The Winter Guest

  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.

  13

  When at last the hallway was silent, Helena unfolded herself and stood. Her legs buckled, numb from remaining still for so long. She peered out into the now-silent ward. She did not know how much time had passed since she first hid in the closet, how many hours she’d been trapped as the Germans and their Polish laborers cleared bodies and furniture from the adjacent wards. They were gone now, just as quickly and inexplicably as they’d come.

  Steadying herself, Helena walked to her mother’s bed. At least she was still there, one of the overlooked—at least so far—in the harried cleanup. Stroking Mama’s cool, waxy cheek, Helena tried to clear her mind. All the times she had sat by this bedside, she had tried to tell her mother something. But what, exactly? Even now, she struggled to find the words. She had wanted Mama just to notice her. It was more than that, though. She had yearned—even just for a second—for her mother to like her best. Now that would never be.

  Helena took one last look at the beautiful face before covering it with a blanket. Mama deserved a funeral with prayers (though what kind, Helena was no longer sure), or at least a proper burial. But there was no way to carry her home. “I’m sorry,” Helena whispered. With one last look, she walked to the door and, making sure that the hallway was clear, slipped out the back door of the hospital and onto the deserted street.

  Helena started toward the corner, retracing her earlier route. A fine rain had begun to fall, filling the late-afternoon air with icy mist. She passed the steps of the apartment building where she’d seen the family earlier. The stuffed doll lay sodden and unclaimed where it had been left, abandoned and sad. Helena picked it up from the puddle and sat it up on the stairs in case the girl should return. Shame filled her. She should have done something, called out. She had always considered herself the strong one in their family, but when tested, she had failed.

  As she neared the intersection, footsteps rang out. Helena ducked back around the corner. Boots, heavy and thudding, echoed off the pavement. A flashlight illuminated the way ahead, light licking the walls. The trucks had gone, but there were foot patrols, searching for any remaining Jews who might have escaped the net. Helena pressed against the wall, holding her breath. She looked around desperately for a better hiding place, but found none. She reached for her knife. Weeks earlier, when she’d almost encountered the Nazi jeep on the road, she’d been caught off guard, frozen in terror. But she knew now that she would sooner fight and bring on her own death than be taken.

  Helena braced herself as the footsteps grew louder, preparing for her inevitable discovery. Suddenly they stopped, the air silent and still. “Hier!” a voice called in the distance. The footsteps came again but they were fading now as the patrol ran in the other direction. Helena exhaled, her shoulders slumping. Her relief was short-lived—rapid gunshots broke out, rattling the windows. They had caught someone else. Suppressing a scream, Helena ran down the alleyway, her own footsteps muted by the gunfire that rang ceaselessly against the stone buildings.

  Forty minutes later, she reached the edge of the forest and raced for the cover of the trees. She paused for the first time since she’d fled Kazimierz, struggling to catch her breath. It was dark now, the familiar path ahead a veiled maze. Remembering the flashlight that Sam had given her, she pulled it out, holding it aloft to maximize the faint yellow beam. The rain had stopped and the air was cold and fresh. She breathed it in greedily, trying to clear the smells of burning and death that hung over the city.

  Something moved behind her. Helena spun around sharply. But the path was deserted, the low brush still. Easy, she told herself. Just an animal. Still her skin prickled. She forced herself to keep moving. As she walked, the realization sunk in: Mama was dead. Her guilt rose. Helena had always accused Ruth of being the one with her head in the sand. Why hadn’t she seen the disaster at the hospital coming and done something to save her? If she had not gone to find Alek, she would have been there, helped her mother. Instead, she had left her alone in her final desperate moments. And for what?

