Chapter Seven

WHERE IS ERYK? Dina was not supposed to be home alone. I look around the tiny one-room apartment, at the two mattresses splayed on the floor—one for her, one for her brother. She is sitting on her mattress, curled up with a book. Books are prohibited in the ghetto, but we do what we can to smuggle books for the children. She smiles when she sees me, then buries her nose right back inside the pages.

There is nothing left in the apartment, which was once rich with music, instruments, and life—even in the ghetto. What remains are just the basics: a wooden table, two chairs, a dresser, kitchen utensils, and photos of the Behrman family: the parents playing in the Warsaw Philharmonic, a prepubescent Eryk at a piano recital, a baby Dina playing the xylophone. Everything else, all keepsakes from the past, have been bartered for food and supplies. Everyone has done the same.

“Where is Eryk?” I ask Dina. “And why are you here alone?”

“Peter is coming. Eryk said he will be home later.”

The boy with the stutter. I use a spare minute that I don’t have to heat up the soup for Dina. I know better than to push for more answers. Zelda told me not to ask questions, to trust that she has worked out all the details from start to finish, and that everyone is doing their assigned part. The less I know the better, she explained. If I’m caught by the police or the Nazis, they can’t beat nothing out of nothing. Another lie. That is all they do.

There is a knock at the door. “Who’s there?” I demand.

“P-p-peter.”

The boy enters holding a small suitcase. He is fifteen but looks twelve. This is who is watching Dina? My stomach knots. Zelda couldn’t do better than that? I glance at my watch and sigh deeply. It’s time. I’ve got to get out of here.

“Dina,” I call out. She looks up timidly. “I need to leave. Your brother will be back soon, okay?” She nods, returns to the book.

“Peter,” I whisper, wagging a finger. “Do not let Dina out of your sight. Do you hear me? No matter what.”

He nods. A child taking care of a child. “Wait,” he calls out, and points to the small valise. “That’s from Zelda. She said to put those clothes on.”

I open the suitcase and see a belted black dress with a leather hook attached to it like a makeshift holster, a matching wool coat, and a tube of lipstick. Lipstick? Bright red, practically orange. A clownish color I would never wear in real life, but I don’t ask questions. I follow instructions. The dress and coat—a set—not my taste, but good enough. And Zelda got the size correct. I wonder to whom the clothes once belonged. I try not to think about that and focus on what I’m about to do. “Turn around,” I tell Peter, as I quickly undress and put my own clothes back inside the suitcase and store it in the corner of the room against the wall for when I change and return home to Jakub.

I take a deep breath, eye both children briefly, tell them to be safe, keep the door locked, and then I head out.

A man named Henryk waits for me in a parked car two streets away from the Behrmans’ apartment. Though I’ve never met him personally, I have seen him numerous times driving around the ghetto. No one drives a car here. It’s either a bike, a horse-drawn vehicle, or a rickshaw, unless you are a high-up member of the Judenrat. A car is one of the perks of being a collaborator. Henryk is the driver for the Judenrat’s vice chair and clearly one of Zelda’s boys—a plant. No wonder she gets all the information so quickly.

When I open the car door on the passenger side and climb in, Eryk is sitting in the back seat. He acknowledges me with a nod, but surprisingly doesn’t really look at me. His eyes are steeled ahead. The fledgling resistance movement is about to send its first message to the Jewish Police... and I’m the messenger. But what is Eryk’s role? I wonder but don’t ask.

There is no question or doubt about the purpose of my mission. My first kill: a Jew turned policeman turned Nazi collaborator. Everyone knows him, fears him. He is head of the Jewish Police and goes by one name: Kapitan. He flaunts his power along every dirty, stinking block of the 1.3 square miles of ghetto, parading around in his chauffeur-driven rickshaw like he’s King David—with his bright blue cap and sand-colored belted uniform, wearing a permanent smirk while wielding two well-used batons, one at each hip.

Kapitan is notorious for his cruelty. He has raped at least a dozen young women, sent hundreds of families to their deaths in the roundups—with lists that he personally presented to our captors. If a man was chosen for the transport, Kapitan took it upon himself to search for the missing wife and kids who were still in hiding and sent them on the death trains as well. He liked keeping murder neat and tidy, a family affair—no stragglers left behind. Like the other policemen on active duty patrolling the ghetto, Kapitan volunteered for his position, believing it would save his life. I smack my orangey lips together.

