Chapter Six

JAKUB LEANS AGAINST the carbide lamp on the kitchen table, watching me closely as I clear the dishes. He knows I am up to something. The air is too thick and he’s too well trained a journalist not to sniff out a story. Normally, he helps with the dishes, but tonight he sits across from Aleksander in silent anger, making a steeple of his index fingers, digging under his chin. I feel his distrust burning a hole in my back.

“What is it, Kuba?” Aleksander is the only one who uses Jakub’s boyhood nickname and gets away with it.

From the corner of my eye, I see Jakub shaking his head. “The list.”

The fucking list.

I heave a heavy sigh as I stare at the rusty trickle of sink water. I can’t help it. The list is all we’ve talked about—argued about—for the past two days. The Nazi list of Jewish girls who will be plucked out of the ghetto for forced prostitution. Our Judenrat warlords were too cowardly to announce it or fight it. Instead, they ordered the decree printed on the front page of the Jewish Gazette, thinking it would absolve their own guilt, their part in throwing us all under the train. The Gazette, known as the bulletin of only bad news, is the ghetto’s sole means of mass communication. When it first started, the creators asked Jakub to be its editor, but he refused. Like everything else in my husband’s life, it all comes down to dignity. The Gazette is beneath him, a rag, not up to Jakub Blonski standards, no matter that it’s the only news source in town. But after the latest decree was issued, he couldn’t sleep. None of us could. And my role in it has pushed him over the edge.

Once I saw the decree in black and white, I couldn’t sit still, wait it out, and do nothing. The second I read it, I made an appointment and went before the top brass of the Judenrat and two junior members of the Nazi command, without discussing my plan with Jakub first. I presented my case and volunteered to be the one to watch over all the girls. Yes, Queen of the Whores. I appealed to the Nazis by playing on their greatest fear—disease. I saw both young Nazis flinch when I mentioned syphilis. So I purposely stated it repeatedly, inserting disease and hygiene and syphilis into every single sentence, secretly enjoying watching them twitch. I told them I intended to make sure that every girl would be clean for the soldiers. That we should have nurses on board and at least a dozen “maids” on hand to keep the rooms tidy, the sheets changed—a job, I explained, that would be optimal for the younger girls. My goal was to save as many girls’ lives as I could. But I didn’t stop there. I also demanded warm blankets, better hygiene—soap, specifically—and most of all, more food to keep our young women “Nazi-worthy.” I stressed that a Jewish woman from the ghetto was necessary to watch over the girls and keep them in line because they would trust her. I would personally stay with the girls, I emphasized, sleep in the same area with them. I did not lower my gaze. I showed no sign of fear, even though internally I was trembling. I wore my best dress—a now-faded blue Chanel midcalf form-fitting dress that I’d worn to the dinner party the night before my wedding to Jakub. I knew that every man in the Judenrat’s office who heard my passionate plea saw not a prisoner or a Jew, but rather an elegant woman of impeccable breeding, who looked like God’s gift to the Nazi libido. You are the prize, Bina, Jakub’s voice echoed in my head. I knew my audience. And I sold it.

I sold it and broke what was left of my marriage simultaneously.

I drop the rest of the dishes in the sink, leave them there; I will get to them later. I quickly glance at my watch. Swallowing hard, I am barely able to look my suspicious husband in the eye. Zelda made me swear to secrecy. Too many lives are at stake.

One hour.

“Jakub,” I say, curating a conciliatory tone, “please, let’s not discuss the list. Go rest.”

“Rest, Bina?” He slams his glass against the table, nearly knocking over the lamp and spilling the water. Here it comes. “Rest, goddamn it!”

Aleksander gives me a hard look when Jakub stands and stomps over to the window. His back faces us as he stares out at the convent across the courtyard, where I hold my acting classes for the children, many of whom are now orphans.

I nod back at him. Yes, I know. One hour. The clock is ticking. Do something, my eyes transmit silently. Occupy Jakub. Find him vodka. Get him drunk. Whatever it takes.

“Let’s take our mind off things,” Aleksander suggests when Jakub returns to his chair at the head of the table. “Perhaps play some cards? Bina, you’re going to the Behrmans’ now, right?”

