later to the sounds of the street sweepers brushing the sidewalks, and the rhythmic hooves of the deliverymen’s horses banging against the cobblestones. Outside, it was still dark. I ran my hand across the empty space in bed beside me, the sheets still warm and rumpled where my husband had lain. His musky scent hung heavily in the air above me. I did not have to look up to know that his rucksack and other belongings were gone.
Jacob had disappeared. We’d been married for six weeks.
“… hungry?” Krysia’s voice jars me from my thoughts. I realize that she has come into the parlor and has been speaking to me, but I have not heard what she has said. I turn to her reluctantly, as though I have been woken from a pleasant dream. She holds out a plate of bread and cheese toward me.
“No, thank you.” I shake my head, still half lost in memories.
Krysia sets down the plate on the coffee table and comes over to me. “That’s a beautiful picture,” she says, gesturing toward my wedding photo. I do not answer. She lifts up the photo of Jacob as a child. “But we should put these away so no one sees them.”
“Who would see them?” I ask. “I mean, it’s just the three of us here.” Krysia let her maid and her gardener go before Lukasz and I arrived, and in the weeks we have lived with her, there has been no one else inside the house.
“You never know,” she replies. Her voice sounds strange. “Better to be safe.” She holds out her hand and I hesitate, not wanting to surrender one of the last ties I have to my husband. She’s right, I realize. There’s no other choice. With a sigh, I hand her the wedding photograph and watch numbly as she carries it from the room.
CHAPTER 2
The morning Jacob disappeared, not daring to leave a note, I sat in bed for several minutes, blinking and looking around the bedroom. “He’s not coming back,” I said aloud. I was too stunned to cry. I rose and dressed, my movements reflexive, as though I’d rehearsed for this moment a thousand times. I packed my small suitcase as quickly as I could. Reluctantly, I took off my engagement and wedding rings, and slipped them, along with our marriage certificate, into the bottom of my suitcase.
At the door of our bedroom, I hesitated. On the crowded bookshelf by the door, nearly buried beneath Jacob’s physics textbooks and political treatises, lay a small stack of novels, Ivanhoe, Pride and Prejudice and a few others, mostly by foreign authors. I reached out to touch the bindings of the books, remembering. Jacob had given these to me shortly after we had met. He used to come visit me at the library every day, and often he brought me small gifts, such as an apple or a flower or, best of all, a book. I laughed the first time he did this. “Bringing books to a library?” I teased, examining the slim, leather-covered tome, a translation of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.
“But I am sure you do not have this one!” he protested in earnest, holding out the book, his brown eyes smiling. And he was right, for although I had already read many books, I had not possessed a single one of my own until then. My parents had encouraged learning and had sent me to the Jewish girls’ school as long as they could manage, but owning books, other than the family Bible and prayer book, was not a luxury we could afford. I treasured each of the half dozen or so books Jacob brought me, never telling him that I had read them all before from the library, some so many times I knew them almost by heart. I reread each one (the story was somehow different now that the book was my own) and then tucked it away safely in my dresser drawer. They had been among the few possessions I had brought with me from my parents’ house to the Baus’.
Picturing Jacob as he gave me the first book, my eyes burned. Where are you, I wondered as I stared at the bookshelf, and when will you be back? I brushed away a tear and studied the books. I can’t take them with me, I thought. They’re too heavy. But I won’t leave them all, either. Finally, I pulled two of the books from the shelf and squeezed them into my bag.
I walked to the front door of the Baus’ house, bags in hand. My eyes lingered on the rose-colored silk curtains, held back gracefully from the high windows with bronze-colored rope, the gold-rimmed china in the glass-front cabinet along the foyer wall. With the house empty, what was to stop vagrants, or even the Nazis, from looting the place? For a moment I considered staying. Jacob had been right, though; it would not be safe for me alone. Searches by the Gestapo had become commonplace, and several fine apartments in the city center had already been expropriated from their Jewish owners and given to high-ranking Nazi officers. I thought fleetingly of taking a few of the Baus’ belongings to protect them, perhaps a few small paintings or the silver candlesticks. But even if I had been able to transport these things to my parents’ tiny home, they would hardly be any safer there. Pausing in the foyer, I looked around one last time before closing the door behind me.
I made my way down Grodzka Street, away from the city center toward the Jewish quarter. As I walked, the houses grew more dilapidated, the streets narrower. I could not help but remember the first time I had allowed Jacob to escort me home from the library. He had offered for months, but I had always refused, afraid that if he saw the poor, religious world I came from, he would realize the differences between us and disappear forever. I had watched his face as we reached the edge of the Jewish quarter. I could tell by the way he bit the inside of his cheek and tightened his arm protectively around me that he was taken aback by the naked poverty, by the cramped, run-down buildings, and shabbily dressed inhabitants of my neighborhood. He never said a word, though. If anything, his affection toward me seemed to grow after that day, and he seemed determined to take me away to his world. Until now, I thought, staring at the desolate street before me. Now he was gone and I was returning to Kazimierz, alone. I could feel the tears gathering in my eyes once more.
Soon I reached Szeroka Street, the main square at the heart of the Jewish quarter. I paused, taking in the synagogues and shops that lined the square. Something was different from when I’d last visited just weeks ago. Though it was a weekday morning, the streets were empty and eerily silent. Gone were the neighbors calling to one another through open windows, the men arguing in front of the shops, the shawl-covered women carrying bundles of food and kindling. It was as if the neighborhood had disappeared overnight.
I decided to stop in the bakery and say hello to my father before heading to the apartment. The bakery, which consisted of just a tiny shop with an adjacent kitchen, was my father’s labor of love. He had opened it as a young man more than thirty years ago to support him and my mother, and had worked there every day since. Even after the occupation, he had stubbornly insisted upon keeping the store open with few supplies and even fewer paying customers in order to provide a source of food to our family, friends and neighbors, and to furtively produce small quantities of the Jewish breads, the challah loaves for the Sabbath and matzah for Passover that were now forbidden.
He would want me to stay, of course, to set my suitcases in the corner and put on one of his large aprons and bake with him. Helping my father was one of the things I missed most about not living in Kazimierz since I had gotten married. We used to talk for hours as we made and kneaded the dough together. Often he told me stories of his childhood, of my grandparents, whom I had never met, and the large general store they had owned, close to the German border. Sometimes he would grow quiet and I could hear him humming under his breath. I did not have to look over to know that he was smiling to himself, his dark beard white with flour.
I turned right at the corner of Jozefa Street and stopped in front of the bakery. I tried to open the front door, but it was locked. For a moment, I wondered if I had gotten my days wrong and the bakery was closed for Shabbes. The last time my father had not opened the bakery on a day other than Saturday or a Jewish holiday was the day I was born. I pressed my face against the window. The shop was dark inside. An uneasy feeling arose in me. It was after eight o’clock; my father should have been working for several hours already. I wondered if something was wrong, if he or my mother was sick.
