Chapter Twenty-Nine

WE ARRIVE AT the destination less than fifteen minutes later. Vladek parks and points at the boarded-up two-story house across the street. “That’s the address you gave me. See that sign hanging off the doorframe? It’s a ballet studio. Are you planning to dance your way out of Warsaw?”

I sit in the passenger seat and pray I’m not endangering Anna by showing up here. She is the only person left besides Vladek who can help me escape, if she is even alive. What if Lukas already got to her too? But I have no one else.

“This is the place,” I tell Vladek, unsure of what I’m doing right now.

“Not smart,” he says, shaking his head. I know what he sees. A building that is in shambles amid a tree-lined upscale residential street with neighbors who will know immediately if someone is lurking inside the deserted studio. A runaway Jew is worth a lot, probably triple the price since the uprising began.

“I have no other choice,” I say.

Vladek smacks his palm against his head, as though wrestling with himself. “There may be another option... who lives here?”

Anna. I need to check, to find out if she is still here. “Twenty minutes,” I tell him without answering his question. “Can you give me twenty minutes?”

He turns off the vehicle and cuts the lights. “Ten minutes, and then I’m leaving. It’s not safe. Neighbors are among the worst collaborators with the Nazis. No one wants trouble on their street.”

“Fifteen minutes.” I throw down onto the seat a stack of zlotys that I don’t even count and jump out of the truck, cross the street, and hurriedly make my way to the right side of the studio toward the back window. I hide in the shadows, trying to recall Anna’s instructions that last night in the safe house. The window latch is broken, she told me. You need to jiggle it open to get inside.

Please be here, Anna.I hold my breath as I carefully wriggle the latch. Is my suitcase still here? I wonder. My heart pounds when the window gives way and opens. I take a quick look around, and once I am certain no one is watching, I step onto a broken brick beneath the window, which Anna must use as well, and hoist myself up and inside.

“Hello,” I whisper, steadying myself as I look around the large empty studio space. “Hello?” I repeat, but nothing.

I don’t turn on any lights, but luckily the moonlight streaming in through the shutter slats illuminates the studio. There is a long barre perched against a wall-size mirror, an old record player in the far corner, and a parade of colorful costumes hanging neatly on a valet stand on the other side of the room. I picture a young Anna here, sashaying in her pink tutu, twirling on her toes, looking to her beloved Madame Sosia for approval. I imagine that gut-wrenching day when the Nazis stormed in and shot the beloved teacher dead in front of her pupils. I check for any clues of the attack. Nothing. Anna must have scrubbed the floor clean of blood.

“Anna, it’s me... Irina,” I whisper again. No answer. I walk around, trying to decide what to do first. I have ten minutes, maybe less. I must move quickly.

My suitcase. Is it here, as Anna promised it would be? It is all I have left; the only memories of my family are packed inside. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. I check around until I spot a small hallway next to a staircase leading up to the second floor. There is a large storage closet and a commode. “Anna?” I call up from the base of the stairs, which are cracked and dusty. I take a few steps up, wait for a response. Still nothing.

No one is here. I return to the hallway closet and open it. It is stuffed with blankets, pillows, linen, and shelving lined with tinned food. I remove everything carefully, take nothing, and that’s when I see it. My suitcase stashed behind a stack of boxes. A warm feeling overwhelms me. Anna kept it for me. She knew I would come for it.

Gently removing the small valise from the closet, I drag it toward the center of the studio where there is light. I hold my breath as I open it up. Everything is still inside: photographs of my family, Aleksander and Karina, and Jakub’s manuscript—minus those pages I had carelessly left behind and that Lukas took when he and his men raided the safe house. And then beneath it all, I feel it, the Behrman family’s violin, the Stradivarius. I pick it up. It’s heavier than I remember. Something inside of it shakes. I hold it up to the light. Between the strings, inside its hollow body, I see a thin booklet, and eyeglasses? Anna must have put those in there for me. I pinch open the strings as wide as I can without breaking them and shake out the hidden items. A passport. I open it and read the name: Petra Schneider, with Anna’s picture. She is wearing the same thick horn-rimmed glasses. If I put them on, I could easily pass for her. My heart pounds hard. She knew I would survive. She was expecting me. She left me the one thing that could save me—more than food, more than shelter, even more than this valuable violin—a foolproof non-Jewish identity. Hers.

Petra Schneider.

