Chapter Two

WARSAW, 1939

GO OUT THERE, Bina. Curtain call. They’re begging for you.” Stach nudges me forward, toward the stage. We are huddled together in the wing after our opening night performance of our play, Romeo and Juliet. “Listen to it.” He points to the theater’s overhead wooden beams vibrating with raucous applause. “Opening night magic. Hear the thunder? That’s for you, my friend... ‘a rose by any other name.’” His face splits into a sly smile. I laugh aloud, cover my mouth.

I play Juliet. But Stach is not Romeo. According to him, he’d never be Romeo. You couldn’t pay him enough zlotys to play Romeo, whom he calls spineless, a prancing daisy picker. Stach is the fiery, sarcastic Mercutio, a loyal-to-the-end hothead, and indisputably the most talented actor on that stage. When he performs, the rest of us fade into the background like fairy dust. His booming baritone resounds like the voice of God commanding from heaven, especially when he’s angry. As Mercutio, Stach is deliciously sinister and more than believable—he becomes his character. I love watching the audience devour his performance.

“You know damn well that the thunder is for both of us,” I say, grabbing my best friend by the poufy material of his bloodstained white poet’s blouse and pulling him back toward the stage with me. “Everyone knows you’re the star... ‘Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man...’ You have all the best lines.”

“Not according to my father. Didn’t see him in the audience tonight. Big surprise.” Stach laughs again. His shiny black hair appears almost blue beneath the glare of the stage lights cast in our direction. But his laugh is not a laugh—it is forced, soaked in pain. His father has never showed up to a single performance of his. Stach’s mother, of course, is in the audience tonight—front row, hands clasped together with pride.

Stach Nowak is his stage name. His real name is Stanis?aw Sobieski, a descendant of royalty on his father’s side. His father still calls himself a baron despite noble titles having been abolished. He hates that his sole heir has chosen acting as his profession—a “worthless hobby”—and shunned the family’s lucrative steel business. “You’ll never be a leading man,” his father chides him at every opportunity. “And Sobieskis are never second best.”

Though I would never admit it, his father is right. Stach will never play the leading man, the romantic prince, the dashing rescuer on a white horse. Despite his incredible talent and winning smile, his handsome face is marred by a large purplish birthmark spanning the entire left side of his cheek, like a slapped face; an imprint so glaring that even heavy stage makeup cannot conceal it. Stach calls it the devil’s handprint. It’s his signature, distinguishing him from all other actors and giving his characters edge and anguish. But it also relegates him to playing only the complex antagonist or supporting actor—Shylock, Iago, Claudius, Caliban. And yet, he always manages to steal the show anyway.

Stach pushes me toward the stage once again, only this time more forcefully. And I shove him right back playfully. “Get out there,” he says, “before that ass Mateusz robs you of all the applause.”

I glance toward the other side of the stage at the target of Stach’s ire: Mateusz—that ass—Romeo obviously, approaching center stage, his white canvas shirt with its bell sleeves billowing as though he were strolling along a windy seashore, his wavy blond hair blowing in sync with the stage fan, his chiseled face held high, owning it all. Pompous and greedy, as usual. I glance at Stach and note the gleam in his turquoise eyes as he watches Mateusz, and then the spark vanishes before I can fully process it. The two men have despised each other since the first day of drama school nearly two years ago. Mateusz is in my class, and Stach, one year ahead of us, is indisputably the superior performer. But Mateusz, physically beautiful with a lithe build, penetrating almond eyes, and lush, womanly lips, embodies dreamy, poetic Romeo. He, of course, lands all the coveted leading-male roles. That birthmark ensures there is no contest.

Their rivalry is most apparent during practices, when they snap at each other, cut down each other, and I find myself thrust in the middle, like a mother separating two combative sons. It was intolerable until that day a few months ago when I learned that the incessant animosity was all an act.

WE HAD JUSTrehearsed the balcony scene and finished play practice after a long, hot day. I knocked on Stach’s dressing room door to debrief and gossip, as usual. No one answered. The door was left ajar, so I walked in and saw all his belongings still there, but he was nowhere to be found. I called out for him and searched the entire theater. We always leave practice together. Strange. I returned to my dressing room to pack up for the night when I heard low, stifled laughter coming from the costume closet as I passed by. The costume closet was not actually a closet, rather it was a large storage room filled with stage props and set designs from past productions. I opened the door, walked in, and looked around. Empty. I must have imagined the voices. And then, just as I was leaving, I heard loud whispers coming from behind a floor-to-ceiling painted garden scene on the far side of the room, near the back door. My heart pounded. I’d know that sound anywhere—deep and booming—even as a whisper. And the other voice, I knew, belonged to Mateusz. It was the same undertone he’d make when his lips grazed mine in the final scene, when Romeo believes Juliet to be dead. Stach and Mateusz? My breath halted. I knew I should leave. Instead, I hid behind a large mural depicting a snowcapped mountain range and listened for just a bit longer. I had to be sure.

