We Were the Lucky Ones Read online

  Bella wrote immediately to Jakob, telling him of her plans, and left the following day, wearing two pairs of silk stockings, a navy knee-length fluted skirt (a favourite of Jakob’s), four cotton blouses, a wool sweater, her yellow silk scarf – a birthday gift from Anna – a flannel coat, and her gold brooch, which she hung on a chain around her neck and tucked into her shirt so the Germans wouldn’t see it. She slipped a small sewing kit, a comb, and a family photo into her coat pocket beside the forty zloty Sol insisted she bring. Instead of a suitcase, she carried Jakob’s winter jacket and a hollowed loaf of peasant bread with his Rolleiflex camera hidden inside.

  They’ve crossed four German checkpoints since leaving Radom. At each, Bella tucked the bread loaf beneath her coat and feigned pregnancy. ‘Please,’ she begged, one hand resting on her belly, the other on the small of her back, ‘I must reach my husband in Lvov before the baby arrives.’ So far, the Wehrmacht has taken pity on her, and waved the wagon on.

  Bella’s head rocks gently on the bench as they plod eastward. Eleven days. They have no radio and thus no access to the news, but they have grown accustomed to the menacing growl of Luftwaffe planes, the distant clap of explosives detonating over what they could only presume was Lvov. A few days ago, it sounded as if the city were under siege. Even more disconcerting, though, was the silence that followed. Had the city fallen? Or were the Poles able to keep the Germans at bay?

  Bella wonders constantly if Jakob is safe. Surely he’s been called upon to defend the city. Twice Tomek has asked Bella if she would like to turn back, to attempt the journey at a later date. But Bella insists they continue on. She’d told Jakob in her letter that she was coming. She must keep her promise. To quit now, despite the uncertainty ahead, would feel cowardly.

  ‘Whoa,’ Tomek calls from the jockey box, and in an instant his voice is swallowed by shouts.

  ‘Halt! Halt sofort!’

  Bella sits up and swings her feet to the floor. Slipping the bread loaf into her coat, she pulls the wagon’s canvas door aside. Outside, a swampy meadow teems with men in belted green tunics. Wehrmacht. There are soldiers everywhere. This is no checkpoint, Bella realises. It must be the German front. A chill tiptoes up her vertebrae as three block-jawed soldiers with grey peaked caps and wood-stocked karabiners approach. Everything about them – their charged expressions, their rigid gait, their sharply creased uniforms – is unforgiving.

  Bella climbs out of the wagon and waits, willing herself to remain calm.

  The head soldier, gripping his rifle, raises his free hand and thrusts his palm in her direction. ‘Ausweis!’ he orders. He turns his palm up to the sky. ‘Papiere!’

  Bella freezes. She knows very little German.

  Tomek whispers, ‘Your papers, Bella.’

  A second soldier approaches the jockey box and Tomek hands him his papers, glancing over his shoulder at Bella. She is hesitant to hand over her ID, for it states clearly that she is Jewish, a truth that will likely do her more harm than good – but she has no other choice. She offers her identification card at arm’s length and waits, holding her breath as the soldier scrutinises it. Unsure of where to look, her eyes dart from the insignia on his collar to the six black buttons running down the length of his tunic to the words GOTT MIT UNS inscribed across his belt buckle. These words Bella understands: GOD WITH US.

  Finally, the soldier looks up, his eyes as grey and merciless as the clouds overhead, and purses his lips. ‘Keine Zivilisten von diesem Punkt!’ he snaps, handing her back her card. Something about civilians. Tomek slips his own papers into his pocket and gathers his reins.

  ‘Wait!’ Bella breathes, a hand on her belly, but the head soldier cocks his rifle and juts his chin west, in the direction from which they’d come.

  ‘Keine Zivilisten! Nach Hause gehen!’

  As Bella opens her mouth to protest, Tomek shakes his head quickly, subtly. Don’t. He’s right. Whether or not they believe she’s pregnant, these soldiers aren’t about to bend any rules. Bella turns and heaves herself back into the wagon, defeated.

  Tomek pivots the horses on their haunches and they begin to retrace their footsteps, plodding west, away from Lvov, away from Jakob. Bella’s mind spins. She fidgets, too vexed to be still. Extracting the bread from her coat, she sets it on the bench and crawls to the rear door flap, opening it just enough to see out. The men in the meadow appear small, like toy soldiers, dwarfed by the colossal clouds looming above. She lets the heavy canvas fall and is enveloped again in shadows.