I strain to read the passport. Petra was born in Hamburg, Germany. She is listed as a student and has a very believable story. And I can tell, just by looking at the few clues, the entire story. Petra’s mother has a Polish name. Her father is German. We would play a game in the ghetto to pass time: Give me a name, a fake identity, and I will give you the story. My colorful stories always won. Petra Schneider moved here from Hamburg as a young girl, to spend time with the Polish side of her family and to study ballet. Petra is legitimate, an Aryan Pole. And Petra, Anna is telling me without telling me, is my way out.

This courageous woman has saved my life twice and demanded nothing in return. She could have sold the priceless violin on the black market to feed herself and all her relatives for a year, perhaps even booked her own passage out of this godforsaken war zone. Maybe she is already gone. But Anna went even further. She anticipated my return, believed I would one day make it out of the ghetto and need passage. All the planning she did for a woman she barely knew. My eyes well up. I may never be able to thank her for giving me a second chance at life. I press the passport to my chest. She wants me to live even more than I do.

I quickly shut the suitcase and take it with me, pausing briefly at the costume valet, and make a split-second decision. I open my satchel and remove the pearl hairpin that I wore the evening of the nightclub bombing, which Anna had given me as part of my disguise. It’s sharp on the ends, and I thought to use it as a weapon if needed.

Instead, I attach it like a barrette to the strap of the first dress on the costume valet as a sort of Morse code—a sign to Anna if she returns that I was here, made it out alive, and reclaimed the suitcase.

“Thank you,” I whisper to the empty studio space encompassing all that Anna once loved, then I quickly leave the same way I arrived, up and out the window like a cat burglar.

I carefully check the empty street before returning to the truck. I look up at the military fireworks still going ballistic across the blackened sky. Warsaw is sleeping, but not the ghetto. It will never sleep again. My friends are dying while I am saving myself. I break out into a cold sweat as I open the truck door.

“Leave the damn suitcase,” Vladek says angrily.

“I am not leaving it,” I retort, placing the valise on the seat and crouching in the floor space beneath it. “Can you get me out of Warsaw tonight?”

He glances down at me. “Are you crazy? No one is getting out of Warsaw tonight.”

“I can pay... a lot.”

He points out the car window. “Maybe you are blind or deaf? The ghetto is blowing up, the forest is probably surrounded, the Gestapo is everywhere. They know that any Jews who manage to survive the siege will try to escape. To be honest, that’s what I was doing in the park tonight—waiting for runaway Jews. And then you showed up.” He gestures to the ballet studio across the street. “Maybe it’s best that you stay here. Hide until it is safe to leave.”

I contemplate it. I can sleep inside the storage closet—it’s big enough. There is food. But the neighbors... Vladek is right. They would give me up without blinking. I must get to the forest somehow.

“Vladek, I know you are risking a lot right now. Please, take me to the partisans.” Seeing the refusal on his face, I opt for a more conciliatory tone. “Or at least near the border. From there, I will find a way out. Unless you have a better idea?” I make my eyes wide and fearful—a princess in jeopardy—a look men cannot resist.

We both remain quiet for a few moments, contemplating each other. He speaks first. “There is one possibility. But...”

I hold my breath. Always a but, always a catch.

“The thing is, well, you see, I’m not just a smuggler.” He clears his throat. “I’m a driver.”

“Not construction.” I state the obvious by the way he is stumbling over his words.

He presses his lips together tightly. “Remember when I told you that my wife was a seamstress? Well, she is now employed as a seamstress for high-level Nazi mistresses. My other job is to drive those same women to wherever I’m told their services are required. I also deliver the dresses. Nazis are always celebrating themselves, throwing lavish parties honoring high-level officials who come to town. And—”

“And you supply the women.”

He nods the truth. A smuggler with a conscience. “It keeps my family alive. I do what I must do.”

Hence the Nazi pennant. Not just a safety precaution that drapes the truck.

“You’re a pimp,” I say under my breath.

“This war has turned us all into whores and pimps.” His face boils beneath his scraggly beard. I can see the reddening of his exposed cheeks. “I make sure those women get to and from safely. A protector, not a pimp.”

A protector? But then, who am I to judge? The things I’ve done...

“So, let me guess,” I say. “Your idea is for me to dress up and then you hand me over to those Nazi bastards on a porcelain platter. From there, I would find my way into their beds and out of hell.”

“Not exactly.” He sighs. “But yes, disguise you as one of the mistresses and take you out of Warsaw, to the countryside, where those lavish celebrations take place.” He clears his throat again uncomfortably. And we both know exactly what that means.

