We Were the Lucky Ones Read online

  When Adam has finished reading, Sol offers a prayer over the remaining matzah, breaks off a piece, and passes the plate. Nechuma listens as the soft crack of unleavened bread makes its way around the table. ‘Baruch a-tah A-do-nai,’ Sol sings, but stops short when he’s interrupted by a high-pitched cry. Felicia. Blushing, Mila apologises and slips from her seat to scoop Felicia from her bassinet in the corner of the room. Tap-dancing her feet, she shushes softly into Felicia’s ear to soothe her. As Sol begins again, Felicia squirms beneath the folds of her swaddle, her face contorting, reddening. When she wails a second time, Mila excuses herself, hurrying down the hallway to Halina’s bedroom. Nechuma follows.

  ‘What’s wrong, love?’ Mila whispers, rubbing a finger along Felicia’s top gum as she’s seen Nechuma do, trying to pacify her. Felicia turns her head, arches her back, cries harder.

  ‘Do you think she’s hungry?’ Nechuma asks.

  ‘I fed her not too long ago. I think she’s just tired.’

  ‘Here,’ Nechuma says, taking Felicia from Mila’s arms. Felicia’s eyes are pinched shut, her hands curled tight into fists. Her bawls come in short, shrill bursts.

  Mila sits down heavily at the foot of Halina’s bed. ‘I’m so sorry, Mother,’ she says, straining not to yell over Felicia’s cries. ‘I hate that we’re causing a fuss.’ She rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘I can barely even hear myself think.’

  ‘No one minds,’ Nechuma says, holding Felicia close to her chest, rocking her gently. After a few minutes, Felicia’s cries wane to whimpers and soon she is quiet again, her expression peaceful. It’s mesmerising, the joy of holding a baby in your arms, Nechuma thinks, breathing in Felicia’s sweet almond scent.

  ‘I’m such a fool for assuming this would be easy,’ Mila says. When she looks up her eyes are bloodshot, the skin beneath them translucent purple, as if the lack of sleep has left a bruise. She’s trying – Nechuma can see that. But it’s tough being a new mother. The transition has left her reeling.

  Nechuma shakes her head. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Mila. It’s not what you thought it would be, but that’s to be expected. With children it’s never what you think it’s going to be.’ Mila looks at her hands and Nechuma recalls how, when she was younger, her eldest daughter wanted nothing more than to be a mother – how she would tend to her dolls, cradling them in the crook of her arm, singing to them, even pretending to nurse them; how she took great pride in caring for her younger siblings, offering to tie their shoes, wrap gauze around their bloodied knees, read to them before bed. Now that she has a child of her own, however, Mila seems overwhelmed by it, as if it were the first time she’d held a baby in her arms.

  ‘I wish I knew what I was doing wrong,’ Mila says.

  Nechuma sits down at the foot of the bed by her daughter. ‘You’re doing fine, Mila. I told you, babies are difficult. Especially the first. I nearly lost my mind when Genek was born, trying to figure it out. It just takes some time.’

  ‘It’s been five months.’

  ‘Give it a few more.’

  Mila is quiet for a moment. ‘Thank you,’ she finally whispers, looking over at Felicia sleeping peacefully in Nechuma’s arms. ‘I feel like a wretched failure.’

  ‘You’re not. You’re just tired. Why don’t you call for Estia. She’s all done in the kitchen; she can help while we finish our meal.’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’ Mila sighs, relieved. She leaves Felicia with Nechuma while she goes off to find the maid. When she and Nechuma return to their seats, Mila glances at Selim. ‘Okay?’ he mouths, and she nods.

  Sol spoons a mound of horseradish onto a piece of matzah, and the others do the same. Soon, he is singing again. When the blessing of the korekh is complete, it’s time, finally, to eat. Platters are passed, and the dining room is filled with the murmur of conversation and the scrape of silver spoons on china as dishes are piled high with salted herring, roasted chicken, potato kugel, and sweet apple charoset. The family sips wine and talks quietly, gingerly avoiding the subject of war, and wondering aloud of Addy’s whereabouts.

  At the sound of Addy’s name, the ache creeps back into Nechuma’s chest, bringing with it an orchestra of worries. He has been arrested. Incarcerated. Deported. He is hurt. Afraid. He hasn’t a way to contact her. She glances again at her son’s empty seat. Where are you, Addy? She bites her lip. Don’t, she admonishes, but it’s too late. She’s been drinking her wine too quickly and has lost her edge. Her throat closes and the table melts into a blurry swath of white. Her tears are poised to flow when she feels a hand over hers, beneath the table. Jakob’s. ‘It’s the horseradish root,’ she whispers, waving her free hand in front of her face, blinking. ‘Gets me every time.’ She dabs discreetly at the corners of her eyes with her napkin. Jakob nods knowingly and squeezes her hand.

