Lilac Girls (3 page)

“No one will see us here,” Paul said, pointing out a champagne on the list to M. Bernard.

“Tell that to Miss Evelyn Shimmerhorn over there in the back booth.”

“Are you ruined?” he said with a certain type of kindness seldom found in achingly beautiful men. Maybe the black shirt was a good choice for him after all.

“Evelyn won't talk. She's having a child, poorly timed, dear thing.”

“Children. They complicate everything, don't they? No place for that in an actor's life.”

Another selfish actor.

“How does your father earn your place in this solar system?”

Paul was asking a lot of questions for a new acquaintance.

“
Earned,
actually. He was in dry goods.”

“Where?”

M. Bernard slid a silver bucket with handles like gypsy's earrings onto the table, the emerald-green throat of the champagne bottle lounging against one side.

“Partnered with James Harper Poor.”

“Of Poor Brothers? Been to his house in East Hampton. He's not exactly poor. Do you visit France often?”

“Paris every year. Mother inherited an apartment…on rue Chauveau Lagarde.”

M. Bernard eased the cork from the champagne with a satisfying sound, more thud than pop. He tipped the golden liquid into my glass, and the bubbles rose to the rim, almost overflowed, then settled at the perfect level. An expert pour.

“My wife, Rena, has a little shop near there called Les Jolies Choses. Have you seen it?”

I sipped my champagne, the bubbles teasing my lips.

Paul slid her picture from his wallet. Rena was younger than I had imagined and wore her dark hair in a china doll haircut. She was smiling, eyes open wide, as if sharing some delicious little secret. Rena was precious and perhaps my complete opposite. I imagined Rena's to be the type of chic little place that helped women put themselves together in that famous French way—nothing too coordinated, with just the right amount of wrong.

“No, I don't know it,” I said. I handed the picture back. “She's lovely, though.”

I finished the champagne in my glass.

Paul shrugged. “Too young for me, of course, but—” He looked at the photo a few moments as if seeing it for the first time, head tilted to one side, before slipping it back into his wallet. “We don't see much of each other.”

I fluttered at the thought and then settled, weighted by the realization that even if Paul were available my forceful nature would root out and extinguish any spark of romance.

The radio in the kitchen blared scratchy Edith Piaf.

Paul lifted the bottle from the bucket and tipped more champagne into my glass. It effervesced, riotous bubbles tumbling over the glass's edge. I glanced at him. We both knew what that meant, of course. The tradition. Anyone who's spent any time at all in France knows it. Had he overpoured on purpose?

Without hesitation, Paul tapped his finger to the spilled champagne along the base of my glass, reached across to me, and dabbed the cool liquid behind my left ear. I almost jumped at his touch, then waited as he brushed my hair aside and touched behind my right ear, his finger lingering there a moment. He then anointed himself behind each ear, smiling.

Why did I suddenly feel warm all over?

“Does Rena ever visit?” I asked. I tried to rub a tea stain off my hand only to find it was an age spot. Delightful.

“Not yet. She has no interest in theater. Hasn't even come over here to see
The Streets of Paris
yet, but I don't know if I can stay. Hitler has everyone on edge back home.”

Somewhere in the kitchen, two men argued. Where was our escargot? Had they sent to Perpignan for the snails?

“At least France has the Maginot Line,” I said.

“The Maginot Line? Please. A concrete wall and some observation posts? That's only a gauntlet slap to Hitler.”

“It's fifteen miles wide.”

“Nothing will deter Hitler if he wants something,” Paul said.

There was a full-blown ruckus in the kitchen. No wonder our entrée had not arrived. The cook, mercurial artiste no doubt, was having a fit about something.

M. Bernard emerged from the kitchen. The portholed kitchen door swung closed behind him, flapped open and shut a few times, and then stood still. He walked to the center of the dining room. Had he been crying?

“
Excusez-moi,
ladies and gentlemen.”

Someone tapped a glass with a spoon, and the room quieted.

“I have just heard from a reliable source…” M. Bernard took a breath, his chest expanding like leather fireplace bellows. “We have it on good authority that…”

He paused, overcome for a moment, then went on.

“Adolf Hitler has invaded Poland.”

“My God,” Paul said.

We stared at each other as the room erupted with excited exchanges, a racket of speculation and dread. The reporter from the gala stood, tossed some crumpled dollars on the table, grabbed his fedora, and bounded out.

In the hubbub that followed his announcement, M. Bernard's final words were almost lost.

“May God help us all.”

I
t really was Pietrik Bakoski's idea to go up to the bluff at Deer Meadow to see the refugees. Just want to set straight the record. Matka never did believe me about that.

Hitler had declared war on Poland on September 1, but his soldiers took their time getting to Lublin. I was glad, for I didn't want anything to change. Lublin was perfect as it was. We heard radio addresses from Berlin about new rules, and some bombs fell on the outskirts of town, but nothing else. The Germans concentrated on Warsaw, and as troops closed in there, refugees by the thousands fled down to us in Lublin. Families came in droves, traveling southeast one hundred miles, and slept in the potato fields below town.

