Chapter Twelve

IbrOUGHT TWO DISGUISES with me from the ghetto, per Zelda’s instructions. One is sophisticated, a custom-made midcalf, midnight-blue silk dress with a bow at the collar, shoulder pads, and a belted, cinched waistline (a Schiaparelli from my other life). The other is a peasant woman’s guise—a faded yellow babushka, a pleated drab wool skirt, a frayed beige blouse, and work boots (gifted from Zelda’s closet). What I wear depends on where I need to be to get the guns and ammo—city or countryside. For the 3:00 p.m. meeting at Marszalkowska 120, I dress up.

The busy street is one of the main thoroughfares of Warsaw’s city center. It links Bank Square in the northern sector with the Union of Lublin Square to the south. It is filled with those going about their lives normally, as if an entire race of people is not being massacred on the other side of town. I feel disoriented and slightly faint, as though I have parachuted in from another planet. This is the most difficult role I have ever played—acting like one of them while knowing I’m a walking target. I pass couples, families, shopkeepers, peddlers, old people, young people, beggars, and bankers. Life as I once knew it, in what was once my Poland, carrying on without us. I think about the lovely palaces and the beautiful baroque buildings in the city center, all seized by the Nazis. My Poland. Not anymore. Probably never was.

Armed Gestapo are standing at each corner as far as the eye can see, scoping for troublemakers, liars, Jews—me. I purposely stroll by them extra slowly, guiltlessly, as if I don’t have a care in the world, as though the fear surging through my body doesn’t exist. I project confidence in my fancy dress, with my hair pinned back stylishly, lipstick (rose-tinged, not orange), and smoky eyes that were once all the rage before I was thrown into the ghetto. Bina Blonski is dead, and Irina Zieliński has come to life. A woman of means, a woman in control, a woman about to go shopping despite the Nazi presence, perhaps stopping along the boulevard for an ice cream cone.

Pretend you belong. Don’t let up for a minute.Aleksander’s warning words pound inside my head with each dainty step I take. I also recall his reaction earlier when I finished dressing, twirled around, and said, “So do I look Aryan enough?”

His eyes lit up, not with anger this time but admiration. “You look the part,” he said. But then, just before I left the apartment, he grabbed my arm tightly, the angst shadowing his face. “They are smarter than you think, Bina. They are highly trained dogs combing the streets sniffing out Jews. You can’t slip up even a single detail. Everything we discussed... don’t forget. Be careful, and come back.” His piercing green eyes held on to mine.

“I will, Aleks, I promise,” I respond, lingering just a little longer, wishing he’d never let go of my arm.

As I cross the street and scan the buildings for the right address, I tell myself to stop thinking of him. Stay in character. I pat the fake identification papers inside my purse to reassure myself. The guy who prints the Jewish Gazette also has a side job forging identification. Irina has my same birth date, born in the same town; her job is teacher. Everything is identical except for the name. Zelda says that the best lies are those built around the truth. Let’s hope she’s right.

Smile, I tell myself. Irina would smile.

I FIND THEbuilding. It is an ornate three-story townhouse, attached to various townhouses in pastel colors—peach, pale pink, butter yellow, and milky blue—the last one on the block, and my target. Two large beautifully carved Grecian vases line the arched doorway filled with bright yellow daffodils, reminding me of the lush gardens behind my childhood home. The gardens were once my mother’s pride and joy. She would take her morning tea outside every morning, luxuriating in front of her favorite daffodils and corn poppies surrounded by tall, manicured pine trees. I feel a sharp ache inside. Stop! I chide myself. Bina Blonski is dead. The gardens are dead. Your mother is dead. Stay in character.

As I make my approach, I take note of everyone around me: a middle-aged couple near the building immersed in a conversation, perhaps even an argument. Two young women conversing animatedly with books in their hands. At the end of the street, two young men in business suits sharing a smoke. All so natural. But nothing is natural. Everyone is in twos. They all have their eyes trained on me, pretending that they don’t. I’m an actress; I know bad acting when I see it. Those are guards. Most likely ?egota watchdogs.

I loiter for a few seconds, pretend that I’m looking for something in my purse, to give my contact ample time to approach me. One of the women walks my way, clutching her books to her chest with a cigarette aimed in my direction.

“Excuse me, do you happen to have a match?” she asks sweetly in Polish.

“I’m sorry.” I shake my head. “I don’t.”

“Irina,” she mumbles under her breath. Her eyes are wide, boring deep inside mine, examining my reaction.

