The Kommandant's Girl (32 page)

I should go for help, I think, then laugh inwardly at the notion. There is no help anymore. The resistance is all but gone. The one person who could have called the Gestapo off, Kommandant Richwalder, is dead. I picture Marta holding the gun on the bridge, ready to go down fighting. She would have known what to do.

The gun, I remember suddenly, my hand dropping to my waist. I had nearly forgotten about the Kommandant’s pistol, still tucked neatly in my skirt. I pull it out. I have never fired a gun in my life. Would I even be able to do it properly? The Kommandant fired twice, which I imagine should mean that there are four bullets left. I turn the gun over in my hand, considering. Suddenly, a loud, crashing noise comes through the second-floor window. I leap up. Something has happened. I have to go in. I pull the lever back on the gun and start around the corner of the house, my finger on the trigger. Just before I reach the door, I hear footsteps. Someone is coming down. I leap back around the side of the house, out of sight.

Through the window, I can see three Gestapo policemen in the foyer. They are not the same ones that were here before. The front door opens. “The old woman was lying,” I hear one of the men say as they walk out into the garden. Oh, God, I think; they were interrogating Krysia. I wonder if they saw Lukasz.

“I don’t think she knew anything more,” another replies. His voice is fainter and I can tell they are walking away from me toward the front gate.

The first voice speaks again. “It doesn’t matter now.” Panic shoots through me. What have they done? I fight the urge to leap up before they have gone. A moment later, when the car doors have slammed and the car has sped away, I race into the house.

“Krysia,” I call, sprinting up the first flight of stairs. There is no response. “Krysia!”

I reach the first-floor landing. The house is in complete disarray. Broken glass and porcelain dishes litter the kitchen floor. In the parlor, the sofa pillows have been ripped open, scattering down feathers everywhere. I cross the room to the fireplace. A picture frame lies broken on the floor, the glass shattered. I bend down. It is my framed wedding photograph, the one Krysia hid on the night that I first arrived. The Gestapo must have found it somehow. So my secret will not die with the Kommandant. After more than a year of concealment, it has been revealed twice in one day.

An acrid whiff of smoke fills my nostrils. This is not the usual smell of neighbors burning leaves and brush that sometimes wafts in through the windows. It is more intense and coming from inside the house. My head snaps around, searching for the source of the fire. It must be upstairs, I realize. “Krysia! Lukasz!” I call desperately, racing out of the parlor.

I climb the stairs to the second floor two at a time. “Oh, no!” I cry aloud. At the top of the stairs, Krysia lies sprawled on the floor, her eyes closed. Her arms are flung above her head and her legs are tangled in her skirt at strange angles. She does not move. I drop to her side, lifting her head. “Krysia!” I shake her gently but she does not respond. There is a large welt by her temple, as though she had hit it when she had fallen or been knocked down. Her skin is waxy and cool. I lower my face to hers, feeling for some sign of breath, but there is none. Don’t leave me, Krysia, I plead silently. Not now, not when I need you to tell me what I should do. I open her mouth and place my lips over hers, trying to blow air into her lungs. A moment later, I stop, feeling for a pulse in her neck and finding none. It is too late, I realize; she is gone. “Oh, Krysia,” I cry. I hold her close, rocking her back and forth as she had when she’d tried to comfort me.

Suddenly I hear a crackling sound behind me. The fire, I remember, looking around. I place Krysia’s head back on the ground gently and I stand up. The smoke seems to be coming from several directions and I cannot discern the source of the blaze. For a moment, I consider trying to put out the fire. But even if I could stop it, the smoke will attract attention. I have to find the child and then we must get out of here.

I race to Lukasz’s bedroom. The smoke here is nearly too thick for me to see. “Lukasz!” I call, covering my mouth and crouching low. He is not in his crib or on the floor. “Lukasz!” I shout again, running to Krysia’s room, and finally my own. Even through the smoke, I can tell that the Gestapo had searched the house thoroughly—every room is in shambles, clothes strewn from the dressers, mirrors smashed. But there is no sign of Lukasz. Did they do something with him? I wonder.

Perhaps he ran outside, I think, starting back down the stairs. Then I hear a creaking noise coming from overhead. The attic! I remember Krysia telling me how, after Lukasz’s mother had been shot, relatives had hidden him in their attic for several days. He must have been frightened when the Gestapo had come and gone there to hide.

