Chapter Ten

ISTARE OUT THE small attic window from the fourth floor of the apartment building on the Aryan side. The ghetto is just one street over. That’s how close I am. From my vantage point, I see the whitewashed apartment buildings directly across the street. But also, in the space of six inches of windowpane, I can make out the slope-roofed, redbrick tenements peeking out from behind the ten-foot-high ghetto wall, smothered with glass and barbed wire. I wrap my arms tightly around myself. I am here, free, and hell is within walking distance. Is this what it looks like, feels like, to everyone who is not a Jew?

I’m free yet trapped, a captive in this tiny attic, awaiting my next move. It’s been three days since I took out Dabrowski, three days I have been anticipating instructions from Zelda. How much longer?

The kill itself was surprisingly easy. Almost too easy. I replay it inside my head at least once an hour. New details are added each time I relive it. How I strode into Halstrom’s sweatshop wearing a simple black dress, sturdy shoes, that same dramatic orangey lipstick (for good luck, Zelda had said laughing; she knew I hated the color), and a navy beret. No disguise, just me, Bina Blonski for all to see. I carried a fresh loaf of bread, as though bearing a gift to Dabrowski.

Everyone turned to look when I entered the factory, strutting down the aisle toward their boss, who was sitting at his large desk at the helm of the warehouse cramped with at least one hundred rows of sewing machines and laborers. I noted Dabrowski’s cushy, dark leather fanback chair that looked like wings behind him. Comfort and compensation for his betrayal.

As I moved toward him, the laborers stopped their sewing machines for only a split second, knowing that any pregnant pause in their fourteen-hour workday would yield a harsh beating meted out by Dabrowski himself in front of everyone. Making an example is the Dabrowski way, according to Zelda. He would ruthlessly beat the starving women and children into submission with a rod if their work wasn’t completed to his satisfaction. I can tell by the man’s smug, mustachioed face and his neatly combed, oily black hair that he relishes his power over the slave laborers. A coward. I see the gleam in his eyes as I approach, noting the bread in my hands. I am fully aware of what I look like: a “thank-you” being sent his way. I smile back seductively and know with every inch of my body that I am going to enjoy this.

“Bina Blonski,” he announces with surprising familiarity. I stop in my tracks. Does he know me? We’ve never met before. “Why are you here? And is that for me?” He points to the bread. His voice is oddly melodious, like a tenor. It doesn’t fit the man. And then I see the picture of a young boy on the console behind his desk, realizing that his son was once in my acting class a few years ago, in the beginning. A son who is now dead. Not from starvation or deportation, but from typhus. So many students have passed through my classes over the past few years in captivity. Countless have died from illness, starvation, shot while smuggling, or rounded up onto the death trains. I do recall that Dabrowski’s wife always brought the boy to class, and I feel momentarily bad about the son—a sweet, affable child. I push away any empathetic thoughts and focus on the remaining tortured children in this hot warehouse slaving away for this sadistic bastard.

I smile broadly, and in my loudest speaking voice, which resonates throughout the chamber, I announce, “Yes, it’s for you. I came to deliver a message.” I wore very strong perfume. Part of the seduction, Zelda said. Let Dabrowski smell the scent of death before he rots in hell.

“After your first kill, Bina, I promise it only gets easier,” she explained when we debriefed in the Behrmans’ apartment right after I took out Kapitan. “Once you decide you are no longer a lamb but a wolf, everything changes.” Zelda leaned forward with her untamed eyes. “Everyone I have ever loved has been murdered. I’m numb to the point that I now circumvent the dead on the street, become irritated when I see bodies blocking my path. I’m no longer human, Bina. That’s why these animals are going to pay. For stripping away my humanity. Revenge is redemption. You’ll see.”

I saw.

“You have betrayed the Jews of the ghetto,” I told Dabrowski. “We will never forget and never forgive.” The sewing machines stopped cold. Everyone’s eyes were glued to me. Dabrowski’s mouth dropped open, and as he reached for his desk drawer, I pulled the gun out of the bread loaf and shot him point-blank. One bullet, smack between his eyes. The man’s head exploded, blood splattered onto my clothes, his desk, and the wall behind him. And then there was total silence, reminding me of that momentary lapse between a show’s final line and the audience realizing the play is over.