  They’ve come so far. They’re so close! Bella presses her fingertips into the soft skin of her temples, searching for a solution. They could come back the next day, hope for better luck, a more lenient group of Germans. No. She shakes her head. They’re at the front. What are the chances, really, that they’d be allowed through? Suddenly claustrophobic beneath all of her layers, she tugs off her flannel coat and scoots back up the bench to the front of the wagon, where another flap of canvas separates her from Tomek. Lifting it, she squints up at the jockey box. It’s begun to drizzle.

  ‘Can we try again tomorrow?’ Bella yells over the muted clop of hooves on the soggy road.

  Tomek shakes his head. ‘It won’t work,’ he says.

  Bella can feel heat rising in her, crawling up her neck toward her ears. ‘But we can’t go back!’ She glances at the provisions box at her feet. ‘We don’t have enough food for another eleven days on the road!’ She watches Tomek’s shoulders rock back and forth, absorbing the sway of the wagon, his head bobbing as if he were drunk. He doesn’t answer.

  Bella lets the canvas flap fall and slumps back onto the bench. She and Tomek haven’t spoken much since leaving Radom; Bella had tried to make small talk at the start of the journey, but it felt odd conversing with someone she barely knew, and besides, there wasn’t much to say. Surely Tomek must want to get to Lvov as badly as she. He’s but a few kilometres from holding up his end of Sol’s bargain. She’ll remind him of this, she decides, but when she reaches again for the flap, the horses veer suddenly off-road. Gripping the bench beneath her, Bella braces herself as the wagon pitches and bucks over uneven ground. What’s happening? Where are we going? Twigs snap like firecrackers beneath the wheels and branches claw at the wagon’s cover from above. They must be in the woods. Her mind turns a dark corner: Tomek wouldn’t leave her here, alone in the woods? A simple lie would assure Sol he’d delivered her safely to Lvov. Bella’s heart sets off at a gallop. No, she decides. Tomek wouldn’t dare. But as the wagon lurches on, she can’t help but wonder – or would he?

  Finally, the horses slow to a halt and Bella steps quickly out of the wagon. The sky has dimmed by several shades; soon it will match the colour of the horses’ slick, black coats. Tomek climbs from the driver’s bench. In his black hat and dark trench coat, he is barely visible in the shadows. Bella stares at him, her pulse still racing, as he begins unbridling the horses.

  ‘Sorry for the silence,’ he says, slipping the bits from the horses’ mouths. ‘You never know who might be listening.’ Bella nods, waiting. ‘We’re about three kilometres from a back road that leads to Lvov,’ Tomek continues. ‘There’s a clearing up ahead. A meadow. I imagine it’s unmanned, but you’ll have to crawl across it to be safe. The grass should be tall enough to keep you out of sight.’ Bella squints in the direction of the clearing but it’s too dark to see anything. Tomek nods, as if reassuring himself his plan will work. ‘Once you cross the meadow, you’ll have to walk south-east through the forest for about an hour, and then you’ll reach the road. By then I believe you’ll have skirted the front …’ He pauses. ‘Unless the Germans have the city surrounded … in which case you’ll have to wait for them to move ahead, or cross the front line on your own. Either way,’ he says, finally looking her in the eye, ‘I think you’re better off without me.’

  Bella stares at Tomek, digesting the implication of his plan. To travel alone, and on foot – it sounded outrageous. She would be mad to consider it. She can h
ear herself explaining the idea to Jakob, to his father; their responses would be the same: Don’t do it.

  ‘Alternatively we turn around and return as quickly as we can, and search for some food along the way,’ Tomek says quietly.

  It would be the safer thing, to go home – but Bella knows she can’t. Her mind churns. She tries to swallow, but the back of her throat is like sandpaper and instead she coughs. Tomek is right. Without the wagon she’ll be less conspicuous. And if she did run into Germans, they’d be more likely to let her by than they would an old man, a young woman, and a two-horse wagon. She bites the inside corner of her bottom lip, silent for a minute.