Konstancin. Villas, castles, vacation homes, lush with towering pine trees and picturesque gardens filled with poppies and lilacs as far as the eye can see. “My home,” I whisper, feeling sicker than when I discovered Vladek is driving my father’s truck. My family home has been taken over by the Nazi elite.

Vladek doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to. It’s all right there, written in the dead air between us. I will myself not to cry. This is just a truck. My home was just a home. My memories are just memories. All expendables.

“If you have any chance of escaping, that’s what I would recommend. Maybe, stay here for the night until I can arrange a better hiding spot. But...”

But. And there it is again. The catch, the complication.

He shakes his head, as though fighting with himself. “I can’t do this for free. I’m not a good man. I don’t claim to be. This will cost you plenty and require detailed planning and involve more than just me. Right now, the Nazis are engaged in battle. Their fancy parties are on hold until it’s over... once they win.” He points to the ghetto as if it were a mere finger length away. “This revolt buys us at least a day or two to plan. But I can’t move forward without compensation. There are too many people to pay off. I’m sorry.” He holds my gaze.

Not sorry. The very lucrative business of dead Jews.

“What if the uprising lasts longer than you anticipate?” I ask. “What if it’s not just a day or two but weeks?”

Vladek flicks his wrist. “Impossible. The Nazis seized all of Poland in thirty-six days. You think a handful of starving Jews with a few grenades and reject pistols can stand up to the S.S. war machine? I hear Jews are using children to fight.” He glances at his watch. Using children! You have no idea, you bastard. “Today is Tuesday?” he notes. “By Thursday, the Nazis will be celebrating and demanding their mistresses back in their beds. Two days. I give it two. Tops.”

So, my life depends on the quick destruction of the ghetto, I think. Revenge is unbearable, Zelda.

“How much?” I ask. How much is my life worth?

“That’s the bigger problem. You can’t afford the escape.”

I think of Eryk’s face, the violin inside my suitcase. It belongs to him and Dina. To save their lives, not mine. I think of Petra Schneider, my new foolproof German-Polish identity. Zelda’s face rises before me. Live, Bina, live. I make a quick decision.

“I have a violin.”

“A violin?” He gives a pealing laugh, then his face waxes serious. “People need food, money, not music. This is war. Ah, you rich Jews have no idea.”

You rich Jews have no idea.“The violin is a work of art. It’s worth more than a dozen trucks,” I counter, thinking of all the corrupt art dealers who took advantage and profited immensely off persecuted Jews forced to sell their paintings and valuables for a pittance of what the art was worth and flee their homes. I think of all of Aleksander’s magnificent paintings that his own art dealer stole from him, profiting immensely. “There will be buyers for this violin, I guarantee you.”

Vladek shrugs. “Doubtful, but I will check. If you’re right, that would solve that problem. But there is still the other problem, the bigger one.” He looks me up and down. “You are beautiful. You look like them, but you are a Jew. Nazi mistresses are all Polish women. Nazis can smell a Jew a mile away. I have never seen anything like it. They sniff out the nervousness, the tics, the hand movements, the scent. They measure the size of pupils. They can catch a Jew with one eye closed. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Can you play—”

“Whore, seductress, mistress?” My voice rises, and I try to contain the scorching rage, but I’m failing. It takes all my restraint not to use my last few bullets and blow this lout’s head off.

“What I’m saying is your life depends on your ability to act—to not be a Jew. Can you act under pressure?”

And that’s when I laugh, loud and bellicose—an ogre’s meaty laugh. A cackle worthy of Macbeth’s witches that surely all the nosy neighbors on the street could hear.

Vladek tries to shake me quiet. But I don’t care. I laugh until I cry. I sob until I have no more tears left. He eyes me like I am a lunatic. And he’s right. There is so much I want to tell this coarse man, this pimp smuggler who means nothing to me, but who is now my sole means of survival.

Everyone I have ever loved is dead, Vladek. All those rich Jews and poor ones too. All those fighting children, dead, I shout at him silently. Aleksander was right. It should have been me—not Jakub. It should have been me—not Zelda. But here I am still alive, Vladek, and it’s all because of my acting ability.

What you don’t know, what Nazis can’t sniff out or tell by a tic or a nervous gesture, is that I am nearly twenty-four years old, and I have portrayed practically every part imaginable: heroine, wife, lover, mistress, daughter, almost-mother, villain, maid, whore, seductress, smuggler, assassin. I am a woman born to become anyone other than who she really is.