The Things We Cherished (14 page)

My wife. Charlotte checked to make sure she had heard him correctly. The man had to be fifty years her senior. “Are you from Wadowice?” she asked in Polish, wondering if he had perhaps known the Dykmans family.

He shook his head. “No, I’m from Przemyśl.” Charlotte nodded, recalling the small city on the Ukrainian border. “My wife and children were taken to Auschwitz, so after the war I came here looking for them. I never found them but I stayed.”

“Are you Jewish?” She hoped he wouldn’t mind the question.

“No, Catholic, but that didn’t seem to matter when the Nazis cleared our town. Anyway, sometime later I met Jola.” He patted the hand of the woman next to him.

Much later, Charlotte hoped. Jola would not even have been born when the war ended. “And we have a son, Pawel,” Jola added in accented English. “He’s ten.”

Charlotte stared at the elderly man. It was hard to believe he
had a child so young. Well good for him, she thought, taking in his proud smile. Everyone deserved a second chance.

Jack’s leg met hers again, and this time it stayed. It’s the crowded table, she told herself, making it hard to keep a distance. Heat rose within her and she struggled to focus on the conversation. We should leave. She was more eager than ever now to escape the too-warm room. But she knew it was impossible. It would be easier to climb out of a quicksand pit wearing heavy Wellingtons than to flee the hospitality of their well-intentioned host.

“So you are visiting the Dykmanses’ house?” a man to her right asked in Polish.

“Yes.” She waited for him to press her for the reason but he did not. People in this part of the world, still scarred from the decades of Communism when one kept one’s head down to avoid trouble, tended to ask less of strangers and mind their own business.

She wondered then if it bothered these people that Roger, now a foreigner, was reclaiming such a big house in the midst of their town. “It’s lovely really,” a woman seated across the table said, seeming to read her thoughts. “For Pan Dykmans to come back and spend so much time and money restoring the place. It was an eyesore for so many years.”

The man to Charlotte’s right made a strange guttural sound, somewhere between a cough and a snort, signaling something other than approval. “Like the Jews,” he mumbled.

Charlotte’s cheeks flushed. Poles were supposedly past the war. Some even professed a newfound interest in Jewish life and culture, at least in the big cities. But here in the provinces when the alcohol flowed and they thought they were among their own, the anti-Semitism that had lain dormant in the intervening years flared up. She wanted to tell the man that the Jews had only been permitted to reclaim the properties that were not occupied, and
those were mostly the synagogues and cemeteries and community centers no one wanted. But Jack put his foot on hers beneath the table, willing her to be silent. He was right, she realized, biting her tongue. Why waste her breath when nothing was going to change the entrenched views here?

Jack’s hand brushed against her leg, rested. She inhaled sharply. Was he hitting on her? Highly improbable, she concluded. It must be the vodka. She considered pulling away, then decided against it.

“The Dykmanses were good people,” Jola said. “At least that’s what my mother said.”

“Really?”

“Yes. My grandmother and Pani Dykmans, Hans and Roger’s mother, were close.” Jola paused, glancing self-consciously from side to side, as if aware for the first time of all the eyes upon her. “Well, everyone knows about Hans, the work he did during the war. But Roger, he was another story.” Charlotte cringed, wondering if maybe the information was something she didn’t need to hear about her client. “Roger was a good friend of my mother’s older cousin. He was a kind man, according to her. Just very quiet.”

“A loner?” Jack suggested.

But the woman shook her head. “Not necessarily. I mean, he kept to himself—especially after he met Magda.”

Charlotte and Jack exchanged glances. “Magda?” She repeated, feigning surprise.

Jola looked around the table again, as if afraid to say too much. “Magda was a beautiful young woman. They met when Roger was a student at the university in Warsaw, I think.” Wroclaw, Charlotte corrected silently. “Roger only had eyes for her. That was a very well-kept secret, though he confided in my cousin once when he was home from university. You see, Magda was married.”

