The Things We Cannot Say(53)

“Explain yourself,” I whispered fiercely. He closed his eyes and I raised my voice. “Explain yourself, Tomasz!”

His eyes dulled, and then his shoulders slumped forward.

“Do you remember when I told you that I want to become a pediatrician?” he whispered.

“Of course,” I said, stiffly.

“I...there was...the surgeon. Remember I told you about the surgeon?”

I softened then—just a little, because I recognized the struggle in Tomasz’s voice and I realized that I was about to hear a new kind of story from him—a story he didn’t know how to tell. I stared at him, and in that moment, I had to force myself to focus on the knowledge that I had known this man for our entire lives. He was a good man. This might not be a good story, but the man telling it to me was essentially good. If what he had said just now was true, there would be a rationale for it, even if in that moment, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was.

But I did trust him, at least enough to give him the chance to explain. I reached for his hand and he looked at me in surprise.

“It’s okay, Tomasz,” I said gently. “Just tell me. I’m not going anywhere.”

I started to walk again, his hand tightly in mine. He fell into step beside me, drew in a deep breath, and then he released it in a rush with a tumble of words.

“I fought with the Polish army in Warsaw until they had overpowered us. We put up a Hell of a fight but we were no match for them, not in the end. The Nazis captured me and a group of my friends from the college, and we were given a choice—join the Wehrmacht, or they’d kill our families and put us into prison. They said they had intelligence on us all and they knew where our families were—and I thought if I did what they asked, I could save my father and Emilia and maybe even you, darling Alina, because what if they already knew we were engaged? I felt I had no choice. I didn’t know what else to do, so I joined the Wehrmacht.” He spat the word out bitterly. “I wore the filthy uniform and I did everything I was instructed to.”

I remembered my brothers telling me that students from Warsaw had been conscripted to the Wehrmacht, and how I’d scoffed at them—because I’d been so certain that Tomasz would never comply with such an order. But one thing I knew all too well about Tomasz was how deep the love he had for his family was—how deep his love for me was. They had found the only leverage that would have convinced him to betray his country.

“Did you kill people?” I asked unevenly.

“There are worse things than murder, Alina,” he whispered. “I betrayed our countrymen, and one day...one day when Poland is whole, you can bet there will be an accounting for cowards like me. Especially me. I went to Warsaw to learn to heal, and instead, I enforced their ideology. They liked me because I spoke some German from summers on vacation. They liked me because I was strong and fast—and because...” He broke off altogether now, and I heard the sob he tried to muffle. “The commander said I had a way about me that put people at ease. They assigned my unit to moving families to the Jewish area. The little children were so scared, and their mothers were so frightened, but I told them it was going to be okay. They just had to do what we told them to do and they’d be okay. But it wasn’t okay, not even in the early days, because there wasn’t enough room or food and it was just a way to corral them all into one place to make it easier to hurt them. They built a wall around that ghetto. It is Hell on earth and there is no escaping it, and I marched those children in there and I promised them that they’d be okay.”

He could no longer muffle the sobs, and I could no longer stand to hear this story without holding him. I stopped, turned to him and threw my arms around his waist. I pressed my face against his chest and I listened to the beat of his heart, the thumps coming faster and harder as the memories and his shame surfaced. I struggled in that moment—horror and revulsion at his actions, but also, growing understanding.

Because it finally made sense—the darkness I glimpsed in him from time to time. It was rooted in mortification and regret of the deepest kind; he had made decisions that betrayed the very values that made Tomasz Slaski the man he was.

He sank to the ground at one point, but I followed him, and then pushed him until he was resting against a tree trunk. Tomasz still couldn’t look at me, so I straddled his lap and I cupped his face in my hands.

“Tell me everything, my love,” I whispered. The tears rolled down his face into his beard, and he raised his eyes to the forest canopy above us.

“Your father would kill me if he knew what I’d done.”

“Perhaps not if he knew why, Tomasz.”

“Your father is a good man. He would have resisted.”

“He won’t judge you, Tomasz, and neither do I.”

“The Poles will kill me one day, if the Nazis don’t get me first. Good men like your father will find me and kill me for what I’ve done.”

I shook my head fiercely, then I kissed him, hard—the best thing I could think to do to stop such talk. He swallowed, then met my gaze again.

“Tomasz,” I said firmly. “Tell me the rest.”

He drew in a shuddering breath, then sighed.

“One day, I was patrolling the ghetto, and I saw him. Saul Weiss.”

“Your surgeon friend?”

“Yes. He and his wife, Eva, had been taken there too. They’d been dragged from a nice apartment near the hospital to a pathetic room in the ghetto they had to share with two other families. I pretended I didn’t recognize him at first, because I was so ashamed to be a part of what was happening to him. I looked away from him, and I walked some more, and then I glanced back, and do you know what he did? He smiled at me. Kindly, Alina. He smiled at me.” I could barely understand the words leaving Tomasz’s mouth because he was weeping again. I started to cry too, and I bent and kissed the tears away from his cheeks, then nuzzled my nose against his.