Before the war, nothing exciting ever happened in Lublin, so we appreciated a good sunrise, sometimes more than a picture at the cinema. We'd reached the summit overlooking the meadow on the morning of September 8 just before dawn and could make out thousands of people below us in the fields, dreaming in the dark. I lay between my two best friends, Nadia Watroba and Pietrik Bakoski, watching it all from a flattened bowl of straw, still warm where a mother deer had slept with her fawns. The deer were gone by then—early risers. This they had in common with Hitler.

As dawn suddenly breached the horizon, the breath caught in my throat, the kind of gasp that can surprise you when you see something so beautiful it hurts, such as a baby anything or fresh cream running over oatmeal or Pietrik Bakoski's profile in dawn's first light. His profile, 98 percent perfect, was especially nice drenched in dawn, like something off a ten-
zlotych
coin. At that moment, Pietrik looked the way all boys do upon waking, before they've washed up: his hair, the color of fresh butter, matted on the side where he'd slept.

Nadia's profile was also almost perfect, as was to be expected of a girl with her delicate features. The only thing holding her back from 100 percent was the purple bruise on her forehead, a souvenir from the incident at school, less of a goose egg now, but still there. She was wearing the cashmere sweater she let me pet whenever I wished, the color of unripe cantaloupe.

It was hard to understand how such a sad situation could lead to the prettiest scene. The refugees had fashioned a most elaborate tent city out of bed linens and blankets. As the sun rose, like an x-ray it allowed us to see through the flowered sheets of one tent to the shadows of people inside, dressing to meet the day.

A mother in city clothes flapped open her sheet door and crept out, holding the hand of a child dressed in pajamas and felt boots. They poked the ground with sticks, digging for potatoes.

Lublin rose beyond them in the distance, like a fairy-tale city, scattered with old red-roofed pastel buildings as if a giant had shaken them in a cup and tossed them on the rolling hills. Farther west was where our little airport and a complex of factories once sat, but the Nazis had already bombed that. It was the first thing they hit, but at least no Germans had marched into town yet.

“Do you think the British will help us?” Nadia said. “The French?”

Pietrik scanned the horizon. “Maybe.” He ripped grass from the ground and flung it in the air. “Good day for flying. They better hurry.”

A string of spotted cows sashayed down the hill toward the tents to graze, bells tanging, led by kerchiefed milk women. One cow lifted her tail and scattered a troop of lumps behind her, which those following stepped around. Each woman carried a tall silver milk can against one shoulder.

I squinted to find our school, St. Monica's Catholic School for Girls, a tangerine flag swaying from its bell tower. It was a place with floors so polished we wore satin slippers inside. A place of rigorous lessons, daily mass, and strict teachers. Not that any of them had helped Nadia when she needed it most, except for Mrs. Mikelsky, our favorite math teacher, of course.

“Look,” Nadia said. “The women are coming with the cows but no sheep. The sheep are always out by now.”

Nadia noticed things. Though only two months older than me—already seventeen—she seemed more mature somehow. Pietrik looked past me at Nadia as if seeing her for the first time. All the boys liked her, with her perfect cartwheel, flawless Maureen O'Sullivan complexion, and thick blond braid. Maybe I was not as beautiful and a miserable athlete, but I was once voted Best Legs
and
Best Dancer in my
gimnazjum
class in an informal poll, a first, at our school anyway.

“You notice everything, Nadia,” Pietrik said.

Nadia smiled at him. “Not really. Maybe we should go down there and help dig potatoes? You're good with a shovel, Pietrik.”

She was flirting with him? A direct violation of my number-one rule:
Girlfriends first!
Pietrik pulled
my
wreath from the river on Midsummer Eve, gave me a silver cross necklace. Did traditions mean nothing anymore?

Maybe Pietrik was falling for her? It made sense. Earlier that month the Girl Guides had been selling dances with local boys for charity, and Pietrik's little sister Luiza told me Nadia bought
all ten
of Pietrik's dances. Then there was that awful dustup outside the school gates. Nadia and I were leaving school when street boys started throwing rocks at Nadia and calling her names because her grandfather was Jewish. Pietrik had been so quick to rescue her.

People throwing rocks at Jews was not something unusual to see, but it was unusual for it to happen to Nadia. I'd never known she was part Jewish before that. We attended Catholic school, and she'd memorized more prayers than I had. But everyone knew once our German teacher, Herr Speck, made us chart our ancestors and told the whole class.

I'd tried to pull Nadia away that day as the boys hurled rocks, but she'd stood firm. Mrs. Mikelsky, pregnant with her first child, had rushed out, wrapped her arms around Nadia, and shouted at the bullies to stop or she'd call the police. Mrs. Mikelsky was every girl's favorite teacher, our North Star, since we all wanted to be like her, beautiful and smart and funny. She defended her girls like a mother lion and gave us
krowki,
toffee candies, for perfect math tests, which I never failed to get.

