The Girl from Krakow (30 page)

“Here, have the last piece of strudel.” Rita smiled, feeling confident she had finally found an ally, perhaps even a friend.

Two weeks and things had settled into a routine that was allowing Rita to sleep nights, gain a little weight, listen to radio concerts from Berlin, and chat with
Pani
Wilkova a few evenings a week. She was reluctant to move her two vast Darwin tomes to Świętego Jana Street. They weren’t subversive, just seriously incongruous with her cover. What would the daughter of an innkeeper from the eastern marches of Poland be doing with Darwin on her hands? So, she kept them in the case under the bed in the room she continued to rent. She had read them so many times, by now they had mainly sentimental value. She almost laughed out loud as the words flitted across her consciousness.

One morning in Rita’s third week at the Tax Inspectorate, returning from the farmers’ market, she found herself looking up the stairs from the street entrance into a dark face under a kerchief. The woman came down to the vestibule. Her clothes were dirty and torn, and her smell was rank. With the sun behind the open door shining on her, it began to dawn on Rita—first the realization that this was someone from Karpatyn, then from the Terakowski textile factory, and finally she knew. It was Dani, the girl whom Rita had listened to for months, reciting the Polish epic
Lord Tadeusz
. It was Dani, threadbare, with a haunted look in her eye, thinner even than when Rita last saw her, leaving the factory for the ghetto the day Rita had escaped. Then Rita remembered the electric warmth the brief moment her body had touched Dani’s the first day she had found her reading at the workbench.

Though Dani had detected recognition in Rita’s face, she still said nothing. She remained silent so long Rita began to fear that she had become a mute. Had her tongue been ripped from her mouth? Had she lost her hearing to a blow on the head?

Mute or not, there was no time to exchange a word. Rita began to mount the stairs, pulling Dani along. “Follow me and be quick.” She led her into the foyer, through the dining room, and into one of the unoccupied maids’ rooms. “Stay here. Not a sound. I will come back with some food as soon as I can. I need to start their midday meal.” Rita pointed down the hall. Closing the door firmly behind her, she tried to regain control of herself.

Going about her duties, Rita began to think through how to deal with Dani’s arrival. It had destroyed an equilibrium that Rita had carefully constructed. It had put her back in a danger she had managed to escape. The worst thing for Rita was to be associated with someone who looked Jewish, lacked papers, had no means of support, and might for all she knew produce Yiddish when she tried to speak German. And yet all these problems were defeated by the fact that it was Dani. It wasn’t just that suddenly Rita had someone to talk to, to share her experience with, someone who needed her help. It was Dani who had turned up, Dani whom Rita had not even realized she missed, Dani whose poetry had eased her misery on the shop floor in Karpatyn.

An hour later Rita came into the small room with a cup of sweet tea, some toast, and a bit of strawberry preserves. Dani was fast asleep and was awoken only reluctantly. But there might not be another chance to talk for several hours.

“It’s you, it’s you! You of all people!” She repeated the words as she woke the sleeping Dani with a hug—and was rewarded by a smile. These were not the words Rita had intended. What she had intended to say was more on the order of,
What the devil are you doing here? Why are you putting me at risk? Who told you to seek me out?
But all these questions her instinct for survival drove her to raise were beaten down by the overwhelming emotion of gladness. “Quickly, tell me how you found me, how you got here, what happened in Karpatyn?”

Dani sat up. “So
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
you got out in late October. The week after, they started the final clearance of the ghettos.” For a moment Rita thought Dani would break down, but she gathered her forces. “Once they had found as many of the old, the sick, the children as they could and herded them onto the cattle cars, they burned the second ghetto. That left only the large one for the few hundred workers that had been granted the new work permits.” She stopped for a minute, gathering her thoughts, organizing her narrative. Then she continued.