Charlotte looked down the table at the caretaker, Beata. Had she set up the meeting with Jola purposely? Perhaps knowing they were trying to find evidence of Roger’s innocence, she had arranged for them to meet the one person who might be able to help. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it, she decided, watching Beata’s simple face, now gone slack from the vodka.

“What happened to Magda?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know. Taken to the camps, I would guess, along with the other Jews.”

Charlotte’s breath caught. Surely Roger could not have been in love with a Jewish woman and yet conspired with the Nazis to have all of those children killed. This bit of information, more than anything else that she and Jack had learned so far, seemed to speak to their client’s innocence.

Suddenly Charlotte grew very warm and nausea rose up within her. “Need … air …” she managed, pushing back from the table and rushing to the door. Outside, the cool night air rushed against her face and she gulped it in greedily, fighting the urge to vomit.

A moment later, Jack was at her side. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, too embarrassed to speak. What had come over her? Was it the alcohol or Jola’s story, or something else entirely? “Fine,” she said at last. “I thought I might be sick. I think it was the shots of vodka on an empty stomach.”

“Heady stuff, especially on top of jet lag,” he agreed. “It was a good exit strategy, anyway. You must be exhausted. Which brings us to an important point: Where are we going to stay tonight?”

“I thought you said you reserved us a couple of rooms in Katowice.”

“I did, but it’s after eleven, and I don’t think we’re going to get a cab at this hour.”

She resisted the urge to rebuke him for his lack of planning. “We could see if someone could give us a ride …” But she did not
finish the thought. If they went back inside they would be cajoled into staying for more vodka, the party likely lasting well into the night. And there was no one in that gathering who was in any shape to drive them anyway.

“What about there?” Jack suggested, pointing toward the Dykmanses’ house.

She paused, looking up at him. “Are you seriously suggesting that we stay here?”

“The house is empty,” he retorted, annoyed by the challenge. “Do you have a better idea?”

In point of fact, she did not. “I’m assuming it’s locked.”

“Let’s go see.” They walked back and pushed against the solid oak door, which did not move. Polish houses were not like the quickly assembled particleboard dwellings back home. They were made with granite and stone, built with painstaking care over many years and passed down. It was not uncommon for three or four generations to live under one roof.

Jack disappeared around the side of the house. Charlotte followed and found him working at the edge of a large window. “What are you doing?” He pulled harder and for a moment she was afraid that the glass might break, but he tugged again with a grunt and the window slid open. With great effort, he climbed over the ledge, hoisting one leg, then the other.

“But—” she started, surprised. She had not imagined breaking and entering to be part of his skill set.

Charlotte expected him to reach back and offer a hand to help her over, but he disappeared into the darkness. She waited outside alone for several seconds, hearing the laughter spill forth from the caretaker’s cottage, certain that they would be caught at any moment. But then Jack appeared around the side of the house, gesturing toward the now-open back door.

Inside, the darkened house was eerie and still. A chill ran up Charlotte’s spine, and she fought the urge to feel for a light switch, not wanting to attract attention from the outside.

“I don’t feel right staying in their beds,” she whispered.

“Too risky,” he agreed. “Let’s go to the attic. I saw a mattress there.”

As they climbed the ladder, Charlotte wondered how they would find their way around the cluttered attic in the dark. But moonlight shone brightly through the lone window, illuminating the boxes in pale gray. Jack moved around the now-familiar space with ease, pulling out a mattress from against one of the walls and clearing some of the boxes to one side to make a space for it.

“Not exactly the Ritz,” he commented, unbuttoning his shirt as he sank to the mattress.

And awkward, she thought, to say the least. She took off her shoes and sat down. As she lay on her back, she tried to maintain a few inches of distance between them. The room began to wobble slightly from the vodka and she placed one foot on the floor beside the mattress so that it wouldn’t spin.

He turned toward her. “Is it hard for you, being here and working on the case?”

“Because I’m Jewish, you mean?” She stared up toward the ceiling. “It used to be. The first time I came to Poland in the early nineties, everything was so gray and old. It looked like something right out of the war. And the signs of the past were everywhere—the police sirens, the concentration camp site I had to pass on my way to the archives. It was hard not to see life as a graveyard.” The words seemed to spill out as she recalled the images she hadn’t thought of in years. “But eventually I had to put it in context or I would have gone crazy. It still crept up on me though. You expect to feel something the first time you walk
through Auschwitz. But maybe not the fiftieth and that’s when it gets you.”

