting all members of the Polish Officers Corps. At least Pietrik had not been conscripted into the army when the war broke out.

I begged Pietrik for more important assignments, like those the older girls got, but as our group commander, he was full of excuses.

“Tell me I'm not good at missions,” I told Pietrik one afternoon at our apartment. “Look what a good job I did with Nadia's house.”

Pietrik helped me wash the few paintbrushes Matka had not buried. She'd placed them under a floorboard so she could still paint at night. They were not just any brushes, but Kolinsky sable-hair watercolor brushes, and washing them was a task of honor Matka trusted me with. She inherited those Stradivariuses of the brush world from her mother, and each was worth a fortune. They came tucked in a red-flannel roll, each one with its own narrow sleeve to live in, each made of Russian weasel hair, from the male weasels only, three times more precious per pound than gold.

“I have nothing for you, Kasia,” Pietrik said. “Things are quiet now.”

For a boy with such large hands, he was gentle with the brushes. He dipped one in the soapsuds and ran his fingers gently over the nickel ferrule and down the sable tip.

“If I spend another day in this house, I'll go mad.”

Pietrik set his brush next to mine on the dishrag. “You know the rules. You're not old enough. Read a book.”

“I'm capable of more—”

“No, Kasia.”

“Nothing feels better than fighting them, Pietrik. Send me anywhere. It doesn't have to be big.”

“If you were ever caught, being a beautiful young girl is no defense against them. They'll shoot a pretty one as soon as any other.”

Beautiful? Me? Pretty?

“If you don't assign me, I'll go work for the Free Press. I heard they need runners.”

“You are safer with me.”

“There you go.”

Finally, progress!

Pietrik turned to me, serious.

“Well, there is one thing. A complicated assignment, so you have to
listen.
”

“In the ghetto?” I asked.

He nodded.

Right away I was afraid but didn't dare show it. One frightened look, and that would be the end of my assignments.

“You need to go to Z's Pharmacy.” He paused. “No, on second thought, you're not doing this.”

“Who is better? I used to have chocolate ice cream at Zaufanym's with Nadia. Mr. Z goes to our church.”

Though it was in the ghetto, there was no rule against Christians buying at Z's. All sorts of people shopped there, even the SS, since the pharmacist and owner, known as Mr. Z to most, was practically a doctor and somehow stocked every remedy, even with the war on.

“Can you be there at exactly two tomorrow?”

“Have I ever been late?”

“The patrol shift changes then, so you'll have exactly five minutes when there will be no guards who will stop you. Avoid the blackshirts as best you can. They've added patrols.”

“Got it,” I said with a smile, though all the blood in my body seemed to stop running. I had the feeling in my stomach that said, “Think twice about this,” but I shooed it away.

“Enter, and go straight to the door at the back of the shop,” Pietrik said.

“To the basement?”

“Yes. Take the stairs down.” Pietrik took my hand and looked into my eyes. “Once you make contact, stay five minutes only. You'll be accepting an important package, Kasia. Do you understand?”

I nodded. Doing my best to keep a calm voice, I asked, “Might anything explode?”

“No, but speak to no one as you leave. Come back to your regular shift at the theater. Your cover story is you are buying aspirin.”

Pietrik was so serious as he gave me my instructions. A cover story. It was a real mission, and though my hands shook, I would execute it perfectly. Five minutes was a world of time just to pick up some things.

I
BARELY SLEPT THAT NIGHT,
a running loop of all that could go wrong playing in my head. The ghetto. Just being in the wrong place could get one arrested. Every day one heard of neighbors and friends taken to Gestapo headquarters, “Under the Clock,” the innocent-looking office building with cells in the basement, or worse, to Lublin Castle, where prisoners were shot in the courtyard.

I set out for Z's Pharmacy the next afternoon with shaky legs. It was a gray day, the wind pushing heavy clouds about the sky. No need to be afraid. That was what got you caught. Nazis could smell the fear.

