The Color of Light (53 page)

Whatever her visitor heard, or didn’t hear, must have satisfied him, because suddenly the boots squeaked purposefully towards the door. She heard it bang shut.

Gradually the babel of noises sounded like it was coming from farther away, then ceased altogether. An unnatural silence fell over the town, a sound more terrible than all the sounds that had preceded it.

That night, she heard the door creak open, heard footsteps enter the apartment, stealthily this time. The table was moved, the carpet rolled away, and there was Zukowski, extending a hand to help her up out of the hole in the ground.

It was horrible, horrible, he said, wiping the corners of his eyes. Soldiers tearing children from the arms of mothers who fought like wild animals. Policemen beating old men over the head to move them along at a smart pace. Fresh bursts of grief as people recognized brothers, sisters, parents, children they thought had been hidden away.

Trains came and went for two days. In the end, there were not enough cars for all the people assembled; and so the last remnant of the Jews of Wlodawa were shot and beaten to death at the train plaza, the pretense of civility at an end. Their bodies were carted off into the forest by a few strong men reserved for this purpose, who performed their duties while whispering the prayer for the dead, slipping in puddles of mud and blood, before taking their turn in front of the guns.

Zukowski had visited the site himself. He knew the little children were in the lap of the Holy Mother, he told her. He took off his hat and wiped his face on his sleeve. “The ground,” he whispered unsteadily. “I was there today. The ground is moving.”

Shaya was asleep. Sofia laid the baby in the strange, abandoned bed, tucked him under the covers, then did a curious thing; she opened and closed drawers until she found a pen and paper. Relief flooded through her body. She sat at the table, smoothed her fingers over the sheet of paper, snowy white. “Can we stay here?” she said, her eyes on the paper as she began to sketch him, his kind eyes.

Now he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “My wife,” he murmured uneasily. “My children. If they find you…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. If she was caught, they would all die.

And then, just like that, his shoulders straightened with resolve. “Of course you can stay here,” he said firmly. “But you can’t leave these rooms, you understand. I’ll bring you food.”

She gave him her engagement ring. From her apartment, she asked him to bring clothes, some family pictures, her books, her pens and paper, her silver Shabbos candlesticks. Within a month, she had to tell him that she had nothing left to trade. He lifted his hands, palms up, and shrugged. “So it goes with my family, so it will go with yours,” he said. “Don’t worry about the money.”

A week ago, he’d disappeared. Knowing that his wife wasn’t pleased with the arrangement, she wondered if he’d finally given in to her pleading. Or worse, that he’d been arrested, tortured, killed.

This morning, the cupboard had been completely empty. As the day waned into twilight, she took a chance. She threw a shawl over her head and left the apartment, locking Shaya in with a warning to stay quiet.
Keeping her head down, she hugged the corners of the marketplace, coming at last to the booth where she knew the woman behind the mound of potatoes.

“Please,” she whispered to her husband’s lover. “Please.”

The pretty mouth dropped open, as if she had seen a ghost. “You should not be here,” she hissed, but she let Sofia take two potatoes. “Now,
go.”
she said, her eyes darting around to see if anybody was watching, “and don’t ever come back.” And then her voice turned low, vicious. “Or I’ll
tell
on you.”

By the time she reached her apartment, it was almost dark. Sofia boiled the potatoes and they had a feast. When the knock on the door finally came, she was almost relieved. Whatever happened next, at least her baby had a full stomach.

She was done. In all her words there had been not a trace of self-pity.

We were sitting on the couch now, turned towards one other, our hips barely touching through all our clothing. She was resting her head on the palm of her hand and gazing up at me through half-closed lids. The white curve of her neck called to me.

I reached out and stroked her hair, dark and smooth like a rook’s wing. “Sleep, my darling girl,” I told her. “You’ve been so brave, for so long. Your angel of healing is here. I’ll take care of everything. Go to sleep now.”

I could spend the whole night detailing the pageant of horror, tragedy and missed opportunities that has been my life. It’s the parts that are happy for which there are too few words.

