Of course, fleeing to Brazil would mean putting the distance of an ocean between Addy and his family—the thought of which torments him to no end. It’s been thirteen months since he last heard from his mother in Radom. He wonders often if any of his letters have reached her, if she would feel hurt or betrayed to learn of his plan to leave Europe. No. Of course not, he assures himself. His mother would want him to get out while he can. And anyway, he will be no less reachable in Brazil than he has been for the past several months in France. Still, to leave without the peace of mind of knowing that his parents and siblings are safe, without their knowing of his plan or how to contact him, feels wrong. To quiet his conscience, Addy reminds himself that if he’s able to secure a visa—and thanks to it, a more permanent address—he can put all of his energy into tracking down the family once he’s settled somewhere safe.
If only procuring a Brazilian visa were an easier task. His first attempt was a failure. He’d waited at the Brazilian embassy for ten hours in the freezing rain, he and dozens of others desperately seeking permission to sail for Rio, only to be told apologetically by one of Souza Dantas’s staffers that there were no visas left to issue. He’d returned to his hostel and spent the next several evenings lying awake, mulling over how he might convince the young woman to make an exception, but he could see it in her eyes—nothing could make her break the rules. He would have to appeal to the person above her, to the ambassador himself.
Addy rehearses his plea, feeling in his pocket for his paperwork—a certificate from the Polish embassy in Toulouse allowing him permission to emigrate to Brazil, if Brazil deemed him worthy of a visa. “Monsieur Souza Dantas, je m’appelle Addy Kurc,” he recites under his breath, wishing he could converse in the ambassador’s native Portuguese. “Plaisir de vous rencontrer. You are an extremely busy man, but if you would allow me a moment of your time, I’d like to tell you why it is in your best interest to grant me a visa to your beautiful country.” Too forward? No, he must be forward. Otherwise, why would Souza Dantas offer him the time of day? If he could just explain his degree, his experience in electrical engineering, the ambassador would take him seriously. Brazil was a developing country—they must need engineers.
Adjusting his scarf between the lapels of his overcoat, Addy catches his reflection in one of the hotel’s ground-floor windows, his trepidation momentarily quelled as he studies himself as if through the ambassador’s eyes. He looks sharp, put together, professional. The suit was the right call, he decides. Addy had thought about wearing his army uniform, which he carries with him wherever he goes. Bearing the respectable triple stripes of a sergent-chef, a promotion he’d earned shortly after arriving in Colombey-les-Belles, his military attire often comes in handy—he wears it sometimes beneath his civilian attire, on the chance that he might need to change quickly. But he is himself, and more confident, in his suit. Besides, if he’d worn his uniform, he’d have risked Souza Dantas asking how and when he’d been demobilized. And technically, he hadn’t been.
For Addy, the process of leaving the army transpired quickly and unconventionally. He got out shortly after France capitulated and Germany ordered all but a few units of the French Army discharged. Those that remained fell under German rule. He would have waited for his official demobilization papers but discovered that, with the implementation of Hitler’s recent Statut des Juifs, France’s Jews were being stripped of their rights, arrested, and deported by the thousands. And so, rather than await arrest, Addy had borrowed a typewriter and a friend’s demobilization papers as reference and forged a document for himself—a dangerous move, but he’d sensed he was running low on time. So far, thankfully, his papers have worked. No one has taken much care in looking at them—not his platoon leader, not the agent at the Bureau Polonais in Toulouse where he’d requested permission to emigrate from Poland, not the driver of the French military truck aboard which he’d hitched a ride to Vichy. Still, he doesn’t have any interest in pressing his luck with Souza Dantas.
Addy snaps to attention at the sound of footsteps on the stairs above him. He turns to see a broad-faced and even broader-shouldered gentleman approaching and can tell in an instant—it’s him. Souza Dantas. Everything about the man is straightforward and unassuming: his pressed navy slacks and wool overcoat, his leather briefcase, even his stride is efficient, businesslike. Addy’s heart floods with adrenaline. He clears his throat. “Senhor Souza Dantas,” he calls, greeting the ambassador at the bottom of the stairs with a strong handshake and silencing the voice in his head reminding him that his request for a Brazilian visa has already been turned down. That no one else will take him. That this plan, it has to work; it’s his only option. Stay calm, Addy reminds himself. This man may be the most important person in your life at the moment, but you mustn’t seem desperate. Just be yourself.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Halina
The Bug River, Between German-and Soviet-Occupied Poland ~ January 1941
Halina gathers up the tail of her woolen overcoat and plunges a stick into the water, inching toward the Bug River’s opposite bank. The frigid water purls around her knees and tugs at her trousers. Pausing, she glances over her shoulder. It’s past midnight, but the moon, full and round as a szarlotka pie, might as well be a spotlight in the cloudless night sky; she can see her cousin Franka perfectly. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asks, shivering. Franka’s freckled face is pinched with concentration. She moves slowly, one arm outstretched for balance, the other hooked through the willow handle of a wicker basket held snug to her side.
“I’m fine.”
Halina had offered to carry the basket, but Franka insisted. “You go ahead,” she’d said, “feel for holes.”
It’s not the basket itself Halina is worried about. It’s the money inside. They’d wrapped their fifty zloty in a panel of waxed canvas and slipped it through a small hole in the basket’s lining where they hoped it would remain safe, and hidden, should they be searched. Leaning into the current, Halina thinks about how, before the war, fifty zloty was nothing. A new silk scarf, perhaps. An evening at the Grand Theatre in Warsaw. Now, it’s a week’s worth of meals, a train ticket, a way out of jail. Now, it’s a lifeline. Halina stamps her stick into the riverbed and takes another tentative step, the blue-white reflection of the moon pooling and dancing around her.
In his letters, Adam continued to promise she’d be better off in Lvov, that life under the Soviets wasn’t nearly as bad as life in Radom under the Germans as she’d described it. Halina knew he was right. She hated living in the cramped little flat in the Old Quarter, where Mila and Felicia slept in one bedroom, her parents in the other, and she on a too-small settee in the living room. She loathed the fact that there was no icebox, and that they often went days without running water. They were constantly stepping on each other’s toes. And to make matters worse, the Wehrmacht had begun roping off sections of the neighborhood. They hadn’t come out and said it yet, but they were building a ghetto. A prison. Soon, the city’s Jews would be completely segregated from the non-Jews. According to Isaac, a friend in the Jewish Police, they’d already done the same in Lublin, Kraków, and ?ód?. Radom’s Jews were still allowed to come and go from the Old Quarter, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the ropes would be replaced with walls, and the neighborhood would be sealed.