Chapter One

ISTARE AT ALEKSANDER’S long, muscular back through his sweat-stained matted shirt as he leads us underground into the grainy darkness of the sewer passageway. I imagine the naked contours of his body beneath the sticky material and my heart hammers. It doesn’t matter that I am covered in rot, slime, and stink. All that matters is that I am near him. Despite the stench drowning my nostrils, his musky scent is intoxicating. I cling to it, inhaling his essence as my husband, Jakub, trails a few paces behind. I am sandwiched between the two men I love. Scratch that. One I love, the other I want to devour. Take a guess which is which.

Yes, I’m going straight to hell, even though, let’s be honest, I am already here. There is no escape out of the ghetto—our prison sentence for being born Jewish. Right now, in the bowels of the sewer, we are trying to stay alive, smuggling supplies for ourselves and others. And yet, this death trap is no match for the lust eclipsing my heart, the constant unrequited craving. If I die tomorrow, I want him. Once. I’m asking you, God. You’ve taken so much already. Give me Aleksander and the rest of my fate is yours to play with. Do we have a deal?

Aleksander turns, as though cued. His forehead drips with adrenaline. “You okay, Bina?”

Am I okay? Do I laugh now or later? Not okay. Nowhere near okay. I’m walking through waste and contaminated knee-high water for food and medicine. Could it be possible that just a few years ago I was sashaying across a magnificent stage in a custom-made costume to a standing ovation? I must have dreamt that, not lived it. But the way Aleksander’s green eyes sparkle—a magnetic glint in the shadows—somehow makes everything, even the worst of it, okay. If we die right now, right here, and his face is the last I see, that would be enough. Except it is not enough. I want him inside me, penetrating me, releasing me—then I swear, I will go, surrender myself to this cruel, bottomless night. My husband’s hand suddenly clasps my shoulder protectively from behind, puncturing my duplicitous thoughts. I turn slightly. A sharp reminder: Snap out of it, cheater.

“Are you okay?” Jakub asks, as if Aleksander hadn’t asked the same question just seconds earlier. There are only three of us here—he heard.

“Yes, kochanie. And you?” I touch my husband’s arm and camouflage my guilt with an endearment. A lie covering a lie—my specialty these days.

Before Jakub can respond, we all jump back, startled, as a loud barrage of gunfire pounds above our heads, followed by piercing screams. Not screams of war, but the hauntingly familiar cries of more terrorized Jews. Like dominoes, we fall. Like stepped-on rodents, we flatten. It doesn’t stop. The gunshots, the cries for help, the deafening silence, the repetitious sounds of unnatural death. Acceptable Murder—a Nazi Olympic sport—day in, day out. While we sleep. If we sleep. Will we ever sleep again?

We stop in our tracks, trying desperately to ignore the pervasive thought banging in our heads: When is it our turn?

Aleksander stops walking, points upward. “Damn it, those bastards showed up. That’s not the information we got earlier. There’s a good chance the exit may be sealed shut or surrounded. But still, we need to get Bina outside somehow.” He searches his older brother’s face for answers.

Yes, his brother.I know . . . I’m a terrible person. But not always. This war—this brutal attack against us—has changed me, destroyed what was once good, sensible, faithful. The three of us have lost so much. Aleksander lost his wife and my best friend, Karina, and their baby daughter, after their home was set on fire by the Nazis before we were herded into the ghetto. He survived the blaze; they didn’t. And as for us . . . I glance back at Jakub, then quickly push away those images . . . I can’t think about that right now, or the guns firing above us. Better to focus on Aleksander’s muscular shoulders. Better to think about touching him—about anything live, kinetic. Move forward. Stay in motion. Outsmart them. The only way to survive this endless nightmare is to pretend that our past, the lives we once thought belonged to us forever, never existed. This is who we are now: smugglers, fugitives, burglars—those dregs of society we once called criminals.

