THE WARSAW ORPHAN
Excerpt
Emilia
Almost everything about life in Warsaw was different to life in Trzebinia, but I only allowed myself to think about those differences at night. It had been four years since my father’s death, but I still clung to a memory of resting in my beautiful bedroom in my father’s apartment at the back of his clinic, with the soft pink curtains the mother I never knew had crafted before my birth, the white and green wallpaper and fluffy brown rug, and best of all…my father snoring in his bed, right across the hall. I even missed the room I’d had at Truda and Mateusz’s beautiful, lush home—although I never thought of it as mine until we had to leave it.
The apartment Uncle Piotr rented for us was quirky: most of the rooms were on the third floor, but my room was on a kind of half floor, up a flight of stairs and built into a small attic space. No matter what I did, my bedroom always smelled faintly of dust, and my woolen blanket was always musty. My mattress was soft, but the blankets were scratchy, and the bombing raids in the early days of the war had damaged the roof of the building and the lancet window that illuminated my room. Uncle Piotr patched the ceiling and window frame when we moved in, but building supplies were not easy to come by. He had been forced to reuse mismatched bricks, and the mortar he packed them with was fortified with hay, which stuck out here and there. Sometimes I stared at that hay, wondering if, on the other side of the roof, rats were pulling at it. Maybe the roof would cave in on me, and the last thing I’d see would be those rats.
Despite my overactive imagination, I was relatively safe there, but every breath reminded me that I was not at home, and that thought would always be followed by worse ones—that home was gone forever, that I was the last surviving member of my real family. Sometimes, I’d wake in the night, and even before I remembered where I was, the scent of my bedroom would remind me that my new, permanent status was lost.
The sounds were different, too. The long-standing curfew in Trzebinia meant that our sleepy village became deathly calm at night…for the most part. Occasionally, there’d be shouting or shooting or other signs of trouble.
Warsaw was never quiet, not even at night. Between gunshots or crying or dogs barking, the constant soundtrack of noise kept me awake when we first arrived. I’d grown used to it, but the night before my fourteenth birthday, sleep completely eluded me.
It wasn’t excitement keeping me awake; I knew what my birthday would bring. Uncle Piotr was taking a day off work, and he’d made vague promises about an exciting outing, but I knew exactly what he was planning because I’d overheard Truda and Mateusz discussing whether I should be allowed to go after the lies I’d told. That deception had only come to light the previous week, and their hurt was still fresh.
I wasn’t excited about Uncle Piotr’s planned trip to Krasiński Square to join in Palm Sunday festivities. I had no idea what exactly these festivities would look like, but I knew that anything sanctioned by the Germans was not likely to be fun for us Poles. Even so, I found myself outraged at the idea that Truda and Mateusz might refuse me permission to participate.
My father used to say that people don’t always make sense, and the older I got, the more I knew this to be true, even about myself. It seemed that the very act of Truda and Mateusz prohibiting an activity now had the power to make that activity unbelievably tempting to me. That troubling pattern was becoming quite clear.
So I tossed and I turned and I huffed and I groaned in frustration, and I thrashed my limbs against the mattress, irritated that I could not shut my mind down. Perhaps that’s why it took a long time for the sound to register in a meaningful way. Exhausted but also wide-awake, I gradually noticed a new noise in the usual cacophony. Was it a kitten? I crawled out of bed and went to the window, excited by such a possibility. Of course, we couldn’t keep a cat, but maybe if it was a stray on the rooftop, I could find a morsel of food and try to pet it. I carefully, gingerly opened the window. The sound was still muffled, but it did seem louder, although sadly, it no longer sounded like a cat. I paused, straining hard to identify both the sound and the direction of its origin, until it struck me: the sound was coming from Sara’s spare bedroom, upstairs in her apartment, on the attic floor adjacent to my room.
I pulled the window closed and pressed my ear against the wall. When this had no effect, I stood staring at the tattered wallpaper for a long moment, listening as the muffled sound ebbed and waned.
My curiosity finally won out. My heart had never beaten so loudly as I edged along the hall, then stepped down one stair at a time, trying to will my footsteps into a lightness that wasn’t physically possible. But it was so late, and the city was so noisy. Uncle Piotr, Mateusz and Truda all slept on the lower floor, and no one stirred. In the foyer, I slid our apartment key from its hook and dropped it into my pocket, then I rummaged through the hall table drawer as quietly as I could manage, seeking Sara’s spare key.
