Lilac Girls (37 page)

“Let us start over here,” Karolina said.

She carried a basin of water and a stack of towels straight toward a particularly damaged row of soldiers. The facial injuries were the hardest to deal with. They'd taken the mirrors in the lavatories down for a reason. I forced myself to look. How could I be a nurse if I couldn't deal with such things? Suddenly I could not recall even basic Red Cross training. Karolina stood at the cot of one of the worst, a dark-haired man who slept curled on his side. The blood that had seeped through the gauze wrapped around his head had dried black.

“First, introduce yourself to the patient,” Karolina said, indicating the man on the cot. “We can skip this step, for the patient is unresponsive.”

It would not be exaggeration to say I idolized Karolina. She was everything a good nurse should be. Smart. Levelheaded in the face of gruesome injury. Pleasant. I would have to work on
all
these things.

“Ordinarily we would pull the curtain for patient privacy,” Karolina said, “but we will go right to the washcloths and rubber gloves.”

I pushed my hands into the gloves, smooth and powdery inside, the smell of the rubber somehow hopeful. Karolina folded a washcloth over my gloved hand like a mitt.

“Begin the bath with the face, no soap used there. Eyes first.”

I sat on a chair next to the patient and started with the eyes, reaching the cloth into the deep sockets and moving outward. Could he even feel it?

The soldier next to him lay on his back, arms splayed, snoring louder than any person I'd heard snore before, and there had been many candidates at Ravensbrück.

“Try to use a different part of the washcloth for every stroke,” Karolina said. “You are a natural, Kasia.” Her words made me puff up with pride. My mother had been a nurse after all. Maybe it was in the blood?

There was something satisfying about washing the survivors, revealing clean swaths of pink skin under all that grime, the dirt drifting to the bottom of the bowl. When I finished, the water in the bowl was dark brown so I replaced it with clean water at the tap.

When I returned, medics came with two more Russian soldiers and placed them near us, one with a skull fracture, the other unresponsive. I started a fresh bed bath on one. These men had not washed in months. I knew how that felt.

“You're good at this, Kasia,” Karolina said. “You really should think about coming with us to Warsaw. We could use the help.”

I wiped the washcloth down the soldier's forehead and across one cheek.

Why not go to Warsaw?
Papa might miss me, but his ladylove Marthe wouldn't care.

“The training is first-rate,” Karolina said.

“Maybe,” I said. I was ready for a new adventure. Warsaw would be a fresh start. And I was good at this.

I moved on to the next patient and began with the face. I was making good time. Soon, I would be done with the whole row.

I ran the washcloth across the bridge of the nose to uncover fresh pink skin, and…

I froze, midwipe.

“What is it, Kasia?” Karolina asked.

My mind registered it all, but my body was stuck. I breathed deeply through my nose and grabbed the stretcher handle for support. It would not look good to have a nurse in training faint right there in the ward.

I
t couldn't possibly be him. Pietrik. How many times had my mind played such tricks?
The tooth.
I pulled his upper lip up with my thumb.

“What are you doing, Kasia?” Karolina set her basin on the floor and walked over to me.

My God,
yes.
The chipped tooth, just a little off the side. That gorgeous tooth. I sat for a few moments waiting for my body to catch up with my brain. Yes, it was he. I kissed him all over his face, dirt and everything. He stayed unconscious through it all.

“Kasia,” Karolina said, eyes wide.

I called to the other nurses, waving—I must have looked like a castaway on a desert island—unable to get the words out. The nurses ran over, and Karolina told them I was having a mental breakdown of some sort, kissing and crying over a Russian soldier.

“It's him, it's him,” was all I could say.

“
Who,
Kasia?” Karolina asked. “Who is it? Calm down, now.”

“It's Pietrik,” I said.

“Your Pietrik? Are you sure?”

I could only nod yes, and the girls hugged and kissed me.

They helped me change Pietrik out of his dirty uniform and finish his bed bath. He remained unconscious, and I sat with him holding his hand, reveling in my good fortune. I asked the nurses to go and get Zuzanna while I stayed with Pietrik, afraid he would disappear.

Through a translator, we learned the Russian man in the next cot had fought alongside Pietrik. Once the Russians liberated Majdanek concentration camp, the Red Army had pressed Pietrik into service. He said Pietrik had been at Majdanek since he'd been arrested and had worked with the rest of the slave laborers there to finish building the camp.

