“What do we do? Should we move?”
Adam slides his glasses back over his nose, peers at Halina through thick, round rims. “That would be like admitting we’re in the wrong. I think . . .” he pauses, tapping his forefinger on the blue-and-white checked cloth draped over the table, “I think I have a plan.” Halina nods, waiting. They need a plan, desperately. Otherwise it’s only a matter of time before the landlord’s wife reports them to the police.
“Aleksandra suspects we’re Jewish, despite our papers. . . . I’ve been trying to figure out how we can explain that we’re not—and the only way to prove it, I mean to really prove it . . . is for her to see that we’re not. Well, that I’m not.”
Halina shakes her head. “I don’t follow.”
Adam sighs, fidgets in his seat. “I’ve been experimenting with a way to . . .” He glances uncomfortably at his lap but his words are interrupted by a sound. Someone climbing the stairs to the attic. His chin snaps toward the door behind him. “It’s her,” Adam whispers, as the footsteps grow closer. He and Halina lock eyes. Adam points at the light hanging over the sink. “The light!” he says. Halina looks at him quizzically. “The light by the sink, turn it off.” He unbuckles his belt.
“Why?” Halina asks, hurrying to the sink. There’s a knock on the door.
“Coming,” Adam calls.
Halina pulls a chain to extinguish the light. Adam’s hands are in his trousers, moving quickly.
“What in God’s name . . . ?” Halina breathes.
“Just trust me,” Adam whispers. The knocks grow louder. Adam stands and makes his way to the sink, buckling his belt. Halina nods and makes her way to the door.
“Are you there? Let me in!” The voice on the opposite side of the door is shrill, on the verge of hysteria. Adam gives Halina a thumbs-up. A moment later, Aleksandra barrels into the apartment, glaring at them.
“Hello, Aleksandra,” Halina offers, glancing at Adam, whose hands rest nonchalantly on the porcelain sink behind him.
Aleksandra ignores the greeting and crosses the room toward Adam, trailing a cloud of dissent. “I’ll make this brief,” she says, pausing an arm’s reach from him and narrowing her eyes to slits. “Someone has led me to believe that you’ve been lying to us. They claim that you are Jewish! And you know what?” she points a long finger at Adam, “I defended you—I told them your name, assured them you were good Christians like the rest of us—but now I’m not so sure.” A little white bead of saliva clings to her upper lip. “It’s true, isn’t it?” she barks. “You are Jews, aren’t you?”
Adam holds up his palms. “Please—”
“Please what? Please forgive you for putting our lives in danger? Don’t you know we could be arrested and hung by our necks for harboring Jews?”
Adam’s spine stiffens. “Whomever you spoke with is wrong,” he says, his voice cool. “And to be frank, I’m offended. There’s not a drop of Jewish blood in our family.”
“Why should I believe you?” Aleksandra snarls.
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I have a source.” Aleksandra wraps her fingers around her hip bones, her arms forming triangles at her torso. “You say you’re not a Jude. But you can’t prove it.”
Adam presses his lips together into a tight, thin line. “I don’t have to prove anything to you,” he says, willing the words to come slowly.
“You say that because you’re lying!” Aleksandra spits.
Adam holds her glare. “Fine. You need proof?” He reaches for his belt. Halina hasn’t moved from the door. Behind Aleksandra, she gasps, covers her mouth. As Adam wrestles with his buckle, Aleksandra makes a strange noise, like a hiccup. But before she can object, Adam, in a fit of fury, unzips his trousers, tucks his thumbs under his waistband, and in one motion pushes them, along with his underwear, down to his knees. Halina covers her eyes, unable to watch.
Aleksandra’s jaw drops. She freezes.
Adam lifts his shirt. “Is this enough proof for you?” he shouts as his pants fall into a heap around his ankles. He glances down, half expecting to see his camouflage gruesomely exposed. He’d attached the skin-toned bandage that morning with a solution of raw egg white and water, studying himself in the mirror. In the shadows, he hoped, it would pass as foreskin. The bandage, to his relief, has stayed put.
Halina squints through her fingers at the silhouette of her husband by the sink. In the shadows, she can just make out the shape of his genitals. She understands now why he’d asked her to extinguish the light over the sink.
“Good God almighty, enough!” Aleksandra finally huffs, turning her chin away in disgust. She slinks toward the door, looking as if she might be sick.
Halina exhales, dumbstruck that Adam’s plan had worked, and wondering how long he’d been walking around with a bandage adhered to his groin. She clears her throat and opens the door, an indication that it’s time for Aleksandra to leave.
“Calling us Jewish,” Adam mutters under his breath as he bends to pull his trousers back up over his thighs.
The landlord’s wife pats nervously at her blouse, the skin on her neck smeared with hot, red blotches. She avoids eye contact with Halina as she steps through the door to the stairs without a word. Halina locks the door behind her and waits for the footsteps to recede before turning to look at Adam. She shakes her head.
Adam lifts his palms to the ceiling, shrugging his shoulders toward his ears. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he says.
Halina covers her mouth. Adam glances at his feet and up again at her, and as their eyes meet, the corners of his mouth curl into a smile and Halina laughs silently into her palm. It takes her a moment to collect herself. Wiping tears from her eyes, she makes her way across the room. “You could have warned me,” she says, resting her forearms on Adam’s chest.
“I didn’t have time,” Adam whispers. He loops his arms around her waist.
“I wish I could have seen Aleksandra’s face,” Halina says. “She looked wretched on her way out.”
“Her jaw nearly touched the floor.”
“You’re a brave man, Adam,” Halina says softly.
“I’m a lucky man. I’m actually surprised the bandage stuck.”
“Thank God it did! You had me nervous.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Is it still—on?” Halina glances down at the space between them.
“I slipped it off as Aleksandra was leaving. It was driving me crazy. I’ve been wearing it for hours—I’m surprised you didn’t notice me walking strangely.”
Halina laughs again, shakes her head. “Did it hurt coming off? Is everything all right—down there?”
“I think so.”
Halina narrows her eyes. Her adrenaline has made her skin electric to the touch and Adam’s warmth against her is suddenly irresistible. “I’d better have a look,” she says, reaching for his belt, unfastening it. She kisses him, closing her eyes as his trousers fall once again into a pile at his ankles.
AUGUST 4, 1942: Late in the evening hours, Radom’s Glinice ghetto is cordoned off by police and lit with searchlights; 100–150 children and elderly are murdered on the spot; the following day approximately 10,000 others are sent by railway to the Treblinka extermination camp.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Jakob and Bella
AVL Factory, Radom, German-Occupied Poland ~ August 6, 1942