I held my breath as I pried open the front door, cursing the whine of the hinges, and as soon as I stepped into the hallway, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I reached for the light switch, and the hanging bulbs in the hallway burst to life—so bright for a second that it made me squint. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw a figure moving swiftly toward the communal stairs: a young girl, my age or maybe younger. As she reached the railing, she looked back at me, and for the briefest of moments, our eyes met. Hers were bright with a kind of terror I’d only ever experienced once—the night I’d stared into my dead brother’s eyes and wondered how on earth I was supposed to survive in a world that no longer made sense, the night we fled Trzebinia.
“Are you okay—” I started to whisper, but she was gone before I’d finished the sentence. I heard the soft, rapid patter of her footsteps as she ran down the stairs, followed by the door of the lobby closing as she ran out into the street. Alone again, I became aware of the mess in the hall. There were drips and small puddles all along the floorboards. There was a lingering scent, too—something deeply unpleasant but that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I glanced back at my door and bitterly regretted not putting on my shoes. As I stepped farther out into the hallway and my bare toes met the filthy water, I tried not to think about the source. I wanted to convince myself that Sara was experiencing some plumbing problems, but that didn’t explain the stranger in the stairwell. I wondered if I should just go home, back to bed, to pretend I hadn’t seen any of this. I dismissed that thought in an instant. Whatever was going on, Sara would surely be grateful to have my assistance with the cleanup, especially if it extended all the way down to the front door. Mr. Wójcik on the second floor was a real stickler for keeping the communal areas clean, and Sara wouldn’t want any trouble from him.
This thought reassured me that I was doing the right thing, and my footsteps became bolder. By the time I reached her door, I had convinced myself that rather than disobediently sneaking around our building in the middle of the night, I was simply doing the Christian thing by helping my neighbor.
“Sara?” I called softly as I unlocked her door and let myself inside. The smell from the hallway was much stronger here, so strong that when I breathed in, I unexpectedly gagged. Panicked, I pressed my fist to my mouth and looked around her room in alarm. I finally stopped pretending otherwise: if Sara were having plumbing issues, it was definitely her toilet, and my feet were covered in waste. “Sara?” I called again as I closed the door. Upstairs, I could hear the sound I had heard from my bedroom—only now that I was closer, it sounded nothing at all like a cat and exactly like a heartbroken child sobbing.
A chill raced down my spine, and goosebumps prickled across my skin. The pounding of my heart became so intense I could hear my pulse thudding in my ears. I thought about turning around and creeping back across the hallway to burrow back into bed. But I couldn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together. How exactly did the smell of sewage and the mess in the hall and the strange girl and the crying child all fit together?
I started up the stairs, following muddy footsteps. As I reached for the balustrade, my hand was shaking, but I pressed on. At the top, I paused at the door and pressed my ear against it. There, I heard the unmistakable sound of quiet speech. I couldn’t make out the words, but I recognized at least two voices and thought I could detect the soothing cadence of Sara’s. I drew in a deep breath, and then knocked quietly and called “Sara?”
The voices stopped abruptly, and then in an artificially high tone Sara called back “Elzbieta? Don’t come in here!”
There were frantic sounds within her bedroom, and I knew I should obey her and walk away without opening the door. But desperate curiosity and an instinct I couldn’t explain compelled me to push the bedroom door open. As I did, several things caught my attention: a heap of dank and muddy clothes, spreading a filthy puddle toward the rug beside Sara’s spare bed, and Sara herself, her hands on the shoulders of a semidressed child as she shuffled him into the closet. Sara closed the door so fast that she barely missed catching the child’s fingers. She stood with her back to the closet door, raised her chin high and crossed her arms over her chest.
“What are you doing here so late?” she demanded.
I stared at her, almost doubting my eyes for a second or two. It had all happened so fast. Had I really seen a child there? Surely not. Why would Sara have a child in the closet in her bedroom?
My gaze fell to the pile of muddy clothes, and I drew in a breath. As the scent of sewage hit my lungs again, I covered my nose and my mouth, then narrowed my eyes on her.
