The guard blinks at the sight of the silver. He looks around, making sure no onlookers have seen what he’s seen. Returning his gaze to Halina, he lowers his chin, his silt-gray eyes again meeting hers.
“Listen to me,” he says. His voice has fallen almost to a whisper. “I don’t know who you are, and frankly I don’t care if your husband is a Jew or not. But if you say your husband is of German decent,” he pauses, looking down at the silver in Halina’s hands, “I’m certain that the boss can help you out.”
“Then take me to him,” Halina says, without hesitation.
The guard shakes his head. “No visitors. Give me what you have there and I’ll bring it to him.”
“No offense, Herr—?”
The German hesitates. “Richter.”
“Herr Richter. But I’m not parting with this until you’ve delivered me my husband.” She slips the silver back into her purse, tucks it tightly into the crux of her elbow. Inwardly, she is trembling, but she keeps her knees locked in place and her expression steady.
The guard narrows his eyes, then blinks. It seems he’s not used to being told what to do. At least not by a civilian. “He’ll have my head,” Richter says coolly.
“Then keep your head. And keep the silver. For yourself,” Halina counters. “You look like you could use it.” She holds her breath, wondering if she’s gone too far. She hadn’t meant the last bit as an insult, but it had sounded like one.
Richter considers her for a moment. “His name,” he finally says.
Halina feels her shoulders relax a touch. “Brzoza. Adam Brzoza. Round spectacles, pale skin. He’s the one in there who looks nothing like a Jew.”
Richter nods. “I make no promises,” he says. “But come back in one hour. Bring your silver.”
Halina nods. “All right then.” She turns, walking briskly away from the camp.
At the café she finds Wolf seated at an outdoor table, a cup of chicory coffee before him, feigning interest in a newspaper. By the time she’s seated across from him, Richter has disappeared from his post. “Can you spare an hour?” Halina asks, gripping the seat of her chair to steady her hands, grateful for the fact that the tables around them are empty.
“Of course,” Wolf says, and then lowers his voice. “What happened? I couldn’t see a thing.”
Halina closes her eyes for a moment and exhales, willing her pulse to slow. When she looks up she sees that Wolf has gone pale, that he is as nervous as she.
“I offered him the silver,” she says. “He tried to take it right then but I told him he could have it as soon as he delivered me my husband.”
“Did it seem like he would come through?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
Wolf shakes his head. “Adam always said you had guts.”
Halina swallows, suddenly exhausted. “It’s all an act. Let’s just hope he believed it.”
As Wolf motions for the waitress, Halina contemplates how the war, until recently, has in many ways felt surreal. For a while, her family got by. Soon enough, she often told herself, life would return to normal. She would be fine. Her family would be fine. Her parents had endured the Great War and made it through. In time, they’d toss the horrible hand of cards they’d been dealt back into the pile, and start anew. But then things started to fall apart. First it was Selim, then Genek and Herta—gone. Vanished. Then it was Bella’s sister, Anna. And now, Adam. All around her, it seems, Jews were disappearing. And suddenly, the consequences of this war were undeniably real—an understanding that sent Halina spiraling as she wrestled with the knowledge she both feared and loathed: she was powerless. Since then she’s begun to imagine the worst, picturing Selim and Genek and Herta locked up in Soviet prisons, starving to death, and drumming up a long list of the atrocities Adam had no doubt been subjected to at the work camp, telling herself that if he of all people—with his looks and ID—had not been able to talk himself out of captivity by now, then it must be dire.
And what of Addy? They haven’t heard from him since the family moved into the ghetto, nearly two years ago. Had he joined the army as he said he would? France has capitulated. Did the French Army even exist any more? She racks her memory often for the sound of Addy’s voice, but quits when she finds she can’t retrieve it. She hopes against hope that wherever he, Genek, Herta, and Selim are, they are safe. That they can sense how much the family misses them.
A waitress brings a second mug of coffee and sets it on a saucer before Halina. She nods in thanks and glances at her watch, discouraged to find that only five minutes have passed. It’s going to be a long hour, she realizes, removing the watch and setting it under the lip of her saucer so she can check the time more discreetly. And then she waits.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Genek and Herta
Altynay, Siberia ~ July 19, 1941
Herta drags the limb of a small pine toward a clearing in the forest. Józef, four months old, is tied snug to her breast with a bedsheet. She steps carefully, scouring the ground for sleeping vipers and half-buried scorpions, humming to distract herself from the rumble in her stomach. It’ll be hours before she receives her slice of bread and, if she’s lucky, a tiny slab of dried fish.
Józef squirms and Herta lowers the log to the ground, running the cotton of her sweat-stained shirtsleeve across her forehead, and squints up at the sky. The sun is directly overhead; Ze, as they’ve taken to calling the baby, must be hungry. She finds a shady spot beneath a tall larch at the edge of the clearing and lowers herself carefully to sit, cross-legged. From her perch she can see Genek and a handful of others, fifty or so meters away, piling logs by the river. Their figures appear blurry in the July heat, as if they’ve begun to melt.
Herta extracts Józef carefully from his bedsheet harness and lays him gently to face her in the space between her legs, propping his head on her ankles. Wearing nothing but a cloth diaper, his skin, like hers, is pink and sticky to the touch. “Hot, aren’t you, my love,” she says softly, wishing the sweltering temperatures would break, but knowing it will be another month, at least, before they do, and that the heat of summer, despite its intensity, is far more tolerable than the cold that will envelop them come October. Józef looks up with his father’s sky-blue eyes, staring at her in the only way he knows how, without blinking or judgment, and for a moment Herta can do nothing but smile. Unbuttoning her blouse, she follows his gaze as he studies the branches of the larch above. “Any birds up there?” she asks, smiling.
Though Genek will never admit it (he refers to Altynay as an “endless swath of Siberian shitscape”), the forest, despite the suffocating heat and hellish circumstances, is undeniably beautiful. Here, seemingly as far removed from civilization as possible, surrounded by pine, spruce, and larch—every shade of green she can imagine—and by big, open skies and black-water rivers that snake their way through the trees on their journey north, Herta is but a fleck against nature’s backdrop. She feels at peace. She closes her eyes as Józef nurses, taking in the soft breeze, the chatter of swallows and wagtails in the branches above, feeling grateful for the blessing of the healthy child at her breast.