  ‘Tak,’ she says finally, looking in the direction of the clearing. Yes, she resolves. What other choice does she have? She’s just a few hours from Lvov. From Jakob. Her ukochany, her love. She can’t turn back now. She rests a hand on the wagon’s frame, her limbs suddenly heavy with the weight of her decision. If there are soldiers patrolling the meadow, she doubts she can make it across unnoticed. And if she does reach the other side … there’s no telling who or what may be lurking beneath the forest canopy. Enough, she scolds silently. You’ve come this far. You can do this.

  ‘Tak,’ she breathes, nodding. ‘Yes, this will work. It has to work.’

  ‘All right then,’ Tomek says, quietly.

  ‘All right then.’ Bella runs a hand over her auburn hair, thick as wool from so many days without a wash; she’d given up trying to pull a comb through it. She clears her throat. ‘I’ll leave now.’

  ‘You’ll be better leaving in the morning,’ Tomek says, ‘when it’s not so dark. I’ll stay with you until dawn.’

  Of course. She’ll need the daylight to find her way. ‘Thank you,’ Bella whispers, realising that Tomek, too, has a treacherous journey ahead. She climbs back into the wagon, rummaging around the provisions box for the last of their hard-boiled eggs. When she finds it she peels it, and returns to Tomek. ‘Here,’ she says, breaking it in half.

  Tomek hesitates before taking it. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Tell Pan Kurc you did everything you could to get me to Lvov. If –’ she straightens, ‘when I make it, I’ll write to let him know I’m safe.’

  ‘I will.’

  Bella nods, and there is a silence between them as she contemplates what she has just agreed to. Would Tomek wake up and come to his senses, realising that the plan was too risky? Would he try to talk her out of it in the morning?

  ‘Get some rest,’ Tomek offers as he turns back to the horses.

  Bella forces a smile. ‘I’ll try.’ As she steps back up into the wagon, she pauses. ‘Tomek,’ she calls, feeling guilty for questioning his intentions. Tomek looks up. ‘Thank you – for getting us this far.’

  Tomek nods.

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ Bella says.

  Inside the wagon, Bella flattens Jakob’s overcoat out on the floor and climbs on top, stretching out onto her back. Bringing a palm to her heart and the other to her abdomen, she inhales and exhales slowly, willing herself to relax. It’s the right decision, she tells herself, blinking into the darkness.

  The next morning, Bella awakens at daybreak from a light, restless sleep. Rubbing her eyes, she fumbles for the wagon’s side door flap. Outside, a few dense rays of light have begun to sift through the clouds, just barely illuminating the spaces between the tree limbs overhead. Tomek has already rolled up his tent and sleeping mat and harnessed the horses. He nods in her direction, then returns to his work. Apparently, he hasn’t had a change of heart. Bella slips a boiled potato into her pocket, leaving three for Tomek. After buttoning her coat, and then Jakob’s over hers, she reaches for the bread loaf and climbs out of the wagon. As onerous as the journey ahead may be, she won’t mind leaving behind the cramped, mildewed space she’s called home for the better part of two weeks.

  Tomek is tinkering with one of the horse’s bridles. As Bella approaches, she finds herself wishing she knew him better, well enough at least to part with a hug – an embrace of some kind that would boost her strength, fill her with the courage she’d need to go through with the plan. But she doesn’t. She barely knows him at all.

  ‘I want to tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me,’ she says, extending a hand. It’s important to her all of a sudden to acknowledge the small but immeasureably important role Tomek has played in her life. He takes her hand. His grip is surprisingly strong. Beside them, the horses grow restless. One of them shakes his head and his bit jingles; the other snorts, paws the ground. They, too, are ready to reach the end of their journey. ‘Oh, Tomek, I nearly forgot,’ Bella adds, fishing a ten-zloty bill from her pocket. ‘You’ll need some food – a couple of potatoes won’t do.’ She holds the zloty out for him. ‘Take it. Please.’

  Tomek glances at his feet and then back up at Bella. He takes the note.

  ‘Good luck to you,’ Bella offers.

  ‘Same to you. God bless.’

  Bella nods and then turns and begins making her way under the cover of the forest toward the meadow.

  After a few minutes, she reaches the edge of the clearing and pauses, scanning the open space for a sign of life. The meadow, as far as she can tell, is empty. She glances over her shoulder to see if Tomek is watching – but beneath the oak trees there are only empty shadows. Has he already left? She shivers as she realises just how alone she is. You agreed to this, she reminds herself. You’re better off alone.

