The Things We Cannot Say(79)

“The last time, when you decided not to go, what was the plan then?”

“Nadia told me that they put the man who went in my place into the back of a supplies truck to smuggle him close to the front, then he went on foot. She knows he made it into Soviet territory, but I don’t know if the film made it to its destination.”

I’d heard plenty of stories about the Soviets over the years—they had occupied half of Poland at one stage, while the Nazis occupied the other half. The stories that had come across from the Soviet-held territory were no less horrific than those on our side. If that was our plan too, I suspected we were about to jump from the frying pan into the fire, and the fragile hope that had budded in my chest started to fade.

“And you decided not to go because of me?”

“I thought perhaps I could talk Henry into letting you come with me...but...” He sighed, brushing his hand up and down my arm. “Well, I would have appeared at your window out of the blue one night and told you I was a wanted man, then asked you to run away with me from relative safety, into extreme danger. It didn’t seem fair, and I thought if you had any sense you’d have said no anyway.”

“I probably would have,” I admit. “But not because I didn’t want to be with you, just that Mama and Father were relying on me then...” Just the thought of Mama and Father and my throat started to tighten up again. “I can’t think about this anymore,” I whispered, holding him a little closer. “Tell me a story. Tell me about us.” Then, because I knew he’d love it, I added, “Tell me about us living in America like Henry. Near the beach, where there is no winter.”

“Okay.” He smiled, then he laughed softly. “We’ll get ourselves a big house in Florida. We’ll have a car, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And I’ll be a pediatrician. And do you want a job?”

“Why yes, thank you,” I said, then I pondered this for a moment before I decided, “I think I’ll work in a library.”

“And our children? What are their names?”

“Hmm. Perhaps our son can be Aleksy, after your father.”

“A lovely choice,” Tomasz whispered, then he kissed my hair.

“But can we call our daughter Julita? After your Mama?”

“Should we not honor your parents too?”

“Oh, there will be more children, remember? At least three more. We can honor them later.”

He laughed softly, and that was how we talked ourselves around from pessimism and fear to a strange kind of happiness that buoyed our spirits. I had been so determined earlier that night to cast off my childish thinking, but a few hours of daydreaming with Tomasz, and I gave myself wholly into the fantasy of a happy ending for us. Even after all I’d seen, when I was with him, I could still believe that life might be a fairy tale.

We slept then, and the next day, we woke in the darkness to endless hours of privacy and peacefulness while we waited for Henry. There seemed nothing left to do but to enjoy those precious hours, and to enjoy each other in all of the ways that we’d never had the time or privacy to really enjoy. We gorged on intimacy in the same way that we gorged on food, sharing a blissful honeymoon of sorts, as if the war wasn’t carrying on above us, as if we really were going to live out that happy ending.

And in those too-brief days in the cellar I had once been so terrified of, I proved to myself once and for all—happiness really could be found anywhere, just as long as Tomasz was with me.



CHAPTER 28

Alice


Zofia is much younger than I imagined. She greets me warmly in her lightly accented English, then leads the way to a restaurant so we can get some breakfast. The enthusiastic waitress greets Zofia by name and leads us to a table, then disappears inside to fetch us some coffees.

“What do you recommend eating here?” I ask Zofia. She grins at me.

“That depends how brave you are. Because what I honestly recommend is the smalec on fresh rye bread, but I’m not sure whether your American palate will appreciate it. It’s basically pork lard. Seasoned, of course. Quite delicious.”

I imagine eating thick, gelatinous lard and can’t hold back a grimace, but Zofia laughs and suggests, “I’ll order a serving—you can taste mine.” She reaches to the little stand where a cash register is currently unattended, and helps herself to two menus. She passes both to me, but points to the top one. “In the meantime, perhaps you can have something from this menu—it’s American breakfast food.”

I settle for bacon and eggs, and while we’re waiting for the food, Zofia suggests, “Let’s plan this trip to Trzebinia,” she says. “It is a very small place but we don’t actually know what we want to find out, right?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Well, I did some homework yesterday afternoon with the details you emailed me,” Zofia says, and she withdraws from her bag an iPad. She slips it onto the table between us and loads an ancestry mapping application. “Something a lot of tourists who visit here don’t realize is that very few of our birth, death and marriage records are digitized or even centralized. I drove up to Trzebinia yesterday afternoon as soon as I got your email, just so I could sort through the records at the municipal council. Some people really like to do it themselves, but you just don’t have the time. I did take scans of the relevant records so you’re not missing out on anything.”