Mostly, I remember little things. Sofia stealing glances at me from under long black lashes when she thought I wasn’t looking. The feel of her hip against my hand as she brushed past me between the table and the cupboard. Her hands tracing circles in the air as she lit her Shabbos candles. The accidental touch of her fingertips when we both reached for a game of Exquisite Corpse at the same time.

Isaiah’s tinkling laugh, like the sound of sleighbells. His small pink foot in the washtub during a bath. Down on my knees, crawling around the carpet with him on my back, pretending to be his brave steed. The sweet
sound of his voice laughing with delight as I whizzed him around my head spitting out propeller sounds. His hand sliding into mine.

Isaiah cuddled in Sofia’s lap, his head against her shoulder as she drew him a fish, a horse, a rocket ship, the moon and stars, the letters of his name. Sofia’s pointed chin resting on the top of his head, moving to give him a soft kiss, her red lips lost in the black curls.

Sofia drawing me again and again, her hands flying over the paper, her eyes darting back and forth from her sketch back to me. Sofia directing me, with all the authority of a general in the field. Hands in my pockets. Smoking a cigarette. Hat on. Hat off. Standing. Sitting. Reclining on the couch. Looking off in this direction. With my legs apart. With my legs crossed just so. With my jacket off. With my shirtsleeves rolled up. With my shirt open. In my undershirt. No shirt at all, my braces hanging down to my knees. A slight smile playing across her pillowy lips as she squinted to reduce me down to big lights and big shadows, to shut out unnecessary details, getting the large relationships down first.

One night towards the end I brought her a wireless radio. This was a specialty item, fraught with peril. Just to have one in your possession was punishable by death, a threat which understandably did not hold much sway with me.

Shyly, Isaiah asked me to draw him a horse. My fingers could no longer create the intricacies of the human face, but I could still manage a car, an airplane, a dog, a horse, the sort of things that a ten-year-old boy might draw.

While he scribbled ecstatic circles over it at the table, I threaded the antenna out the window in the kitchen. Sofia and I sat on the floor, head to head, as I fiddled the dial, crossing a universe of static until we found the BBC. A posh British voice declared that the Soviets had Germany’s elite Sixth Army completely surrounded in Stalingrad. It sounded like a turning point.

Isaiah had fallen asleep with his head on the table, softly breathing, the pencil still in his hand. I gathered him up and carried him to the bed. His hair stuck up in damp clumps all around his face, smelling of the French
milled bath soap I had brought the day before. I tucked the feather quilt around his little body.

He opened sleepy eyes. “Wafie,” he said.

I crouched down beside him. “Go back to sleep, little man. Maybe tomorrow I’ll bring you a toy racing car.”

He smiled joyously, showing me a glimpse of pearly teeth between bowed pink lips before his eyes fell closed again. On impulse, I kissed the top of his head.

Sofia played with the dial until she found some music. She leaned her head close to listen.

A bittersweet little waltz began to play, with words I didn’t understand. “I know this song,” she said with wonder. “I haven’t heard it since…”

Paper is white, and ink is black, she said. He is at a wedding. There are many beautiful girls, but none hold a candle to his love. Her face, her figure. Her beautiful black eyes, her beautiful black hair.

“In my heart burns a fire,” she translated, looking directly into my eyes. “No one can know the burning in my heart.
Der Tod und dir Leben ist by Gott in dir hend.
Life and death are both in God’s hand.”

I stood and pulled her to her feet, slipped my fingers around her waist.
One two three, one two three, one two three.
I waltzed her around the room, dancing her around the table and the chairs to the melody, sweet and rueful and filled with longing. We danced for what we had lost, and for things that could never be.

Sofia in the circle of my arms. It was all I’d ever wanted. The smell of her hair. The pressure of her fingers on the back of my neck. I spirited her backwards; she drove me forward.

I never wanted the plaintive little tune to end. But it was a brief song, a poem, almost, and it was a memory nearly as soon as it had begun.

When it was over, the station went off the air, leaving only static. I didn’t want to let her go, so I made a joke out of it, dipped her down to the floor. When I pulled her back up, she was breathing hard, her lips parted.

For a moment we just stood there, looking into each other’s eyes, my hands around her waist. Her fingers, resting lightly on the back of my neck, slid up to the side of my face. I kissed the palm of her hand.