I was halfway to Grodzka Gate, the official entrance to the ghetto, when I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. It was Matka coming out of Deutsche Haus, the restaurant where every German in town ate. The one with the extra big
FÜR POLEN VERBOTEN!
sign on the door. The SS men especially loved the place, since they knew the food was safe to eat and practically free, and they knew they didn't have to eat sitting next to any Polish person. Rumor was the place was full of cigarette smoke and the portions were so large much went uneaten, but no one I knew had been inside, or so I thought. At least not to live to tell of it, for this was the rule. No Poles allowed. Just the week before, our greengrocer had been caught in the kitchen, there to deliver potatoes, and was arrested. He never came back.

These arrests were becoming common events. That morning I'd read in Zuzanna's underground newspaper that in just three months of war, fifty thousand Polish citizens had been rounded up and murdered, about seven thousand of them Jews. Most were town leaders—lawyers, professors, and religious leaders, anyone who broke rules or opposed the occupying forces. The Nazis saw the Catholic Church as a dangerous enemy, and there was a long list of priests arrested. Citizens were often wrongly accused of crimes and sent away or executed in public squares, the shots waking us at night.

So once I saw Matka come out of Deutsche Haus clutching a brown package no bigger than a small loaf of bread at her chest, I had to know what she was doing there. It was lunchtime, and people packed the sidewalks, heads down against the wind. She walked in the opposite direction from me, toward home.

I pushed through the crowd to reach her. “Matka!” I called.

Matka turned and, once she saw me, looked like the icy hand of a spirit had touched her. “Kasia. You're not at the theater? I'm bringing your sandwich later.”

“I took late shift today.” I had worked as ticket girl at the movie theater near our flat since Zuzanna bequeathed the job to me.

We sidestepped a water-ration line that wound down the block.

“You were at Deutsche Haus? No Poles are allowed in there.”

“They consider me German.”

I felt a little sick just thinking about her in that place. It was true about the cigarettes! I could smell them on her.

“How could you?”

“Don't be hysterical, Kasia. I was just dropping—”

We both stepped off the sidewalk and let a German couple promenade by us, per regulations.

“Dropping what?”

She clenched the paper bag tighter and squeezed out a fragrant scent—dark and exotic—of palm trees and sunburned Brazil. Coffee.

“You can tell me, Matka
.
” I breathed deep to dispel the panic. “Is that a new eau de toilette?”

She stepped back up onto the sidewalk and picked up her pace. “Leave it alone, Kasia.”

I'd seen the new silk stockings in her bottom drawer, puddled under folded shirts, limp as shedded snakeskins. The realization wound around me. “You can't just ignore it. You must go to confession.”

She stopped again and drew me close, voice low.

“Bless me, Father, for I have had coffee with an SS man? Lennart is—”

I laughed. “
Lennart?
The name Lennart means brave, Matka
.
Lennart the
Brave
killed our Psina with a
shovel.
”

The sun broke through the clouds, and the barest smudge of black in the hollow of her cheek caught the light, iridescent. Charcoal.

“You've been sketching them.”
Deep breath in…

She pulled me to her. “Quiet, Kasia. They like my work, and it gets me close—”

“It's dangerous.”

“You think I like it? It's all for Papa. They would have
shot
him, Kasia.”

“If I had a husband like Papa I'd rather die than be unfaithful to him.”

She walked on, pushing through the crowd, and I followed, knocked about by people rushing in every direction.

“How could you understand?” she said.

I pulled at her jacket sleeve.

She brushed my hand away.

“They call it race defilement, Matka
.
A Pole and a German. Together.”

She spun to face me.

“Would you be
quiet
? What is wrong with you?” Her breath smelled of coffee and pear
chrusciki.

I was beyond crying. How could she be so reckless?

“They'll take us all. Papa too.”

“Get to work,” she said with a cross look. She rushed away across the street and narrowly missed being hit by a couple in a fancy open car, who honked and yelled something in German. She made it to the curb and turned. Feeling badly she'd been cross with me?