The Second Winter (3 page)

“What’s that?” Julian asked her.

Polina didn’t answer.

“You’re too old to play with dolls,” Julian said.

“I’m going to call her Polina,” Polina said.

“She doesn’t look anything like you.”

Polina shrugged. “She doesn’t cry,” she explained. “Neither do I.”

That same night, Polina couldn’t sleep. The smell of cigars climbed the stairs. Her father’s voice shook the walls of the small house. Polina liked the sound, because it comforted her and she could picture his face and his eyes with the cadence of his words. An hour before, as the family was finishing dinner, Czeslaw had knocked on the door with a bottle of vodka, store-bought and unopened, and after he and his younger brother swallowed a few shots, he had pulled a box of cigars from his pocket, too. At the kitchen table, Polina had gone so quiet that her mother asked what had come over her. Her father grabbed her cheek between his index and middle fingers and gave her skin a soft twist. After so much sun earlier in the day, the gesture had lost its tenderness. Her skin felt chafed.
Ahhh, leave her alone, Ania. She just doesn’t like to see her father drink. That’s it, isn’t it, sweetheart?
His eyes fastened upon her.
You don’t like to see me drink and laugh and enjoy the company of my brother?
Polina didn’t answer.
Here
, he said to her.
Why don’t you help me with this splinter?
He held up a hand and showed her a long, thin sliver of wood that ran half the length of his finger beneath a thick layer of skin.
I can’t reach this one myself — I need your little fingers
. She stared beyond the hand into her father’s eyes. Then she ran from the kitchen, up the steep staircase to the small room she shared with her sister.
Through the walls, she heard her uncle’s voice.
She’s a strange girl, I think. When she’s quiet, you can’t really imagine what she’s thinking
. Then her mother’s.
She keeps her own company most of the time. Except for Julian. She doesn’t even play with Adelajda
. Now, the rumbles through the walls had become less distinct. Polina listened with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling through the gray air, aware of her baby sister’s shallow breathing in pockets of silence.

After some time passed, she slipped from beneath her covers and climbed into bed with Adelajda. Her sister was only five — there was nearly a decade between them, and Polina had little natural affection for her — but, suddenly, she wanted to be next to her. In her sleep, Adelajda shifted on the mattress, dropped an arm onto Polina’s shoulder. Her hand squeezed her biceps, twitched. Her skin was damp with sweat. Polina lay still, concentrated on the feeling of her sister’s fingers on her arm, listened for her father’s voice, tried but wasn’t able to figure out what he was saying.

When she finally closed her eyes, she was already asleep. She didn’t wake when the front door slammed and her uncle stumbled out of the house into the unlit street. A few minutes later, her arm slid off the side of the narrow bed. Her fingers grazed the floor, but still she didn’t wake.

December 1939
.

The snow fell in flurries. At noon the sky was so dark that Polina thought that it was night. She sat beside the window in the kitchen and stared outside at the white blanket settling over the courtyard behind the house. A fire smoldered in the stove, remnants of the coal her father had lit at dawn.
Polina’s mother was on her knees in the bathroom, scrubbing the floor. Her hair, covered in a kerchief, was coming loose from the bun, and she tucked a long strand behind her ear, then continued with her work. She was the firstborn child of a rabbi in Warsaw, but Ania Rabinowitz Dabrowa wasn’t a practicing Jew. Outside the family, no one knew of her ancestry. Polina’s father was Catholic, and that is how Polina had been raised. Her mother had never wanted to make things difficult for Aleksy, even before the occupation. She had fair skin and blue eyes, blond hair. There was no reason for anyone to know that her family was Jewish. When Aleksy was working and the Dabrowas had money enough for meat, Ania made a point of going to the butcher herself to buy pork. This morning, although there was nothing for Polina at midday, they had eaten well, and the air was still smoky, sweet with the smell of bacon grease from breakfast.

Polina listened to the scrape of the brush on the floor in the bathroom. She knew that she should be helping with the chores, but she had other things on her mind. Her mother had forbidden her to leave the house — it was cold, and she didn’t have gloves — but, beyond the icy glass, the snow looked as soft and inviting as a thick layer of sugar. It was difficult for Polina to resist. When she caught sight of Julian, traipsing across the courtyard in his thin jacket, she made up her mind. She slipped into her coat, grabbed her mother’s scarf, and, careful to latch the door behind her, ran to catch up to her friend.

“Which way are you walking?” she asked him, when she joined him at the side of the small house. The snow was deeper than Polina had imagined, and Julian was hugging the building under the eaves to avoid the deepest drifts.

He glanced at her without acknowledging her. Since his father had disappeared in September, he had become
somber — this was only three months before — but he was still glad for her company. He shrugged. He was half a foot taller now than the adolescent girl next to him, and his coat was too small for him and his shoulders poked through the material like sharp branches. He had aged years, it seemed, since his father had gone. “Into town,” he said.

“Why?”

“The market’s today.” His lips were even more red than they usually were. Polina had the impression that they possessed the only piece of color in the otherwise gray day. Even the tile roofs had turned to charcoal. “Anyway, my brother was picked up this morning to work on the road. I thought maybe I could find him.”

“Are you going to help him?”

“Don’t ask so many questions.”

When Polina slipped, Julian grabbed hold of her arm, then held on to her until she found her balance again. The cobblestones were icy. Polina thanked him with a smile, but he didn’t return it. She felt suddenly young next to him, even though she was older. She focused on the path in front of them. She didn’t want to lose her footing a second time. In the distance, the rigid edges of the bridge emerged from the fuzzy whiteness like a shadow.