My face is our ticket to survival. I have been able to fool the Nazis because of my appearance. I am a tall, willowy, blond, blue-eyed Jew—not the stereotypical mousy, cowering Jewess falsely depicted in their anti-Semitic propaganda, rather the dreamy breed of Aryan goddess seducing an entire nation. This face enables me to slip out of the ghetto to the Aryan side, past the ten-foot-high walls covered in glass splinters and barbed wire with fourteen tightly guarded entrances, without getting shot. I have been successfully smuggling food and medical supplies through the sewers for nearly two years. I pretend that I am one of them, move among them freely. But sadly, the Nazis are no fools. They are ravenous monsters, lurking at every corner, waiting for me to trip, fall, betray myself and others. One slipup, and this guise is over.

I glance again at Jakub and see the look I do my best to avoid. Pain, despair, and resentment rolled into one tormented gaze. My husband is forced to turn the other cheek for what I’m about to do. Smuggling has a steep price. Let’s call it what it is: whoring for food and medicine. Yes, fucking for potatoes and antibiotics if basic flirting doesn’t work. That’s who I am now.

Jakub and I never discuss it aloud, but it’s there, the silent executioner between us, permanently destroying what little we have left in our young, thwarted marriage. Those heavy-hooded accusatory eyes speak volumes. I see it, feel it, but act like I don’t. This war has turned me into that kind of human—someone who ignores her husband’s pain, who desires her husband’s brother, who seduces for scraps of food and medical supplies, who steals with a counterfeit smile, to feed him, myself, others. Survival is not heroic; it is ugly. All those things you would never do in a normal, moral, refined life is now your only way of life.

Don’t get me started on how many we have lost in this war. Thousands. Countless men, women, and children. Family, friends, neighbors. The ten-block radius of the sealed ghetto was once crammed with nearly four hundred thousand Jews. Thirty percent of Warsaw’s population was Jewish, the largest Jewish community in Europe. But they have murdered so many of us at this point—including at least 99 percent of our children.

The three of us are among the sixty thousand Jews who remain. We used to be among Warsaw’s elite. Aleksander used to be a celebrated painter. I used to be an actress. Jakub used to be the top journalist for Nasz Przegl?d. We used to be wealthy. We used to drink fine wine and talk about books and art and theater. We used to laugh. We used to be secular, cultural Jews, mingling with the upper echelon of Warsaw society. We used to speak only Polish—not Yiddish, like most of the ghetto inhabitants. A maid used to wash my hair, and another used to lay out my clothes. Our so-called friends used to be loyal, until they eagerly handed us over to the Nazis like Beluga caviar on a platter without blinking an eye or pausing between shots of ?ubrówka. We aren’t just Jews, I tell Jakub. We are inhabitants of a planet called Used to Be.

Despite appearances, I do know right from wrong. The other Bina—the one who used to laugh hard and live large—would be mortified by my transformation. If Jakub’s mother knew . . . but she’s dead. Or his father. Dead. Or my parents and sister—all dead. Two sets of grandparents—gassed on the first transport to Treblinka. The baby I was carrying . . . dead too. The only light in all this darkness is that no one I loved and cared about will ever know the extent of my desire for Aleksander, my burning for a man I can never have.

I have been professionally trained to pretend and camouflage. The other Bina was once a drama major at the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts, a top student. So much promise. Gifted, my teachers used to say, destined for greatness. Little did they know that my acting skills, especially here in the ghetto, would be the gift that keeps on giving.

It feels like hours, but it’s only minutes before the shooting above us stops. We wait until the ear-piercing screams wane, the surrounding voices grow dim, and the careening screech of vehicles diminishes. We wait until the wait itself is unbearable. And then quietly, coolly, Aleksander lifts Jakub onto his broad shoulders. My husband feels the movement of the unsealed sewer lid above us and lightly pushes it up, revealing a narrow stream of icy night air and light. He takes a panoramic view of the area, peers down at us, and nods, then quickly returns the lid to its place. Regaining his footing on the sewer floor, Jakub gives me one last lingering, heavily hooded look: Showtime.