  Helena saw her mother’s face, f
inally at peace, and thought of the secrets she had kept hidden all of these years. A Jewish parent. Half-Jewish. The Jews she knew of were dark and strange. How could she possibly be one of them? Images from Helena’s childhood clicked into place. She could remember her father’s parents, who had lived with them when she was very young. Other than that, the family had been alone, no relations or even friends coming to the house. Mama’s past had always been shrouded in darkness and she had airily laughed off questions about how she had come to be in their village, the family she had left behind in Masuria, Poland’s northern Lake District. Now Helena saw her vagueness as deliberate, her break from the past as an attempt to hide the truth about her heritage. There was so much Helena wanted to ask her mother: Had she always known? Why hadn’t she told them the truth? And then after escaping her past, to wind up in a Jewish hospital once more. She wondered whether Tata had put her there unwittingly, or had thought it the best way to protect her. Had Mama been aware enough to know that she had been returned to the very world she’d spent her life trying to escape? The answers lay buried forever now.

  Grief ripped through Helena and she rocked backward on her heels, her head swimming. She had not expected Mama to live, had not labored under any of her sister’s false hope. But reality set in now and a thousand images of her mother cascaded down upon her. It was not just Mama that had gone but all of her memories—and it was as if a part of Helena had died, too.

  Mama was gone. Helena could not help Sam nor could she ever really be his. Tears did not come easily to Helena, not even in the darkest moments of night. But she cried now, the hot wet splashes rolling down her cheeks, foreign and unstoppable. She wiped them furiously, but they flowed unabated.

  Helena began running through the woods, not feeling the twigs that snapped against her face and tangled her hair. Soon she reached the clearing and the shadow of the chapel loomed large in the darkness. She stopped short of the door. She had not planned to come here. Remembering her promise to Ruth, she started to turn. But the door opened then and at the sight of Sam, silhouetted against the chapel entrance, she could stand it no longer.

  He raced to her as quickly as his half-mended leg would allow. “Lena!” In his surprise, he spoke too loudly, heedless of their usual caution. Then he embraced her with newfound abandon.

  She fell into his arms sobbing. “What is it?” he demanded, holding her tighter. One of his crutches fell to the ground and his leg wobbled from the strain but he did not let go. “Are you hurt?”

  “Mama’s dead...and the Germans...” she began, and she could tell that without saying any more he understood. He lowered himself to the ground in the doorway, still holding her. She beat her hands against his chest. He grasped her wrists and drew her closer. Their lips met and she was kissing him then, not in the tentative way she had last time, but fiercely, letting her grief pour out through him.

  “Helena...” He stiffened and she braced herself to hear once more that they should not do this because he was leaving.

  “No.” She kissed him again, drowning his protests. She felt his teeth behind his lips, tasted the saltiness of her tears. They needed to take this moment because it was all they might have. He pressed against her, matching her intensity, seeming to know that this was what she needed. And when they had finally broken apart, he drew her close to his chest and held her silently.

  She drew her knees close and wrapped her arms around them. “She was alone at the end. I should have been there.”

  “Lena, no! There was nothing you could have done for her. You would have surely been killed, too. You said that she hasn’t been lucid much when you’ve visited. Mercifully, she probably had no idea what was happening.” Helena squeezed her eyes shut. She would never know the truth about whether her mother had been scared or in pain or whether she had simply drifted off into her memories forever.

  He reached for a rag and pressed it against her hair, which she had not noticed was soaking wet from the rain. She inhaled the damp earthy smell that seemed to have permeated the fabric of his shirt, then shuddered as a series of images ran through her mind. “I saw a family arrested, old people murdered. A woman attacked. They were clearing the Jewish quarter—or what was left of it, anyway.” Sam stiffened beneath her. She looked at him, surprised. “Did you know?”

  “Not entirely,” he replied, and she understood then the conflicted expression she had sometimes seen on his face when they spoke during her past visits. He had been trying to protect her from the truth, or as much as he knew of it. “I had some idea. But a hospital, I can’t even imagine.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Would it have done any good to worry you?”

  He had a point, she conceded inwardly. Even if Sam had told her that the sanatorium might be in danger, she would not have been able to take her mother out of there.

  “There’s something else...” She looked up, her eyes meeting his. “I found out that my mother is—was—half-Jewish.”

  He pulled back slightly. “What? How is that possible?”

  “A nurse told me it was in Mama’s file.”