I pick up on it immediately. “Motyl,” I respond, as Aleksander had instructed me to answer.

She nods, glances up at the large, draped window on the second floor, checks the street, then signals to someone. The door opens a minute later, and a clean-cut-looking young man wearing a pressed suit and tie smiles cordially from the doorway and gestures me inside with a slight nod.

“Go now,” she whispers without moving her mouth as she walks by me. “He’s waiting.”

MOTYL, OR WHOEVERhe really is, sits facing the window when I enter. Why is he staring at drawn drapes? His thick blond hair peeks over the top of the large leather chair—a power chair belonging to a business executive or a high-level government official. And the desk itself is a work of art. I notice it immediately. English, ornately carved with mother-of-pearl inlays and ornaments. My father had a similar desk in his library. I stare at the back of the man’s head, wishing it were my father in that chair. I clear my throat and stay put near the door. When he finally swivels around, my heart stops. I reach out to the nearest wall to catch myself from falling. It can’t be.

Stach.

My best friend and partner in crime, wearing a suit and tie, rises in slow motion, mouth agape in equal disbelief. He grips the edge of his desk to brace himself and barely gets the words out: “Bina? You’re ‘Irina’?” His jaw drops. “Lock the door now,” he manages.

Shocked, I turn, lock the door. Stach is Motyl? How is this possible?

His voice trembles as he comes around the desk and faces me. “You’re alive.”

I inch toward him, barely breathing. The shock waves between us morph into stillness, immobility. He snaps out of it first, grabs me, practically squeezes the breath out of me—the old Stach. “You’re alive, goddamn it,” he repeats, whispering in my ear. “So thin. I feel your bones, Bina.”

“Bina is dead. It’s Irina now,” I whisper back. “Motyl... You’re the Butterfly?” I am stunned. His hands drop from my arms, and he points to his face. To the large port-wine-stain covering the entire left side of his cheek—a deformity that has defined his whole life. It could be a butterfly, a handprint, a lobster, a puddle, a Rorschach test—whatever you want to make of its shadowy crimson form.

“I wanted to be called Spider,” he cracks. “Something manly and elusive, but I ended up with Butterfly.”

We both laugh. I cover my mouth, to control all the emotions spilling out at once. There is too much to say, too much we both don’t know, when at one time we knew the minutiae of each other’s life.

He assesses me from head to toe. “They starved you. You’re barely there and yet, oddly, more beautiful.”

My smile tightens. I no longer feel compliments when I once lived for them. “I’ve aged a hundred years.”

He takes my hand and leads me to the plush leather couch and sitting area in the corner of the large office, near an open bar. “Tell me.” He searches my pained face. “Your family? Your father? You know I always loved your father.”

Everybody loved my father. I feel the tears building behind my eyes. Stach speaks as though I’ve been away on a long trip or got lost in the forest. He knows exactly what happened to me, to my family. Everyone knew about Maksymilian Landau’s fate. He was one of the first prominent Jews in Warsaw murdered by the Nazis. Surely his death was widely reported after they carted us off. I wipe away the perspiration gathering at my temples. How could Stach in his tailored suit and tie in this plush office possibly begin to comprehend what really happened to us? How could anyone but a ghetto Jew understand the horrors?

I gaze deeply into his compassionate eyes. Stach did love my father, who welcomed him into our home like a son since he was a little boy. I swallow back the lump rising in my throat and the resentment blackening my heart. “They beat him to death, Stach. Just before they threw us into the ghetto. My mother, my sister, my uncle... sent to the death camps. And...” I reel off my family’s murders clinically, as though I’m reading a prescription aloud. He knew them all. “Jakub was sent to Treblinka in the last roundup. Probably dead too.”

Stach’s face darkens, his fists clench. “I didn’t know for sure,” he manages, but I barely hear it.

I turn away from Stach’s probing gaze. I can’t go down this dark, bottomless hole. Instead, I try to regain my composure by taking in the rich office décor, a style I was once accustomed to. At its center is a large chandelier with dripping crystals, and on the far wall is a vibrant Matejko oil of a historic battle. We also had a Matejko in our home. It was of the astronomer Copernicus. It hung in the Great Room. My grandfather had purchased the masterwork directly from the artist himself and gifted it to my father. Whatever this ?egota organization does, it clearly does not lack financial resources.

“Bina,” Stach interrupts my thoughts, bringing my attention back to him.

“Irina,” I correct him softly.