I race into Krysia’s room and throw open the closet door. Pushing aside Krysia’s clothes, I climb up the ladder. “Lukasz,” I call through the opening. There is silence. I cannot make out anything in the darkness. “Lukasz, it’s Anna. It’s all right, come to me.”

I hear shuffling in the dark, then a tiny warm hand finds mine.
“Na,”
I hear him say. I grab his arm and pull his small, trembling body to me. “It’s okay,” I say, holding him close and climbing back down the stairs. The smoke has grown thicker now. We have to get out fast. I grab a rag from Krysia’s dresser and place it over Lukasz’s mouth. As we start to leave the room, I see a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye. It is the sweater Krysia made for Lukasz. I grab it to take with us.

As we cross the hallway to where Krysia lies, I cover Lukasz’s eyes so he will not see her. He has already seen too much death. I climb over Krysia and start down the stairs, then turn back. Krysia. My heart wrenches. She had been everything to us. Saved us. Cared for us as if we were her own. So you became a mother, after all, I think. I wish that we could take her with us. She deserves a proper burial. A funeral where the hundreds who loved and admired her could come to pay their respects. But there is no time. “Thank you,” I whisper, looking at her one last time. I blow her a kiss, and run out with Lukasz into the cold morning air.

O
utside, it is nearly dawn and the farmers of Chelmska are just beginning their day. They feed their livestock and sweep their front porches as if it is any other morning. Some look up and nod as we pass, others do not acknowledge us at all as we walk up the road into the forest. If they think it strange that I am walking toward the woods carrying a soot-covered child, instead of to the bus stop at the roundabout for work as I normally would, they give no indication. They have not yet seen the smoke that will surely pour out of Krysia’s house within minutes.

As we climb the road that winds upward into the forest, the houses grow fewer and farther apart. Ahead the trees are dense, their dark cover a promise. Soon the road ends, trickling into a narrow forest path. I pause and turn to look at the neighborhood below. The roofs of the houses look sleepy, unperturbed. Enough, I think. There is no point in dwelling on what must be left behind. I look down at the ground beneath me. There is a thin layer of frost that I had not noticed previously. I am suddenly aware of my circumstances: the cold, the heaviness of the child, how far we have to go. The fact that we have nothing.

A sense of urgency overtakes me. We must keep going. Shifting Lukasz to my left hip, I begin to walk again. Safely enveloped by the trees and out of the eyesight of the neighbors, I quicken my pace now, nearly running, my gait awkward with the girth of my stomach and the weight of the child. The path grows uneven and steep. My legs begin to ache and my shoes become caked with damp spring mud. Suddenly, my foot catches on a rock and I lurch forward, tripping. As I fall, I cling fiercely to the child, hitting the ground first and rolling to break his fall. A wave of pain shoots through my shoulder.

I lay dazed for a few seconds, trying to catch my breath. “Lukasz…” I sit up and pull the child onto my lap. Quickly, I check him for injury, but he seems fine, except for some dirt on his already-blackened forehead. “Are you okay?” He nods silently and makes the face that I know means he is hungry. My stomach twists. He should be having breakfast now, safe and warm at Krysia’s table. I wish that I at least had some milk to give him. I should have remembered to take the rations Krysia had prepared for our travels. The rabbi’s reproachful face flashes in my mind. What kind of caretaker will I make without Krysia? Will I be able to care for my own child when he or she is born? I reach into my coat pocket and find an old square of chocolate from a bar the Kommandant had given me once. I pull back the paper and dust it off before handing it to Lukasz. “Here.” He takes it and puts it in his mouth hurriedly, as though afraid it will disappear. A wide smile appears on his face. Chocolate for breakfast.

Still trying to catch my breath, I study his face as he eats. Not an hour after the trauma of the Gestapo and the fire and leaving Krysia’s, his eyes are clear and calm. So you are coming with me after all, I think. “Come, darling,” I say, standing up. Remembering the blue sweater, I take it from inside my coat and pull it over his head. It fits snugly, almost too small for him. He has gotten so big in the year that he has been with us. Despite all of the tragedy and tension, he has thrived, growing from a toddler to a child when none of us were looking. My child. I cannot think of him as anything else, though I still wonder if someday the rabbi or some other relative will come looking for him, and claim him for their own. For now, though, he is here. I squeeze his solid fingers in mine, as if to be sure. He looks up and smiles, as if to reassure me that everything will be okay.