At the end of that week, Karpatyn was finally to be made completely
Judenrein
. The last workers were to be stopped at the ghetto gates and redirected for transportation to Belzec. The morning before, she had overheard two
Jupos
behind a latrine share the rumor from the Viennese
Schutzpolizei
. That evening, when everyone left the Terakowski Works, Dani hung back and hid herself on a pallet in the rafters, among the bats and sparrows that nested there when the lights were turned on. The next day vindicated the two
Jupos’
source: no one came to work; the factory floor was still. Dani remained in the rafters as long as she could. Then she climbed down and, scampering to the outhouse, found everything deserted—the factory yard, the loading dock, the machine shop. No workers at all, not even the few Poles. She decided there was nothing to do but try to hide in the factory at least till it reopened. Then she’d leave with the first shift of new workers.

Over the next few days, moving cautiously between the workbenches, through the canteen, among the storage sheds, even up to the office, Dani managed to uncover a few well-hidden crusts of bread, a dried salami end. Not enough to curb the pangs of hunger but enough to keep her alive. After five endless days, there was not another scrap to be found, and Dani was bloated from the tap water she was drinking to fill her stomach.

That fifth morning she watched from the rafters as the owner, Lydia Terakowski, led a man around the shop floor, pointing out the sewing machines, the cutting tables and the pressing irons, the conveyer belts on tracks above the tables, and the rest of the equipment. Dani would learn that Lydia could tell that things were slightly wrong, that they were not as they had been left—cabinets were open, drawers were unclasped, doors were ajar. She betrayed none of this to the man, with whom she spoke in German.

When the man was gone, she returned. “Who is that? Who is hiding here? Come out. You won’t be harmed or sent away.” Dani climbed down from the rafters in the roof and stood before her. “How long have you been here?” Lydia did not look friendly.

“Since the last day. How long has it been? I have lost track,” Dani admitted.

“Five days. Come with me.” Lydia led her across the yard and through the gate down to the house. Once in the kitchen, she put together some food and sat waiting as Dani wolfed it down. “Look, the last ghetto has been razed. There are no more Jews in Karpatyn, unless like you they have managed to hide. You have to get out.” Then, more to herself than to Dani, Lydia said, “But you’re a dead giveaway.”

“Why is the factory closed?” Dani asked.

“Without the ghetto manpower, it can’t operate. Now a German has come in and is forcing me to sell the works. The offer is outrageous. You’d think this was a Jewish business they were stealing.” Lydia stopped, realizing she’d been too candid. Before the war in Germany, the standard rate for a Jewish concern was one-fifth its market value, with the sale financed by an interest-free loan from the owner. This deal was going to be just as bad.

Lydia was now alone in the house. Her mother had gone back to Warsaw for the winter. Her only concern in hiding Dani was the irregular visits of German officers passing through, making courtesy calls before politely stealing greatcoats. The prospective buyer, representing one of the large textile mills in the Ruhr, came only by appointment. So Lydia was able to shelter Dani through December and into the winter.

The one thing Lydia could no longer do was provide papers. The local priest had ceased to be cooperative, hinting at pressure from the bishop. Forgers had left the area. Business dried up once the ghetto had been liquidated. Inquiries would almost certainly bring the Gestapo down on her head.

By late January the sale, such as it was, had been closed, and a date set for the removal of the factory to Germany. Railcars would be brought up the Terakowski siding and everything put aboard by a Wehrmacht engineering detachment conveniently lent for the occasion by the local
Befehlshaber
.

Then Lydia received the letter from the Reich Tax Inspectorate, Krakow. She actually found herself shaking as she opened it. Would she be audited by Nazis as well as stripped of her factory? From the relief of reading Rita’s letter, she felt a plan emerge. Once the machinery had been placed on the freight cars, Dani could hide among the large crates. When the train slowed at Lemberg, with any luck she could sneak off. In a bigger city, she might have a chance. There was, however, neither time nor money to acquire any papers for her. All Lydia was able to give her was Rita’s address in Krakow.