  Months later, in a different world, Nechuma will look back on this evening, the last Passover when they were nearly all together, and wish with every cell in her body that she could relive it. She will remember the familiar smell of the gefilte, the chink of silver on porcelain, the taste of parsley, briny and bitter on her tongue. She will long for the touch of Felicia’s baby-soft skin, the weight of Jakob’s hand on hers beneath the table, the wine-induced warmth in the pit of her belly that begged her to believe that everything might actually turn out all right in the end. She will remember how happy Halina had looked at the piano after their meal, how they had danced together, how they all spoke of missing Addy, assuring each other that he’d be home soon. She will replay it all, over and over again, every beautiful moment of it, and savour it, like the last perfect klapsa pears of the season.

  AUGUST 23, 1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact, a secret agreement outlining specific boundaries for the future division of much of Northern and Eastern Europe between German and Soviet powers.

  SEPTEMBER 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland. Two days later, in response, Britain, France, Australia, and New Zealand declare war on Germany. World War II in Europe begins.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bella

  Radom, Poland ~ September 7, 1939

  Bella sits upright, knees pulled to her chest, a handkerchief balled in her fist. She can just make out the square-cornered silhouette of a leather suitcase by her bedroom door. Jakob is perched on the edge of the bed by her feet, the cold night-time air still clinging to the tweed of his overcoat. She wonders if her parents had heard him climbing the stairs to their second-storey flat, tiptoeing down the hallway to her room. She had given Jakob a key to the flat years ago so he could visit when he pleased, but he’d never been so bold as to come at this hour. She pushes her toes into the space between the mattress and his thigh.

  ‘They’re sending us to Lvov to fight,’ Jakob says, out of breath. ‘If anything should happen, let’s meet there.’ Bella searches for Jakob’s face in the shadows, but all she can see is the oval of his jawline, the dim whites of his eyes.

  ‘Lvov,’ she whispers, nodding. Bella’s younger sister Anna and her new husband, Daniel, live in Lvov, a city 350 kilometres south-east of Radom. Anna had been begging Bella to consider moving closer to her, but Bella knew she couldn’t leave Jakob. In the eight years that they’ve known each other, they’ve never lived more than four hundred metres apart.

  Jakob reaches for her hands, laces his fingers between hers. He brings them to his mouth and kisses them. The gesture reminds Bella of the day he first told her he loved her. They’d held hands, fingers entwined as they sat facing each other on a blanket spread across the grass in Kościuszki Park. She was sixteen.

  ‘You’re it, beautiful,’ Jakob had said softly. His words were so pure, the expression in his hazel eyes so unadulterated, she’d wanted to cry, even though back then she’d wondered what a boy so young thought he knew about love. Today, at twenty-two, she isn’t surer of anything. Jakob is the man she’ll spend her life with. And now he’s leaving Radom, without her.

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nbsp; ‘How – how will you get there?’ Her voice is soft. She’s afraid that if she raises it, it will crack, and the sob percolating at the base of her throat will escape. The clock in the corner sounds a single toll and she and Jakob flinch, as if stung by a pair of invisible wasps.

  ‘We’ve been told to meet at the train station at a quarter past one,’ Jakob says, glancing toward the door, letting his hands slip from hers. He cups his palms over her knees. His touch is cool through the cotton of her nightgown. ‘I have to go.’ He leans his chest against her shins, rests his forehead on hers. ‘I love you,’ he breathes, the tips of their noses touching. ‘More than anything.’ She closes her eyes as he kisses her. It’s over too quickly. When she opens her eyes, Jakob is gone, and her cheeks are wet.

  Bella climbs out of bed and walks to the window, the wooden floorboards cold and smooth beneath her bare feet. Pulling the curtain aside a touch, she stares down at Witolda Boulevard two stories below, scanning for a sign of life – the flicker of a flashlight, anything – but the city has been blacked out for weeks; even the street lamps are extinguished. She can see nothing. It’s as if she’s staring into an abyss. She jiggles the window open, this time closing her eyes for a moment as she listens for footsteps, for the far-off whine of a German dive-bomber. But the street, like the sky above, is empty, the silence heavy.

  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 metres or so from Bella’s flat. The aerial attack kept up for days, until the town of Kielce, sixty-five kilometres south-west of Radom, was captured. That was when rumours 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 meagre 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 mobilise 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 realises. 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 grey. 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 mould; 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 goodbye, 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 grey 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 learnt 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 realised 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. Proszę.’ 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 greying 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.

  ‘Wear the things you want to take,’ Sol had said. ‘It will be less conspicuous.’ Civilian travel was still allowed in what was once Poland, but the Nazis issued new restrictions by the day.