So much has happened in a week. It was just six days ago, on the first of September, that the Germans invaded Poland. The very next day, before dawn, bombs began to fall on the outskirts of Radom. The makeshift airstrip was destroyed, along with dozens of tanneries and shoe factories. Her father had boarded up the windows and they’d taken refuge in the basement. When the explosions let up, Radom’s men dug trenches—shovel-wielding Poles and Jews shoulder to shoulder—in a last-minute effort to defend the city. But the trenches were useless. Bella and her parents were forced back into hiding as more bombs were dropped, this time in broad daylight from low-flying Stukas and Heinkels, mostly on the Old Quarter, some fifty meters or so from Bella’s flat. The aerial attack kept up for days, until the town of Kielce, sixty-five kilometers southwest of Radom, was captured. That was when rumors spread that the Wehrmacht, one of the armed forces of the Third Reich, would soon arrive—and when radios began blaring from street corners, ordering the young and able to enlist. Men left Radom by the thousands, heading east in haste to join up with the Polish Army, their hearts filled with patriotism and uncertainty.
Bella pictures Jakob, Genek, Selim, and Adam making their way past the city’s garment shops and iron foundries, treading silently to the train station, which had somehow been spared in the bombings, a few meager belongings stashed in their suitcases. A division of the Polish infantry, Jakob had said, awaited in Lvov. But did it really? Why had Poland waited so long to mobilize its men? It’s been only a week since the invasion and already reports are disheartening—Hitler’s army is too vast, moving too quickly, the Poles are outnumbered more than two to one. Britain and France have promised to help, but so far Poland has seen no sign of military support.
Bella’s stomach turns. This wasn’t supposed to have happened. They were supposed to be in France by now. That was their plan—to move when Jakob finished law school. He’d find a position at a firm in Paris, or Toulouse, close to Addy; he’d work on the side as a photographer, just as his brother composed music in his spare time. She and Jakob had been charmed by Addy’s tales of France and its freedoms. There, they’d marry and start a family. If only they’d had the foresight to go before travel to France became too dangerous, before the thought of leaving their families behind was too unnerving. Bella tries to picture Jakob with his fingers wrapped around the wooden stock of an assault rifle. Could he shoot a man? Impossible, she realizes. He’s Jakob. He isn’t cut out for war; there isn’t a drop of hostile blood in his body. The only trigger he’s meant to press is the one on his camera.
She slides the window gently closed. Just let the boys make it safely to Lvov, she prays, over and over, staring into the velvet blackness below.
—
Three weeks later, Bella is stretched out along a narrow wooden bench running the length of a horse-drawn wagon, exhausted but unable to sleep. What time is it? Early afternoon, she’d guess. Beneath the wagon’s canvas cover, there isn’t enough light to see the hands of her wristwatch. Even outside it’s nearly impossible to tell. When the rain lets up, the sky, dense with clouds, remains cloaked in gunmetal gray. How her driver can manage up front, exposed to the elements for so many hours, Bella has no idea. Yesterday it rained so long and hard the road disappeared beneath a river of mud, and the horses had to scramble to keep their balance. Twice the wagon had nearly turned over.
Bella tracks the days by counting the eggs remaining in the provisions basket. They began their journey in Radom with a dozen, and this morning they are down to their last, which makes it the twenty-ninth of September. Normally, to ride by wagon to Lvov would take a week at most. But with the incessant rain, the going has been arduous. Inside the wagon the air is damp and smells of mold; Bella has grown used to the feel of sticky skin, clothes that are perpetually damp.
Listening to the creak of the wagon beneath her, she closes her eyes and thinks about Jakob, remembering the night he’d come to say good-bye, the cool of his hands on her knees, the warmth of his breath on her fingers when he’d kissed them.
It was the eighth of September, just a day after he set off for Lvov, when the Wehrmacht arrived in Radom. The Germans sent a single plane first, and Bella and her father tracked it as it flew low over the city, circling once before dropping an orange flare.
“What does it mean?” Bella asked as the plane receded and then disappeared into a gray expanse of swollen, low-hanging clouds. Her father was silent. “Father, I’m a grown woman. Just tell me,” Bella had said flatly.
Henry looked away. “It means they’re coming,” he answered, and in his expression, the tight downward curve of his mouth, the pleat of skin between his eyes, she saw something she’d never seen before—her father was scared. An hour later, just as the rain began to fall, Bella watched from the window of her family’s flat as rows upon rows of ground forces marched into Radom, unopposed. She heard them before she saw them, their tanks and horses and motorcycles rumbling in through the mud from the west. She held her breath as they came into view, at once afraid to watch and afraid to look away, her eyes glued to them as they rolled down Witolda Boulevard in bottle-green uniforms and rain-speckled goggles, so powerful, so many of them. They swarmed the city’s empty streets, and by nightfall they occupied the government buildings, proclaiming the city theirs with emphatic Heil Hitlers as they hoisted their swastika flags. It was a sight Bella would never forget.
Once the city was officially occupied, everyone was wary, Jews and Poles alike, but it was obvious from the start that the Jews were the Nazis’ primary targets. Those who ventured out risked being harassed, humiliated, beaten. Radomers learned quickly to abandon the safety of their homes only to run the most pressing errands. Bella left only once, to collect some bread and milk, detouring to the nearest Polish grocery when she discovered that the Jewish market she used to frequent in the Old Quarter had been ransacked and closed. She kept to the backstreets and walked with a quick, purposeful stride, but on her return she had to step around a scene that haunted her for weeks—a rabbi, surrounded by Wehrmacht soldiers, his arms pinned behind his back, the soldiers laughing as the old man struggled in vain to free himself, his head thrashing violently from side to side. It wasn’t until Bella passed him by that she realized with a sickening start that the rabbi’s beard was on fire.
A few days after the Germans took Radom, a letter arrived from Jakob. My love, he wrote in hurried script, come to Lvov as soon as you can. They’ve put us up in apartments. Mine is just big enough for two. I hate that you are so far away. I need you here. Please, come. Jakob included an address. Her parents, to her surprise, agreed to let her go. They knew how badly Bella missed Jakob. And at least in Lvov, Henry and Gustava reasoned, Bella and her sister, Anna, could look after one another. Pressing her father’s hand to her cheek in gratitude, Bella was overcome with relief. The next day, she brought the letter to Jakob’s father, Sol. Her parents didn’t have the money to hire a driver. The Kurcs, on the other hand, had the means and the connections, and she was sure they would be willing to help.
At first, though, Sol opposed the idea. “Absolutely not. It’s far too dangerous to travel alone,” he said. “I cannot permit it. If anything happened to you, Jakob would never forgive me.” Lvov hadn’t fallen, but there was speculation that the Germans had the city surrounded.
“Please,” Bella begged. “It can’t be any worse than it is here. Jakob wouldn’t have asked me to come if he didn’t feel it was safe. I need to be with him. My parents have agreed to it. . . . Please, Pan Kurc. Prosz?.” For three days Bella petitioned her case to Sol, and for three days he refused. Finally, on the fourth day, he acquiesced.
“I’ll hire a wagon,” he said, shaking his head as if disappointed in his decision. “I hope I don’t regret it.”
Less than a week later, the arrangements were made. Sol had found a pair of horses, a wagon, and a driver—a lithe old gentleman named Tomek, with bowed legs and a graying beard, who had worked for him over the summer and who knew the route well. Tomek was trustworthy, Sol said, and good with horses. Sol promised him that if he brought Bella safely to Lvov, he could keep the horses and wagon. Tomek was out of work and jumped at the offer.