Matka. Every thought of her was still a fresh stab.
“I heard that there are rumors going around about you girls who came back from Ravensbrück.”
“From who?”
“This is serious, Kasia. They are saying that you are not to be trusted.”
“Don’t believe all—”
“Zuzanna too.”
This sent a real quake of fear through me. “Who is saying this?”
“The authorities—”
“Who? NKVD? Let me talk to them.”
“This isn’t something to take lightly, Kasia.”
“?‘Not to be trusted’? What does that even mean?”
“They think, because you were at Ravensbrück, a German camp, that you were working for the Germans. Contaminated by fascism.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“And you’ve been seen partaking in suspicious activity. Do you have a secret hiding place?”
“The wall by Nadia’s house? That’s child’s play, Papa—”
“Well, stop it. You are being watched.”
“Who can live in such a—”
“Do you want to go away again? This time for good? Get Zuzanna, and destroy any evidence you were there—”
“You’re serious.”
“Your Girl Guide uniform. Your letters I saved.”
“But if they read the letters, they’d see—”
“They are not easily reasoned with, Kasia. Go. Now.”
Zuzanna and I made a fire in the backyard that afternoon, as one often did to dispose of household trash, and burned the few things we had from the camp. We threw the bags we’d made from our old uniforms on the pyre. Regina’s English book. My Girl Guide uniform.
I hesitated when it came to the urine letters I’d sent. Papa had kept them in the kitchen drawer, a neat stack that told the world of our troubles.
“I can’t burn these,” I said, my grip on the envelopes tightening.
“You listed every girl’s name in those,” Zuzanna said. “You have to protect them. Who cares about some old letters?”
I still hesitated.
Zuzanna snatched the top letter and handed it to me. “Here,” she said and tossed the rest on the fire. At least I would save one.
As the fire burned, black bits of ash floated about, much as they had from the Ravensbrück chimneys. When we were done, almost all evidence of our camp life was gone.
Who needed such things anyway, we told ourselves. Souvenirs of a terrible time. But it made the black spot in my chest grow larger. I was a patriot. I took an oath to serve my country. I gave up my youth, my mother, my first love, and my best friend for Poland. For this I was accused of being an enemy spy?
—
I TRIED TO FOCUS on good things. Even with the terrible shortage of food and the confusion of people returning to Lublin, there was a ray of optimism surrounding the reopening of demolished factories. The universities were not up and running again, but the Red Cross taught basic nursing classes at the hospital.
I headed there one late-summer morning, hoping to get some nursing practice. I stepped into the back wing of the hospital, happy to see it had survived the bombings somewhat intact. The massive ward on the second floor was filled with rows of canvas cots divided almost equally, half occupied by Russian soldiers, the other half by Polish civilians from the camps and other places. Russian nurses and medics brought the wounded, presenting with every type of injury imaginable, in on canvas stretchers.
“We’re off to Warsaw soon,” said Karolina Uznetsky, one of my favorite nurses, as she unfolded a cot. “The army is taking over the hospital.” She filled a basin with warm water.
“I’ll miss you all,” I said, instead of what I really wanted to say: Please stay. You leave, and who will be here when Pietrik comes back? Leaving means you’ve given up on survivors.
“How about a free class on the bed bath?” Karolina said.
“Yes, please,” I said.
Such an opportunity! The bed bath was known to be more complicated than it sounded.
“Let us start over here,” Karolina said.
She carried a basin of water and a stack of towels straight toward a particularly damaged row of soldiers. The facial injuries were the hardest to deal with. They’d taken the mirrors in the lavatories down for a reason. I forced myself to look. How could I be a nurse if I couldn’t deal with such things? Suddenly I could not recall even basic Red Cross training. Karolina stood at the cot of one of the worst, a dark-haired man who slept curled on his side. The blood that had seeped through the gauze wrapped around his head had dried black.
“First, introduce yourself to the patient,” Karolina said, indicating the man on the cot. “We can skip this step, for the patient is unresponsive.”
It would not be exaggeration to say I idolized Karolina. She was everything a good nurse should be. Smart. Levelheaded in the face of gruesome injury. Pleasant. I would have to work on all these things.
“Ordinarily we would pull the curtain for patient privacy,” Karolina said, “but we will go right to the washcloths and rubber gloves.”
I pushed my hands into the gloves, smooth and powdery inside, the smell of the rubber somehow hopeful. Karolina folded a washcloth over my gloved hand like a mitt.
“Begin the bath with the face, no soap used there. Eyes first.”
I sat on a chair next to the patient and started with the eyes, reaching the cloth into the deep sockets and moving outward. Could he even feel it?
The soldier next to him lay on his back, arms splayed, snoring louder than any person I’d heard snore before, and there had been many candidates at Ravensbrück.
“Try to use a different part of the washcloth for every stroke,” Karolina said. “You are a natural, Kasia.” Her words made me puff up with pride. My mother had been a nurse after all. Maybe it was in the blood?
There was something satisfying about washing the survivors, revealing clean swaths of pink skin under all that grime, the dirt drifting to the bottom of the bowl. When I finished, the water in the bowl was dark brown so I replaced it with clean water at the tap.
When I returned, medics came with two more Russian soldiers and placed them near us, one with a skull fracture, the other unresponsive. I started a fresh bed bath on one. These men had not washed in months. I knew how that felt.
“You’re good at this, Kasia,” Karolina said. “You really should think about coming with us to Warsaw. We could use the help.”
I wiped the washcloth down the soldier’s forehead and across one cheek.
Why not go to Warsaw? Papa might miss me, but his ladylove Marthe wouldn’t care.
“The training is first-rate,” Karolina said.
“Maybe,” I said. I was ready for a new adventure. Warsaw would be a fresh start. And I was good at this.
I moved on to the next patient and began with the face. I was making good time. Soon, I would be done with the whole row.
I ran the washcloth across the bridge of the nose to uncover fresh pink skin, and…
I froze, midwipe.
“What is it, Kasia?” Karolina asked.
My mind registered it all, but my body was stuck. I breathed deeply through my nose and grabbed the stretcher handle for support. It would not look good to have a nurse in training faint right there in the ward.
1945
It couldn’t possibly be him. Pietrik. How many times had my mind played such tricks? The tooth. I pulled his upper lip up with my thumb.
“What are you doing, Kasia?” Karolina set her basin on the floor and walked over to me.
My God, yes. The chipped tooth, just a little off the side. That gorgeous tooth. I sat for a few moments waiting for my body to catch up with my brain. Yes, it was he. I kissed him all over his face, dirt and everything. He stayed unconscious through it all.
“Kasia,” Karolina said, eyes wide.
I called to the other nurses, waving—I must have looked like a castaway on a desert island—unable to get the words out. The nurses ran over, and Karolina told them I was having a mental breakdown of some sort, kissing and crying over a Russian soldier.
“It’s him, it’s him,” was all I could say.
“Who, Kasia?” Karolina asked. “Who is it? Calm down, now.”
“It’s Pietrik,” I said.