Chapter Twenty-Three

WHEN I EMERGE from the tunnel, I find myself in a dark basement beneath a lattice of cobwebs. I inhale the familiar cloying ghetto bunker air as I make my way out of the deserted building and into the street, careful to remain in the shadows. The ghetto labyrinth is embedded in my mind. I know every street, every twist and turn, all the hiding spots. My father used to tell me that I was blessed with a photographic memory, just like him.

As I move past each run-down tenement, I notice that all the lights are out as dictated by curfew. But I can still discern the moving shadows in various windows, illuminated by candlelight for those who can’t sleep—the night zombies. So many windows have been smashed during the daily Nazi raids that each fa?ade I encounter is like a glimpse of a face with broken teeth.

In the weeks since I was away on the Aryan side, I changed, and yet here, everything is the same—especially the stench, like rotted meat, permeating the thick air. Sharp, broken cobblestones cut at my bare feet. I dumped those painful shoes back in the tunnel. I mentally hug myself. The soles of my feet are irrelevant. You made it back. You’re home. Roving surreptitiously like a ghost between buildings, I maneuver as if my calloused dirty feet have wings. I imagine myself Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as I flit stage right, stage left, upstage, downstage.

I pause briefly at the side of the four-story building that was once my home on Nowolipki Street. Now it is just another broken face with shattered windows. I glance up at the second floor, with its glass blown out, and I see remnants of my kitchen. Keep walking. Don’t look back. The air around me becomes increasingly dense with each stride.

I make my way to Mila Street, where Eryk told me that Zelda and her fighters had relocated. The courtyard in front of the building is oddly vacant. My eyes well up as I approach the entryway. Like all doors in the ghetto, this one is covered with dents from Nazi boots and bullet holes. I recall that first day when I demanded to see Zelda, and her young guards tried to stop me from entering their headquarters. Sadness tugs at my heart. The boy with the stutter is dead. And Eryk... what do I tell him about Dina?

I turn the doorknob and immediately feel the cold muzzle of a gun pressing against my temple. I let out a sigh of relief when the outstretched arm connects to a teen boy not more than fourteen years old, wearing an oversize jacket and a flat newsboy cap, man-size clothes that clearly don’t belong to him. He is standing on his tiptoes to reach me. I can’t help it. I smile warmly at him, even though it’s difficult to see him in the dark, enjoying the welcome home. “Glad someone is on top of things. Nice gun. Where’s Zelda?”

“Who are you?” He keeps the pistol right where it is. I let him do his job.

“I’m Bina Blonski back from the Aryan side.” I point to his gun. “The weapon in your hand... I sent it to you. I must see Zelda now. Tell her I’m back. What’s your name?”

“She is not to be disturbed. Only in the case of emergency.” He pauses, deciding. “Sammy.”

“Well, Sammy, you’re looking at the emergency.”

He hesitates, trying to figure out what to do. I shake my head. Children forced to make adult decisions. He slowly removes the gun from my temple but keeps it at my back as he walks me through the doors, where there is a small torchlight on the floor, and I can now see the boy clearly. Small but mighty. I like his style. I spot two more young guards standing at the base of the stairs going up to the first floor—a boy and a girl—look-alike siblings, maybe twins, with their downturned dull eyes, unkempt hair, and rags for clothes, also aiming a pair of guns that I’d sent. I feel the lump forming in my throat. Child fighters. Orphans for sure. If nothing else, my people are now armed.

Sammy and I descend the creaking stairs to the dimly lit basement and my mind races. I pause at the last step, take a deep breath, and view the expansive new space in front of me—a high-end bunker that once served as Manny and his thugs’ headquarters. My breath halts. Time stops.

Aleksander.Standing cross-armed in the archway at the far side of the room.

Our eyes lock, and words escape me. “Aleks,” I whisper, noting his muscles through his white undershirt, feeling the instant charge between us. I barely see the others as they begin to emerge one by one out of the woodwork, gathering in the room. There must be two dozen people, maybe more, but I see only one.

“Bina.” His lips slowly curve up.