“Was that a child?”
“There is no child,” she said abruptly, then took a step toward me. “You are dreaming. Go back to bed.”
But the closet betrayed her, because from inside I heard a strangled, muffled sob. Sara met my gaze, almost pleading with me not to draw attention to it—which, of course, I immediately did.
“Let her out!” I exclaimed, stepping hastily toward her.
“She’s fine,” Sara said, sighing in resignation. “They are fine.”
She turned and opened the door and dropped her voice, murmuring quietly in soothing, soft tones, as she shepherded four small children out of the closet. Two were completely naked, other than smears of mud and filth across their skin. One little boy was fully clothed, from a neat black cap on his head down to makeshift shoes of muddied hessian wrapped around his feet, tied tightly with wound twine. The last child, the little girl I’d heard crying, was barefoot, but she was still wearing a dress. I looked from the children to Sara and then back to the children again.
Until that very moment, I thought I had understood what it was to be afraid, but it suddenly occurred to me that there were depths of fear I had never imagined possible. These children—these emaciated, filthy children—looked as though they might drop dead from terror at any minute.
I rubbed my eyes, as if that would make the children disappear, but this was no hallucination. As tired and bewildered as I was, the smell in the room was so overwhelming it could not be denied.
“Are you going to stand there gawking, or are you going to fetch me some towels?” Sara asked me pointedly. My jaw flapped, and then I retreated and ran down the stairs, very nearly slipping on a puddle. I gathered towels from Sara’s linen closet and returned to the bedroom, where I set them on the bed. Sara took one and crouched to gingerly, carefully wipe the filth from the face of the littlest girl, who was still weeping. Without looking at me, she said lightly, “Now, Elzbieta, you must go and draw me a bath. Make the water as hot as you can stand against your own skin. And we will need soap—there is a fresh packet under the sink in the kitchen. Take all of it into the bathroom, and then let yourself out, and go home and back to bed.”
“I don’t understand. Who are these children?”
“I’m babysitting for a friend.”
“Why did you hide them in the closet, then? And why are they covered in…” For some reason, the word stuck in my throat. “Why are they so dirty?” Sara glanced back at me, her gaze expressionless. For a moment, I convinced myself that there was a perfectly logical explanation for all of this, and I was being obtuse. Just before Sara turned her attention back to the child, though, I caught a hint of panic in her gaze. “You’re lying to me.”
“It’s just very complicated and—”
“I’m not a child.”
Sara threw an amused smile over her shoulder.
“You’re thirteen years old. You most definitely are a child.”
“I’m fourteen tomorrow, Sara. And I’m mature for my age because everyone is mature for their age now.”
“Well, isn’t that the truth?” she said and sighed heavily, then she rose to stand and looked me right in the eyes. “My friend had an accident at home, and the children were caught up in the mess. It’s very dangerous for children to be exposed to raw sewage like this, so she asked me to look after them until she cleans up. Any other questions?”
“Then, why hide them?”
“You startled me. That’s all.”
“I startled you, so you pushed four children into a tiny closet?” I said incredulously. Sara met my gaze boldly, almost daring me to challenge her further.
“It’s late. I’m tired, and I wasn’t thinking,” she said, finally looking away to the little girl, who was gasping for air between each desperate sob. With a sigh, Sara bent and scooped the girl up and held her close, and she murmured quietly into her ear. She spoke so softly I couldn’t identify the words, but one of the sounds registered and a shock wave of tension ran through my body.
Sara was speaking Yiddish to this child, and the impossible scene before me suddenly made some sense.
“Elzbieta, I need to soothe this little one and get these children clean, and you need to get to bed.” The little girl rested her head against Sara’s shoulder and stared at me. Her cheeks were hollow, and her red-rimmed eyes seemed artificially huge in her tiny face. Worst of all, the child’s skin had a sickly gray-yellow tone to it, visible where Sara had wiped the mud from her face.
“What’s wrong with her?” I whispered, taking an automatic step into the room. Sara closed her eyes briefly, then turned away to look down at the other children, who seemed frozen in complete and terrified silence. When she didn’t respond, I prompted her again. “Sara?”
“She is unwell, but it is not the kind of unwell that comes from disease. It is a kind of unwell that comes from neglect. This little girl simply hasn’t had enough to eat.”
