A Feather on the Water(99)

His forehead furrowed as he turned to her. “I don’t want to make a problem for you.”

“It wouldn’t be a problem,” she said. “There’s no rule against you staying here for a short time as my guest.”

“Where would we sleep? The camp is full.”

“Delphine suggested that the girls could sleep in the cabin next door, with her and the auxiliaries. She thought they’d enjoy being with the older children.” Martha hesitated. She couldn’t meet his eyes. She was too afraid of seeing disapproval in them.

“We would be alone? No one else in your house?”

“If you want. But you don’t have to. There’s the room in the chapel, if you’d feel more comfortable there.”

“What do you want?” His voice was soft and low. He didn’t sound offended or disconcerted. She raised her head, daring herself to look at him.

“Well . . . I . . . I can’t think of anything I’d like better than being alone with you.” She searched his face. Nothing in his eyes gave away what he was thinking. “But we don’t have to decide now. Why not just see how you feel?”



Christmas Eve at the camp followed the same pattern as the previous year: Martha was required to raise a glass and dance a sequence of polkas and mazurkas until the celebrations reached a pitch when no one would notice her slipping away.

Stefan remained in the office until it got dark. He hadn’t wanted to advertise his presence until the party was well underway.

“It’s even wilder than I remember!” Martha groaned as she flopped onto the chair behind the desk. “I’d ask you for a dance, but I don’t think I have the energy.”

“It’s okay.” He smiled. “I don’t care to dance.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. She should have been more careful. He hadn’t said how or where he had spent last Christmas. She imagined him holed up, alone and freezing cold, in the timber warehouse in Warsaw, mourning his wife. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can understand that this is all a bit much for you.”

He tilted his head as he looked at her. There was still a smile in his eyes. “I have a present for you.” Bending down, he took something from the bag at his feet. It was a little box, its chestnut-brown surface inlaid with a delicate tracery of paler wood.

“That’s beautiful.” She angled it to the light when he passed it to her. “Did you make it?”

He nodded. “There is something inside.”

She lifted the lid to reveal a nest of blue velvet. Inside the folds was a ring. It was made of three delicate circles of wood, each intricately carved, all interlocking.

“I hope it fits you.” He came around the desk and took her hand. He tried the ring on the third finger of her right hand. It fit perfectly. She stared at it, then at him, unable to voice what was in her mind. In Poland, this was the wedding finger.

“Oh, Stefan . . .” Tears stung the corners of her eyes.

“Shhh.” He put his finger to his lips. “I know it’s not possible right now. But we make believe, yes?”



Later, when they made love, it was Stefan who cried.

Martha cradled his head in the crook of her shoulder, feeling the tears seep into her skin. She didn’t ask the reason. For him, there was so much to grieve, and he had allowed so little of it out up to now.

In the morning, waking up beside him, she lay for a few moments just looking at his sleeping face. Above the ruffle of blond hair, on the bedside table, she could see the photo of herself with Kitty and Delphine, taken on Christmas Day a year ago by Charlie. They were all smiling, their glasses raised in a toast. What would they have thought if, in that moment, they could have seen into the future? Kitty married and living in America, Delphine the adoptive mother of three children. And herself . . . She turned her gaze back to Stefan, whose eyelids fluttered momentarily in his sleep. A year ago, she’d thought she would never see him again. Like the feather she’d seen floating along the river the day he left her, he’d disappeared from view, entered choppy water, and been pulled under. But he had emerged, bedraggled but intact, farther downstream. There would be more turbulence ahead—that much was certain. But now they would face it together.





CHAPTER 31


The first months of the new year brought no new prospects for the DPs. Martha began to wonder if Major McMahon’s conviction that other countries would soon open their doors was nothing more than speculation.

At the end of February, a letter came from Kitty. She was now settled in New York. She’d gotten a job as a typist in an attorney’s office, and she had applied to study art at Columbia in the fall. She was still worried about her parents, who were trying desperately to get out of China. The letter said that the Communists were advancing ever closer to Shanghai. Anyone with money was getting out while they still could, but the price of a boat ticket was astronomical. Charlie’s parents were trying to work out a way to wire money to them.

Martha’s eye traveled down the page. She caught sight of a name that made her catch her breath. Arnie. Kitty had found him.

“We have all the New York telephone directories in the office,” the letter explained. “I found nine people called Radford with the initial A in the Manhattan one. I hope you won’t be cross with me—I just had to know if one of them was him. I worked my way through the list, pretending to be an old school friend of yours, newly arrived in New York. The seventh one I tried was Arnie. He called you a name I won’t repeat and said he had no idea where you were. Then he slammed the phone down.”