The Things We Cannot Say(77)

“Knowing how Jan feels about Jews, I can’t believe he has given your friends his own bedroom,” I whispered to Tomasz. Tomasz sighed.

“He has walled them in behind a false wall, my love. Even the exit is blocked—they are trapped unless Jan moves a heavy bookshelf in his room. Besides which, as soon as he moved them in, he locked the doors to that part of the house and shifted into his son’s old bedroom at the front to keep a buffer between Eva and Saul and his space. If I didn’t visit to pass food through this vent, they’d die in days. Make no mistake, their situation is dire.”

A memory sprang to mind of the times I’d been inside the Golaszewski house as a child, before Jan and Father’s relationship soured. I remembered being amazed by how much space they had—it amazed me that parents would have their own bedroom, given my parents had always slept in our living space. I remembered that large bedroom, and I also remembered the tiny little nook at the very back, which had once housed a bookshelf. It would take very little effort to wall in that small nook, but it would leave such a tiny cavity.

“How do you talk to them...” I started to ask, but Tomasz held his finger up over his lips and bent to the ground level. There was a small rock sitting in the dust at the bottom of the wall.

“We devised a system so I’d know if they’d been compromised. If the rock is here, it is safe for me to knock on the latch. It opens from the inside,” he murmured, then he stood and knocked on one of the wooden panels on the walls. The panel trembled, then it slid down to reveal a gap in the wall at face height. I caught my first glimpse of Eva’s wide brown eyes and high cheekbones, and a delicate heart-shaped face that I knew would be strikingly beautiful if she wasn’t so deathly thin. Behind her, I could see the interior of the false wall—and as I’d feared, the space was so small the two barely had room to move around.

For a moment, though, she didn’t seem fazed by her predicament, because all of her attention was on me and her eyes were alight.

“Tomasz! Is this the famous Alina?” she whispered excitedly.

“It is,” Tomasz said, and he slid his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Alina, meet Eva Weiss.”

“Hello,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

There was more movement in the window, and then Saul was there, positively beaming at me.

“I’m Saul, and the pleasure is all ours,” he assured me, reaching out through the window frame to shake my hand. His fingers were bone thin, but his grip was strong. His facial hair was very dark, which made for a shocking contrast against the ghostly white skin of his face. “We have heard so much about you.”

“So much,” Eva said, flicking a slightly teasing glance at Tomasz. “All of those months traveling and every day it was the same thing—Alina this, Alina that. It wasn’t enough that he was willing to walk across Poland to get back to you, he had to try to make us fall in love with you too.”

I glanced at Tomasz, and then giggled a little at the embarrassment that crossed his face. He looked back at me and gave me a rueful shrug.

“It should be no surprise to you that you were on my mind,” he said. I felt heat on my cheeks.

I whispered back, “And you were on mine.”

“Thank you for everything your family has done for us, Alina,” Saul murmured suddenly.

“It is nothing...” I said hastily, and I meant it. Whatever we had done, it wasn’t enough. Not for these people—who immediately struck me as kind and cordial, despite the desperate circumstances they found themselves in. I was embarrassed in that moment that I hadn’t found a way to do more—to do something real for them beyond letting Tomasz bring them crumbs of food that was probably going to spoil anyway.

“Nonsense,” Eva said, eyes widening. “You have risked your lives for us, and the food...the food is probably the only reason...” She cleared her throat suddenly, then held up one bony hand. “Well, let me show you.” She bent away from us, and then straightened, bringing a little bundle back with her. “Would you like to hold her?” Eva asked me softly.

“I... I don’t really have much experience of babies,” I admitted.

“Just hold her gently against your body and support her head—it’s still quite weak,” she said, as she passed the tiny bundle through the gap in the wall. The few babies I had held in the past were pink and perfect, their faces plump with milk fat and their smiles angelic. Tikva Weiss looked different from the first moment I saw her. She was only a few months old, but the skin on her face hung across the hollows of her cheeks and stretched over her cheekbones, as if there was nothing between the two surfaces.

The lightness of the bundle she was wrapped in seemed impossible—I pulled the blanket back a little, just to reassure myself that there was a whole baby inside.

She was so small—too small, but Tomasz had been right. The child was perfect and precious, and well worth every single risk he’d ever taken to help this family.

“What is her name again?” I asked Saul and Eva.

“She is our little Tikva,” Saul murmured. I glanced up at him, and he smiled. “Her name is the Hebrew word for hope.”

I reached down and reached my finger over the soft skin on the baby’s face. I brushed the thin thatch of dark hair back from her forehead. I held her a little closer, a little higher in my arms. I realized in that moment that I wasn’t just holding a baby—I was holding all the hope that these two had left in the world. My eyes filled with tears, and I blinked them away rapidly. I knew I had to hold myself together. It would do this little family no good at all to have my pity.