“Come.”
Felicia extends her arms and Mila lifts her carefully to her hip, then half walks, half jogs to the far corner of the room, to a wall lined with long bolts of viscose rayon, wool, and recycled shoddy, and beside them, a row of paper sacks, each nearly twice Felicia’s size, filled with fabric scraps. Setting Felicia down on the floor, Mila glances over her shoulder at the door in the opposite corner. A few of the others in the room look up from their sewing but go about their business.
Mila squats so her eyes are level with Felicia’s and takes Felicia’s hands in hers. “Remember the day we played hide and seek?” she asks, steadying her breath and trying not to rush her words. She doesn’t have much time, but Felicia must understand exactly what Mila is about to tell her. “Remember, you hid here, and pretended you were a statue?” Mila glances toward the paper sacks. When they’d first practiced the drill, Mila had to act out what it meant to “be a statue,” and Felicia had giggled watching her mother stand perfectly still, as if she were carved from a block of marble.
Felicia nods, her expression suddenly sober, like that of a child much older than two and a half.
“I need you to hide for me, love.” Mila opens the sack she’d marked at the bottom corner with a tiny x, lifts Felicia up again, and gently lowers her inside. “Sit, darling,” she says.
—
Inside the sack, Felicia bends her knees to her chest and then feels the ground moving beneath her as her mother pushes the bag so it’s flush against the wall. “Lean back,” Mila instructs from above. Felicia rests her spine tentatively on the cold cement behind her. “I’m going to wrap you up tight,” her mother says. “It will be dark, but only for a little while. Stay perfectly still, like we practiced. Just like a statue. Don’t make a noise, don’t move a muscle until I come find you, okay? Do you understand, love?” Her mother’s eyes are wide, unblinking. She’s talking too fast.
“Yes,” Felicia whispers, although she doesn’t understand why her mother would leave her here, in the dark, alone. The last time, it felt like a game. She remembers her mother’s impression of a statue, how it had seemed silly. Today, there is nothing to laugh about in the urgency of her mother’s voice.
“Good girl. Like a statue,” her mother whispers, holding a finger to her lips and bending down to kiss her on the top of her head. She’s shaking, Felicia thinks. Why is she shaking?
In an instant the paper sack is rolled shut and Felicia’s ears are filled with a crunching sound as the world around her goes black. She strains to hold on to the faint tap of her mother’s heels retreating across the room, but all she can make out is the whirring of sewing machines, and the subtle rhythmic crinkle of the paper sack, a finger-width from her lips, moving with her breath.
After a moment, though, there are new sounds. A door opening. A sudden commotion—men’s voices yelling strange words, chairs scraping the floor. Then there are footsteps, lots of them, passing by her all at once, toward the far side of the room. The people, the workers, are leaving! The men continue to yell until the last of the footsteps have dissipated. A door slams shut. And then all is quiet.
Felicia waits for several heartbeats, her eardrums straining, reaching. Shreds of cotton tickle her elbows and ankles and she wants badly to move, to scratch at the places that itch, to call out. But she can still feel the tremble in her mother’s touch and decides she’d better sit quietly as she’d been told. She blinks into the darkness. After a while, just as her bottom has begun to ache, the door clicks open. Again, footsteps. She stiffens, sensing right away that they are not her mother’s. Their owners traipse around the room, their boots landing heavily on the floor.
Soon there are voices accompanying the footsteps. More strange words. Felicia’s heart knocks hard against her chest, so hard she wonders if the men in the room might hear it. Pressing her eyes shut, she sips delicately at the dark, claustrophobic air, whispering silently to herself to stay still as a statue, still as a statue, still as a statue. The footsteps grow closer. The floor throbs beneath her now, with every stomp. Whoever it is must be centimeters from her! What will they do if they find her? And then she hears it: a horrible crunch—something heavy, a boot maybe, colliding swiftly with the paper sack next to hers. She gasps, then quickly covers her mouth with her hands. Shaking, she’s struck by the sensation of something hot and wet between her legs, realizing a moment too late that her bladder has given way.
The men begin yelling again, in a singsong voice. “Come out, come out wherever you are!” they taunt. A tear slides down Felicia’s cheek. As quietly as she can, she cups her hands over her face, bracing herself for the blow that’s sure to come. When it does, she’ll be discovered, and they’ll snatch her up—where will they take her? Holding her breath, she wishes with every ounce of her two-and-a-half-year-old soul that the men will pass.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Halina and Adam
Lvov, Soviet-Occupied Poland ~ May 1941
In Halina’s half sleep, her brother Genek has escaped from whatever hell he’s undoubtedly been subjected to and returned to Lvov. He’s at the door to her apartment, knocking, for his flat has been confiscated and he needs a place to stay. Halina rolls to her side, feeling Adam’s warmth beside her, and then her stomach clenches as she realizes she isn’t dreaming. The knocks are real.
Disoriented, she sits up, reaching for Adam’s arm. “What time is it? Did you hear that? Who on earth—who could it be?” A fraction of her still believes, or wants to believe, it’s Genek.
Adam reaches for his bedside lamp. “Franka, maybe?” he offers, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the heels of his hands.
When Halina and Franka arrived in Lvov in January, Franka had found an apartment two blocks south of Adam’s. She visits often, but never in the middle of the night. Halina slips out of bed and into her robe, glancing at the clock—it’s half past one in the morning. Standing perfectly still, she waits for another knock. It comes a moment later, this time faster—thump-thump-thump-thump-thump—the fleshy outer edge of a fist beating quick and hard against wood.
“NKVD!”
Halina’s eyes widen. “Kurwa,” she curses under her breath.
It’s been months, as far as she knows, since Stalin shipped off his last trainful of “undesirables” to the east. The NKVD had come for Genek—his neighbors confirmed it, the knock like this one after midnight. Most likely they’d come for Selim, too—she’s searched and searched and found no trace of him. Are they here now for her? For Adam?
Halina and Adam had talked at first about living separately, for this exact reason. Adam’s work in the Underground is risky—if he were caught, he’d no doubt be deported or killed—but Halina was adamant. “I didn’t hike across a river and nearly die of hypothermia so we could live down the street from one another,” she’d said. “You have a perfect false ID. If they come for you, use it.” Adam had agreed, and soon after, they were married in a quiet fifteen-minute ceremony, with Jakob and Bella as their witnesses. Now, Halina wonders whether she should have been so stubborn in insisting that she and Adam share an address.
Adam leaps out of bed and pulls a shirt over his head. “Let me go, see what they—”
“Halina Eichenwald!” a second voice calls through the door, deeper, also in Russian. “Open up immediately—or you will face arrest.”
“Me?” Halina whispers. Since she began work at the hospital, she’s learned to understand and speak Russian. “What could they want from me?” She smooths her hair behind her ears, her pulse thundering. They had prepared for a knock on the door for Adam, but hadn’t thought through what to do if it was for her.