“We could get her…” I was ready to suggest Uncle Piotr could find food for us, maybe even to admit for the first time something I’d scarcely even admitted to myself up to that point: Uncle Piotr seemed to have an uncanny ability to get hard-to-find objects. Rarefied foods sometimes appeared in our kitchen, and more than once, I’d heard him on the telephone discussing objects I knew to be contraband, like crystal radios or identity papers, like the ones he’d found so quickly for me. But before I could say any of this, Sara interrupted.
“This is not something we can fix with one meal, Elzbieta. This little girl needs to go to a new home. They all need to go to new homes.”
We stood in fraught silence for several more moments. I didn’t want to say it, as if speaking the words aloud would somehow increase the danger we were all in.
“These are Jewish children, aren’t they?” I whispered dully. I raised my gaze to Sara’s. She swallowed, then forced a laugh.
“Of course not—”
“Sara,” I said, my throat tightening. “Please do not lie to me. I’m not a fool.”
Her tone, at last, grew impatient.
“These children have swum through a sewer to get here, Elzbieta. They are tired, and they are dirty and scared, and if I don’t clean them, they will all die.”
“Die?”
“There is typhus in the sewer,” she said plainly. “There are typhus germs all over their little bodies, even as we stand here stating the obvious. I need to scrub these children clean, wash and dry their clothes, and then get them out of this apartment before sunrise. I do not have time to explain this to you—not right now, anyway. You must leave me to my work, and then tomorrow we will talk, I promise.”
“Let me help.”
“If your family wakes up, they will notice you missing—”
“—and they’ll step into the hallway, see a trail of festering sewage that leads to your door and check here first.”
Sara winced.
“There is a mess in the hallway?”
“It’s not nearly as bad as it is in here, but yes, there is a very obvious mess.” Sara closed her eyes briefly, seeming momentarily defeated, and that’s when I made my decision. “I’ll draw the bath for you, then go clean the hallway.”
Sara looked so exhausted in that moment that my heart ached for her. She opened her eyes and stared at me.
“Please,” I added, “let me help. I can’t sleep anyway.”
“Fine,” she said and sighed, then she bit her lip. “But you must be quiet out there. No one can hear you, because if someone comes out to see what’s going on—”
“I’ll tell them there was a problem with your toilet.”
“Good girl. And start at my door, won’t you? Work your way downstairs from here.” She looked down to the child in her arms and then back to me, her gaze intense. “The sooner we hide where the trail ends, the better.”
*
It took more than an hour to clean from Sara’s apartment to the front door of our building. It wasn’t a significant distance, but I had to move slowly in order to remain quiet. By the time I walked back upstairs, the floor was drying, and I paused in the hallway to survey my handiwork.
Truda had taught me well. I had done a good job, and this unexpected burst of late-night domestic activity was the most satisfying thing I had done in months. It wasn’t the cleaning, it was the simple fact that I had helped my friend and the knowledge that I was doing exactly what my brother and father would have done.
When I let myself back in, Sara was sitting on the sofa, her head in her hands. It was oppressively hot in her apartment now, the stove on and the oven door propped open. The children’s newly cleaned clothing hung in every conceivable space to dry. As I set the mop and broom down, Sara looked up and offered a weary smile.
“Where are the children?” I asked her uncertainly. Sara pointed toward the stairs.
“Sleeping. And you, my friend, must take yourself into the bathroom and wash your hands and your feet very carefully with what’s left of my soap.” She rested her palms on her knees, then pushed herself to her feet. “While you do that, I’m going to make us some tea.”
I scrubbed my skin so carefully that by the time I was finished, my hands and feet were red and raw. By the time I returned to the kitchen, Sara had two steaming mugs of tea on her low-set coffee table. I thanked her quietly as I sat beside her. She gave me a sad smile as she reached for her tea.
“I know you’re curious, and I’d love to explain the whole, complicated mess to you, but it would be far too dangerous. All I can tell you is that a courier was taking these children somewhere safe. But there was an incident, and she had to quickly find an alternative place.”
“They were escaping from the Jewish Quarter, weren’t they?” I guessed. Sara didn’t answer me, so I blew on the tea, then tried to prompt her again. “I do know the Jewish Quarter has been walled in.”
