Chapter Twenty-Seven

IRUB MY EYES hard, disoriented, confused by the tangle of gray woolen blankets enveloping me. Where am I? My gaze travels from wall to wall for clues, landing on the few snapshots tacked to a wooden post. Zelda with her sister and brother. Zelda with her parents. Zelda at the center of all her fighters huddled together. I spot my purse in the corner of the room and the nightclub dress I wore hanging on a hook, realizing that I’m in Zelda’s room in the bunker. Is she alive? I try to recall the chain of events, how I ended up here.

I force myself to sit up. Everything hurts, especially my head. My clothes are drenched in sweat and covered in blood. Slowly, random images begin to surface. Lukas, the shooting, Jakub, Aleksander, stabbing a Nazi guard with Zelda’s pocketknife, then an explosion. That’s where it ends. I press my ear to the wall behind her bed and hear muddled voices on the other side of it. I begin to decipher more facts: Zelda is dead. It took twelve bullets to kill her, someone says. Even then, she refused to die, another voice chimes in, adding that her last word was Raisa, her sister’s name, as she shot her final bullet, taking a German soldier down with her.

Someone mentions Tosia. How she saved the day. I lie back against the pillow and vaguely remember how Tosia, with her pearlescent skin smothered with freckles, threw a grenade into the hallway as the Nazis made their way down from the rooftop after killing Zelda. Alone, she took out three Nazis while one was wounded and another managed to escape. Did Lukas escape or die?

And Aleksander... My heart screams. Is he alive?

Nothing else matters. I must know, praying that he is among them. I struggle to get up; my ribs are burning, and my head feels like it is being weighed down by bricks. The voices on the other side of the wall are still recapping what happened. I stop moving when someone describes how Tosia carried Aleksander to the bottom of the bunker, dragging him down the three flights of stairs. Alive! He’s alive! And then the same voice recounts how I stabbed a wounded Nazi soldier with my small knife—bludgeoned him to death. Butchered like meat, someone added. I don’t recall any of it.

But that doesn’t excuse what she did, a familiar voice yells out angrily. Eryk? The others agree. I freeze. They know. Everybody knows. Daughter of a Nazi... slept with her husband’s brother while he was on a train to Treblinka. Not even buried yet. The voices become a Greek chorus of disgust and blame.

But he slept with me, too, I yearn to shout back in defense. There were two of us there. Tears fill my eyes. I am the wicked witch of Warsaw. I killed my husband twice—last night and long before he was sent to Treblinka.

Painfully, I remove my bloodstained shirt—Nazi blood—then grab a shirt from Zelda’s small pile of clothes, a loose plain-woven beige blouse. I sniff it. Woodsy, sulfurous, metallic, as though she’d been oiling guns. It smells like her. Tears roll down my cheeks as I put it on. I feel so small, so defeated.

Zelda is dead. Jakub is dead. Sammy is dead. Little Dina—I will never know what happened to her. Get up. Go out there now. Face the firing squad.

I stand in agony, check my purse with the Irina papers and the money still intact. My leg muscles tighten like steel rods. There’s going to be a price to pay. Without thinking twice, I grab my purse, take a small satchel of Zelda’s, and fill it with a few items from her desk: a flashlight, a compass, two cigarettes, matches, a half-filled flask of water, bandages, the still-bloody pocketknife, and a thick black sweater hanging on a hook. And then I head out.

The talking stops immediately. I focus first on the long wooden table where everyone is sitting, before absorbing the surrounding accusatory faces. The table is covered with grenades, bullets, magazines, weapons, Nazi uniforms, and dozens of wallets filled with deutsche marks and zlotys peeking out of them—a smorgasbord of military booty seized from our enemy. At another time, we would have danced around the table to rejoice, a victory hora. But the loss among us is too great to celebrate. My eyes peel away from the table and toward Aleksander, who is sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, his bandaged leg elevated with a stack of pillows. Then I meet Eryk’s angry face next to him.

His hair is matted with sweat and his shirt is covered in blood. His impassioned gaze impales mine, and his voice is slow and succinct as he stands and walks toward me. “Did you lie about my sister? Why did you tell me that Dina was safe, hidden in the forest, and in good hands? What really happened, Bina? Did that Nazi kill her? What if I could have saved her?” he shouts. “I trusted you, goddamn it.”

I bite down on my bottom lip. He never could have saved her. Nobody could. But that doesn’t matter right now.

“I tried, Eryk, I really tried. I still believe she is alive,” I muster, my voice choking. Anna told me that Stach had gotten her out, but then Stach was captured. And Anna never knew for sure what happened to Dina. I just didn’t mention that part—the uncertainty. My eyes well up. Eryk is unmoved. They all are.

“I don’t believe you. Not one word you say.” He glances at Aleksander, whose face is stone cold. “That Nazi said Dina was dead. I believe him.”

They believe a Nazi over me.

Aleksander fixates on me. There is hatred in his eyes too. How the hell could you have written down what we did? You did this. Your words killed Jakub before the Nazis did. There is a sheen of sweat painted across his forehead, like one of his own textured brushstrokes. “A Treblinka oven would have been a better death for Jakub,” he says. His voice is lifeless, numb. “It should have been you,” he says. “You, not Jakub.”

Those eyes that once sparkled like emeralds are now opaque like pond scum. He is staring at me in the same cold way the Nazis look at us: disassociated and repulsed. The man I love with all my heart wishes me dead, and right now, seeing my reflection in his deadened eyes, I wish that too.

“I’m leaving,” I announce. My voice, known for its rich, throaty tone, is timorous, disgraced.

“Just go. Get out of here,” Eryk responds icily. I should have told him the truth about Dina, not given him false hope. I broke the circle of trust, and that’s all we have ever had here together; the only thing we could count on. “And don’t come back,” he shouts. No longer a boy but a man. No longer a man but a soldier.

My heart breaks irreparably. Shame slashes mercilessly through me. As I turn to go, banished from those I love, those I fought for, those I came back for, I notice the Browning planted on the far edge of the table squished between two shiny German Lugers. It’s mine. I don’t deserve it, but I take the gun anyway, stuff it inside my waistband, and no one stops me. As I make my way toward the stairs, I hear Eryk shouting after me, “I’m just glad Zelda didn’t live to see this.”