At once, the entire room of slave laborers erupted with enthusiastic fists pounding against the tables and feet stomping the floor. The rich, pulsating sound was magnificent. I saw the triumph in their eyes when I turned and walked back toward the doors, felt the ground quaking beneath my feet. I murdered their tormentor in cold blood, and they were all still alive to see it. Not a Nazi. Not a man. But a woman who took out their enemy with a gun concealed inside a loaf of bread. Ahh, the stories that would be told. The victory I witnessed in everyone’s almost-dead eyes meant everything to me. Justice for those who couldn’t fight back.

You were right, Zelda. So right.

And then Zelda’s well-oiled machine went to work. Her boys were waiting for me at the factory’s entrance, wearing masks. The two Jewish policemen who had been assigned to guard the factory door were tied up and gagged. Two of her fighters whisked me out of the factory, and two others stayed back to clean up Dabrowski’s murder. One of the masked men gently removed the gun with the remaining two bullets from my hands and whispered, “I’m bringing this back to Zelda, Mrs.—Bina.” Eryk. I squeezed his arm but said nothing. It was all a blur.

Dazed, I was immediately brought to a deserted apartment nearby. My clothes were removed, even my shoes, and my attire from head to foot was quickly replaced. The same young, skinny redhead I had seen in the bunker dressed me, had my suitcase with her. Her name was Tosia. Fierce and smart, she moved swiftly. I learned that her family had been seized in one of the first roundups while she was on the Aryan side smuggling food. Alone in the ghetto, she joined Zelda’s unit. Once I was changed, Tosia led me to one of the more discreet wall entrances, where two more policemen—resistance plants—were waiting for me.

Tosia handed them a fistful of zlotys to pay off the Polish guards on the other side, who would then quickly bribe a young Nazi guard to leave his post for ten minutes. Hands fed greedy hands. I could hear the smack-smack echo of the palm clasps. All Zelda’s orchestration. I was then removed from the ghetto, shoved into the back seat of a waiting car on the Aryan side, and pushed onto the floor. A tarp was thrown over me. In less than fifteen minutes, I was stripped of my ghetto citizenship.

Gossip in the ghetto moves at the speed of light. By nightfall, everyone would hear that Bina Blonski, daughter of Maksymilian Landau, killed the collaborator Dabrowski. She would also be pronounced dead, her murderer still unknown.

All skillfully curated by Zelda. Please, Jakub, I beg inside my head, don’t ruin this.

The young, elegantly dressed Polish couple who drove the getaway car barely spoke to me as they speedily set me up in the attic apartment. The room, the size of a large closet (much smaller than my own closet in my other life), contained the bare minimum: a cot, a sink with running water, a small toilet, an old wood stove, a tiny table with one chair, fresh linen, towels, feminine hygiene necessities, and floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with basic supplies, including three loaves of bread, cheese wedges, vegetables that were not yet rotted, sugar, tea, and a bottle of vodka. A feast by ghetto standards that I was told to “make last until you receive further instructions.” No names, no introduction. The faceless couple moved in and out, as though they were never here. Who are they? Does Zelda know them? The answers may never arrive. With nothing here but a few random books that I found in the closet, I stare out the window and wait impatiently for my next instructions.

THE KNOCKS COMEon the fourth day, in the middle of the night. Three hard knocks, two taps, followed by three hard, just as I was told. I wait with my ear pressed to the door, then softly ask, “Who is it?”

“Me,” a voice whispers. “Let me in.”

Me. My breath catches, my heart drops. Him. Aleksander.

I fling open the door, pull him inside, shut the door quickly, and then lock it behind me. I hug Aleksander tightly—an appropriate embrace, not the real one I feel inside. “Tell me everything.”

And then I see it before I hear it. Bad news. His expression is morose. He looks gaunt, exhausted, thirsty, dirty, covered with cuts and bruises, dried blood smeared across his face. A man on the run. He stinks of sewer.