“It may be forbidden to use the word ghetto in Warsaw now, but in this apartment, we tell the truth. That’s what it is, and that’s what we will call it.” I was struck by a pang of guilt, because I had so often avoided the truth while I was in Sara’s apartment. And I’d heard Uncle Piotr and Mateusz discussing the Jewish Quarter and the rules about the word ghetto, but I hadn’t thought much about why that rule would exist.
“The Germans like to give off an air of civility. They want the world to think that they are the master race, smarter and more dignified than the rest of us. They also want to be able to disguise their cruelty with polite words. Instead of facing the truth of their own cruelty, they dress it up with airs and graces, as if using different words could change the reality of their evil deeds—” She seemed to catch herself, and she winced and shook her head, then sighed. “I am being careless now, but I am too tired to play the game. A group of sewer guides and couriers were escorting the children to a safe house, but the Germans were waiting at one of their exit points, and they arrested one of the guides. That guide will be tortured by the Gestapo, and she will inevitably give up some of the details of her rescue work. Most of the children were captured with her, but the other courier escaped with these four.” She gestured upstairs. “She panicked and brought the children here, knowing that I would shelter them overnight.”
“Should I not ask how she knows you?”
“You definitely should not.”
“The children are so thin,” I murmured, almost to myself.
“Yes.” She pressed her palm against her chest and swallowed heavily. “It has been months—years even—since they ate properly, and there are no reserves left in them, no fat beneath the skin to keep them healthy, no vitality in their bodies. The Jewish rations are half our rations. Half. Think about how little you have to eat, and now imagine that was halved. Every single person on the other side of that wall is starving to death.”
“Well…you told me there is typhus in the sewers,” I said awkwardly. “And…the Germans say the Jews are walled off because they have typhus…” That’s what the posters and signs around the ghetto said anyway, and I knew that’s what the Germans wanted us to believe. The shameful truth was I hadn’t thought much about the wall or the Jewish people trapped inside it. I had been entirely consumed with my own problems since we’d arrived in Warsaw. It hadn’t occurred to me to think about those who might have had even bigger problems.
“You really think the Jews are dirtier than we are?” Sara interrupted me, eyes flashing with fire, then she seemed to catch herself. She drew in a deep breath, then she asked me carefully, “Elzbieta. Does it matter to you that those children are Jewish?”
“You told me to wash my hands—”
“Because of the sewage! Not because the children are Jewish!”
She had never spoken to me so sharply, and I felt my face flushing with shame. I was tired and anxious and now as nervous about Sara’s disapproval as I was about the danger we were all in with those children in her apartment.
“I…I know…”
I wanted to tell her then that I was really Emilia Slaska, born of a family who loved their neighbors, Jewish, Catholic or whatever they might happen to be. That my father had been killed by the Germans right in front of my eyes, that my brother Tomasz had died because of his efforts to help the Jews, that I’d seen him in death, too.
Had I not so recently been caught breaking Mateusz and Truda’s rules, I might have told her that night, but as Truda had warned, just because I liked Sara did not mean I should trust her. I was tired, confused just trying to figure out if Sara should be trusted now that I knew she had secrets of her own.
But then I remembered the stories I’d heard about the Germans—how they could be so incredibly crafty, and how they’d sometimes go to great lengths to test loyalty and root out those working against Hitler’s goals. It struck me that even this complicated situation in Sara’s apartment could be a ruse, set up to determine whether or not I was a sympathizer to prohibited activities.
Mateusz had told me to be paranoid, and in that moment, I truly was—but I was also wary of the sharpness in Sara’s gaze. All I could do was try to walk a fine line between maintaining her approval and saying and doing the things I knew I was supposed to do.
“You should not be hiding Jewish children in your apartment,” I said with conviction, intending to convince her that I believed it, just in case she’d set all of this up to trap me. But Sara’s eyebrows drew down, and her lips pursed. My answer displeased her immensely. Although I knew I’d done exactly what I was supposed to do, I hated that I had disappointed Sara. My cheeks grew hot, and I stood, suddenly desperate to retreat—away from the sick children and my dear friend who, it turned out, I didn’t really know at all. “I know the Jews aren’t dirty,” I blurted, and I dropped my voice low. “I know they are just people, just as we are. My family had many Jewish friends back in…where we came from. But I am scared for you. It is so dangerous for you to have Jewish children in your home, even overnight.”
