“We may need it,” Papa said.
Matka turned away from him. “Nothing good comes of a gun.”
Papa hesitated and then placed the gun in the box. “Bury your Girl Guides uniform, Kasia. The Nazis are targeting scouts—they shot a pack of Boy Scouts in Gdansk.”
A chill went through me. I knew not to argue with Papa and placed my prized possessions in tin cans: the wool scarf Pietrik once wore that still smelled like him, the new red corduroy shift dress Matka sewed for me, my Girl Guides uniform shirt and neckerchief, and a picture of Nadia and me riding a cow. Matka wrapped one of her sets of Kolinsky sable-hair paintbrushes, which had been her mother’s, and added them to a can. Papa melted wax on the seams of the tin cans.
That night only stars lit our back garden, a patch of dirt surrounded by a few planks of wood held up only by the weeds around them. Papa stepped on the rusty shovel blade to push it into the ground. It cut through hard soil as if it were cake, and he dug a deep hole, like a baby’s fresh grave.
We were almost done, but even in near darkness I could tell Matka had kept her engagement ring on her finger, the one her mother had passed on to her when Papa was too poor to buy her one. The ring was like an exquisite flower, with a big center diamond surrounded with deep blue sapphire petals. It glittered like a nervous firefly as Matka’s hand moved in the darkness. “The diamond is cushion cut—from the seventeen hundreds when they cut stones to react to candlelight,” Matka would say when people admired it. React it did, shimmering, almost alive.
“What about your ring?” Papa asked.
The firefly flew behind her back, protecting itself. “Not that,” Matka said.
As children, when crossing the road, Zuzanna and I had always fought over who got to hold Matka’s hand that wore that ring. The pretty hand.
“Haven’t we buried enough?” I said. “We’ll be caught out here.”
Standing there arguing in the dark would only attract attention.
“Suit yourself, Halina,” Papa said. He flung shovelfuls of dirt into the hole to cover our treasures. I pushed earth into the hole with my hands to make things go faster, and Papa tamped it down smooth. He then counted his steps back to the building so he’d remember where we buried our treasure.
Twelve steps to the door.
—
ZUZANNA FINALLY CAME HOME with terrible tales of the doctors and nurses working all night to save the wounded. Word was many were still alive trapped under rubble. We lived in fear of hearing the sound of Germans at our front door, our ears to the radio in the kitchen, hoping for the best news but hearing the worst. Poland defended herself, sustaining great losses, but in the end could not match Germany’s modern armored divisions and airpower.
I woke Sunday, September 17, to Matka telling Papa what she’d heard on the radio. The Russians had also attacked Poland, from the east. Was there no end to the countries attacking us?
I found my parents in the kitchen peering out the front window. It was a crisp fall morning, a light breeze blowing in through Matka’s curtains. As I drew closer to the window, I saw Jewish men in black suits clearing the rubble from in front of our house.
Matka wrapped her arms around me, and once the road was cleared, we watched a parade of German soldiers roll in, like new tenants in a boardinghouse with their mountains of luggage. First came trucks, then soldiers on foot, then more soldiers standing tall and haughty in their tanks. At least Zuzanna did not see this sad sight, for she was already at the hospital that morning.
Matka heated water for Papa’s tea as he watched it all. I did my best to keep us all quiet as could be. Maybe if we were silent, they would not bother us? To calm myself I counted the birds crocheted on Matka’s curtains. One lark. Two swallows. One magpie. Wasn’t the magpie a sign of imminent death? The rumble of a truck grew louder.
I breathed deep to quell the panic inside me. What was coming?
“Out, out!” a man shouted. The terrible clatter of hobnail boots on cobblestones. There were lots of them.
“Stay away from the window, Kasia,” Papa said, stepping back himself. He said it in such an offhand way I knew he was scared.
“Should we hide?” Matka whispered. She turned her ring around and closed her hand so the stones hid in her palm.
Papa walked toward the door, and I busied myself with prayer. We heard a good bit of yelling and orders, and soon the truck drove away.
“I think they’re leaving,” I whispered to Matka.
I jumped as a rap came at our door, and then a man’s voice. “Open up!”
Matka froze in place and Papa opened the door.
“Adalbert Kuzmerick?” said an SS man, who strode in all puffed up and pleased with himself.
He was two hands taller than Papa, so tall his hat almost hit the top of the door when he entered. He and his underling were dressed in full Sonderdienst uniform, with the black boots and the hat with the horrible skull emblem with two gaping holes for eyes. As he passed, I smelled clove gum on him. He looked well fed too, his chin held so high I could see the blood through a little piece of white paper stuck on his Adam’s apple where he’d cut himself shaving. They even bled Nazi red.
“Yes,” Papa said, calm as could be.
“Director of the postal center communications?”
Papa nodded.
Two more guards grabbed Papa by the arms and pulled him out without even time for him to look back at us. I tried to follow, but the tall one blocked my way with his nightstick.
Matka ran to the window, eyes wild. “Where are you taking him?”
Suddenly I was cold all over. It was getting harder to breathe.
Another SS man, skinny and shorter than the first, stepped in with a canvas bread bag across his chest.
“Where does your husband keep his work papers?” asked the tall one.
“Not here,” Matka said. “Can’t you tell me where they’re taking him?”
Matka stood, fingers locked at her chest, as the skinny one went about the house opening drawers and stuffing whatever papers we had into his bag.
“Shortwave radio?” the tall one said.
Matka shook her head. “No.”
My stomach hurt as I watched the skinny guard fling our cabinet doors wide and toss what little food we had into his bag.
“All provisions are the property of the Reich,” the tall one said. “You will be issued ration cards.”
Tinned peas, two potatoes, and a sad little cabbage went into the skinny one’s bag. Then he grabbed a rolled paper bag that held the last of Matka’s coffee.
She reached for it.
“Oh, please—may we keep the coffee? It’s all we have.”
The tall one turned and looked at Matka for a long second. “Leave it,” he said, and his underling tossed it onto the counter.
The men stepped through our three little bedrooms and pulled drawers from bureaus, dumping socks and underclothes on the floor.
“Weapons?” said the tall one as the other searched closets. “Any other food?”
“No,” Matka said. I’d never seen her lie before.
He stepped closer to her. “You may have heard that withholding that which is due the Reich is punishable by death.”
“I understand,” Matka said. “If I could just visit my husband…”
We followed the men out to the back garden. The yard, fenced on all sides, suddenly seemed smaller with the SS men standing there. It all looked normal, but the ground where we’d buried our things the week before was still beaten quite flat. It was so obvious something was buried there. I counted the guard’s steps as he walked into the yard. Five…six…seven…Could they see my knees shaking?
Our chicken, Psina, moved closer to our buried treasure spot, scratching near it, looking for bugs. My God, the shovel was there, leaning against the back of the house, dirt still clinging to the blade. Would they take us to Lublin Castle or just shoot us in the yard and leave us for Papa to find?
“Do you think I’m stupid?” the tall guard said, walking toward the spot.
Eight…nine…
My respiration shut off.