I move past the boy with the oversize coat and dive into Aleksander’s arms, inhaling the strong, intoxicating scent of him, pulling him to me with all my might. But his return embrace is limp, practically unresponsive. I let go and look into his eyes for a clue. But his gaze is averted, focused over my shoulder. I turn slowly, follow the path. I do a double take, then a triple take, grab a nearby chair for support. My legs go weak, nearly buckling, as time folds in on itself. At the other side of the room is a bald, rail-thin man. I rub my eyes. It can’t be.

Jakub. Alive.

I hold my chest, unable to catch my breath. My husband who was sent to Treblinka on the death train has miraculously returned—the sole ghetto prisoner in nearly three years to survive the camps and come back here. My mouth struggles to form words, but nothing comes out. Jakub looks like he has been split in half, cadaverous.

He walks slowly, achingly, toward me. “It’s me, Bina. It’s okay... I know how I look. This is a shock, but I’m here.” He gently unpeels my fingers clawing the chair next to me and pulls me into a deep embrace. Starved, all bones. Yet, unlike Aleksander, my husband’s scrawny arms feel like steel doors encasing me. I fall into him, my body so weak, my mind so tired, my thoughts gone gray.

“Where are your shoes?” he asks.

I manage to look down at my mud-soaked feet and laugh between my tears. Everyone breaks out in laughter. It’s not funny, but it’s ghetto funny. And then Zelda enters and everything, all sound, stops at attention.

“The Face has returned,” she announces, warmth oozing from her liquid eyes as she moves toward me from across the room with wide-open arms.

“Zelda.” I pull away from Jakub and run to her. Tears I can no longer restrain fall unrepentantly down my face. She notes my bloody dress with a hard gaze, takes my hand and leads me to the long wooden table in the center of the room and seats me next to her at the helm. She gestures to the others to join us.

“There is much to discuss,” she says, never wasting a minute. Never mind that I am dealing with the shock of seeing my husband resurrected from the dead. For her, there are always more important things at hand. She signals one of the younger members to bring me coffee and something to eat. This woman—commander of the resistance—is barely twenty-five years old and somehow manages to control everyone with just a snap of her fingers and a simple nod. She has that effect on everyone. Even Jakub, a nonbeliever, is under her spell. I can tell when someone intrigues him by the way he tilts his head, strokes his chin as he, too, sits down at the table next to me.

“Tell your wife what happened,” Zelda commands him.

I turn to Jakub. A million stories are stockpiled behind those worn albeit still sharp eyes as he speaks. “I was in Treblinka. It was hell, Bina. Worse than any of us could possibly imagine. A factory of death, torture, degradation. The ghetto is paradise compared to it. I am here only by chance.” He runs his hand over his shaved head, then cups his palm over his mouth, as though trying to muzzle the agonizing words that are poised to fall out. I reach over and take his free hand, a hand that looks as though it belongs to a seventy-year-old man, with its protruding veins and skin so thin and sallow. “When I arrived, there was a man there, a Nazi standing at the entrance to the camp,” he continues. “Crazy as it sounds, I knew him. Johann Haas. He was once a journalist, a reporter for Berliner Tageblatt. We met at that conference in Amsterdam—remember, Bina?” He smiles to himself, as though attempting to recapture his once fulfilling professional life. “We had drinks together with a group of journalists. Talked, laughed, cajoled. When he saw me in the lineup, I knew immediately there was a ray of hope. A lot happened there...” He shakes his head, as though warding away the cruelest of imagery, and I can’t help but think of what an odd, egg-shaped head he has without his thick, wavy brown hair. “Well, Haas got me out. He gave me clothes, an ID, money, and an escape route. I had the opportunity to go free, but I came back for...” His eyes glaze over.

Me.

He came back for me. Jakub was given a get-out-of-hell pass and he, too, returned here. Home. And then I correct myself. No, it isn’t about me. Knowing Jakub, he came back for his precious archives. Those papers are most likely still in the apartment, hidden under the floorboards beneath our bed or stashed in milk cans buried underground. Stop! I scold myself internally. Just stop. He deserves better. You know what you did. I glance over at Aleksander. What we did.

“Truly a miracle,” I tell him, my hot eyes filling with water, not admitting to myself what I’m really feeling. Jakub is alive, which means my relationship with Aleksander is dead. Jakub smiles at me affectionately, then looks at his brother lovingly across the table. It’s gut-wrenching. Not the guilt, but the punishment.