It was silent at first, and then I heard the bated breath, the shushing each other warnings, the rustle, the unsnapping of pants, the rousing laughter, kissing, groping, sucking, groaning—an orchestra of intimacy. I imagined it all without seeing any of it. I quickly tiptoed out of the room, squeezed through the door I’d left partially open, and leaned up against the nearest wall, my hand plastered to my chest, my heart racing. All that sniping and jealousy was a ruse. Why didn’t Stach tell me? Tears filled my eyes. We have shared everything since we were kids making up plays together. I even told him about my conflicted feelings about marrying Jakub a few months ago. I cried in Stach’s arms the night before my wedding, and he reassured me it would all be okay. He was the only person in the world who knew my truth. Why couldn’t he share his secret with me?

THE APPLAUSE GROWS louder and Stach takes my hand as we line up for our final bows. Everyone believes he is in love with me, and Stach wants them to think that. I clasp his hand tightly. I will always have your back even if you are afraid to trust me, my palm promises his.

We stand still behind the heavy red velvet curtain poised to reveal what I know to be on the other side: Warsaw’s elite. Celebrities, politicians, socialites, and everyone who matters in the theater world came out to see what was being touted as the best Shakespearean production in years by the “next generation” of Warsaw’s finest young actors. There has been much talk of an impending Nazi invasion, but that did not diminish tonight’s attendance. Every seat in the house was filled. The show must go on, our director had told us during our final practice earlier this week. Next week may be war, he intimated, but this week we would celebrate our beautiful production. Don’t let fear stand in the way, he said with a proud fist raise. Do this for Poland. For the arts and our way of life.

I inhale the intoxicating theater air as the crowd applauds vigorously, demanding we show ourselves once again. The familiar heady aroma of “my theater” clings to my nose and to the back of my throat—an even mix of cloying and stuffy—as I watch the rising curtain slowly unveil the tips of my dusty-rose ballet slippers, my burgundy Renaissance gown with its jeweled embellishments, my pushed-up cleavage, my neck adorned with a jeweled sapphire choker, my face rouged with excitement, my long hair braided tightly into a single golden rope down my back and topped with a tiny claret cap laced with gold that reminds me of a yarmulke.

I meet the adoring gaze of my audience, feel the deep, umbilical connection, and I lovingly receive the glory. An indescribable rush moves through me as I slowly take my first bow. Stach grabs my hand again and Mateusz clasps the other. United, we raise our hands high overhead, as we take our final bow together.

This, I think as my body arcs deeply. This.

And then just seconds before resuming an upright stance, the clapping halts as though someone cut the lights. An unwelcome hush blankets the playhouse as a phalanx of soldiers and police barge through the door, led by one man dressed in full royal regalia, a throwback to another era. And not just any man—Stach’s father.

“Landau! Bina Landau,” Baron Konrad Sobieski shouts my name, singling me out. I glance around. There is only one thing that separates me from all the other actors onstage. I am the lone Jew. A Jew who doesn’t look like a Jew, I’ve been told my whole life.

My heart palpitates when I see my father in the distance, rising from his seat to protect me, and then my mother pulling him back down by his sleeve, silencing him with a fearful warning glare. I see Jakub seated next to her, immobile and not blinking. And Aleksander next to him, his cheeks burning, and my best friend, Karina, with both hands pressed to her mouth in shock.

“Bina... Bina!” the baron bellows to a dead silent theater, his voice ricocheting off the walls like wayward bullets. My focus is on the rows of unearned colorful medals spanning his uniform—a man who is not a soldier, never served a day of his life in the army. Those noble medallions are always locked inside the velvet-lined family vault with the rest of Stach’s family heirlooms dating back to the 1700s. Stach made me swear to secrecy and showed them all to me once when his father was out of town.

If this weren’t so terrifying, the moment might be comical. Konrad Sobieski appears as though he’d jumped straight out of our Renaissance production as a raging Capulet or a Montague. But his unexpected presence is more than real—it is premeditated. I overheard my father speaking to my uncle several months ago, discussing how Konrad Sobieski was funding the National Democratic Party’s anti-Semitic platform to rid Poland of its Jews, and using all resources available to make that happen. The NDP’s thugs have been destroying local Jewish businesses for the past few years and recently escalated their destructive activities with ample financial backing, mostly, I presume, from the baron’s own deep pockets.