His eyes well up. “What happened to your family and to the Jews of Poland and throughout Europe is unforgivable, unimaginable. I am doing all that I can to help, and I know it’s not nearly enough. My father”—he clears his throat loudly—“is, no surprise, leading the Polish-Nazi Alliance. He is Hitler’s point man in Warsaw. He rides around with their officers in fancy cars draped with Nazi flags. I’m so ashamed.” He gestures to the door. “They don’t know who my father is. I couldn’t bear telling anyone the truth.”

“You’re not your father,” I say flatly. And you really believe that they don’t know who you are, who your family is? I reach over and grab my old friend’s hand, a hand I once knew so well but that now feels only distantly familiar. Truth is, I don’t recognize either one of us anymore.

Stach’s gaze calcifies, and his thick blondish-brown brows narrow harshly. “There’s more. You don’t know all the things he has done.”

I know enough. I gently remove my hand and squeeze my eyes tightly to block out another faraway memory, one that I will never share with Stach. Ever.

He stands, returns to his desk for a pack of cigarettes, lights up two, hands me one. I examine it. The good kind—French, finely rolled, with what I presume to be top-notch tobacco. I can smell its superiority. I don’t smoke regularly, but right now I need it.

Stach’s assistant knocks and asks through the closed door if we would like tea and biscuits. Tea and biscuits? I roll my eyes. If only this were high tea at the Bristol. Everybody knows why I’m here: guns and grenades. This is not a tea-and-cake outing. But my stomach growls its response loud enough for both of us to hear.

Stach eyes me painfully as he calls out, “Thank you, Andrzej, yes. Please leave the tray at the door. As I was saying, several months after you left—”

Left!my eyes shout accusingly, stopping him midsentence.

He meets my burning gaze with an apology. “Were taken, seized,” he corrects himself. “I was in Hamlet at the theater.” He throws his arms up defensively when he sees my mouth drop. “Yes, goddamn it, Bina. Your father was murdered, you were kicked out of your home, sent to the ghetto, and I was still acting.” He takes a long drag on his cigarette, and I feel the rage firing up in my belly. I’m about to burst, but I remind myself that life went on without us. Stach is here now.

He continues. “Two years ago, I played Hamlet. The leading man for once. Not the scene-stealing supporting actor. For the first time, Mateusz and I changed places. That day, we were in dress rehearsal for the show. After we were done rehearsing, I heard loud clapping coming from the back of the auditorium.” His hardened gaze is now far away, as though that sound in the theater were echoing in the air around us. “I didn’t see them enter... my father with a group of Nazi soldiers. They walked together toward the stage, just like they did to you. A repeat performance. I knew exactly what was coming when I saw my father’s face. You know that sadistic look of excitement in his eyes when he’s about to inflict pain.”

I nod, biting my bottom lip so hard I taste blood. Of course I know. It’s the face of my nightmares.

“The Nazis walked past me and, instead, pulled Mateusz right off the stage and beat him to a pulp in front of me. I tried to stop them, but two Nazi thugs held me down and made me watch as they yelled, ‘Pervert, criminal, faggot.’ I begged, cried, screamed for them to stop hurting him and to take me instead. My father just stood there rejoicing. And then—”

Stach stops speaking. The brutal memory is clearly too much to handle. He finishes the last of his cigarette, gets up and pours himself a tall drink from the bar, finishes it in one swallow, and quickly refills his glass. He turns to me. “Those beasts kicked the life out of Mateusz’s beautiful body and destroyed his face with their boots, laughing as he cried out for his mother. They pulled him out of the theater, broken and bloody, and shoved him into one of their long black cars. I later heard he’d been transported to Auschwitz. He was wearing his costume, Bina. He was sent to Auschwitz in his Horatio costume.” Stach walks to the window, pulls back the thick drape slightly, peers out, then closes it. “I hear a homosexual’s fate is worse than a Jew’s.”

“Unless you’re a homosexual Jew,” I counter, suddenly resenting Stach and his cushy office, his assistant, the tea and biscuits at his disposal. I begrudge his one pain, one loss, when mine are so numerous and unending. Yes, he has suffered, but not in the way we have suffered. And yet, I remind myself, he’s here helping us.

“They did unspeakable things to Mateusz in Auschwitz.” Stach’s voice diminishes. “He is dead, I made sure of it. I paid someone inside the camp to shoot him quickly and stop the daily torture that my father ordered be done to him.”