The snow had stopped falling and the sky had cleared a little by the time they reached the center of town. It was market day, but with supplies diverted to the German army, the square wasn’t as busy as it usually was. Farmers with vegetables and staples had sold out their stock early, and most had already taken their carts and headed home. The merchants who remained were hawking wares no one wanted — the dregs of the harvest or cuts of meat that few could afford. A group of German soldiers stood huddled on one side of the square,
smoking cigarettes, stamping their heavy boots, glancing at the Polish villagers. The tips of their rifles, strapped over their shoulders, poked above their heads like the strings of a marionette. As oppressive as the occupation was, Polina was barely aware of it. After the fighting had stopped, life had settled back into a routine. It wasn’t the same as it had been, of course. From time to time, the family was woken by gunfire, and they didn’t eat like they used to. Her father spent most days at home, her mother’s face had become gaunt. But Polina was too young to appreciate the deeper effects of the changes, and she had seldom seen German soldiers up close. She stopped at the far edge of the square, grabbed Julian’s arm. Even from this distance, she could see how foreign they were. They didn’t belong here. Julian gawked at them, too. The two children stood still so long that their toes began to freeze.

“Come on,” Julian said.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m hungry.”

Julian slowed when they reached the first stalls. The farmers eyed the young boy and girl suspiciously.
Flour and spice
, one of the merchants said.
Meat, I’ve got meat, I’ve got pork, I’ve got sausage, I’ve got meat
, another repeated. The children paused to watch a woman in a heavy skirt and wool shawl haggle with a man for a large roll of orange fabric, then zigzagged through the stalls toward the center where there were more people. A fire was burning in a large steel drum, and smoke rose above the crowd in a dark, greasy plume. Its heat warmed their faces.
Bread and pastries, bread and cookies, bread and pastries
.

“Do you have any coins?” Polina asked.

Julian didn’t answer. His eyes were focused on a cart that was nearly empty, except for a few soggy loaves of bread. The
red cloth the baker had spread underneath had gotten wet in the snow, and it was covered with a sludge of crumbs and flour.

“I wish I had a grosz that I could give you,” she said.

Julian was jostled backward. He had walked right into someone — his attention had been fastened on the scraps of bread. Polina hadn’t seen the man either. He was wiry, barely taller than Julian, an elderly man with gray hair, dressed in a black jacket. Polina noticed the armband on his biceps first — the yellow Star of David — then his long, unkempt beard. His hands were like talons. He grabbed hold of Julian, gave him a shake. “Watch where you’re going, eh?”

Julian pulled himself from the man’s grip, then gave him a shove. The man slipped and nearly fell, but when he recovered himself, he didn’t say anything more. He simply stared at Julian, and Julian looked back at him. Polina didn’t breathe again until the old man finally let Julian alone and started back on his way through the crowd.

“Meet me in front of the school,” Julian said.

“What?”

Julian didn’t wait for Polina to understand. He squinted at the baker, made certain that his attention was focused elsewhere. Then he darted to the cart, grabbed whatever he could fit into his hands, and bounded off in the other direction. By the time the baker realized what had happened, Julian was already gone. Polina watched him disappear behind a line of stalls as the baker’s voice rose into a shout.
Hey, you there, hey!
Worried that the commotion would attract their attention, she turned toward the soldiers, but they were laughing obliviously, engulfed in a cloud of steam and smoke. The baker, who had taken a few steps in pursuit, returned to his cart, and Polina started across town in the direction of the school.

When she reached the plaza in front of the schoolhouse, Julian was seated on a short flight of stairs in the building’s shadow. A sliver of blue emerged between heavy clouds, and for a few brief seconds the streetscape was impossibly bright. Against the white backdrop, Julian’s long and thin, hunched form stood out like a dab of paint on a blank canvas. His hands were cupped in front of his face, and he was blowing steam onto his fingers. As Polina approached, she realized that he was still holding the stolen bread in his lap, waiting for her. She didn’t say anything. She simply took a small, soggy loaf from him, then sat down on the steps next to him and ate. The snow melted beneath her, wetting her skirt. She wiped her nose with her sleeve. Her fingers were nearly as red as Julian’s lips.

Afterward, the two children lay in the snow and made snow angels. Polina hadn’t expected Julian to join her. It had been some time since he had shown any interest in the games they used to play. Today, though, he had been hungry — it had been twenty-four hours since his last meal — and the food put him in a better mood. The bread hit his stomach like something sharp, but within minutes he felt almost giddy. He lay his head backward into the snow, looked up into the tissue sky, lifted his arms and legs. Lying next to him, Polina pretended to make an angel of her own, when really she was gathering a ball of snow. She sat up quickly and was about to throw it at him, when he stopped her with a question.

“So
now
it’s okay for us to throw things?”

Polina smiled, because she knew that Julian was remembering that day, more than a year before, when they were standing in front of Farmer Madeja’s chicken coop. “Well,” she said, “this isn’t a stone — it’s only a piece of frozen air. And anyway, you’re not a rooster.”

Julian smiled as well. It was rare for him to win an argument with Polina. Then he rolled over and grabbed her arms. “No?” he asked her, looking into her eyes. “Aren’t I?” The snowball she had made got crushed between them, and it disintegrated into powder.

Polina fought, but gave up when she couldn’t move him off her. “No,” she said, “you’re not. At least not a terrible one.”

This made Julian giggle, and he shoved her backward into the snow. Polina pulled him on top of her again. His eyes darkened as he hovered above her. She would have kissed him, perhaps, but he hesitated too long, and she let him roll off her onto his back. The two children lay still, their fingers touching. Above them, the sky opened up, and the crack between the clouds was so bright that Polina had to squint. Julian had stopped laughing. And in the aftermath of their brief tussle, Polina was aware of the rasp of his breath, and then of how quiet Kraków had become.