The Diplomat's Wife(63)
I step out onto the pavement and follow Renata silently through the dark, deserted streets. It begins to drizzle, a light fine mist, and I can feel the curls around my face tightening in response. Renata leads me halfway down the block, stopping in front of an unmarked building. Music and voices rise from below.
“Ready?” Renata asks. I nod, swallowing. The din grows louder as she leads me down a set of stairs and through the door. Inside, the bar is a long brick cellar. Crude wooden benches and tables, seemingly scattered at random angles, are filled mostly with young people, playing cards and talking over large mugs of dark brown beer. Several look up at us across the dim, smoky room, as if they know we do not belong here.
But Renata, not seeming to notice, surveys the room coolly. “There,” she says in a low voice, gesturing slightly with her head toward the back of the bar.
I follow her gaze to a man seated on the end of one of the benches. “I see him.” Marek. In truth, I might not have recognized him if Renata had not pointed him out. Once heavyset, he looks as though he has lost at least thirty pounds. His face, usually clean-shaven, now sports a mustache and goatee. He’s trying to be Alek, I realize with a start. At the sight of him, my breath catches.
“We need to get his attention,” Renata says.
I nod, too nervous to respond. What will his reaction be to seeing me again? But Marek, engrossed in conversation with a gray-haired man beside him, has not looked up since we entered the bar. “How?” I ask a minute later. “I can’t just walk up to him.”
“True,” Renata agrees. “But I can.” She pulls a scrap of paper and pencil out of her bag. She scribbles something I cannot read, then crumples up the paper. “You wait here.” Before I can respond, she strides across the bar, drawing several appreciative stares in her short skirt and heels. I climb onto a bar stool, watching as she passes Marek, brushing against him, just hard enough so that he notices but the others at his table do not. Then, without stopping, she drops the paper into his lap. Marek looks up in surprise, but Renata has already disappeared into the toilet at the back of the bar. I watch, not breathing, as Marek scans the note. He looks up and our eyes meet. He blinks twice behind his glasses, trying to mask his surprise. Then he leans toward the man beside him and whispers something, before making his way slowly toward the front of the bar.
Before reaching me, he stops, staring as though seeing a ghost. “Marta…?”
“Czesc, Marek,” I say in Polish, struggling to keep my voice even.
“What are you…?” He falters. “I mean, we thought that you were…”
“Why don’t you sit down?” I suggest quietly.
He opens his mouth to speak, then, appearing to think better of it, closes it again and climbs onto the bar stool beside me. “Two pilsners, please,” he says to the bartender. Neither of us speak as the bartender pours the beer from the tap. I look over Marek’s shoulder, wondering what has become of Renata. She will not come back during my conversation with Marek, I suspect. She did her job by getting him here; the rest is up to me.
I look back at Marek. Images race through my mind: Marek sitting at the head of the table beside Alek at Shabbat dinner each week, laughing and talking. Later they would huddle over papers in the back room of the apartment, plotting in hushed whispers. Then I see Marek again that last night at the cabin when I confronted him as he prepared to flee. He was supposed to lead the resistance after Alek was gone. I know, of course, that there was nothing more we could have done. The movement was in tatters after the café bombing; even a great leader like Alek could not have carried on. But Marek left the rest of us behind at the moment we needed him most. Does he feel guilty, as I do, at having survived when so many others did not?
Enough, I think, forcing my anger down. I wait until the bartender has set the glasses in front of us and walked away once more. “You thought I was dead. Isn’t that what you were about to say?”
He nods. “The bridge…We heard that Richwalder shot you.”
“He did. I survived that and Nazi prison, too.” There is a note of pride in my voice. Marek had never been a supporter of women helping with the resistance, other than as occasional decoys. He thought us weak, inconsequential. Now, watching his stunned expression, I cannot help but feel smug.
“Did they ask…?”
“About the resistance? They suspected my involvement and spent months trying to beat it out of me. I didn’t tell them anything,” I add quickly.
Relief crosses his face, as though the Nazis are still in power and might be able to hurt him if they knew the truth. “And now? Surely you didn’t go back to Poland after all that happened.”
“No. I live in London, actually.”
“England? But how? And what are you doing here?”
“It’s a long story.” I pause, looking around the bar for Renata. Has something happened to her? “I’m afraid we don’t have much time.”
Marek’s forehead wrinkles. “I don’t understand.”
“Marek, I…” I take a deep breath. “I’ve been sent to find you.”
His eyes widen. “Sent? By whom?”
“The British government.” Marek’s jaw drops. “I work for the Foreign Office. They sent me because I know you. I need you to connect me with a certain leader in the anticommunist underground.”