“I cannot live like this,” I exclaimed. “I cannot live in this nice apartment, living off rations that can be skimmed for cake, in a house that has money, and with my uncle who seems to be able to get any luxury item we can dream of. Not while, just a few blocks away, children are swimming through sewers to avoid starving to death. And I cannot believe that you would ask me to.”
“Things are not so easy for you,” Sara said calmly. “Truda managed to skim enough flour for some cake, but you and I both know that our rations are not generous. But for your uncle, you would only be just getting by, too, and even with his help your family is hardly living the high life.”
“But we are still surviving,” I whispered, as my eyes filled with tears. “Sara, I can’t bear it. Uncle Piotr took me to Krasin´ski Square today, and I saw that wall, and I wanted to tear it down with my bare hands. You must let me help because this feeling—” I pointed helplessly to my chest, trying to explain the outrage that had been boiling away inside me since last night “—it will destroy me if I don’t use it to do some good. Besides, this is not a choice between safety and danger. I’m probably already in danger!” I had said too much, and at her concerned look, I hastily added, “Everyone in this city is. The German cruelty can be so random.”
“All the more reason you should keep to yourself, Elz·bieta.” She seemed to suddenly deflate, her exhaustion from the previous night now written in the deep lines around her mouth and in the gray bags beneath her eyes. “This is a very admirable desire, but it’s impossible.”
“Okay,” I said, feigning sadness. I pulled away and made as if to leave the bedroom. “Well, do you have any suggestions?”
Sara gave me a blank look.
“Suggestions for...?”
“Who I should ask next?” At her frown, I added, “I don’t know anyone else in Warsaw, so if you won’t help I’ll just go down to Miodowa Street, and I’ll ask every passerby if they can connect me with the underground efforts to help the Jews...”
“Elz·bieta!” she groaned in frustration.
“I mean it. If you won’t find a way for me to help you, I will find someone else.”
I could see that Sara was trying to maintain her irritation with me, but in that moment I saw the first glimmer of reluctant admiration in her eyes.
“You must let me think this through,” she said, after a long and careful pause. “And you must understand that if I find something for you to do, it cannot be on the front lines. There is so much to be done, and all of it is heroic, but much of it is behind-the-scenes.”
I had been entertaining fantasies of heroically carrying dying children through the sewers so this was somewhat disappointing, but I would take what I could get.
7
Roman
“I feel your hatred sometimes, Roman. I want you to know that I understand why you feel that way, and I forgive you for it.”
Samuel had found himself with a free afternoon, and he and I had decided to call upon the street vendor on Zamenhofa Street, to thank her for her help over the past few weeks. She had saved vegetable scraps for us consistently since that first day I visited her, passing them to Dawidek or me when we came after work, but this was the first time Samuel had been able to speak with her personally. While they were hardly thriving, Mother and Eleonora were both alive, and I had a feeling that might not be the case but for those scraps.
Now, Samuel and I were returning to our apartment, running a little later than we should have and scurrying to make it back behind our door before the seven o’clock curfew. We had been walking in silence until Samuel’s breathless statement. I looked at him in alarm. His expression was set in a stiff mask, and he stared ahead, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.
“Samuel, no! Why would you say such a thing?” I protested.
“We both know exactly why.” He shrugged. “It is my fault you are here.”
“It is their fault we are here,” I said flatly.
“Yes and no.”
We walked in silence again for almost a block while I tried to understand how to talk about this. It was not something he and I had addressed before—an unspoken truth that I did not even think about unless I could find no way to avoid it. As such, I hadn’t collected or sorted my own thoughts on the matter, and now that Samuel had brought the murky issue from the shadows into the light, I was too confused to reply.
“Your mother wanted to flee,” Samuel reminded me. “I convinced her to stay.”
“You did what you thought was best.”
“Then she wanted to get you false papers. She wanted you to go into hiding with your school friends. But I dismissed that idea, too. I was so sure we were best off staying together.”
“I wouldn’t have gone anyway, Samuel. The only blessing in our current situation is that we are together.” We were still scurrying along the streets, both studiously avoiding eye contact. “I don’t blame you for any of this,” I said unevenly. “I could never blame you.”
“You could have escaped, Roman. You don’t deserve to be here.”
“No one deserves to be here!” I exclaimed, stopping abruptly as my hands curled into fists. Samuel turned back to me, first to look around in alarm that I might have drawn attention to us, and then to give me a pained, miserable frown.
“I just meant...” Samuel, so wise and calm and hardly ever lost for words, trailed off. He raised his hands in defeat, then shrugged sadly. “I just meant to say that you could have avoided all of this. You could have hidden in plain sight outside of these walls.”
For once, the ghetto seemed silent all around us. I stared at him, desperately trying to figure out both how to end the conversation and how to resolve it. I hated talking about this, almost as much as I hated that Samuel had been suffering from this incorrect assumption.
“It breaks my heart that you think I...” I drew in a sharp breath, then, almost squirming with awkwardness, I said, low and fast, “I love you. I do hate, but it’s not directed at you. Never at you.”
“You are my first son, Roman. You are the boy who taught me how to be a father. I love you, too.”
My eyes were stinging with unshed tears. We were late, and we needed to run, but after a moment I’d been squirming through and desperate to end, I found a moment I was desperate to linger in. I wished I had the words to express so much to Samuel—how much he meant to me, how grateful I was to him—but my throat felt tight, and I knew that if I tried to say those things, I’d wind up weeping. Instead, I kept my gaze fixed on the pavement ahead of us as I admitted hoarsely, “I don’t know how to keep going sometimes. This is all too much. I worry that I’m not strong enough.”