“That’s nearby, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Half an hour, forty-five minutes from here, tops.”

“Jesus.”

“I’m always conflicted,” Charlotte continued. She was rambling, she knew, but the answer to Jack’s question was not a short or simple one. “I mean, I’m the descendant of Holocaust victims. My mom’s whole family died here. But when I came back, I found that the truth was so much more nuanced than I ever expected. The people you wanted to call evil had humanity and the heroes were flawed. There was gray everywhere. That’s what I found so appealing about the work. The broad brushstrokes of history were misleading. I really felt that by studying and recasting things in a finer light, I was doing more of a service to the truth and to those who died. But as for Roger …” She paused, turning to face him. “It’s too soon to tell, I think.”

“Yet you still want to defend him?”

“I do. Everyone deserves a fair trial. It sounds clichéd, I know. And often it isn’t pretty. The kids I see, lots of them have done some really awful things—they’ve hurt family members, strangers, animals, other kids. Maybe there’s a reason, maybe not. But they all deserve to be heard.”

“Is that why you’re doing it?” Jack asked. “I mean, helping Brian, after all that happened.” The painful history suddenly loomed large between them. “It’s not like you owe him anything.”

So that was his real question. “I don’t know.” She shifted uneasily. “I don’t think of it that way. It’s not for him,” she added quickly. But the question lingered. Even with the passage of time, perhaps there was still some small part of her that wanted Brian’s approval, reveled in having something to offer that he needed.

Jack seemed to exhale, so slightly she thought she imagined it. She remembered then his expression earlier that day when he thought she was calling Brian. Was he worried that she might still have feelings for his married brother? And why should he care? Was it just sibling rivalry, or was the acrimony between them still so strong after all of these years?

“I could ask you the same thing,” she countered, changing the subject.

“True,” he acknowledged. She could hear him stroking his chin. “I’m not sure why I’m helping. It’s most decidedly not because I care whether Brian makes partner in that firm of his. I guess it’s out of some sort of sense of obligation—family, not personal.”

“But you haven’t spoken in years.”

“He’s still my brother,” he replied simply. “And he asked for my help.”

“It was curiosity,” she said abruptly. “For me, I mean. The story was so intriguing and it was a chance to do something overseas again.”

“Do you miss it?”

She hesitated, knowing that he was talking about her former life, the international work she’d left behind. “Not so much. It’s like the stuff in these boxes.” She gestured around the attic. “You pack a dream away so that it doesn’t see light and pretty soon it’s just part of your past, like an old art project. Most days you don’t even think of it.”

“And then someone comes along and opens the trunk and takes it out and gives life to it again,” Jack replied. “You wonder if you will be able to put it away.” There was an undercurrent to his voice that made her think that he was talking about something else.

As they lay in the darkness, the question nagged at her. She had left her ghosts buried all of these years for a reason. Would coming
back here and stirring things up change that somehow? “I have a life in Philadelphia,” she said aloud, as if responding to an argument that had not been made. “I’ve got work that matters, people who need me.”

“Of course.” She searched his voice for a hint of condescension but found none. He rolled slightly away then and a moment later began to breathe more deeply, air whistling softly through his teeth.

Charlotte looked around the darkened attic, hearing in her mind the whispers of those who had been here before them. She wondered what they had thought when they tucked their belongings away, the things they had thought important enough to save. Had they known they might not be coming back? Her skin prickled.

There was a scuffling sound by her feet then. She sat up, alarmed. A mouse, perhaps, or something bigger? The noise came again, closer now. Impulsively, she grabbed Jack’s hand. “Wha—?” he started, then turned toward her. As he did, his face drew close and his lips brushed hers. She froze, waiting for the awkward leap back, the apology. But his mouth stayed, grew stronger on hers, and she found herself responding. His hand came to her hair, then her face.