Stach steps forward, his eyes blazing. “Enough! Father, stop this now!” My best friend’s face is clenched, and the devil’s handprint seems to darken and expand as his cheeks become increasingly inflamed.

“Stand down,” his father retorts, his arctic glare returning to me. “Bina Landau, leave the premises immediately.”

I find my voice, and it, too, echoes in the theater, attempting to match his. “Why me?” But the sound is hollow, young, desperate. Everybody knows why.

The baron’s striking face resembles Stach’s, only without the birthmark and permanently scowling. Suddenly, I recall a memory from a year ago that I pushed away.

I was visiting Stach at his home, when the baron summoned his son into the drawing room, knowing I could hear every word through the thin walls. “If you ever fall in love with that Jew, I will disown you,” the baron sneered. “I don’t care how beautiful she is. I don’t care who her goddamn father is. You have humiliated our family enough with this acting business... but a Jew too? I will not allow it. That girl is no longer welcome here.”

I wanted to defend myself, to barge into that ornate room and scream: A Jew whose father built your palatial home! My father, considered Warsaw’s most prominent architect, built many luxurious villas throughout Poland and refurbished several landmark castles. He has been celebrated for his architectural innovation throughout the country—especially in Konstancin, the exclusive woodsy enclave twenty kilometers south of the city, where both our families reside.

The baron glares at me from the auditorium floor and makes a panoramic sweeping gesture to the audience. “Why, Bina, why?” he mimics cruelly. “You are a Jew. There is no place for your kind among us, especially now.” He turns again to the audience for support. “We must protect Poland first.”

I don’t hear the rest of the vitriol he is spewing, but I feel every rotten word course through my veins like poison. I see the ugly truth reflected in the eyes of all who applauded my performance just minutes earlier. I see my parents and family being escorted out of the theater by the soldiers. No matter that my father also designed this theater for the nation’s most prestigious drama school. No place for Jews...

“This is not about her. It’s about me, isn’t it, Father?” Stach steps forward to the edge of the stage, one hand on his hip, the other clasped around the sword at his belt. His voice fills the theater, as though he were Mercutio back at it. The audience, mouths agape, are now sucked into this performance within a performance. “Leave Bina alone, damn you.”

Konrad Sobieski’s eyes storm over the challenge presented by his rebel son before a throng of witnesses, his only son, who rejects his noble bloodline as though it were a plague, not a gift. The baron’s mouth parts into a punishing smile, as if he has been waiting years for this very moment: a public duel that he intends to win.

“Get out, kike!” he roars at me and then begins to chant, “Jewliet! Jewliet!”

I can’t breathe. I’m frozen. I’m burning. Every conflicting sensation takes hold of me at once. I look to the theatergoers for protection, to the audience who loves me, but there is only silence, eyes lowered at half-mast. Those zealously clapping hands, the thunderous applause that shook the theater’s beams just a short while ago, have tucked themselves away. A Jew among them. I never hid my Judaism, but I never flaunted it either. It didn’t seem to matter. I am an actress, that’s all I cared about. Everyone knows who my family is. Everyone. Many people in this audience have been to our home, attended our parties, drank our wine, ate our food, were guests at my wedding.

But now?

Even my director, the man who has mentored me, who calls me his star pupil, who insisted that the show must go on—Do this for Poland—is a mouse among men. He stares down between his spindly legs at his scuffed shoes, unable to meet my demanding gaze. Say something, anything. Stand up for me. But when he looks up, I see Jewliet clouding his eyes now too.

I take one last look at the theater I revered with all my heart, at the stained-glassed ceiling and ornate woodwork—my home away from home. I see the writing on the wall. That ovation was for Juliet, not Bina Landau.

Stach reaches for my hand once again, and I cling to its warm, safe familiarity. But it can’t protect me. He squeezes my fingers to the point of crushing them and whispers between closed lips, “Go out the costume closet back-door exit. Use it... hide. I will find you.”

Controlling the tears filming my eyes, I know this, too, is yet another lie. He will never find me. This moment may be our last. Everything is changing... and Stach will too.

I meet his crestfallen gaze, his eyes the color of the gem adorning my neck, and I feel a pain like I have never known before. “Don’t let him win, Stach. Don’t let him take away everything you love... who you love,” I add quickly under my breath, knowing I will never have another chance.

He responds with a revelatory twitch. I yank my hand from his, turn with my back to the audience, and move briskly off the stage, leaving Juliet and all my other characters—those I have portrayed and those I never will—behind in a wake of dust.