Not tonight.

ZELDA’S TEAM HAS monitored Kapitan’s movements and patterns for the past few weeks. He is a creature of habit. At 8:15 p.m. exactly, he exits police headquarters and heads to Manny’s Bar for a round of drinks and to collect his nightly kickbacks. The bar is around the corner from the now boarded-up Café Sztuka on Leszno Street, the once splashy cabaret that Jakub, Aleksander, and I used to frequent when the ghetto was first sealed off before the roundups, and the same café that begged me repeatedly to join its performers, most of whom are now dead. Manny’s Bar is the last bar standing in what used to be the ghetto’s lively entertainment district, the premier let’s-pretend-life-goes-on section, once consisting of five professional theaters, both Yiddish and Polish, a symphony, opera, live revues, and musical comedy. All gone now. When Zelda reached out to Manny for help, he didn’t hesitate. He, too, was fed up with Kapitan’s incessant demands, and more than happy to do his part.

I tighten the belt of my coat, grit my teeth. It’s bitter cold even though I’m sweating through the wool material from nerves. The only thing worse than being in the ghetto is being in the ghetto during winter. No heat, barely any running water. Anything that comes out of a faucet is filled with rust and debris. My heart races and I can practically hear it pounding. We wait silently in the car until we see Kapitan toddle out of the bar and onto the other side of the street. His uniform is undone, his police cap is lopsided. He is drunk on his power, but not too drunk. That was the deal. Zelda told Manny that Kapitan needs to know exactly what is happening to him and why. Drunk then dead is not a lesson, not a punishment, not justice. Semidrunk, begging for his life, is the objective.

“It’s time,” says Henryk, the only words he has uttered all night.

Eryk leans forward, clasps my shoulder. “Be careful, Mrs. Blonski.” Mrs. Blonski. A young man with ingrained manners, no matter how many times I’ve told him to call me Bina.

When Kapitan walks away from the bar and ambles down the street, Henryk hands me Zelda’s loaded 9mm Weiss pistol. One of the twins, I think, as I open my coat and stick the pistol securely inside the fitted holster attached to my dress.

Taking a deep inhale, counting to three, I close my eyes briefly and envision what I’m about to do. I get into character, conjuring up the strongest women I know: Joan of Arc, Medea, Cleopatra, Athena. Fierce, fearless, unstoppable. Once I leave myself behind, I can do anything.

I carefully get out of the car, taking pains not to make a sound, and walk on the opposite side of the street toward Kapitan, exactly as Zelda had instructed. I hear her voice in my head guiding me as I move briskly, anxiously, like a woman who knows she should not be out past curfew and is praying that she doesn’t get caught.

Kapitan, of course, sees me and stops in his tracks, salivating like a hungry lion eyeing a terrified baby deer. I heard that in the other life he was a math teacher. He is only one-quarter Jewish, which makes him Jewish enough to be thrown into the ghetto. Well, you are about to calculate this one wrong, I think as I pick up speed. Show him how nervous you are—that’s exactly what he wants. He lives for Jewish fear, gets off on it. I count to three silently in my head once again, anticipating.

“Hey, you! Stop! Where do you think you’re going?” he slurs predictably. “It’s past curfew.”

I pull up my coat collar and keep walking, pretending to ignore him, my shoes clacking loudly against the cobblestones.

“You!” he shouts again even louder, his voice reverberating down the dark, empty street. Manny keeps his street clean of beggars and bodies. So it’s just us. “I know you.”

I stop, but don’t look at him. This is it. No going back.

“What do you want?” I pivot slightly, holding my head high.

“What do I want? That’s how you address the head of police?” He crosses the street, drunk but not too drunk.

“That’s how I address a traitor.” I repeat Zelda’s script word for word.

“Traitor?” he roars. “You little bitch. I can save your life or put you on the next goddamn transport. Who the fuck do you think you are?” He charges toward me. I have mere seconds now. I reveal the terror in my eyes that he craves.

“You’re in big trouble, young lady.” He smiles, baring all his rotting teeth. Big trouble—clearly his two favorite words. I picture him standing in front of his math class, chiding a student caught whispering during one of his boring lectures.

Kapitan extends a sweaty hand and runs it along my quivering face, then squeezes my chin tightly, and I let him, keeping my eyes wide and unblinking. “You want that husband of yours and that brother of his to stay off the next train.” It wasn’t a question.