“It is,” Sara conceded slowly, then she added, “Did you know that I had a child, a son?”
My eyes widened. Sara had never once mentioned her life before the war.
“You were married?”
“I was. I don’t speak about him because it hurts too much, but I think of him every day.”
“What happened?”
“His name was Janusz. He was three years old. He had my smile, my husband’s eyes… He was the best thing that ever happened to me. My mother was watching him that day—the very first day of bombing. I went to the hospital with my husband, who was a doctor, and we were tending to the wounded. Our apartment building was hit by a bomb, most likely within a few hours of me leaving. Mother’s injuries were awful—she surely died instantly. My son, though…” She broke off, her voice trembling. Sara drew in a shaky breath, then sipped at her tea and finally cleared her throat. “I couldn’t get back to our building because the roads were blocked, and the hospital was in such a state, and every time I tried to leave, someone would rush at me with another injured person and…I just kept telling myself that Janusz was with my mother and that they were certainly okay. But they weren’t okay, and when I finally got back to the apartment two days later, I saw that the building was destroyed. I will never forget the sight of him. Janusz was lying beneath a small beam. When I lifted it off him, I saw that he was lying in a pool of his own blood. He’d scratched at the beam for so long that his fingers were raw.”
“Oh, Sara…”
“The worst of it was that I know that part of Warsaw was flooded with people in the days he lay dying, because it was a major arterial road and thousands of people walked right by him as they evacuated. Someone heard him crying—maybe many people did. I understand that the people who happened past were all rushing out of the city. I know that they were probably terrified and trying to save their own lives and their own families…but no one stopped. No one would put themselves at risk. And my baby died alone and terrified.” The tears in her eyes spilled over. She let them roll down her cheeks, but she met my gaze, daring me to face the full force of her pain. “He always cried for me when he hurt himself, Elzbieta. In my heart, I know that he was crying and calling for me as he died. Maybe his very last thoughts were of the abandonment…wondering why I wasn’t coming to help him.”
“I am so sorry,” I said because, as useless as the words were, they were surely better than the stunned silence I was tempted to sit in.
“To know that my son suffered and he was alone and no one did anything to help him has changed me. It has driven me not just to madness but beyond it. I make foolish decisions every day because I cannot rest my head on a pillow at night unless I’ve done everything in my power to help children like my son. That is why these children are here tonight. One day, I will likely die for a child like one of those precious souls upstairs, and I am at peace with that. I’m at peace telling you this story, even though just a minute ago, you made me wonder for the first time if you are the kind of person who would believe the German lies that the Jews are somehow less than anyone else.”
“I don’t believe that,” I blurted, shaking my head desperately. Her disapproval was much more frightening than even death seemed to be in that moment. “I was scared. I am scared. I thought you were trying to trap me.”
“Trap you?” she repeated, frowning.
“The Germans are so wily,” I said, my throat tightening. I suddenly felt foolish to have doubted her. “I thought it might be a ruse. That if I didn’t say or do the right thing, you’d turn me in.”
Once again, Sara’s expression softened.
“These are hard times. Knowing who to trust is never an exact science, not in a place like this, not when there is so much to be gained from betrayal. It is late, and I’ve had a long day—but so have you, and you need to go home to bed now.”
I sat my now-empty teacup on her coffee table and rose but then paused.
“Your husband,” I said. “Where is he?”
She sighed sadly.
“They bombed the hospital, too. I was there at the time, but I was in the shelter in the basement and was uninjured. Wojciech was in surgery upstairs—he died instantly. I lost him the day after I lost Janusz and my mother. And now,” she said shrugging, “now it’s just me.”
I looked around her apartment, suddenly realizing why I’d assumed she’d never married.
“You don’t have any photos of them.”
“All our photographs were in the apartment when the building was destroyed,” she whispered.
I slipped back into my bed a few minutes later, Truda and Mateusz and Piotr none the wiser. I lay awake for hours, thinking about Sara and her loss and the wall around the Jewish Quarter and all of the people trapped within, wondering for the very first time about the other stories taking place in Warsaw while I had been so focused on my own.
***
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