Chapter Eight

THE SABBATH CANDLES radiate in the corner of the room in the bunker, which is filled with at least two dozen fighters ranging in age from the boy with the stutter to Manny the bar owner, who is in his late forties, and by far the oldest member in the room. Most of the fighters are not religious, but now more than ever, showing pride in our Judaism matters. I stopped by for just a few minutes at Zelda’s behest, lying once again to Jakub that I was dropping off soup for the Behrman kids. Aleksander told his own lie. He is here too. Both of us separately promising Jakub we would return before curfew.

Zelda sits at the head of the long table, her charcoal eyes sparkling like stars against a black velvet sky. Tonight, she is the proud leader of a fledgling organization claiming its first victory. And I gave it to them: Kapitan’s murder. There is no standing ovation for my performance, just a circular glow radiating from all directions—respect, and it is everything.

Zelda raises a tarnished goblet of wine. “To Twarz.” Everyone laughs at her code name for me: the Face. The soft, admiring tone camouflaging her usual gruff pitch tickles my skin. She then gently places the goblet down and hands me a gift wrapped in crumpled old newspaper—the Jewish Gazette, which bears a death toll headline from two deportations ago. “For you, from all of us.”

No one says a word as I stare at the gift. The silence is thick, anticipatory. My breath catches in my throat when I look up briefly and hold Aleksander’s hot gaze in mine. My heart twinges, and I quickly look away, afraid my eyes will expose what is embedded in my heart. He is not standing behind Zelda, like her posse of young teenage soldiers, but leaning against the doorway across the room in the faded blue button-down shirt that I washed yesterday along with Jakub’s shirts.

I take my time, stretching the moment, holding the gift as though it were a sacrificial offering. The only gifts in the ghetto are food. Even for birthdays—food. Anniversaries—food. Nothing else matters when you’re starving. Smiling to myself, I recall my last real present. My father had gifted me a pearl necklace—rare pink pearls—for my nineteenth birthday. It had a clasp with a diamond embedded in the gold. It belonged to my grandmother, who had the good fortune to die peacefully in her sleep a year before the war began. I traded that necklace within a few weeks of arriving in the ghetto, to a Polish guard for a bottle of aspirin, a dozen potatoes, and two pounds of sliced meat—a necklace worth all the sliced meat in Warsaw. But this... I stare at the shabbily wrapped present, fondle the length of it, and then slowly open it. My gaze returns to Zelda. She nods. It is what I think it is. I let the paper fall off and drop to the table. A bloodstained club. Kapitan’s club, his blood. A symbol of victory. I blink back the tears. It is the most meaningful gift I have ever received. Zelda nods like a proud mother. I am one of them now.

A lone tear escapes its shackles, and I feel its slim wetness loll down my cheek, and I allow it. I look up with tear-dappled lashes. Aleksander, like everyone else, is smiling. But nothing—not even him—compares to Zelda’s face right now.

“Mazel tov.” She beams a smile that transforms her face, making way for unexpected beauty to shine through. The French call it jolie laide—ugly beautiful.

“Mazel tov,” echoes everyone in the room.

“Today, we celebrate.” Zelda raises the Sabbath goblet once again. “We fought back, sent a message, and we were heard. People are celebrating Kapitan’s death in the streets, Bina. A beacon of light in the Land of Darkness and Defeat. And this first triumph belongs to all of us here.” She meets the shining gazes of everyone in the room, then gently puts down the glass, leans forward with both hands pressed across the table. “Make no mistake, they’re coming for us. But yesterday, we came for them. We fought back. Shabbat Shalom.”

“Shabbat Shalom,” everyone responds in unison.

Zelda glances over her shoulder, signals to Eryk. He reaches inside his jacket and hands her the gun. My gun. The murder weapon. I recognize it because it has a lightning-shaped scratch along its sleek long-nosed black exterior.

Zelda puts the gun on the table next to the goblet, then takes out a black-and-white photo from the inside of her jacket and shoves it across the table in my direction. The smile is gone. “This man, Bina... His name is Dabrowski. He works at the Halstrom factory. You know where it is.”

“Of course,” I say uneasily. The factory is in the heart of the ghetto. It is the largest sweatshop, owned by a German-based company that manufactures Nazi uniforms. And Jews provide the free slave labor. No one lasts at Halstrom’s more than a few months. Women and children are worked to death. Everyone knows it’s a last stop.