Stach’s face contorts with so much agony that my bitterness stops and compassion kicks in. The old Bina. I allow myself to remember handsome Mateusz, Romeo to my Juliet. Stach’s loss is immeasurable because it was exacted by his own father. A man who despised that his son was an actor, a homosexual, and my best friend. A disgrace at every turn. Most of all, Konrad Sobieski hated the birthmark that marred his son’s handsome face and stained the family name. Every day of Stach’s life, he made his son pay for those things that were inextricably part of him.

Stach chokes up. “The same night they took Mateusz, my father kicked down my bedroom door and said, ‘You are alive only because of your mother. You repulse me. I am sick just looking at you.’ So I left that night for good. When my father went to sleep, my mother gave me what I needed to escape. She heard about Mateusz. She knew who I was, what I am. Despite fearing the wrath of my father, she robbed our family vault—filled with her own inheritance—and loaded a bag with enough gold and zlotys to feed an army. She begged me to leave the country for my own safety. That night was my last at home.”

“Why didn’t you leave? Go anywhere else—London, America—and live your life?”

Stach exhales deeply, and I feel the heat of his cigarette-infused whiskey breath. “I could have gone anywhere, Bina. I have papers. Visas. Money. Contacts. Everything I’d need to escape this hellhole was at my disposal. But sometimes, there are things bigger than you. Sometimes there are moments greater than your own small life. Instead of running away I decided to run toward. I came to Warsaw and used my finances and contacts, joining those who are like-minded and helping to establish ?egota. I don’t regret it for a second. It’s given me purpose, my life meaning.”

He gets up and pours himself yet another whiskey, downs it in one gulp. Stach is drinking much more heavily than I remember. He then opens the office door, nods at his assistant, and brings the tray of tea and biscuits and chocolate truffles inside and places it before me on the coffee table. My mouth waters as I reach for a biscuit and then another, forcing myself not to shove the food inside my mouth with both hands like a glutton. My one-time impeccable manners long gone, I make a clean sweep of everything on the tray as Stach watches and drains his latest drink as though it were water. Up close, his face is puffy. The birthmark fleshier. Stach, I think sadly, has become a man who drinks to get through what he must. We are both hardened shells of our former selves.

“Stach,” I whisper, licking the crumbs off my lips, not wasting anything.

“Yes, time to get down to it.” He cuts me off with a glass slam on the table. “Guns and ammo.”

I square my shoulders. “We will take anything you can give us. Time has run out. We have strong information that the last roundup of Jews may be the final one and coming anytime soon. We need your help immediately to fight back. I can’t leave here empty-handed.”

“Bullets are no match for tanks.” He folds his arms tightly.

“No, bullets are no match at all,” I counter, crossing my own arms. “We have no illusions. Winning is impossible. We just want a victory. Some of us may even survive. But if we don’t, we intend to die our way, not theirs—and take as many of them with us as we can when we go. We must set an example for Jews across Europe that while the world has turned a blind eye, we can still fight back, even if we don’t win. Fighting back is the win.”

“David versus Goliath.” He purses his lips. “Now, I’m afraid the answer is no.”

“No? Your response is no!” My voice drums with anger, and suddenly I don’t care. “I was told you could help.” I close in on my old friend with a tiger’s snarl. “Why, damn you?”

He smiles crookedly, and I want to slap him. “Bina Blonski swearing? Now, that’s a first. What I meant is that I refuse to help if this is your suicide mission.” His piercing turquoise gaze turns icy, a look that reminds me of his father. “Look, Bina, I thought you were dead. And yet, here you are. We are here together, reunited. It means something. You mean something to me. You were the sister I never had. You accepted me with this hellish mark across my face. When others made fun when we were kids, you always defended me. Your parents welcomed me into their home with open arms despite my raving anti-Semitic father.” He shakes his finger in the air. “I know you heard me with Mateusz that day in the costume closet, but you kept it to yourself. I mourned you when I heard they took your family away. I couldn’t get out of bed for nearly a month. It was unbearable. The only way I could survive the loss was to act—to be someone, anyone but me. And now you’re here—a gift—still alive.” His face contorts in the same way it used to when I beat him at chess. “I’m not willing to lose you again. No matter what. You are going to live, Bina/Irina, if you’re the one damn Jew I save.” He leans forward, inches from my face. “If not, no deal.”

My fists clench. “This is not some romantic knight-on-the-white-horse moment in one of our stupid plays. My people are dying in there, nearly extinct. I need to fight with them.” My voice rises again. I am not leaving without the guns. I will kill him first. “This is not about you or us.”