“Yes, remember? I’m bringing the kids some soup.” I purposely announced that activity this morning, but I repeat my plan for Jakub’s benefit.

Forty-eight minutes.

“I will walk you,” Jakub grumbles. Despite his anger, he is mindful of the eight o’clock curfew. A rule follower until the end. He turns to Aleksander. “Fine. I will be back in fifteen minutes. Cards then.”

“Great, thanks. Just give me a minute.” I muster appreciation. I’d already anticipated that Jakub would walk me to the Behrmans’ apartment. So did Aleksander, who gathers the two small servings of the vile beetroot soup for me. Our tormentors have limited ration cards to three hundred calories a day per person. If they can’t kill us with the typhoid, the death trains, slave labor in their sweatshops, then starving us to death still works like a charm. Smuggling food is our only option to stay alive. “The little girl Dina Behrman I was telling you about, Jakub...” But he’s barely listening. I ramble on anyway. “She’s been having night terrors since they took her parents. I have been working closely with her in class. Her brother told me Dina has gotten much worse and asked if I could help.”

Aleksander gives me a cut-it-off neck swipe signal. “So, I may stay over there a bit longer until she falls asleep. I know it’s after curfew but...” Aleksander’s hard glance again. I stop talking.

“I will pick up Bina,” Aleksander volunteers, then points to the top shelf in the nearly empty cupboard and tells his brother, “There’s a spot of vodka waiting for you when you get back.”

Jakub’s brows knit together as he eyes the flask. “Seriously, you went to Manny’s Bar with those thugs again?”

Those thugs. The Jewish gangsters on Mila Street. The thieves who live among us—but without them, we couldn’t smuggle or survive. In the ghetto, professional thieves are the new heroes, saviors, teachers, our lifeline.

Aleksander’s mouth breaks into a mischievous smile, and his eyes sparkle, and I can’t help but smile back. “Yes, I went to Manny’s the other day,” he admits. “Get this... I traded Manny a portrait of himself for a pint of vodka.”

We all laugh at that. We can’t help it, and the release feels surprisingly good. Manny Abramowicz—the bar owner and jack-of-all-trades thief—is the most popular guy in the ghetto, self-anointed Mayor of Survival. Anyone who needs to barter anything starts with Manny and his boys, who were also crooks back in the other life. But who needs a self-portrait when we are all starving, dying by the second? Just Manny. Nothing in ghetto life makes sense. But it’s also Manny, I think as I slip on my coat, who is making tonight happen. And those twin pistols that Zelda possesses—all Manny.

As I turn toward the door with Jakub close behind me, I purposely do not look back at Aleksander. We made it through the first hurdle, I know we are both thinking. A lot is riding on this. On me.

Thirty-six minutes.

AS JAKUB ANDI enter the courtyard to the Behrmans’ apartment a few blocks away, he pulls me back from the door by the sleeve of my coat.

“What is it?” I ask, my heart seizing. Please don’t stop me.

“Let’s not fight, Bina. I’m so tired of fighting with you.” His eyes look like his father’s—baggy, sunken lids—a twenty-nine-year-old man who has aged forty years in the twenty-six months we’ve been here. And I hate myself right now. For hurting him, betraying him, humiliating him, lying to him. Everything I do is destroying this dignified man, breaking him down piece by piece.

“Jakub, I’m so sorry.” And I mean it. For this. For what is about to happen tonight and all the nights after that. You deserve a wife who loves you, who would die with you and your precious archives. A wife who sleeps with you and thinks of you—not your brother. A wife who does not volunteer to be the ghetto madame. You deserve so much more. But I can only give you less.

I lean over and kiss my husband fully on the mouth, tasting the beet soup on my lips. But for this one solitary moment, I’m not lying. He pulls back, looks at me, his tired eyes shining and his permanently disapproving mouth smiling for the first time in forever. An eye glint—like his brother’s—emerges for a split second, but then just as quickly, the muscle memory kicks in. He looks at me and sees the list. The spark extinguishes to a flicker and then it’s gone for good. He releases my sleeve, turns, and walks away, not knowing that his wife, a serial betrayer, will soon betray him once again.