Chapter Fourteen

IT’S BEEN TWELVE days since Aleksander left my bed. Does he think of me? I have never felt so isolated, so alone. I now have books to read, courtesy of Stach. He made sure the apartment was stocked with the classics he knew I once loved, among them The Doll by Boles?aw Prus, On the Niemen by Eliza Orzeszkowa, and our mutual favorite, The Wedding by Stanis?aw Wyspiański, also a play that we once performed together in school.

Like everything else in this distorted version of life, the books are not merely books. They serve as a cover. Hidden beneath those books are well-concealed bullets and materials to make grenades and other homemade devices. ?egota smugglers had snagged discarded boxes from the Tarabuk bookstore that had been tossed out into the alley behind the store, to transport and camouflage the small weaponry my way. The ammo is transferred from my apartment to an open manhole in the courtyard of Zlota 49 on the Aryan side that leads directly to a makeshift tunnel into the ghetto. With ?egota’s help paying off the myriad Polish smugglers, we have created a working assembly line straight into Zelda’s hands.

All the action happens in the middle of the night. I try to sleep during the day, so I am awake for the nighttime activity.

I look around the tiny, cramped apartment filled with enough food and supplies, even an old foxhole-type radio, to get by. I leave only when I must, which is rarely. I have not seen Stach since the day I went to his office. All communication is delivered through the young couple who brought me here. Residents in the apartment building believe that I am the woman’s younger sister. It’s not a stretch. We bear a strong resemblance to each other—tall, blue-eyed, lissome blondes. Our relationship is believable, which is half the battle. All it takes is one person in the building to rat me out and the entire operation would fall apart. Every move on everyone’s part is fragile and calculated down to the most minute details.

I sit on the chair, reading by candlelight, when I hear the three hard knocks, two taps, followed by three sharp pounds sounding off in the middle of the night. Panic courses through my body at the familiar yet still startling code. I jump up, press my ear to the door. “Yes?” I whisper loudly.

“It’s me,” responds the young, familiar voice. “Bina, let me in.”

Eryk. Here? My heart drops. Did something happen to Aleksander? Something bad. I know it. After easing back the bolts on the door, I pull Eryk inside by his sleeve and quickly lock the door behind him. He stinks of sewer and rot.

“Eryk, what happened? Is it Aleksander?” My heart lodges in my stomach. Please say no.

“No, it’s Dina... they took my sister. Rounded her up with the other girls from the school last night. Stroop. The edict demanding sex slaves...” Eryk is trembling, trying but failing to control his tears. “You need to help me. You need to—”

“Sit, sit.” I lead him to the table, give him water, a slice of bread and cheese, my mind whirring wildly as I sit across from him on the wooden stool that the young couple brought for me on their last visit. The edict. Girls to whores. It is happening. Zelda promised she would take care of it... and I believed her. My heart slams furiously. And now they’ve taken Dina. Barely ten years old! I’m filled with dread as I stare at Eryk. Don’t show him you’re scared. He will break. Dina is all he has left. I reach across the table and take his hand. I notice his fingernails are bitten down to the quick. “Slowly, Eryk, breathe... Tell me.”

Still shivering, he starts to speak but his voice is strangled. I jump up to grab a blanket and wrap it around his shoulders and move the stool closer to him. “I knew about the edict. Everyone did, but I thought Dina was safe. The edict said the Nazis were rounding up girls between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two for their officers. But now”—he looks as though he cannot bear the sound of his own words—“they changed their minds after a grenade was thrown and killed one of them. One! One in retaliation for the hundreds of thousands that they’ve murdered. Those sadistic fucking bastards.” His face drops into his hands. “Dina will never survive. You know my sister—scared of her own shadow. She was sucking her thumb when they took her, and I couldn’t stop them. Please, Bina, you’ve got to help me. I can’t lose her. You promised me.”

Don’t cry, I warn myself, forcing my voice to remain steady. “I need all the facts so I can think this through properly. First, do you know where they’ve taken the girls?”

He nods. “Zelda heard that they are being held in the basement of the Great Synagogue for four days before being transported somewhere else. It’s now day two, and here...” He hands me a letter, but reluctantly. “This is from Zelda. Instructions for you.”

I rip open the hastily sealed envelope and read its contents in shock. I look up at Eryk’s face, the dilated eyes, slightly quivering lips. “You read this, didn’t you?”

He is about to lie but changes his mind. “Yes.”

“And you’re not just here to deliver the letter, but to break your sister out of the synagogue,” I say flatly. “And you will get yourself killed within minutes, maybe less. How will that help Dina if you’re dead? She needs you alive. You’re all she has left. Do you hear me, Eryk?” My voice is scolding, harsher than I intended.

His eyes fire up. “Did you read what Zelda wants you to do, damn it! Read it again, Bina!” he yells, jabbing his finger into the letter. “Dina is going to be dead by day four!”

“Keep your voice down,” I warn him. I stand, walk to the window, turning away from him so I can think. Down the street, a group of people are gathering at the hospital’s entrance at this late hour. Dina, my shiest student. She couldn’t even perform in front of the others. She hid behind a desk when it was her turn to recite her lines. So instead, I had her work on making scenery, cutting cardboard and other skimpy odds and ends that we foraged from the factory dumpsters. She was happiest blending in, head bent, not being noticed.

“How many girls did they take?” I ask. Get all the details. Think, think.

“Around a hundred.” His voice scrapes. “Most are from the Beit Ya’akov school. They raided the school during the girls’ morning classes.”

“The religious school.” My heart sinks further. Virgins. Every one of them. Orphans, nearly all of them.

