“Oh, Caroline,” Paul said.
Father’s double-hung closet was almost as he’d left it, with rows of khaki, brown wool, and white flannel trousers folded over hangers; all manner of jackets, from belted Norfolks and worsted serge to a one-button cutaway. Legions of two-tone shoes and one pair of patent leather dress slippers, stuffed with tissue paper, lined up on the floor. Foulard ties shared rack space with belts, hung by their brass buckles. Mother’s black bunting from the funeral lay in a heap on the top shelf. Not that I’d been at Saint Thomas Church that day, being only eleven. The New York Times had said, The Woolsey women locked arms that day in the front pew. I pulled on one belt and slipped the suede-lined sealskin leather through my fingers.
“He was very neat,” Paul said.
“Not really. Mother kept him together.”
Paul lifted a gray fedora, stuffed tight with yellowed tissue paper, from the top shelf. He turned it in his hands, like a scientist examining a rare meteorite, and put it back. He seemed somber all at once. Why had I spoiled the mood?
“Father was color-blind, you see,” I said.
Paul just looked at me. If only I could stop blathering.
“And to make matters worse, he refused to be dressed by a valet.”
Paul made no attempt to stop me, just watched with a look I couldn’t place. Pity for a poor spinster who missed her dead father?
“Father insisted on dressing himself. So Mother bought him only basic colors. Browns and navys.” I clicked off the closet light. “Before that, you should have seen his outfits.”
As I closed the closet door, I felt tears coming but held them back.
“One morning at breakfast, he appeared in a yellow jacket, purple tie, burnt-orange trousers, and red socks. Mother almost choked, she laughed so hard.”
I turned my face to the closet door, forehead against the cool paint. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’ll get myself together.”
Paul took my shoulders and turned me to face him and then pulled me close. He smoothed back my hair, and his lips found my cheek. They lingered in the little dip there under my eye and then traveled across my face. He took the long way to my mouth, and once there, tasted of coq au vin and French cigarettes.
Paul unwound the scarf from his neck and released a wave of Sumare.
Pine. Leather. Musk.
We made our way to the sofa as icy snow pelted the windows above us like sand in a hurricane. My heart skipped a beat as his hand brushed the inside of my thigh on the way to release a stocking. He sent two fingers into the silk and drew it down. I unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Then another. I slipped my hands inside his open shirt, down his sides, smooth as the inside of a conch shell.
“I think maybe you had more than the angel’s share of the cognac,” Paul said in my ear.
He unfastened the top button of my dress. In the low light, his face was especially beautiful, so serious. We were really doing this…I pushed away thoughts of him with Rena.
The second and third buttons went, so slowly.
He pulled my dress down off my shoulder and kissed my bare skin. “I can’t believe how beautiful you are,” he said, working his lips down to my chest, in no hurry at all.
“Perhaps a bed would be a good idea.”
I could only nod. My canopy bed with the pink satin bedspread? That bed had never seen anything like Paul Rodierre.
We zigzagged to my bedroom, leaving my underthings along the way.
“Arms up,” Paul said once we made it to the bed.
I raised my arms as if ready to dive, and he slipped my slip and dress up and off in one motion. He slid out of his jacket and brought me to him. My fingers shook as I felt for his belt. He kissed me as I pulled the end free from the buckle and slid the whole thing through the loops. The zipper purred down. He stepped out of his pants and brought us both to the bed. We fell onto smooth satin, the slats surprised by the sudden weight.
“Are you still wearing your socks?” I said.
He kissed the base of my throat.
“What is that sound?” Paul asked, working his way downward.
“What?” I propped myself up on one elbow. “Is someone here?”
He pulled me back down, lips close to my ear. “It’s nothing.” His sandpapery chin grazed my cheek in a good way. “Don’t worry about it.”
It was lovely having Paul in my bed, all to myself. I sank deeper into the pink satin as he rolled on top of me and kissed my mouth, now urgently.
I heard the sound this time. Someone knocking. How had someone gotten past the doorman? I froze, as Paul’s lips traveled downward.
“Someone’s here,” I said, shaking in the darkness.
1940–1941
What you must understand is how social the Polish underground was for a young person. After the Germans invaded and deemed Girl Guides and Scouts criminal organizations, we just continued clandestinely and became known as the Szare Szeregi, or Gray Ranks. We answered to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and most of the Girl Guides joined. This group was my only source of companionship, since Zuzanna worked long hours at the Lublin Ambulance Corps and was never home. Plus, it was a good way to vent our frustration at being occupied by the Germans.
We’d had excellent first aid training in Girl Guides, but in the Gray Ranks, we continued educating ourselves and attended secret medical courses. The older girls fought alongside the boys or worked as nurses and seamstresses and managed orphanages. Some even helped free people from German prisons, blow up bridges, and steal German military plans.
We younger girls in my seven-person squad saved Polish books from being destroyed by German soldiers and taught secret classes. We trained as decoders and delivered fake identity cards and messages. We did our part to sabotage the Nazis, rearranging street signs to make sure the SS got lost. At night we connected to German broadcast speakers in the streets and played the Polish national anthem. The more we got away with, the more we wanted it, as if it were a drug. We had to be careful, though, since not only had the Nazis chosen Lublin as their Polish headquarters, but all across Poland, German spies had started identifying our former Girl Guide leaders and arresting them.
Plus, lapanka were occurring more frequently. A lapanka was something Matka lived in fear of for us—a sudden, wild manhunt executed by the SS. No longer did the authorities wait for the cover of night. They took their prey, random Polish citizens, in daylight in the most unexpected places: Churches. Train stations. Ration lines. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught was seized and taken to a confinement center. Most were sent to Germany to be worked to death. Aryan-looking Polish children were at risk too. They started disappearing in great numbers from the cities. One day a whole train of them was rounded up and taken. The German guards shot the mothers as they ran after the train. In the country, if too few laborers reported, whole villages were burned.
Though Pietrik wouldn’t speak of it, his father, a captain in our Polish army, had been arrested along with his fellow officers, leaving Pietrik the only man in his house. Before the war every man who’d graduated from university had been required to join the military as a reserve officer, so it was easy for the authorities to eliminate our most educated by arresting all members of the Polish Officers Corps. At least Pietrik had not been conscripted into the army when the war broke out.
I begged Pietrik for more important assignments, like those the older girls got, but as our group commander, he was full of excuses.