  “And she kept it from you all of these years?” Helena nodded. Sam’s eyes widened. “That’s quite a shock.” For a second, she was fearful—though Sam himself was Jewish, would he like her any less because she was not the same person anymore?

  “Being Jewish makes everything so much more dangerous for you, Helena.” His voice wavered and his expression was one of grave concern.

  She looked at him, puzzled. “I’m not a Jew. Part-Jewish, maybe.” That sounded odd. How could one be part anything? Which part?

  “Darling, the Jewish religion passes through the mother. So if your maternal grandmother was Jewish, then your mother was Jewish and so are you. And the Germans say that anyone with even a bit of Jewish blood is a Jew.” He took her hand. “Do you mind?”

  “No,” Helena replied quickly, not wanting to offend him. She meant it; it didn’t bother her, really. For she loved him and he was Jewish, and that could not mean anything bad or wrong. But it was a strange idea, too—Jewish had always been something so foreign—how could it have been part of her all along without her knowing it? She did not feel Jewish, whatever that meant—she felt exactly as she had a few hours earlier.

  “You can’t possibly think about staying now that you know,” he said, tightening his embrace. “The things that they are doing to the Jews, well, you saw it yourself at the hospital.”

  She had not considered until then the ramifications of her mother’s religion. An image popped into her mind of the family she had seen earlier being taken from their home. Innocents—men, women and children—arrested on the streets of beautiful, civilized Kraków because they were Jews. Arrested or worse, she thought, remembering the bodies piled high in the hospital hallway. Because they were Jews. Though Helena and her siblings had lived as Christians their entire lives, they were now in the same jeopardy. Was there no one to stop this from happening? The family she had seen were her people, and she was now one of them by virtue of her Jewish heritage. But shouldn’t they have been her people, anyway, regardless of faith?

  Sam stroked her hair, then rested his chin against her head. “Do you think some part of you knew?”

  Helena considered the question. She had known, perhaps, that she was different, not like the other girls in the village. But the actual reality of being Jewish was so foreign...she could have sooner imagined that she was from outer space. “I don’t know.”

  She remembered then a visit to see Mama, months earlier, before Sam. It was a Friday evening, and she was making her way back from the hospital later than usual. She had passed one of the synagogues, the large one on Miodowa Street with the ornate glass windows. Alit from within, the temple seemed to glow yellow gold, otherworldly. She had walked closer, drawn to the low, methodical chanting from within that seemed to permeate the walls. Was it merely the beauty that
had appealed to her? Or was it some deeper part of her, something in her soul, that had known the truth before she’d had any idea.

  Sam chuckled. “What’s so funny?” she demanded, caught off guard.

  “I don’t mean to make light of things, not now. But a nice Jewish girl, as they say back home, makes things so much easier. Being Jewish didn’t seem to matter so much before the war. But having been here and seen things, well, my faith is deeper than ever. So I’m happy you’re Jewish. It’s almost like it’s fated—beshert, as my grandmother would say.”

  Helena wanted to tell him that she didn’t believe in meant-to-be, not before and certainly not now after what she had seen in the city. “I want my children to be Jewish,” he added. A lump formed in her throat. Was he really talking about a future together, the family that they might one day have? “I’m sorry if that was too forward.”

  “Not at all,” she said, taking his hand. Here, in the quiet, removed world of the chapel, they could dream together and plan a future. For what else did they have but those dreams? Talking about it with him now, it almost seemed possible.

  “There’s something else,” she said. “I went to the city and tried to make contact for you—twice actually.”

  “You did?” In comforting her, he had put his own need to escape aside. But now the urgency returned to his voice.

  “I found Landesberg.”

  “Really? How?”

  “I went to the church where the black market operates and asked.”

  “Helena, that’s so dangerous! If you spoke with the wrong person, you could have been arrested.”

  Helena thought about this for the first time. It had been foolish, risking everything for Sam. But even now, she knew that she would do it again in an instant. “Well, it’s done now and I wasn’t. And I heard two men talking about a café where I could find him. So I went and I found Alek. Or rather, he found me.”