“Dabrowski oversees the workers. A Pole who married a Jew—that’s why he’s here. A Nazi plant, another collaborator. They think we don’t know. But he reports everything he hears to his Nazi handlers and has been rewarded handsomely. This traitor is particularly brutal. He doesn’t just turn people in. He goes the extra mile—giving up names of those in hiding, and especially the ‘troublemakers’ like us. Names the Nazis never even asked for, ingratiating himself to those animals. He’s number two on my list.”

How many are on your list? I wonder.

“Twelve to start,” Zelda says, reading my mind. “Between us”—she makes a circular motion with her finger, indicating everyone in the room—“in the next few days we will kill a tribe of those within our community who have betrayed us. But you”—she points the short, stubby finger in my face—“will take out Dabrowski.”

Zelda lets that sink in for a few seconds, and there is pin-drop silence around the room. “And then, you are leaving the ghetto. Because this killing will make a statement. Every slave laborer in that factory will witness it. And everyone at all the surrounding sweatshops will hear about it, which is a good thing, the important thing.”

“Wait—leave?” I interrupt. “Leave the ghetto?” I repeat, glancing at Aleksander. His mouth drops. It is clear he wasn’t privy to this information.

“Zelda,” he interjects, walking toward the table.

She holds up her hand. “Not now. We will discuss this later in private.”

She turns back to me, ignores Aleksander’s glare, the tightening of his mouth, the fists curling at his sides. “We need you on the Aryan side immediately. There are rumors of the next roundup coming soon. I heard this from my source in the Judenrat. And it may be the worst murder train of all. We hear Nazi commanders are being ordered to clean out the ghetto, and we must be ready.” She glances at her comrades. “Let me be clear: this roundup is not going to go like a Swiss train as usual. For the first time, there will be consequences. And not just dead collaborators. Dead Nazis too.” She glances around, dares anyone to challenge her. Her eyes rest on Aleksander, whose cheeks are bright red, clearly upset with her. She clasps her hands tightly together. “Now, everyone, leave us. I need the room alone with Bina.”

She nods at the young men lurking behind her and smiles slightly at the young woman standing with them. A pale-skinned, scrawny, freckle-faced redhead with riotous coils of curls. No more than eighteen or nineteen years old. I wonder what she does for the team. Everyone leaves. Only Aleksander remains. He is not going to let Zelda push him around.

“Zelda.” His arms are crossed and the muscle pops in his jaw. “I’m fully aware of Bina’s capabilities. But it’s my brother we are talking about here.”

She dismisses him with a wrist flick. “Your brother has his nose in books while everyone is dying around him.”

“Damn it, Zelda, let me kill Dabrowski. Not her.” He points at me without looking at me. I shrink slightly at the anger in his voice.

Zelda’s hard gaze is slightly mollified. I sense that Aleksander is among the very few who could get away with challenging her. “We all make sacrifices. We will talk more later. I have a different assignment for you. Now please, go.”

Zelda waits until Aleksander stomps out of the room, and I realize I haven’t let out a breath. She leans forward. “It’s best if this remains between us. There is an apartment already set up on the Aryan side—a safe house—close to the ghetto, just on the other side of the wall. You’re going to kill Dabrowski, then you’re going to get us ammunition, guns, grenades. There is no other option. The next roundup, like I said, will kill most of us. We must be ready to fight back. There’s an organization on the outside sympathetic to our cause, an arm of the Polish resistance called ?egota. They are friends. Do you hear me? We don’t have many of those. These are Poles who care about us and about what the Nazis have done to our country. I got word that they are willing to help us get what we need. That’s why you must go immediately and arrange for the transport of weapons.”

I struggle to keep my voice even. “Let me get this straight. You want me to shoot Dabrowski dead in broad daylight, then leave the ghetto. What am I supposed to tell my husband? And what about the girls? The list?” I shake my head. “I went directly to the Judenrat. I pleaded my case. They know who I am. My plan is to protect the girls. I can’t just leave in the middle of all this—especially now.”

“Guns and ammo are our only priority.” Her voice is deceptively calm, like a still wind. “And you can leave, if you’re dead.”

“Dead?” My eyes widen.