I swallow hard, feeling the press of the pistol against the tight waistband of the belted dress. He drops his hand from my face, and I can barely breathe. I take a step backward but try to keep him engaged. “What do you want from me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” He points to the nearby alley. “Walk in front of me,” he orders, patting both batons at his hips simultaneously. “Where I can watch you.”

My head is hammering. I feel the heaviness press between my brows as we make our way toward the alley. From the corner of my eye, I see Henryk’s profile in the distance, for backup, just as Kapitan pushes me roughly against the side of the building. A broken brick rips at my back, but I don’t scream. Instead, the pain wakes me up, sharpens my senses. Kapitan starts clumsily unbuckling his belt. And in that brief second when he takes his eyes off me, I reach inside my coat, step back, and shoot him point-blank in the chest.

His eyes spring wide open as the blood splatters everywhere. He stumbles forward and grasps on to me. I push him off to the side, emboldened. I am certain this is not how Kapitan imagined he’d die—by a woman’s bullet. I see the disbelief in his half-shut gaze, as he clutches his chest.

“That’s for all the Jews you betrayed, Kapitan.” I spit out his name as he cries for help. To no avail. Manny made sure no one would be walking down his street. I shoot Kapitan once again to shut him up and give him more pain, the second bullet to his stomach. Make him suffer. I hear the echo of Zelda’s words. The fear gone, my blood pumping wildly, I watch this man’s slow, dramatic death as though it were straight out of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The chest clutch, the tears blinding his eyes, the rattling breath, the furrowed forehead lined with drippy sweat, the calling out some random woman’s name—dying but not yet dead, alive long enough to see who killed him, to feel it, and to know why. I feel drunk on my power over him. I reach up to shoot him once again—the final shot—when I hear footsteps quickly approaching. I point my gun at the intruder.

“Eryk, what are you doing?” I drop the pistol to my side.

“My turn now,” he says, not looking at me. He is holding the bow of his father’s violin. He pushes me aside roughly—no manners this time—and straddles Kapitan, who is beneath him grasping his last seconds of life. Eryk raises the bow high over his head and stabs the man right through his chest into the bullet hole, pushes it in with all his weight, and twists. “This is for my mother, you piece of shit. And for my father. May you rot in hell.”

I stand back and let Eryk do it all, feel it all: the rage, the pain, the immeasurable loss, over and over. He repeatedly stabs the already dead man until the bow in his hand snaps in half. I wait it out, knowing Zelda gave Eryk this gift, avenging his parents’ murders, the finishing touch. That was her plan all along.

Finally, I lead Eryk away, out of the alley, just as Henryk pulls up in the car. I climb into the back seat with Eryk, who is now crying. A killer back to a boy who’d lost his parents. At least he still has tears. The last vestige of humanity. Most of us have already gone numb.

“They’re never coming back, Bina.” No more Mrs. Blonski.

“No,” I whisper. “They’re never coming back.” I lightly wipe away his tears with my finger, grateful for the wetness, that I can still feel something.

“Nor are we.”

“Nor are we,” I repeat, knowing that none of us is going to come out of this alive. And if we do, we will have already died a thousand deaths.

“If something happens to me, Bina... can you...” The tears halt and the resolute gaze returns. This boy-man of the house at just seventeen with one family member left worth living for is about to ask me to protect the only person who matters to him. Dina once told me that her brother was a great pianist. Gentle, kind, shy. But not when he played the piano. Then, he seemed big and bold, different, she said, adding with a whisper, and kind of scary.

“I will watch over Dina,” I assure him. “I won’t let anything happen to her.” I give Eryk the soothing words he needs. Comfort lies, empty promises—the good kind. If I don’t die first, which I don’t say, but we both think it anyway.

Henryk purses his lips together tightly, nods his tacit approval. Justice was done. We all know that by morning, word of Kapitan’s death will spread like wildfire throughout the ghetto, and Zelda’s message will be heard loud and clear: There’s a price to pay for collaboration. We are fighting back. You’re either with us or against us.

For the first time in months, I feel something akin to peace as the cold air from the open window wafts over me. I think not of my dead parents, my sister, the baby I lost, but of fat Manny Abramowicz—the only human who actually gained weight in the ghetto. And I understand now to the depths of my soul the dark, exquisite beauty of survival, the saccharine glow illuminating revenge.