Zuzanna and Papa helped me move Pietrik home to my bedroom that evening. He had lost much of his body fat, but Zuzanna examined him and said it was possible he would recover. She had seen a lot of head trauma. Many times, once the swelling subsided, the patient regained normal brain function.

I
T WAS WEEKS BEFORE
Pietrik opened his eyes and even longer before he spoke, but I was grateful for every small step. I carried a matchbox in which to place a piece of sausage or a bit of ham for him whenever I had a chance, and in time he grew stronger. Zuzanna and I celebrated his first words, “Turn up the radio, please,” with our own private party while Pietrik watched from his bed with the trace of a smile on his lips. He was like a bird I'd seen once knocked unconscious after flying headfirst into our kitchen window. He came to be himself slowly. And then suddenly one day he was up and walking again.

We didn't press for details of his years at Majdanek, and he didn't volunteer them. We each carried our own bag of troubles.

Once he could walk, Pietrik made up for lost time and was hired to be the caretaker for the glassworks factory, which the owner reopened. As his body filled out, he also took a job driving ambulances for the Lublin Ambulance Corps. But for all his physical improvements, it was as if Pietrik had a piece missing. The kissing piece mostly. He sank all effort into his work, avoiding any chance of romance with me. I devised excuses for this: He was too tired. Too sad. Too happy.

O
NE MORNING
I
WOKE
to the rumble of thunder, thinking I was back at Ravensbrück, the bombs thudding in the distance. I relaxed once I saw the drops on my bedroom window, though—once I remembered I was to ride alongside Pietrik in the ambulance that day. As a nurse in training, I got to sit up front with the driver. Since he avoided being alone with me then, barely even
touched
me, it was nice to be so close to him all morning with nothing but the stick shift between us. The rain would keep him in the ambulance cab, windows up, all to myself.

I arranged myself there in the front seat of the ambulance, feeling smart in my white nurse-in-training uniform and cap. Maybe he would kiss me. Could I kiss him first? That was terribly forward of course, but what did I know about such things? I'd been locked away for some of my teen years, the time you learn the rituals of romance.

Did Pietrik even still find me attractive? The white stockings we all wore did little to camouflage my bad leg. Every so often people would stop and stare, openmouthed, a “what happened to
you”
look on their faces. Did he find me grotesque? What if I told him what Luiza had said? That he loved me? But I could never betray her dying wish.

“Such traffic,” he said, downshifting. “Where is everyone getting gas in this town? We'll take the long way to the hospital.”

Since he'd come home, Pietrik got impatient and angry at the smallest thing. Snarled traffic. A mispronounced word. A sprinkle of rain.

“There's no rush,” I said. “Just delivering stretchers.”

The rain was coming down harder now, the windshield wipers fighting a losing battle. A gully washer, Matka would have called it. Matka
.

We turned down Nadia's street.

“We are going to drive by her house,” I said.

“I know, Kasia. I can see.”

“You never told me what ‘Zegota' meant. On the envelope I picked up.”

“The Council to Aid Jews. Nadia's mother knew one of the founders.”

“Where did you hide them?”

“I'd rather not—”

“You can't avoid talking about it forever.”

He downshifted and busied himself with driving, his gaze directed at the road.

“They lived in different safe apartments,” he said eventually. “Until they weren't safe anymore. Z's basement for a time. Once we were arrested…”

Traffic slowed as we drove closer to Nadia's old apartment, the orange door shiny with rain.

I saw it first: the black heap of wet fur on the doorstep.

“Stop, Pietrik. It's Felka.”

“Again?” Pietrik said.

He pulled the emergency brake, turned on the flashing lights atop the vehicle, and jumped out. I scrambled out too, as best I could from the high ambulance cab, and got to the top of the stairs. There was Felka curled on the doormat, drenched with rain, but looking only a bit sheepish.

The new residents were the Riskas, a nice teacher and his wife, who had been bombed out in Warsaw. Mrs. Riska was a cousin of Mrs. Bakoski's, and they'd moved to Lublin, lured by the new government's offer of free housing. The government had to make this offer since many Polish people were wary of the new government and stayed away, worried that Poland might not end up as free and independent as Stalin claimed. Even with free houses offered, so many still stayed in London or other places, waiting to see.

The Riskas were understanding about Felka showing up on their stoop so often and called us whenever they found her there. Papa tried everything to keep her home. Locked her in the house. Tied her up. But she still managed to escape. We all knew who she was waiting for.

