“Bonsoir, Madame . . .” Addy ventures, his arm outstretched between them.
The girl’s mother stops abruptly, seemingly irked to have been disturbed. The way she carries herself, with her shoulders pinned back and her lips pressed tightly together, reminds Addy of his old piano teacher in Radom—a formidable woman whose rigid standards pushed him to become the musician he is today, but with whom he wouldn’t want to share a drink. Reluctantly, she takes his hand.
“Lowbeer,” she says in a slight accent, her ice-blue eyes drifting down the length of Addy’s torso. “De Prague,” she says, when her gaze finally meets his. Her face is long, her lips painted mauve. They are Czechoslovakian.
“Addy Kurc. Plaisir de vous rencontrer.” Addy wonders how much French the pair understands.
“Plaisir,” Madame Lowbeer replies. After a moment’s silence, the woman turns to her daughter. “Puis-je vous présenter ma fille, Eliska.”
Eliska. Her blouse, he can now see, is sewn from a fine linen, her knee-length navy skirt, a rich cashmere. His mother would be impressed, he thinks, and then swallows the familiar pull, the worry that coils around his heart whenever his thoughts turn to his mother. There is nothing more you can do now, he tells himself. You will write to her again in Rio.
Eliska offers her hand. Her eyes, powder blue like her mother’s, once again meet Addy’s. “Votre musique est très belle,” she says, holding Addy’s gaze. Her French is perfect, her handshake firm. Addy finds her confidence at once attractive and startling. There is more to this young woman, he realizes, than her lovely face. He lets his hand slide from hers and immediately regrets it. It’s been a year since he’s felt a woman’s touch—he hadn’t realized how much he longed for it. His fingertips are electric. His whole body is electric.
“They call you the Master of Ceremonies on the ship, you know?” As Eliska smiles, two small dimples form around the corners of her lips. She brings a hand to the pearls resting on her collarbone.
“So I’ve heard,” Addy replies, trying desperately not to seem flustered. “I’m glad you enjoy the piano. Music has always been my passion.” Eliska nods, still smiling. Her cheeks are flushed, although it doesn’t appear she’s wearing any rouge. “Prague is an alluring city. You are Czechoslovakian, then,” Addy says, tearing his gaze from Eliska’s to address her mother.
“Yes, and you?”
“I am from Poland.” A stab in his gut. Addy doesn’t even know if his home country exists anymore. Again, he pushes the worry aside, refusing to let it ruin the moment.
Madame Lowbeer’s nose twitches, as if she might sneeze. Poland is clearly not the answer she was anticipating—or perhaps for which she was hoping. But Addy doesn’t care. He looks from mother to daughter, a flurry of questions darting through his mind. How did you wind up on the Alsina? Where is your family? Where is Monsieur Lowbeer? What’s your favorite song? I’ll learn it and play it a hundred times if it means you will sit and watch me again tomorrow!
“Well,” Madame Lowbeer says, her smile tight, “it is late. We must sleep. Thank you for the concert; it was lovely.” With a quick nod in Addy’s direction, she links elbows with her daughter and they make their way through the arched doorway toward their cabin, the soles of their buffed ankle-strap heels knocking softly on the hardwood floor.
“Bonne nuit, Addy Kurc,” Eliska calls over her shoulder.
“Bonne nuit!” Addy replies, a bit too loudly. Every part of him wishes Eliska would stay. Should he ask her to? It had felt so good to flirt with her. It had felt so—normal. No, he’ll wait. Be patient, he tells himself. Another night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Genek and Herta
Altynay, Siberia ~ February 1941
Nothing could have prepared Genek and Herta for the Siberian winter. Everything is frozen: The dirt floor of the barracks. The straw scattered over their log bed. The hairs on the inside of their noses. Even their spit, long before it hits the ground. It’s a wonder that there is still water at the pit of the well.
Genek sleeps fully clothed. Tonight he wears his boots, hat, a pair of gloves he’d purchased when the snow first started falling in October, and his winter coat—it is lucky he’d thought at the last minute to bring it from Lvov—and still, he aches from the cold. The feeling is intense. It’s nothing like the dull pain between his shoulder blades after hours spent heaving his axe, but rather a deep, relentless throb that pulses from his heels, up through his leg bones, into his gut and out his arms, triggering spastic involuntary full-body shivers.
Genek curls and uncurls his fingers and wiggles his toes, nauseated by the thought of losing one. Nearly every day since November, someone at the camp has awoken to find an appendage black with frostbite; when it happens, there is often no other choice but for a fellow prisoner to amputate. Genek watched a man once writhing in pain as his small toe was sawed off with the dull blade of a pocketknife; Genek had nearly fainted. He inches his body closer to Herta’s. The bricks he’d warmed by the fire and wrapped in a towel to set at their feet have gone cold. He’s tempted to burn some more wood but they’ve already used their two allotted logs, and sneaking out under Romanov’s watch to steal an extra from the pile would be reckless.
This godforsaken land has turned on them. Six months ago, when they’d first arrived, the air was so hot they could hardly force it into their lungs. Genek would never forget the day their train finally screeched to a stop and the doors were thrown open to reveal nothing but pine forest. He’d leapt to the ground clutching Herta’s fist in one hand and his suitcase in the other, his scalp swarming with lice, the skin over his vertebrae scabbed from leaning against the splintered wooden wall of the train car for forty-two days and nights. Fine, he’d thought, looking around at their surroundings. They were alone in the woods, impossibly far from home, but at least here they could stretch their legs and urinate in private.
They’d walked for two days in the blistering August heat, dehydrated and dizzy with hunger, before arriving at a clearing with a long, one-story log barracks that appeared to have been built in a hurry. When they finally set their suitcases down, their exhausted bodies reeking and sticky with sweat, they were welcomed with a few select words from Romanov, the black-haired, steel-eyed guard assigned to their camp: “The closest town,” Romanov said, “is ten kilometers south. The villagers there have been warned of your arrival. They want nothing to do with you. This,” he barked, pointing at the ground, “is your new home. You will work here, you will live here; you will never again see Poland.”