Gundula is close enough for Mila to smell her breath, when she stops, balls up her hands into fists, and exhales, exasperated. It sounds like a growl. “I told Carty,” she spits. “I told him you couldn’t be trusted. Just wait until he has you arrested, just wait!”
Mila backs up slowly, into the corridor. “Madame,” she says calmly, “you are overreacting. Perhaps a glass of water would help. I will fetch you one.” As she turns to make her way to the kitchen, Mila catches something alarming in her periphery—the shadow of an object moving rapidly overhead. She ducks, but it’s too late. The vase hits the back of her skull with the hollowed knock of two heavy objects colliding. At her feet, glass shatters.
Mila’s world goes dark for a moment. The pain is searing. With her eyes closed, she reaches for the doorway, grateful when her fingers find it, catching herself. When she opens her eyes, she touches the back of her head with her free hand; a lump has formed on the spot where the vase struck her. She glances at her fingers. Amazingly, there is no blood. Just pain. You should have run.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” Gundula is crying. “Are you all right? Ach mein Gott.”
Regaining her balance, Mila steps gingerly from the mound of the broken glass at her feet and makes her way down the hallway to a closet to retrieve a broom. When she returns, Gundula is standing in the place where she left her, shaking her head, her eyes wild, like those of a crazed woman.
“I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry,” she whimpers.
Mila doesn’t reply. Instead, she sweeps. Gundula lowers herself to sit in a dining chair, muttering to herself.
When her dustpan is full, Mila carries it to the kitchen, empties the glass into a trash receptacle under the sink, and returns the dustpan to the closet. Reaching for the two empty milk jars on the counter, she holds one in each hand and retraces her steps, trying desperately to ignore the throb radiating from the back of her head to her eye sockets, the voice inside pleading with her to get out, and to get out fast. “I’m going to the dairy,” she says, her voice calm, as she passes the doorway to the dining room. And as quietly as she’d come, she leaves, without any intention of returning.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Bella
Warsaw, German-Occupied Poland ~ January 1943
They are a mother and daughter, Bella realizes from behind the shop register as she studies the two German women perusing dresses. They have the same ivory skin and sharp curve to their jaws, the same way of carrying themselves, tilting their heads just so as they run their fingers along the dresses hanging in rows throughout the shop. Bella blinks away the tears filling her eyes.
“This one would look nice on you,” the girl says, holding a blue wool dress up to her mother’s torso. “The color is just right for you. It complements your eyes.”
Bella and Jakob have been in Warsaw for six months. They’d thought for a moment about staying in Radom, but Radom was a small town compared with Warsaw, and they feared they would be recognized. There was no work to be had, anyway. Both ghettos had been liquidated, and only a few young workers remained. And Bella’s parents, of course, were gone. They’d been deported with the others, as Ruben had warned, and it was no secret anymore—if you were sent to Treblinka, you didn’t come back.
And so, with no more guards manning the ghetto gates, Bella and Jakob had gathered up the few belongings that they could salvage from their empty flats, prayed that their IDs would serve them, and boarded a train to Warsaw, using all but a few of the zloty they’d stashed away for the fare.
At first, Bella had hoped that the change of scenery in Warsaw might help her shed some of her grief. But it seemed that everywhere she went, everywhere she looked, there were reminders. Three sisters, playing in the park. A father helping his little girl into a wagon. The mother-daughter pairs who frequented the shop where she worked. It was torture. For weeks, Bella couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t eat. Not that there was much to eat in the first place, but she found the thought of food repulsive and refused it. Her cheekbones grew more pronounced, and under her shirt, her ribs jutted from beneath her skin like a keyboard made up of only sharps and flats. It felt as if she were treading water with weights strapped to her wrists, as if at any moment she might drown. She was heartsick, and hated the way Jakob asked her, constantly, if she was all right, the way he was always trying to coax a bit of food into her mouth. “Come back to me, love,” he would plead. “You seem so far away.” But she couldn’t. The only time she felt a semblance of her old self was when they made love, but even then the feeling didn’t last. The touch of his skin against hers reminded her that she was alive—and the guilt that consumed her afterward was so powerful it made her sick.
Bella knew during those first few weeks in Warsaw that she couldn’t live much longer chin-deep in a sea of sorrow. She wanted, badly, to feel herself again. To be a better person, a better wife. To accept what had happened. To move on. But losing her sister, and then her parents—it was crippling. Their deaths gnawed at her in her waking hours, and haunted her in her sleep. Every night, she would see her sister being dragged into the woods, she would see her parents boarding the trains that would deliver them to their deaths. Every night she dreamed of ways she could have helped them.
In November she began pinning the waistline of her skirt to keep it from falling from her hips. It was then that she realized she was in trouble, that Jakob was right. She needed to eat. To take care of herself. She needed him. She wondered, though, if it were too late. They’d been living apart for months—Jakob had said they were safer, their forged IDs more believable that way—but Bella knew there was part of him that couldn’t stand by, futile, watching her deteriorate. How could she blame him? She’d been mourning so deeply she’d forgotten what it meant to love the man who, before her world came crashing down, was her everything. She vowed to try to pull herself together.
“We’ll take it,” the mother says, laying the dress over the counter.
Bella takes a deep breath, willing away her tears. “Of course,” she says. Her German is now perfect. “It’s a nice choice.” She musters a smile. Don’t let her see that you are upset. She hands the woman her change.
As the pair leaves, Bella closes her eyes, drained from the effort of keeping her composure. There will always be reminders, she thinks. There will be days that are not so bad, and others that are unbearable. What matters, she tells herself, is that even on the hardest days, when the grief is so heavy she can barely breathe, she must carry on. She must get up, get dressed, and go to work. She will take each day as it comes. She will keep moving.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Mila and Felicia
Warsaw, German-Occupied Poland ~ February 1943