  She hikes her skirt up over her knees, ties it in a loose knot at her thigh, and then tucks the bread loaf under Jakob’s coat and adjusts it so the loaf rests on her back. There. Now she can move more easily. Squatting, she brings her palms and then her knees silently to the ground.

  The earth beneath her squishes as she crawls, the cold mud curling between her fingers, painting her extremities tar black. The grass is long and sharp and damp with dew; it slices relentlessly at her face and neck. Within minutes, one of her cheeks is bleeding and she is soaked all the way through to her undergarments. Ignoring the mud and the wet and the sting on her cheek, she kneels for a moment to scan the tree line a hundred metres ahead, and then glances over her shoulder. Still no sign of Germans. Good. She lowers herself back onto her hands, wishing she’d worn trousers, realising now what a pointless vanity it was to want to look nice for Jakob.

  As she sloshes her way across the meadow, she thinks of her parents, and the meal they’d shared the night before she left. Her mother had prepared boiled pierogi stuffed with mushrooms and cabbage, Bella’s favourite, which she and her father had devoured. Gustava, however, had barely touched the food on her plate. Bella’s chest tightens as she pictures her mother with an uneaten pierogi before her. She’d always been thin, but since the Germans arrived she’d grown gaunt. Bella had blamed it on the stress of war, and it had pained her to leave, seeing her mother so frail. She recalls how, the following day, as she boarded Tomek’s wagon, she glanced up at the flat and saw her parents standing at the window – her father with an arm wrapped around her mother’s slight frame, her mother with her palms pressed up against the glass. All she could make out were their silhouettes, but she could tell from the way Gustava’s shoulders shook that she was crying. She’d wanted badly to wave, to leave her parents with a smile that said she’d be fine, she’d be back, not to worry. But Witolda Boulevard was crawling with Wehrmacht; she couldn’t risk revealing her departure with a wave. Instead she turned away, pulled the wagon’s door flap aside, and climbed in.

  Bella winces as her knee strikes something hard, a rock. She breathes through the pain and crawls on, realising just how quickly the events of the past two weeks have unfolded. Jakob’s departure, the German invasion, the letter, the arrangement with Tomek. She’d been frantic when she left Radom, thinking solely of getting to Lvov to be with Jakob. But what about her parents? Will they be all right on their own? What if something happens to them while she’s away? How will she help them? What if something happens to her? What if she never makes it t
o Lvov? Stop, she scolds. You will be fine. Your parents will be fine. She recites the sentiment over and over again, until the possibility of any other scenario is removed from her consciousness.

  Bella tries to listen for signs of danger as she crawls, but her ears are filled with the thunder of her pulse. She’d have never guessed that walking on her hands and knees would require such work. Everything is heavy: her arms, her legs, her head. It’s as if she’s anchored to the earth, weighed down by her appendages, by her countless layers of clothing, by Jakob’s camera, by the muscle that clings to her bones and the sweat that coats her skin despite the morning chill. Her joints hurt, every one of them, her hips, her elbows, her knees, her knuckles; they grow stiffer by the minute. Damn the mud. Pausing, she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand and peers over the tips of the grass; she’s halfway to the tree line. Fifty metres to go. You’re nearly there, she tells herself, resisting the urge to lie down for a few minutes, to rest. Can’t stop now. Rest when you reach the forest.

  Focusing on the cadence of her breath – two beats in through her nose, three beats out through her mouth – Bella is lost in delirious rhythm when a sharp crack catapults through the morning sky, splintering the silence. She drops quickly to her stomach and flattens her body to the ground, shielding the back of her head with her hands. There is no mistaking what the sound was. A gunshot. Would there be another? Where had it come from? Are they onto her? She waits, every muscle in her body flexed, contemplating what to do – run? Or remain hidden? Her instinct tells her to play dead. And so she lies, her nose a centimetre from the mud, breathing in the smell of fear and wet earth, counting the seconds as they pass. A minute ticks by, then two as she listens, straining, the meadow playing tricks on her – was that the wind rustling the grass? Or was it footsteps?

  Finally, when she can’t stand it any longer, Bella presses her palms into the mud and, in slow motion, lifts her torso. Through the grass, she scans the horizon. From what she can see, it’s clear. Maybe the shot had sounded closer than it was. Ignoring the likelihood that it had come from the direction in which she is headed, she starts crawling again, faster now, her muscles no longer heavy with fatigue but spiked with a terrifying sense of urgency.