On an afternoon four days later, a little better fed and cleaned up as much as Lydia could manage, Dani jumped off the freight car as it slowed to enter the Lemberg marshaling yards behind the main railway station. She managed to wend her way through strings of boxcars and passenger carriages until she found herself at last walking down a road next to the tracks. Soon enough the road became a city street. It was there her luck ran out. Or so she thought. As she walked along, a Blue Policeman caught up with her. He grasped her shoulder and turned her around. “Papers.”

She looked blankly, then said, “None. I’m a farm girl from a small village. We never had any papers. I didn’t know I needed them.”

“Sorry, sister. You’re about as Jewish-looking a girl as I have ever seen. Come with me.” Despite Dani’s protestations, he led her off toward the town center. Dani tried everything, including some Hail Marys and as much of the catechism as she could remember. Then she began cursing him in a Polish that only a policeman could ever have heard from a woman. Nothing worked, and despite herself, Dani was reduced to sniveling. After a ten-minute walk, the policeman and Dani found themselves at a street corner waiting for a slow cart and horse to pass. The Blue Policeman looked behind him into a café, turned back to Dani, and said, “Wait here. I am going in for a beer.”

What to do? Escape? Remain? Follow him in and demand a drink? What would an ignorant farm girl do? Obvious: remain rooted to the spot she had been left at. Dani did so. An endless quarter of an hour later, the policeman came out. “Still here? Well, then you can go, my dear. No little Jewess would be foolish enough or stupid enough to wait.” He looked at a pocket watch. “Besides, I’m not on duty anymore.” He sauntered off.

Just then another man came out of the café. “Come along, my dear; perhaps I can help you.” He took Dani to the same police station the Blue Policeman had been heading for, sat her down at a desk, and asked her name. He mulled it over. “Danielle Cohen. That will never do.” He put a piece of paper in the typewriter before him. “It won’t be much help, but it may make a difference in a pinch somewhere.” He thought for a minute. “Let’s see. You’re not Cohen anymore. Do you like Nowiki?” Dani nodded. He pulled the paper from the typewriter and signed it. Then he took her to the station and bought her a ticket for Krakow.

“And here I am.”

“Can I see the letter you got in Lvov?”

“I have it here.” She reached down the front of her dress and pulled it out, unfolding it carefully.

Metropolitan Police

Central Office

Lemberg

This is to confirm that Danielle Nowiki came before me and filled out a report testifying to the theft of her documents. Replacement will be difficult as Stanislava Records office has been destroyed by fire.

Signed

Milkolaj Bilek

Inspector, Blue Polizei

There was a small blue dot under the ‘l’ in
Bilek
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

S
o, Dani Cohen was now Dani Nowiki. It was one more thing to remember. That afternoon Rita spirited her out of the Inspectorate Office and into her rented room with
Pani
Wilkova. But after a week, the landlady was not happy. Dani had not registered with the police, and she looked suspiciously Jewish even to Mrs. Wilkova’s unpracticed eye. Each day for a week, she drew a line in the sand, and each evening she relented for one more night. Something had to be done.

“Herr Lempke, there is so much work. So many people are coming through from Germany. I fear I am having difficulty keeping up with both the housekeeping and cleaning the offices. Might I be permitted to have a local woman come in daily and help?”

“Capital idea, Fräulein Trushenko.” Lempke called the secretary out of the office. “Halle, ring up the labor exchange. Post a job for an undermaid, Polish. We don’t need to pay for a German speaker. Fräulein Trushenko can deal with her.”

“Very good.”

That morning Rita came back from the farmers’ market. Poking her head into the office, she said to Halle, “I think I found a girl for us at the market. A bit coarse, but experienced, healthy, honest-looking. Would save us the trouble of going through the labor office. I told her to come at teatime.”

Halle agreed. “I’ll check with Herr Lempke.” A few minutes later, she came back into the kitchen. “Very well.”