Cars started lining up, blocked behind the ambulance, as we tried to lure her back to the dry cab.

“Come, girl,” said Pietrik, sweet as could be, but Felka wouldn't budge. “You take her front. I'll take the rear,” he said.

We carried Felka back to the street. Once the drivers in the cars saw the ambulance was stopped for a canine and not a human needing care, the horns started honking.

We managed to get her into the cab of the ambulance and lay her between us, and I wrapped a terry cloth towel around her. As Pietrik pulled away from the house, Felka shivered and shook, sending water flying about the cab and onto our faces. I brushed a smear of dirt off the front of my uniform. So much for the kiss.

“Nadia could still be out there somewhere,” I said.

“Dry behind Felka's ears. She likes that.”

I brushed the towel over the dog's head and under her grizzled muzzle.

“DPs are still coming home.”

“Don't call her a displaced person, Kasia. Tell the truth. She was murdered by the Nazis and is gone. Just like the rest.”

“At least your mother gets a memorial service tomorrow.”

“It's not just hers, Kasia. It's for two hundred people, and it's going to be a circus. Please don't go.”

“Papa said there will be NKVD agents there.”

“What will they do to me? Kill me? As long as it's quick, I'll welcome it.”

“They are looking for AK members. Any high-ranking member of the underground—”

“I was a Red Army
soldier,
Kasia—”

“Against your will…”

“So that gets me a pass for now.”

“Papa said—”

“Enough ‘
Papa said,
' Kasia. Don't you think for yourself anymore?”

I rubbed Felka's belly with the towel, and she turned over onto her back, legs in the air.

“Maybe I shouldn't have done your couriering for you,” I said.

“Don't you think I live with that every day? Not only my sister, who was barely out of braces, but your mother, who was dear to me too, Kasia, dead. And what they did to
you
? And here I am, healthy and fine. What kind of a man am I? Sometimes I think, if I didn't have you…”

He turned and looked at me.

“…I wouldn't want to be here.”

I searched his face. Had he really said that? He fixed his gaze back on the road, but I'd heard it.
If I didn't have you.

I reached for his hand, resting on the seat.

“Don't say that, Pietrik. It's a mortal sin, and—”

He pulled his hand away.

“Never mind,” he said, two hands back on the wheel. He drove on, lost in thought. “Forget I said it.”

It was good to see a bit of Pietrik's old self. But like the sun coming out on a cloudy day, it disappeared just as fast as it had emerged.

I
DIDN'T HONOR
P
IETRIK'S
request not to go to the memorial service at Lublin Castle. It was held to honor the lives of the forced laborers murdered there by the Nazis before they withdrew, including Pietrik's mother. I had loved Mrs. Bakoski and needed to mourn with the others. All of Lublin would be there. And besides, I knew many of the families with mothers, sisters, and husbands who'd died that day. Everyone knew someone impacted by that mass murder.

I started the day in the castle chapel, once Matka's favorite place, kneeling high above the gathering crowds below. The chapel had become my special place to steal away to as well. To pray and talk with my mother and stay warm. The beautiful Byzantine frescoes had not yet been completely uncovered then, but I could see bits of them along the high ceilings between the Gothic arches. I prayed for my usual list: Papa. Zuzanna. Pietrik. For the souls of the dead and missing. Nadia. Matka.

From the chapel window I considered the gathering crowd below, scattered down the grassy slope outside the great wall of the castle. People had come from all over Poland to pay respects. The church choir sang as people, old and young, clustered there in groups, jockeying for the choicest front spots with the best views of the service. Collections of black-frocked priests. A gaggle of Dominican nuns, their white headpieces like giant swans. Lublin families. Papa and Marthe in there somewhere. Zuzanna would be listening to it all from an open window at the hospital.

I descended the spiral staircase slowly, for my bad leg and slippery stone stairs were a scary combination, and emerged out in the stone courtyard where we'd all once been rounded up to be transported to Ravensbrück. Had I been standing there with Matka
,
Luiza, and Zuzanna just five years before?

I made my way down the grassy slope and pushed through the crowd. Though it had been a warm fall, it was cold that day. People in the crowd carried bouquets. Mostly globeflowers, scarlet corn poppies, and other wildflowers. I held some fall daisies I'd found growing in an empty lot. I'd wrapped them in a wet dishrag, and the cold water burned my hand even through the glove I wore.