The Things We Cannot Say(84)

Not for the first time, I wish just once when I asked my grandmother about the war, instead of her telling me “that was a terrible time, I don’t want to talk about it,” she’d been able to say something more. Anything more. Maybe if she could have shared some of her story, I could have learned from it, I could have taught my children from it—we could have built a better world from the hard lessons she surely learned.

The residential area ends abruptly, the last row of houses backing onto a thick patch of woods sprawled over a small hill. The road curves sharply through the woods around one side of the hill, and quite suddenly, we’re surrounded by fields, and the road isn’t even sealed. Because the hill shelters the town from these fields, within a few hundred feet it feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere—there’s not much to see out here at all but farmland. There are a few long, thin patches of crop, but most of the fields on this side of the town look like they’ve been abandoned—the grass is high and sprinkled with purple and red wildflowers. As the gentle breeze passes through the flowers, they wave to me like a greeting.

“The address she gave you is not far along this road,” Zofia murmurs. “We’re headed to that house over there on the left. It’s quite unusual to see a prewar house in this district...we’re lucky it’s still there.”

“Because it’s so old?”

“No—just because farmhouses in this region generally didn’t survive the occupation. I’d say what saved that one is the construction material—if it were brick, it would be gone too. The Nazis deconstructed all of the brick structures because they couldn’t manufacture bricks fast enough to expand the second part of Auschwitz—the camp they called Birkenau,” she says. “That’s not far from here, and I’m pretty sure this property would be just within the twenty kilometers they designated for their ‘area of interest.’ They basically cleared the farms of all residents so they could put up a big fence and make sure no one inadvertently saw what they were doing in the camp. They did it under the guise of making a huge work farm—which was true too, of course, they did farm much of this land but...secrecy was the real goal.”

“I can’t even imagine living in such a small house,” I admit. The house is probably only the size of my living area at home, maybe even smaller.

“It was a different time. People’s expectations were different.” Zofia pulls up into the drive, then glances at me. “And here we are.”

I stare down the drive at the house and the woods on the hill beyond it, and to my surprise, I recognize the scene before me. I’ve never been here before and I know nothing about Babcia’s life during the war, but I know all about her childhood. I’ve heard about the woods on the hill behind her home and the township on the other side. She told me she lived in a very small house with a large barn. She told me the land was poor because it was so rocky and most of their fields were steeply sloped.

And that’s exactly the scene before me.

“Is that hill called Trzebinia Hill?” I ask Zofia. She tilts her head.

“I don’t think that hill has a formal name, but the township of Trzebinia is on the other side, so I suppose that would make sense.”

“Babcia told me so little about her life once the war began, but she always told me stories about her childhood...life with her brothers and her sister and her parents on their tiny little farm,” I say to Zofia. “This is everything she described to me, and it is exactly as she described it.”

I am totally caught off guard by the swell of intense emotion that rises as I step from the car. There is something unexpectedly profound about being here—in this country that was my grandmother’s home and a place I have always understood she once loved very dearly and has always missed. I feel Zofia’s patient gaze on my face, and I try to blink the tears away, but one escapes and rolls down my cheek.

“Do you need a minute?” she asks softly, and I clear my throat and shake my head.

“It’s so silly...” I mutter through my embarrassment. “I can’t quite believe I’m here. I’ve always known her as the other version of herself, you know? And this is like a glimpse into...” I clear my throat, unsure if I am expressing myself adequately. “This is just a farm, right? An unimpressive one at that, and we can’t even be sure it’s the one she told me about. I don’t know why I’m so emotional about it.”

“You’re looking at it all wrong, Alice. This might be ‘just’ a farm to anyone else—but to you? It’s clear just by your willingness to come here that you have a great depth of love for your grandmother. This may be a piece of your own history, and it’s a history that was lost to you until now. I’ve helped people track their ancestors before, and the smallest things are sometimes unexpectedly intense.”

I nod, and another tear trickles over onto my cheek.

“I just wish I had come here when she could travel with me,” I whisper, then I impatiently swipe the tear from my cheek and clear my throat one more time. “I wish she’d been able to tell me more about her life here. I wish she was just standing here with me, telling me the things she wants me to know.”

I stare at the house, set against that odd little hill, framed by the thick green woods behind it and the shock of deep blue sky that stretches above. The scent of dust and grass hangs heavily around me, and the breeze stirs my hair. I breathe in that country air, taking it deep into my lungs, as if I can store the memory of it, as if I can take it home with me.