“Bina,” Zelda says with a light snap-snap in front of my face, breaking me out of my internal spiral. “We heard about the Nazi nightclub bombing and the burning down of ?egota headquarters.” She lowers her eyes briefly. “And the girls.” But she stops there. Everybody in the room bows their head. The moment seems to freeze. Clearly, everyone knows what happened, how it happened, what I did to make it happen. Murderer, savior, heroine—pick one.

I look around the room. “Where is Eryk?” I ask, breaking the spell, realizing he isn’t here and dreading that conversation.

Zelda leans in. “He is meeting with the leaders of the ZZW organization—you remember, the other resistance movement in the ghetto. He’s been negotiating with them. The good news is that all the various factions have agreed to cooperate, put our differences aside, and join forces.” She glances at Aleksander. “Aleks and Eryk have been coordinating and dividing up the ghetto territories among all the fighters and doling out support jobs to those who can’t fight but want to help. No easy task.”

I nod my understanding of the grave situation ahead. Hitler’s birthday is in less than forty-eight hours. Every man, woman, and child still alive counts and must fight back together. There is no other way.

Zelda’s eyes bore into mine. She doesn’t hold back this time. “Those girls died with dignity, Bina. You gave them that. I can see it weighs heavily on you.”

Taking a quick, shallow breath, I glance around the room, observing each intense face waiting for my response. “Yes, it does. And what came after weighs heavily as well. Our contacts are all gone.” I feel my chest caving in. “There was an infiltrator in ?egota, the group that gave us the weapons. The leader—they called him Motyl, whose real name is Stach Sobieski—was taken, tortured, and is believed to be dead. He was once my best friend. His father, Konrad Sobieski, was the leader of the Nazi-Polish alliance and behind his own son’s capture. Was... because he is now dead too.” I pause, look at Aleksander, not Jakub. “I know this because I killed him.” I glance around the cold, dank bunker. I point to the few guns that have been laid out on the table. “Whatever we have now is all we are going to get.” I turn to Zelda. “I know it’s not enough.”

She raises her pointy chin. “Not enough to win, but enough to cause plenty of damage and make a stand, which is the only win we’ve got,” she says. “Your work out there changed the landscape for us in here. There were sacrifices, but you did this.” Her eyes shine and I feel the standing ovation in each ebony pupil. She is proud of me, like a mother would be. Sadness overtakes me. I glance around the table, at the room stuffed with fighters. Tonight may very well be one of our last all together.

Zelda holds up her hand, indicating we have more to discuss. It’s nearly four a.m. “Today is also the day before Passover.” She signals to her teen lackeys to bring her the Shabbos wine, whiskey, and matzohs—unleavened bread that someone must have prepared, stored in a makeshift cabinet in the corner of the room.

“They are coming for us, and you want to drink and discuss the Ten Plagues?” Aleksander scoffs in disbelief.

“Don’t be such a downer, Blonski,” Zelda says, pouring him the first shot. “Tomorrow, we fight, but tonight we commemorate the Jewish exodus from enslavement in Egypt and toast to our own oppressors’ defeat. We are ready for them. So, drink, goddamn it!”

Aleksander concedes, raises his glass to her and to me, then downs the whiskey. Wet droplets linger on his full lips, and I imagine them pressed against my body. I quickly look away, damning myself to hell, too afraid the others will see the blatant desire written all over me, and that Jakub will too. And especially Zelda, with her radar eyes, who knows everything anyway. Guilt hovers over me like a menacing cloud. I quickly lace my fingers through Jakub’s, hoping his goodness will somehow swallow my sins.

“So how exactly are we ready for them?” I ask Zelda point-blank.

“For starters, you’re certainly dressed for the occasion.” She laughs heartily, bringing attention to my bloodstained nightclub attire. Everyone else joins her, laughing in unison—anything to delay the reality of the bloodbath we are about to face.

Slamming down her emptied glass, Zelda stands, swipes her hands across her dusty trousers, signals her fighters to follow her into the adjoining room, where the bombs and grenades are being stored, and where Tosia, our young bomb maker, is busy working around the clock stockpiling Molotov cocktails and other homemade explosives. Zelda feels no need to answer my question. She is a woman born ready.