“And you will fight for them, just not with them,” he argues. “You will deliver all the weaponry that I will get you and pay for with my own goddamn money. But it ends there. You stay out of the ghetto fight. And that’s my deal. Take it or leave it.” He reaches out and touches my boiling cheek. I swat his hand away, and he can’t help but smile. “I know every expression you make. I’ve studied you my entire life. This is not just about fighting in the ghetto, is it? I know you...” He points a finger again. “It’s about the brother, isn’t it? Is he still alive? Is he part of this? Funny, you haven’t even mentioned him when he used to be all you talked about.”

My hot face turns beet red. Stach is the only person who knew of my true feelings for Aleksander. I glare my response but admit nothing, hearing Zelda’s voice inside my head. No one is to be fully trusted, Bina. No one.

His eyes widen. “So, he is alive. Do you still love him?”

“Yes, he is alive.” I disclose only that.

Stach is not giving up. “Tell me, Bina, what chance do your fighters have if you are dead? Zero. You need to stay on the outside, to orchestrate and move weapons. Look at you. You were able to walk the streets loaded with Nazis. A Jew in their face and they didn’t even see it. You are much more valuable to your people out here, and you know it.”

“Fine, I won’t fight,” I lie, throwing up my hands in a dramatic surrender, knowing that there is no way in hell I’m leaving Aleksander behind. That there is no way I can or will honor this deal. Not when survival is at stake. I will say and do anything. I will lie and steal and make false promises even to my one-time best friend and brother.

Stach flashes his beautiful, wide, omnipotent smile, the one that lights up his face and captivated his audience every single performance. “I’m an actor, remember? An even better one than you. Everybody knows that. So don’t lie to me, Bina. There’s nothing romantic about dying for love. Does the brother love you back?”

“No,” I say truthfully. Then I think back to when Aleksander held my arm, the terrified look in his eyes when I was about to walk out the door. “Maybe... I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

“So, you’re willing to die for unrequited love?”

“Yes,” I say adamantly, daring him to challenge me. “Would you have died for Mateusz? Would you have gone to Auschwitz to be with him on his last days, even if it meant they would be yours too?”

He presses his lips tightly together. “Yes.”

Our eyes lock. We have always been equally stubborn. He extends his hand again, this time, an olive branch. I take it. “Give me the goddamn list,” he says. “You must have a list.”

I open my purse and dig out the list embedded inside the lining: one light machine gun, ninety pistols, six hundred hand grenades, and raw materials for Molotov cocktails: nitroglycerine, sodium nitrate, wire, nails, thin glass bottles, and wood pulp.

“Wood pulp and glass bottles? You can’t be serious,” he says. “Stroop and his men will laugh in your face.”

“Can you get me what I need, and fast?” I demand, ignoring the sarcasm.

“Of course... and more.” Stach doesn’t take his eyes off me as he gets up and walks to his desk. He removes a key and then unlocks the middle drawer. He hands me a thick wad of zlotys. “Take this. You will need to pay off all the schmaltzovniks along the way—those fucking Polish blackmailers are even worse than the Germans. Give me three days to get this together. I will start with this pathetic list and build from there. You will get a message where to be for the pickup.” He glances at the plate of biscuits that I singlehandedly polished off. “And more food and supplies will be sent your way.”

“Do you know where to find me?”

“I know.”

Of course he knows. The young couple who brings me supplies must belong to ?egota. I take all the remaining chocolates that I can fit inside my small purse. I feel the pity in Stach’s eyes without even looking at him. Yes, Bina Landau is now someone who stuffs her purse with leftovers. I close the purse and stand. It’s late and I must get back to Aleksander with the good news.

“Thank you, Stach,” I say with all my heart. “Don’t be fooled by the pretty dress and the lipstick. I have become an animal. They turned me into that. You’re either a hunter or hunted. There’s no in-between. Manners no longer exist. And I’m truly sorry about Mateusz.” I pull him into another tight embrace. For a moment, body to body, the connection feels like the old us. “It has meant everything to see you again.”

He holds me back by my shoulders and his eyes pierce mine. “Don’t be fooled by the fancy office, the priceless art, the suit and tie. And I lied to you earlier. I’m not just here to help save Jews. I’m here because I’m going to do all I can to destroy my father and his Nazi empire in Poland.” His gaze turns savage. “And then I’m going to kill him.”

I stare at Stach, searching his tortured face, my heart pounding recklessly. “Here’s the revised deal,” I tell him. “Get me as many guns as you can, and in return, I promise to help you give your father exactly what he deserves.”