Zelda laughs, but it’s not a laugh. There is no smile, no warmth, no twinkle. “You think they are going to agree to you babysitting pretty young Jewish girls that they intend to fuck and discard? The Jewish Nanny? Wake up, Bina! It’s all very admirable, but don’t fall asleep like the rest of the ghetto idiots. The Nazis will agree to your terms and then turn around and break the agreement before you can blink. They will use the girls, kill them, and then rape and kill you too. There is no happy ending here. No escape. No hope. Do you understand me?” She bares her teeth. “I don’t talk about this... But do you know what those animals did in Warsaw right after they invaded us? It was October first, 1939, exactly one month after the invasion. They rounded up forty young women between the ages of eighteen and twenty years old. I know this because my younger sister, Raisa, was one of them. She got all the looks in the family. They passed me over, seized her while we were having dinner, took her to an apartment on Piusa Street that belonged to a Jew. They shot him dead, of course, threw his body out the window, stripped the girls naked, made them dance, abused them, raped them, and killed them all. My beautiful sister was studying to become a nurse. Don’t kid yourself, Bina. That will be your fate, too, and all those girls on their goddamn list. No one is going to be saved or spared—no matter what you promised, or what they promised you. Clean sheets? No diseases?” She laughs that non-laugh again. “Just like those trains to Treblinka—all those lies they told us to send us to the death camps. Work, good food, even beaches—hah! We jumped on those trains willingly, like we were going on holiday. Fools! Now we know the truth, we have the evidence. Fighting back, taking them down for the world to see—making them hurt, too—is all that’s left for us now.”

I press both palms on the table, lean forward. “I’m not stupid. I know the end game. But I want to give those girls protection and purpose. Get information out, teach them to act as couriers, listen, find out Nazi plans, get—”

“Do you hear me? No one cares!” she shouts. “The world has forgotten us. The Polish government-in-exile makes all kinds of false promises to us. We are out of time. We are going to die here! Let’s take them with us. That’s the only goddamn plan!” Her voice intensifies, and I can feel the walls shake.

“But the girls...” I persist.

“Not one of those girls on that list is going to become a whore under my watch. Do you understand me?” she yells, then coolly pulls two homemade cigarettes out of her pocket, lights them, sends one my way, sits back, and takes a long drag. “You are going undercover on the Aryan side to get us guns and ammo, period. We need you. Really need you now. You came here bragging about your Aryan face, your skills as an actress, as a hunter. What was it? In summer camp? Hunting with your dead father? Well, I believe you now. You proved yourself. You killed Kapitan, the worst among us. You’re one of us now, so act like it.” She grounds out the cigarette carefully to finish it up later, removes a pistol from inside her pants, and slides it across the table. “I’m giving you three bullets. That’s all I can spare. My hope is that you will need only one to do the job, and you can return the other two.” She stands. “Say goodbye to your husband tonight. Pack a small bag, just the important things. A good coat. Warm socks. Sturdy boots. Undergarments. One elegant dress and shoes. I will bring you a few other necessary items. You will meet me at the Behrmans’ apartment at six tomorrow morning. From there, you will head to the Halstrom factory and follow my instructions.” She pauses. “After you do what you need to do, you’re going to die, like I said.”

I stand too. “That’s not happening.”

Zelda’s gaze remains cold, unblinking. “Bina Blonski is going to die. New papers and a new identity will be waiting for you. You’re going to shoot Dabrowski in broad daylight, in front of all the laborers. There will be a dead blonde on hand with a bullet hole through her face to show the Judenrat and their Nazi handlers that you didn’t get away with it. Believe me, there are plenty of dead blondes to choose from among the bodies lying on the streets. She will be wearing your clothes. Aleksander will know this, but not Jakub.”

“No, I can’t do that.” My breath hitches. “Jakub must know.”

“Jakub is against us. Jakub would turn us in. He can’t know the truth. Do you understand me?”

“Aleksander will never agree.”

She flicks her wrist. “Leave that to me.”

“Either I tell Jakub, or I’m out.” I can’t do that to him. He needs to know the truth. I owe him that at the very least.

She lowers her voice threateningly. “If you tell Jakub, it will put Aleksander’s life at risk. Is that what you want?” She waits for my reaction. “You think I don’t know?”

Our eyes meet. She knows. Just like she knows everything.

“I thought so... Now go, home. Follow the plan.”

Zelda wins. Bina Blonski is about to die.