“Why was Dina there?”

He starts cracking his knuckles. “I sent her to that school because they have a good music teacher there, and a piano. Dina is an even better pianist than I am, a natural, so talented. If only my parents could hear her play.” He can’t hold back now. He starts to cry. I return to the table and embrace him, hold him close to me. “I tried so hard to do everything right for her, to protect my sister the way they would, but I’ve failed,” he laments.

A child raising a child. My stomach twists in knots. Dina doesn’t stand a chance.

He looks up. His eyes are wet, his face streaked. “Please, don’t do what Zelda asked you to do. Promise me.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “I need to think this through properly. But tell me”—the words fall out before I can stop them—“is Aleksander okay?” So selfish amid Eryk’s pain, but I must know.

Eryk wipes his face with his dirty sleeve. If I were a better person, I would go get him a clean cloth. But I’m not. I must know that Aleksander is safe before I can think straight about anything: the girls, Dina, Zelda’s demands.

“He is staying with Zelda now. They are both hiding in the basement of our new bunker on Mila Street. It belongs to Manny the bar owner. It’s big, lots of rooms for everyone, and much better coverage. Aleksander couldn’t go back to your apartment because people believed he was on the death train with your husband, and Zelda wants to keep it that way. So he’s working underground, instructing others on how to use the weapons that you’ve been sending us. He’s busy helping Tosia make grenades, Molotov cocktails, and whatever else is needed to stockpile.” My stomach lurches at the thought of Aleksander with the “brilliant” Tosia.

“How many fighters do we have?” I ask. At least Aleksander is alive and safe for now.

“Between us and the other resistance group, we have close to fifteen hundred fighters, which includes children,” he says. “Everybody who can help is contributing. Those who can’t fight are building bunkers, cleaning out attics for passageways between buildings, gathering supplies, foraging food. The older kids are babysitting the younger kids and training them to smuggle. You should see those daredevils.” Eryk’s eyes light up with pride, and it warms me. “Small enough to fit through the wire, too young to understand, but still not ready to die. Everyone is prepping for, you know, Hitler’s birthday.”

I sit across from him again and sigh deeply. Yes, April twentieth—the day that may be our last, just shy of a few weeks away. Not nearly enough time to do everything we must do to survive.

“I’ve got something for you.” Eryk stands, heads over to the door, picks up the large satchel that he was carrying on his back when he walked in, places it on the table, and opens it. He dumps out a change of clothes, a hard piece of bread, a flask of water, and one of the pistols I had sent last week, and then carefully removes something long wrapped in cloth.

He cradles the large package like a swathed baby. “This was my father’s. His greatest treasure, given to him by his grandfather. We buried it underground near our apartment when we first arrived in the ghetto to save it. When my parents were taken, I was very worried it would be discovered. So I reburied it in the cemetery with its own marked grave, knowing no one would dig it up. Dina knows about it too. I explained to her that if anything should happen to me, this is hers to be used in an emergency in exchange for food, medicine, passage, whatever she needs. But now this happened.” He thrusts the package toward me. He twists his lips together, trying to hold back his emotion. “It’s worth a lot. Trade it for Dina’s life, for her freedom.”

I unwrap the cloth, stare at it, then at him. A violin.

“Is it?” I implore, steadying myself against the thin edge of the table.

“Yes. A Stradivarius.” His deep brown eyes bore into mine. Eyes that have aged overnight. “Don’t let them rape her. Don’t let her die, Bina. Swear to me now, and I will return to the ghetto tonight and fight. If you can’t help me, then I’m going to do whatever it takes to save my sister.”

We stare at each other without blinking. I think back to when Eryk stabbed Kapitan with his father’s violin bow, the violent thrusts into the man’s bloody chest. He was once a gentle, well-mannered boy, a gifted pianist with so much promise, and now he is a fearless warrior willing to give up the last remaining family heirloom to save his sister, who may already have been raped, already killed.

“Zelda didn’t want you to know her plan.” I state the obvious.

“No, she didn’t,” he admits.

If it was my sister trapped in that basement of hell, I would do exactly what he is doing. Dina is all Eryk has left in the world. What else is there to fight for, live for, die for?

“Go back to the bunker,” I instruct him. “Tell Zelda I got the letter, and that I will find a way to reach the girls.” I grab his hands in mine and squeeze them. “I won’t let anything happen to Dina. No matter what. I swear to you.”

Eryk searches my lying face. But a lie camouflaged with hope is the only thing that will stop him from his own suicide mission.

“Sleep for a few hours first,” I urge him tenderly, the younger brother I never had. “And then go back before the sun rises. I will wake you.”

Like Aleksander, Eryk doesn’t argue. Like Aleksander, he is about to fall on his face from exhaustion. The boy trusts me, and what have I done to deserve it? In the ghetto, it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. It’s either you die, or I die. That’s what they have done to us, stomped out compassion, the human touch, turned us into serial liars. And yet, Eryk foolishly believes that I’m his one ray of hope. A woman with no morals who slept with her husband’s brother and her dead best friend’s groom. And who would do it again and again, if only she could.

Once I hear Eryk sleeping, I fill his satchel with food and medical supplies from my reserve and return to the window, my only connection to the outside world. I think of the magnificent Great Synagogue in the center of Warsaw, where the ghetto’s daughters have been stripped down, held in the basement, awaiting their fate. How can I possibly do what Zelda wants me to do? Don’t let those bastards win was the last line of her letter. I wrap my arms tightly around my bone-thin body. There is no other option. Somehow, I must get inside.