The Things We Cannot Say(83)
“Tomorrow?” I choked, and if I’d felt anxious before, now I was positively sick with it. I blinked rapidly, refusing to allow myself to cry. Henry’s gaze was sympathetic.
“I am sorry, Alina. Jakub can’t risk this when he has a traveling companion. We got lucky today but it may be months before this happens again.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, and I raised my chin stubbornly. “I will be fine.”
“Nadia knows this? She will know to care for my friends once I’m gone?” Tomasz asked. Henry nodded, and Tomasz exhaled. “Okay, good. Still, I will need to go see them—at least Eva and Saul.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Henry murmured. He gave us instructions to the meeting point, which was not far from my home—off the main road, at the outskirts to Trzebinia. We saw him upstairs, and then Tomasz and I were alone.
“How long do we have?”
“About eleven hours,” Tomasz murmured.
“If Henry can’t find me a passport...”
“Then we will go anyway,” he said flatly. “We are resourceful people, my love. We will get to the camp and find a way to get inside. I promise you.”
I exhaled, then nodded.
“There is only one thing I need other than my coat.” I took his hand and took him into my bedroom. I pushed aside Emilia’s drawings and exposed Mama’s ring.
“Mama gave this to us. For our wedding,” I whispered as I lifted it carefully into my hand. I remembered so vividly in that moment the night she’d given it to me, and how Tomasz leaving for college had felt like the worst thing in the world. That naive version of myself felt like a friend I’d long lost contact with. Tomasz kissed me softly on the forehead.
“As soon as we are out of this godforsaken country, Alina, I will make you my wife. The first priest we see...” Tomasz promised me. “I will put this ring on your finger, and everyone will know—I am yours, and you are mine.”
“It’s far too big, I can’t wear it until we find a priest and a jeweler,” I laughed weakly, but the tears rose again. I closed my eyes for a moment, then whispered tightly, “If I can have five minutes with the lamp, I’ll sew it into the hem of my coat, so it’s not lost on the journey.”
“We have some time—there’s no need to rush. Take the time to look around this place and say goodbye. I know...” He paused, then whispered, “My love, I know this isn’t easy. I know it’s all terrifying. If there was any other way...”
I kissed him hard on the lips and drew in a deep breath.
“Mama would tell me to stop sulking and get my work boots on,” I said, with determination. “I can sulk and cry in the back of this Nazi truck that may be leading us to our doom.”
“Our doom?” Tomasz laughed, then he shook his head. “To freedom, Alina. And I’ll be there to hold you. I’ll hold you for the whole damned journey.”
“Then I will survive it well.” I smiled at him, and I believed it with all of my heart as I said, “As long as you are with me, I can survive anything.”
CHAPTER 30
Alice
As we drive toward Trzebinia, Zofia gives me a history lesson—a rapid-fire summary of the history of Polish life, right up until communism was disbanded and the country joined the European Union. I ask her about the graves and monuments I see scattered by the side of the road. Some are elaborate—some small enough to be almost unnoticeable, but for flowers or lanterns sitting on the ground beside them.
“Some are in honor of saints or the Blessed Mother,” she explains, pointing to a stone monument adorned with blue ribbons. “This one, for example—it is from a recent festival to honor the Virgin Mary. Others are graves, or monuments in memory of those lost. Some are modern, some very, very old—and plenty are from wartime. There are graves everywhere in the countryside, but it was worse in Warsaw. I’ve seen photos of makeshift graves in the streets—no gravestone, no way to memorialize the person.” She sighs heavily. “Six million Polish citizens died in that war. The scale of the death and the suffering is unimaginable to our modern-day minds.”
We drive in silence for a while after that. Soon, we turn off the highway and into Trzebinia, and I can tell immediately that it’s an industrial town. The first blocks are lined by large factories and businesses, and today at least, there’s visible air pollution even at the street level. As we reach the residential area, Zofia casually flicks her forefinger toward a dilapidated building on the left.
“That’s the only synagogue left standing here after the war,” she tells me. “At the start of the war, there were several thousand Jewish people in town—four synagogues, a thriving community. By the end of the war, they were all gone. That remaining synagogue is unused and poorly maintained. You can’t rebuild a community when there’s no one left to do the rebuilding.”
I crane my neck to look back at the synagogue as it fades behind us into the distance, and I don’t know what to say to that. Of course, I learned about the war during history classes at school, but never in detail, and it never felt entirely real—it seemed too big and too bad and too alien to actually have happened in such recent history.
I’m suddenly thinking again about Babcia and Pa’s inability to share their stories from their lives here, and wondering about all the things they surely must have seen and experienced that I will never know about now, no matter how well this trip goes. What happens when stories like theirs are lost? What happens when there’s no one left to pass your experience on to, or you just can’t bring yourself to share it?