There were three German tax inspectors at tea that afternoon—all middle-aged, highly respectable, and very correct—when the doorbell rang. Rita answered it and came back into the dining room trailing a woman who looked like a cross between a country girl and a woman of the streets. Her appearance and demeanor were scrutinized by those present. Anyone with a bit of Polish would have detected the heavy, even exaggerated, working-class accent.

That the woman was uneducated was clear even to non-Polish listeners. Though she was modestly dressed, this young woman also managed to convey an air of dishabille.

One of the guests wondered aloud what her previous experience might have been. The other pronounced her too slovenly for the situation. Herr Lempke was not so put off. “Can she work?”

Duly translated, they awaited her reply. After a few phrases from the woman of what sounded rather like invective, Rita said, “She says, excuse me,
Hell yes. She’s been doing it all her life
.”

“Looks a thief to me, as well as a bit louche,” observed one of the other two.

Halle now intervened, and Rita could have kissed her for it. “Fräulein Trushenko can watch her carefully. Let’s give her a week. If she doesn’t work out, we’ll go to the labor exchange.”

This proposal overlapped with a statement from the Polish woman, which Rita translated. “She says she has to know right away. She has something else lined up, and it won’t wait.” Dani went on, and Rita caught up. “She says she’s worked in lots of fancy places before, including for Catholic priests, even for Jews. Does windows, parquets, and ironing.” This was a slightly sore point with Lempke, as his shirts were not being laundered and pressed to the standard he was accustomed to.

“Very well; take her on trial, Fräulein Trushenko. You may dismiss her without recourse if she doesn’t work out. And tell her, this is a highly respectable house. See that she understands what that means.”

Rita turned to Dani. In plainest Polish she said, “There are to be no male visitors whatsoever, understood?”

Dani nodded.

They had not even asked her name.

There was a deep stillness in the suite of offices. The tax inspectors had all retired immediately after dinner, and Fräulein Halle had left as well. Rita sat down in the kitchen at her household accounts, deciding what she needed to market for in the coming days.

After dutifully cleaning Dani retired to the tiny maid’s room. The room’s small window overlooked a patch of grass between the building and another one. This building across the courtyard was entirely unlit against the night and obviously more offices of the
Generalgouvernement
. Next to the door, against the wall, there was a narrow bed, covered in a terrycloth spread that had lost all its color and acquired a layer of pilling. Beyond it a small side table supported a dispirited little lamp—transparent glass around a dimly glowing filament visible through a cracked parchment shade. This was the only light in the room. The walls were light blue but stained around the radiator below the window. Still, there was a radiator. And at the moment, it was making the small room pleasantly warm, a luxury only Germans could hope to experience in Poland. The wall opposite the bed was taken up with a raw wooden cupboard and a cold-water sink.

It took Dani literally a moment to unpack the meager belongings she had acquired during the week she had remained in Rita’s rented room. Responding to the room’s warmth, she took off the smock she had been wearing, unbuttoned her dress, hung them both up, and began contemplating the sink. Instead, wearing only her slip, she slid down onto the bed, leaning against the wall, lighting one of the German cigarettes she had swiped from a silver box in the dining room.

Dani looked up to see Rita now leaning on the doorjamb, a bottle of Moselle open in one hand, two small glasses in the other. “When was the last time you had a glass of wine?”

“In a previous life sometime in the last century.” Dani watched Rita drop onto the bed. As she too leaned against the wall, her added weight made the bed slip away from the wall. They found themselves both draped over its side, laughing, heads close together.

Rita took a long breath and put a hand on Dani’s forearm. “I should have been worried about the risks of hiding you. But I couldn’t care less about the risk.” She stopped. The words were not coming out right. “Let’s have some of this stuff.” She poured the amber-colored wine into the short tumblers, and they both drank them off to the bottom. Rita immediately refilled the glasses, somehow eager to substitute drinking for talk. She drank half the second glass and stood. Walking over to the window, Rita attempted to open it. It was painted shut, and she noticed the pull ropes on either side had been severed. There was no point trying to open it. “It’s so warm in here.”