“Safe,” I say aloud. Then I realize that this is far from true. We are hundreds of long, dangerous kilometers from safe. No, not safe, but free. I have no idea where we are going or how, and I don’t know if we will make it. Still, the word has an undeniable ring to it. “Free.” I will not have to be someone else again.

“Fee?” Lukasz reaches up to me as he tries to repeat the word. I look down at him. There is chocolate on his fingers. I reach into my pocket to find a tissue to wipe them. My hand brushes against something in my pocket. The rings and the certificate, I remember suddenly. Marta had handed them to me on the bridge. Once again I consider whether I should get rid of them, bury them in the ground. Then I realize that, for better or for worse, the charade is over. I take the rings from my pocket and put them on my fingers once more.

As we make our way through the woods, I think of those we have left behind. Krysia and Alek are gone, my mother, too. I will grieve for them all in time, I know, each in a different way. And then there’s the Kommandant. I see his face before me suddenly, and stop, my breath catching. “Don’t,” I tell myself aloud, but even as I say the word, I know that it is no use. The face I see in my mind is not that of the Nazi who lorded over the city from high atop Wawel, or who held a gun to my chest on the bridge. No, he is gone. Instead, I see the man who walked into Krysia’s the night of the dinner party, who caught my eyes and didn’t let go, who brought me to new places in my body and held me afterward as I slept. The man who asked forgiveness as he lay dying on the railway bridge. I realize then that it was not only he who died in that moment. The Kommandant brought Anna to life, and when he was gone, she was, too. Anna Lipowski, I think. The Kommandant’s girl. I wonder if I will miss her.

“Enough,” I say, and my words echo in the clearing of trees where we have paused. There will be time to try to make sense of it all later. For now we have to keep going. I force Lukasz, who has dropped to the dirt, to stand up and start walking again.

Shaking thoughts of the Kommandant, I think instead of the others we left behind. My father. He is still alive, or was a few hours ago. I picture the burning light in his eyes through the hole in the ghetto wall. Perhaps he will somehow survive whatever lies ahead.

Marta is alive, too, I remind myself. I remember her sitting on the bridge, clasping the gun, gravely wounded but unafraid. She saved my life. I wish that our last words before that night had not been spoken in anger, that she had not thought ill of me for sleeping with the Kommandant. Most of all I wish our friendship had not been tainted by her feelings for my husband. My mind flashes back to the moment she appeared on the bridge, gun in hand. She could have killed me and had Jacob for herself, I realize, but she had not. Our friendship meant more to her than her feelings for him.

Perhaps by some miracle Marta managed to escape from the bridge before the Nazis arrived, despite her wounds. Maybe she and my father will survive the war, I mused, and we will somehow be reunited: me, Jacob, my father, Marta and Lukasz.

I drop my hand to my stomach, thinking of my unborn child, who will also be a part of this eclectic family of survivors. As I look around the deserted forest, a wave of despair washes over me: how can I bring a child into a world such as this? Even if I find Jacob and we manage to escape, we will have nothing to give our child, not even a home. A cool breeze blows by me then and I look up through the tree branches, which are just beginning to bud, at the early morning sky. It will be fine, a voice whispers. The child will be strong. I know in that moment that the child will be a boy and that we will name him Alek.

An hour later, we reach the far edge of the forest, where the trees abruptly give way to the sloping, cleared fields of Czernichow. I pause, loosening my grip on Lukasz’s hand and scanning the panorama below us. Off to the right, not a kilometer away, I spot the blue roof of the Kowalczyk farm. Squinting, I can just make out a tiny hut behind it. I imagine Jacob standing on the porch, his face breaking into a wide smile when he sees us coming. Then I laugh aloud. I have spent so much time daydreaming, imagined our reunion for so long, that it has become second nature. Now there is nothing stopping me, yet I am still standing here thinking about it instead of going to him. I take a deep breath and step forward.

Away from the shelter of the trees, the sun shines warmly now, more spring than winter at last. Birds circle over the fields before us, calling out merrily to one another. “Come,
kochana,
” I beckon to Lukasz, tugging on his arm gently. Jacob is waiting. Together, the child and I descend from the forest, his small, strong legs quickening their pace to match my own. Though a long, difficult journey surely lies ahead, the first part of it, at least, is over. We have left Krysia’s as we had come, with only the clothes on our backs. But this time, we are going together, finding our way without anyone else to guide us.