“Raphael,” she said hesitantly.

“Don’t,” I said, laying my finger over her lips. “I know. Please don’t say it.”

There was nothing remarkable about the first hours of that day, the one that was the beginning of the end.

In the late afternoon, there was a soft knock at my door. My innkeeper with a telegram. It was from Anastasia. Rudi was stationed in nearby Krakow, capital of Nazi-occupied Poland. She was delighted to find me well, I must phone her right away. I folded the cable in quarters, tucked it away in the inside pocket of my jacket.

After sunset, I went to the black market to pick up a few things. Merchants smiled to me, waved me over. Money made for good friends.

I passed through the market square as it was shutting down. I had located Skip’s lady friend, the one who sold potatoes, on my second day in Wlodawa. She looked up at me as I went by, and as I did every day, I considered luring her into a dark passageway and sucking the life out of her. It was already dark. A pretty girl in a maid’s uniform was dumping dirty water out into the gutter. She had high pink cheeks, round like apples. I followed her around the back, had my dinner. Picking up my parcels, I continued on my way.

My blood racing, I hurried through the busy streets to the house, ducked through an unlit passageway to the inner yard, and knocked softly. As I waited, I laid my hand on the rough wood, imagining it would take on her warmth. She opened the door, already smiling.

“What is that scent you always wear?” she asked. The basket held a roasted chicken, potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, an orange, real coffee. As she took it, she held on a moment longer than was necessary, her fingertips touching mine.

“Sandalwood.”

“Sahn
-dahl-vood,” she repeated in her lush voice. “Always, it will make me think of you.”

She may as well have said, “I love you.” She looked shyly away. Then, with new boldness, she stared into my eyes. That was when I saw it, the image of a man in a fedora, floating in the depths of her pupils. Understanding dawned on me slowly.

“Good God,” I whispered. “I can see myself in your eyes.”

She smiled, not understanding the significance. It was the first time I’d seen my own face in over three years.

I reached out and grasped her arms. Yes, I would tell her. There was no one else in all the world that I cared about more. She would understand. “Sofia,” I said, softly, urgently.

There was a knock on the front door. Three sharp raps.

The color drained from her face. On the floor, playing with his new toy racing car, Isaiah froze in place.

We waited in silence, a moment that lasted for a hundred years. The knock came again, more insistent this time, accompanied by a harsh command in German to “
Aufmachen die Tür!”
Open the door.

I called, “Just a moment!” as I vaulted past the table and raced into the kitchen. Throwing back the bit of carpet, I yanked open the trapdoor in the floor. Sofia clambered down the ladder as I scooped up Isaiah and his car and handed them down to her. I looked down at them, my little family, their eyes wide with terror, then shut the trapdoor over their frightened faces.

I could hear the men outside making ready to force the door. Smoothing my hair, straightening my tie, I hastened to greet them.

There were two of them, an officer in a black leather coat, and a tall soldier carrying a semiautomatic rifle, bayonet fixed. “Hello, gentlemen,” I said politely. “What seems to be the problem?”

They seemed surprised to see me. The officer addressed me in German. I didn’t understand his rapid delivery, but he seemed to want to come in.

“No one here but me,” I replied, smiling pleasantly. He had a little brushy mustache and the flinty eyes of a playground bully. Putting his gloved hand on the door, he barred it open, the threat implicit.

I burrowed deep inside myself, summoning all the hocus-pocus hypno-power at my disposal, then stared hard into their eyes. “There’s no one here,” I suggested smoothly. “No need to come inside.”

It seemed to work. I could see their faces go slack, inert. Nodding their agreement, they muttered something that sounded apologetic, and turned to go. Though I had no breath, I could still heave a sigh of relief, and I did so as I closed the door behind them.

I got halfway across the room before there was another knock at the door. Cursing to myself, I opened it again.

This time, there were no pleasantries. The soldier leveled his rifle, squeezed off two rounds into the center of my chest.

The impact knocked me off my feet. I flew into the air, crash-landing on top of the table. It toppled and fell under my weight. The world receded into a tiny pinprick of light. Next thing I remember, I was on the floor, propped up by the overturned table. There was a frightening ache under my ribs.