I act quickly. “Drink, eat, Aleks. Sit, then speak.” I give him water, tear off a large piece of bread (a day’s worth). He devours them both. How long hasn’t he eaten? What happened to him? I get a wet cloth.

“May I?” I ask, before tenderly cleaning the lacerations on his face.

His breath is choppy. “Two days ago, another roundup. They came after me and Jakub in the middle of the night, after Dabrowski’s murder. They kicked down our door. They know it was you. Everybody does. Things were crazy, bedlam. We were pulled out of the apartment by the police, beaten up, and brought to the Umschlagplatz the next morning. The trains were waiting for us. I was”—he shakes his head, unable to finish the sentence—“pulled out of line by...” He squeezes his eyes tightly, as though trying to ward off the memory.

“Jakub?” I whisper, too terrified of his answer.

He doesn’t need to say another word. He can’t. But I know anyway. Aleksander was saved by one of Zelda’s plants in the police. Jakub is on his way to Treblinka.

I brace myself against the table, feeling like I’m going to pass out. “It’s my fault. Jakub told me this would happen. I risked his life to murder Dabrowski. And yours. Aleks, I’m so sorry.”

Tears roll down his cheeks and every inch of me feels his pain. A man who loves his older brother, who feels guilty for surviving when Jakub will not.

“Does anyone know you’re here?” I muster.

He nods, wipes his face with the cloth. “Zelda sent me. There’s more... always more. There was an incident right after the transport. Once I got away, I hid in the bunker. But I was filled with so much rage, Bina, that I went back out, defying Zelda’s instructions. I found the young Nazi piece of garbage who pushed us onto the train, and I slit his throat. Eryk threw a grenade to cover me—” He starts to choke on his words.

I hold my hand to my heart. “Not Eryk, please don’t tell me Eryk too.”

He shakes his head. “Not Eryk. Peter...” He can barely push out the words. “I got away. Peter was with us too. He tripped and they shot him dead.”

And that’s when I cry. No tears for my husband, who was sent to the death camp, but an all-out bawl for the boy with the stutter.

Aleksander’s voice fades with pain and exhaustion. “Zelda, the guns... there’s so much to discuss and I’ve got instructions for you.” He points to his shoe. Whatever it is, it’s embedded inside the rubber sole.

“Sleep,” I command, pointing to the cot. “You haven’t slept in days. Just a few hours, and then we will talk. Please, Aleks, just rest.”

“No sleep. Too much to be done.”

“Two hours. No more. I will wake you. I promise.”

Reluctantly, he collapses on the cot, closes his eyes, and he’s out. I pull up the lone wooden chair in the room and watch over him, guard him with my whole body and soul. No soap this time, no nakedness, no sun beating down on his gleaming wet skin. This Aleksander is broken, racked with guilt. I stare at his sleeping frame. The matted hair, the cuts and bruises covering his face, his shirt—the same blue one he wore the day I left the ghetto—now bloodstained. He desperately needs a wash. I lean forward, tenderly push back a lock of fallen hair from his eyes. He is mine to protect.

He begins to snore, and I press my hand over my heart, thinking back to the Brothers Blonski—the orchestra of snores at night in our apartment. I begin to shake, my whole body tightening with remorse, knowing my husband paid the ultimate price for my actions.

Jakub, where are you? Dead? Gassed in an oven? Is this how it ends for you?

I grab the thin blanket from the bottom of the cot and wrap it around my trembling shoulders, allowing the soothing sound of Aleksander sleeping to wash over me. I love you, I tell him silently. I have loved you since the first time I saw you. I wish I didn’t, but I do. And I’m so sorry for what this impossible love has done to our family.

The snoring stops, and Aleksander begins to violently toss and turn, and I yearn to hold him in my arms and stop the nightmares that are consuming him, but I don’t dare. Instead, I wait it out, watching the shadows of night prowl across the wall.

After an hour or so he quiets. I stand, pace, then stare out the window and observe the burning ghetto through the window. Zelda needs us now more than ever. Whatever it is that I am supposed to do, it all begins before the sun rises.