Pietrik, who'd come to walk us home, chased the street boys away waving a shovel in the air but ended up with a little chip off his front tooth, which in no way damaged his smile and in fact only made it sweeter.

I was startled from my daydream by a peculiar sound, like the buzz of crickets all around us. It grew louder until the vibration soaked the ground beneath us.

Planes!

They zoomed over us, flying so low they turned the grass inside out, light bouncing off their silver bellies. Three abreast, they banked right, leaving an oily smell in their wake, and headed for the city, their gray shadows gliding across the fields below. I counted twelve altogether.

“They look like the planes from
King Kong,
” I said.

“Those were
biplanes,
Kasia,” Pietrik said. “Curtiss Helldivers
.
These are
German
dive bombers.”

“Maybe they're Polish.”

“They're not Polish. You can tell by the white crosses under the wings.”

“Do they have bombs?” Nadia asked, more intrigued than afraid. She was never afraid.

“They already got the airport,” Pietrik said. “What else can they bomb? We have no ammunition depot.”

The planes circled the city and then flew west, one behind the other. The first dove with a terrible screech and dropped a bomb in the middle of town, right where Krakowskie Przedmie
ś
cie, our main street, wound by the town's finest buildings.

Pietrik stood. “Jezu Chryste, no!”

A great thud shook the ground, and black and gray plumes rose from where the bomb had fallen. The planes circled the city again and this time dropped their bombs near Crown Court, our town hall. My sister Zuzanna, a brand-new doctor, volunteered at the clinic there some days. What about my mother? Please, God, take me directly to heaven if anything happens to my mother, I thought. Was Papa at the postal center?

The planes carouseled around the city and then flew toward us. We dove to the grass as they passed over us again, Pietrik on top of Nadia and me, so close I felt his heart beating through his shirt against my back.

Two planes circled back as if they'd forgotten something.

“We need to—” Pietrik began, but before we could move, both planes dove and flew closer to the ground, across the field below. In an instant, we heard their guns firing. They shot at the milk women. Some of the bullets hit the field and sent puffs of dust up, but others hit the women, sending them to the ground, their milk spilling onto the grass. A cow cried out as she fell, and the pup-pup-pup of bullets punched through the metal milk cans.

The refugees in the fields dropped their potatoes and scattered, but bullets found some as they ran. I ducked as the last two planes flew back over us, leaving the field below strewn with bodies of men and women and cows. The cows that could still run bucked about as if half-mad.

I tore down the hill, Nadia and Pietrik behind me, through the forest along pine-needled paths, toward home. Were my parents hurt? Zuzanna? With only two ambulances, she'd be at work all night.

We slowed at the potato field, for it was impossible not to stare. I walked a milk can's length away from a woman Zuzanna's age, potatoes scattered around her. She lay on her back across hoed rows of dirt, left hand across her chest, shoulder steeped in blood, face splattered with it too. A girl knelt next to her.

“Sister,” the girl said, taking her hand, “you need to get up.”

“Compress the wound with two hands,” I told her, but she just looked at me.

A woman wearing a chenille robe came and knelt near them. She pulled a length of amber rubber from her black doctor's bag.

Nadia pulled me away. “Come. The planes might come back.”

In the city, people were running everywhere, crying and yelling to one another, evacuating by bicycle, horse, truck, cart, and on foot.

As we neared my street, Pietrik took Nadia's hand. “You're almost home, Kasia. I'll take Nadia.”

“What about me?” I called after them, but they were already off, down the cobblestones toward Nadia's mother's apartment.

Pietrik had made his choice.

I headed for the tunnel, which ran under the ancient Cracow Gate, a soaring brick tower with a bell-shaped spire, my favorite Lublin landmark, once the only entrance to the whole city. The bombs had cracked the tower down the side, but it was still standing.

My math teacher, Mrs. Mikelsky, and her husband, who lived close to me, cycled past, headed in the opposite direction. A very pregnant Mrs. Mikelsky turned as she rode.

“Your mother is frantic looking for you, Kasia,” she said.

“Where are you going?” I called after them.

“To my sister's,” Mr. Mikelsky shouted back.

“Get home to your mother!” Mrs. Mikelsky shouted over her shoulder.

They cycled on, disappeared into the crowd, and I continued toward home.

Please, God, let
Matka
be unhurt.

Once I arrived at our block, every cell in my body tingled with relief to see that our pink sliver of a building still stood. The house across the street had not been so lucky. It was razed to rubble, now just a mess of concrete, plaster walls, and twisted iron beds strewn across our road. I scrambled over the wreckage and, as I drew closer, saw one of Matka's curtains blow gently out the window in the breeze. That's when I realized every one of our windows had been blown out by the bombs, blackout paper and all.

There was no need to fetch the apartment key from behind the loose brick, for the door was wide open. I found Matka and Zuzanna in the kitchen near Matka's drawing table, gathering fallen paintbrushes scattered about the floor, the smell of spilled turpentine in the air. Psina, our pet chicken, followed behind them. Thank heavens Psina was not hurt, for she was more like our family dog than a hen.