“Well, take off your smock.”

Rita did so, and then her dress, hanging it carefully on a hook she noticed behind the door, which she then closed. As she stood in her slip, her form silhouetted by the dim lamplight behind her, Dani looked up at her appreciatively. “The female form is so much more interesting than the male.”

“Interesting?” Rita remained standing, but took up the theme. “I’d always rather look at a woman, wouldn’t you?”

Dani nodded as she patted the bed. “You’ll still look good sitting down next to me.” Rita complied, this time holding some of her weight off the wall. It was a posture difficult to maintain. Soon she found herself first leaning on Dani’s shoulder and then resting her head in Dani’s lap. Sipping the wine, Dani stroked Rita’s hair. Then she began pulling hairpins out so that the plaits fell away from her head. Once the pins were all piled next to Dani at the end of the bed, she dropped them on the floor. Now her hand moved down across Rita’s face and neck, finally resting on her chest. Dani’s forefinger and thumb discovered the nipple of Rita’s breast under the thin covering of the viscose slip. Unconsciously she began toying with it.

Rita’s first reaction was a stiffening of her spine as her body readied to repel this delicate assault. But instead, she fell back and began to enjoy it. After a moment she reached her left hand up and pulled the slip’s shoulder strap down her arm. The signal was unambiguous, and Dani reached her hand beneath the material onto the naked breast and the now erect nipple. When Rita could no longer bear to remain still, she rose slightly and pulled Dani’s face to hers, her tongue searching for Dani’s tongue. She had never done this with a woman. Yet she felt driven to it.

After a few minutes of this, Dani pulled away. “Now what do we do?”

Rita rose from the bed, pulling Dani up with her, thinking all the while about her night with Erich a year before. “I’ll show you.” She pushed the straps of Dani’s slip off her shoulders, letting it fall. Then very slowly she began tracing narrowing spirals over Dani’s chest until they culminated at her nipples. Dani was now weaving slightly back and forth in a rhythm that matched the motions of Rita’s fingers. Rita pushed her back so that Dani was leaning against the cupboard. Bending her knees, with two hands Rita rolled away Dani’s loose-fitting underpants, opening her legs, and began to stoke the insides of her thighs. Suddenly Rita was rhythmically squeezing the top of Dani’s labia together by the forefingers of each hand. Then a finger moved down, and from Dani came a shudder of desire. Rita pulled back, promising herself she would be as slow as Erich had been. But Dani was exigent. Soon her hands were pressing Rita’s head firmly against her mons, her body demanding almost to be bitten until she was overcome by the spasms of an orgasm.

Rita decided that for a first experience, this would be enough. Mutual pleasure could await another night.

Once Dani had fallen into a deep sleep, Rita crept off to the other maid’s room. The next morning a reticence reigned between them as they went about their duties.

Later that morning an air-raid warden came up the stairs to the office. “
Fräulein
, are you in charge here?” Rita nodded. “Well, there has been a complaint. Light at a back window last night, violation of blackout. Someone noticed and filed a complaint. See to it.” He raised his right hand.
“Heil Hitler.”
Rita replied as required, and he was gone.

What else had they seen last night? Had they broken a law? Might they be sent to a concentration camp, forced to wear the pink triangles? Surely a Peeping Tom would not have reported them. Rita said nothing, but added blackout curtain material to her shopping list.

That afternoon she came back with a valise and announced, “I’ve moved out of Mrs. Wilkova’s room. I’ll be here from now on.” Dani smiled, and nothing more was said.

Dani dared not go out much. A few forays to shops close by, some walks to the main square at night. Never alone, always with Rita. Just hanging laundry out to dry or beating the dust from a carpet in the back of the building seemed a risk. One morning as she hummed away, hanging sheets, a voice came down from the opposite side in Polish. “Quiet out there. No yodeling. This isn’t a Yid shtetl.” Was the complaint voicing a suspicion?