The guard stares hard at him for a moment. “Stay here,” he finally grunts, pointing with his eyes at the ground before disappearing through an unmarked door.
Jakob obeys. He sets his suitcase at his feet and waits, wringing his felt cap in his hands. The last time he saw Bella was five months ago, in October, just before she was assigned to work at the Armee-Verpflegungs-Lager factory, which everyone referred to simply as AVL. Back then, they were living with her parents in the Glinice ghetto, just down the road from the factory. Bella was still a wreck. The days were long and miserable, and there was little he could do to comfort her as she descended into the depths of despair over the loss of her sister. Jakob would never forget the day she left. He’d stood at the ghetto entrance, his fingers curled around the iron bars of the gate, watching as she was escorted to a waiting truck. Bella had turned before climbing in, her expression heavy with sorrow, and Jakob had blown her a kiss and watched, through wet eyes, as she’d brought her own hand to her lips; he couldn’t tell if she’d meant to return the kiss, or if her hand was there to keep from crying.
Soon after Bella left for the factory, Jakob requested to be transferred to the Wa?owa ghetto, so he could live with his parents. He and Bella kept up by letter. Reading her words brought Jakob some peace—she’d barely spoken since Anna disappeared, but putting pen to paper, it seemed, was easier for her. At AVL, Bella said, she’d been allocated the job of mending leather boots and broken holsters from the German front. “You should join me,” she coaxed in her most recent letter. “The foreman here is tolerable. And there is far more space in the factory barracks than there is in the ghetto. I miss you. So much. Please, come.”
Jakob knew when he read those words—I miss you—that he would find a way to be with her. It would mean leaving his parents, but they had Halina to watch out for them. False IDs if they needed them. A small stash of potatoes, flour, and some cabbage his mother had stockpiled before winter. The amethyst. He’d be close. Eighteen kilometers. He could write to them, visit if he needed to, he reasoned.
There was also his job, however, and the prospect of leaving it was daunting. In the ghetto, a job was a lifeline—if you were deemed skilled enough to work, you were, for the most part, worthy of living. When the Germans discovered Jakob knew how to operate a camera, they assigned him work as a photographer. Every morning, he was allowed to exit Wa?owa’s arched gates to take pictures of whatever it was his supervisor asked for—weapons, armories, uniforms, sometimes even women. Every so often his supervisor would recruit a couple of blonde Polish girls who, for a few zloty or an evening’s meal, were more than willing to pose for Jakob wearing nothing but a tattered fur kept for this purpose. When he returned at the end of the day, he would hand over his film, without any idea as to who would eventually look at his photos, or why.
Today, however, would be different. He’d received his assignment as he always did, but he’d set off from his supervisor’s office with a pocketful of Yunak cigarettes and an assignment he wouldn’t complete. If he is forced to return to Wa?owa, his roll of film still blank, his plan will likely cost him his life.
Jakob checks his watch. It’s two in the afternoon. In three hours, his boss will realize he’s missing.
The factory door swings open and Bella appears, clad in the same navy slacks and white collared shirt she was wearing when she left. A yellow scarf covers all but a small fraction of her hairline. She smiles when she sees him, and Jakob’s heart warms. A smile.
“Hello, sunshine,” he says. They hug quickly.
“Jakob! I didn’t know you were coming,” Bella says.
“I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—” Jakob pauses, and Bella nods, understanding. Their letters have been censored for months; it would have been foolish to write and tell her of his plans.
“I’ll go talk to the foreman,” Bella says, glancing over her shoulder at the guard parked a few meters behind her. “Did your sister make it off?”
In his last letter, Jakob had told Bella of Mila’s plan to move to the States. “She left this morning,” he says. “She and Felicia.”
“Good. That’s a relief. I’m glad you came, Kuba,” Bella says. “Stay here.” The guard follows her back inside, and Jakob remembers a second too late about the cigarettes—he’d meant to sneak them into Bella’s palm so she could use them for a bribe. He curses himself silently, left once again to wait outside in the cold, cap in hand.
—
Inside, Bella makes her way to the desk of the foreman, Officer Meier, a big-boned German with a broad forehead and a thick, well-kept mustache. “My husband has come from the ghetto,” she begins, deciding it best to get straight to the point. Her German is now fluent. “He is here, outside. He is an excellent worker, Herr Meier. He is in good health, very responsible.” Bella pauses. Jews don’t ask favors of Germans, but she has no other choice. “Please, I beg of you, can you find him a job here at the factory?”
Meier is a decent man. In the past three months he’s been good to Bella—allowed her to take her meal on Yom Kippur after nightfall, to visit her parents every so often in the Glinice ghetto, a short walk from the factory. Bella is an efficient worker—nearly twice as productive as most of the others at the factory. Perhaps this is why he treats her well.
Meier runs a thumb and forefinger over his mustache. He sizes Bella up, narrowing his eyes at her, as if searching for some ulterior motive.
Bella removes the gold brooch that Jakob gave her so long ago from the chain she’d strung around her neck. “Please,” she says, dropping the tiny rose with its inlaid pearl into her palm and offering it to Meier. “This is all I have. Take it.” Bella waits, her arm outstretched. “Please. You won’t regret it.”
Finally, Meier leans forward, resting his forearms on his desk, his eyes meeting hers. “Kurch,” he says, in his thick German accent. “Keep it, Kurch.” He sighs, shakes his head. “I’ll do it for you, but I won’t do it for anyone else.” He turns to the guard standing at attention by the door to his office. “Go on. Let him in.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Mila and Felicia
Outside Radom, German-Occupied Poland ~ March 1942
The pile of earth beside what Mila knows will be her grave has grown to half a meter high. “Deeper,” a Ukrainian shouts as he struts by, making his rounds.
Mila’s palms are caked now with blood, her entire torso drenched with sweat, despite the March cold. She takes off her sweater, drapes it over Felicia’s shoulders, and wraps her scarf tightly around her right hand, the more painful of the two. Pressing the sole of her shoe to the head of her shovel, she ignores the sting and glances again toward the train tracks to survey the scene.