before me.
The next Friday afternoon, Marta did not come for me. “She has a cold,” Pani Nederman had informed me a few hours earlier. As we bathed and fed the children that afternoon, I deliberated whether I would go to Shabbes dinner without her. The thought of walking into the gathering alone terrified me; even though I had been going for months, I still thought of myself largely as Marta’s guest, rather than as someone who belonged. At five o’clock, I put on my coat and stepped out onto the street. Straining my head to the right, I could see the soft lights behind the yellow curtains at Josefinska 13. My heart twisted as I imagined not being there, going home to our cold, quiet apartment instead. Suddenly, my mind was made up. I crossed the street and entered the building. I climbed the steps and, inhaling deeply, knocked timidly on the door. When no one answered, I entered the apartment.
“Dobry wieczor, Emma,” Helga greeted me from the kitchen as I entered.
“Dobry wieczor,” I replied. “Do you need help?”
She shook her head. “No, but it would be great if you could stay afterward and help clean up. Katya is sick with the flu.”
“I can help. Marta is sick, too,” I added. I turned from the kitchen to the main room. A dozen or so people were already there, the faces familiar to me after a few weeks of visits. “Emma, come join us,” a boy named Piotrek called out, and I soon found myself listening to a story about a one-legged shoe salesman that I somehow doubted was true. It didn’t matter; I was grateful just to be treated as one of them. A few minutes later, a bell rang, Alek and Marek came out, and the weekly ritual began. I enjoyed the dinner, surrounded by the people I had come to know, but it wasn’t the same without Marta beside me to whisper and share confidences.
The crowd thinned out after dessert, with only a handful of us remaining behind to clean up. Alek, Marek and a third man, whom I had noticed at dinner but did not recognize, retreated to the back room. As I cleared the dishes from the table, I noticed that the door to the room was ajar. Curious, I found myself lingering by the door as I cleared the end of the table nearest to it. Edging closer, I could hear the men arguing. “… the railway line outside Plaszow,” I heard Marek say.
“It’s too soon,” Alek replied. “We need to build up the provisions first.”
“We have two dozen guns, a hundred bullets, some grenades …” Marek protested.
“Not enough.”
The stranger spoke then. “In Warsaw, they are organizing within the ghetto.”
“Warsaw is different. The movement, the ghetto itself, everything is bigger,” Alek said.
“If only Minka can get …”
“Emma,” Helga said, coming up behind me and making me jump. “Do you need help with those plates?”
“N-no, thank you,” I stammered, afraid she had caught me listening. I balanced a stack of plates on my forearm and made my way to the kitchen. As I placed the dishes in the sink and turned the tap on, I heard the door to the back room creak and the men still talking as they made their way to the front door. Alek paused at the kitchen entrance and whispered something to Helga. The three men exited the apartment.
A few minutes later, as I was drying the plates, Helga came over to the sink. “I’ll finish this,” she said, taking the towel from my hands. “Would you mind taking out the garbage on your way down?” She pointed to two bags by the kitchen door. I thanked her and bid the others good-night.
At the bottom of the stairs, I turned and found the back door leading out to the alley. Outside, it was pitch black. I blinked several times, trying to adjust my eyes to the light, before feeling for the step downward. It was a deeper step than I had thought, and icy. I stumbled, almost dropping the garbage bags in the process. “Oh, oh!” I cried.
“Careful,” a deep voice said from the shadows.
I jumped, caught off guard. Then I recognized the voice. “Alek!” I gasped. “What are you doing here? You frightened me.”
“Shhh,” he whispered, taking the bags from me and setting them by the garbage cans. “Come here.” He grabbed my sleeve. He must have asked Helga to have me bring down the garbage in order to speak with me, I realized, as he led me to the far corner of the alley where two buildings met. What did he want? Had I done something to make him mad? I wondered if he had seen me listening by the door. “I have a message.” His voice did not sound angry. He pressed a tiny crumpled slip of paper into my hand.
My heart leapt. “From Jacob?” I asked, my voice rising.
“Shh!” he admonished. He lit a match. “Read it quickly.” I unfolded the paper.
Dearest love,
I am well. I miss you more than you know. Take care of yourself, and do not give up. Help is coming.
Emmeth
There was no signature. Emmeth was the code word Jacob and I had chosen before his disappearance; it was Hebrew for truth. I read the note over and over, until the match threatened to burn Alek’s fingers and he was forced to blow it out. “I don’t understand. Is he near?”
“No, quite the opposite. That note traveled many hundreds of kilometers to reach you.”
“Where is he?”
“Don’t ask me that,” Alek replied sharply. “He is safe, that is all you need to know.”
“But …” A million questions raced through my mind.
“He is on a … procurement mission,” he said. “Getting things that are very important to us. I can’t tell you any more than that.”
I suddenly realized that my husband was the man about whom they had been speaking in the back room. “Minka?” I asked, forgetting I was not supposed to have heard.
“Yes. Outside the ghetto, we refer to one another by our aliases for safety’s sake. But you should not have been listening to our conversation. Believe me when I say that the less you know, the better.”
“I understand.” But I didn’t really. My mind whirled. Where was Jacob? Was he okay? What did his note mean?
“Your husband has a talent for getting things, for finding what we need and persuading people to help us.” I smiled at this, imagining Jacob’s imploring expression and cajoling tone. I could never refuse him anything, or stay mad at him when he looked at me like that. Alek continued, “He also knows a great deal about guns and munitions.” I realized then how very little I knew about the man I had married. “All right then.” Alek reached over and took the paper from my hand. “You can’t keep that. I’m sorry.” I watched in dismay as he lit another match and held it to the corner of the note.
“But …” I started to protest. Then I stopped, knowing he was right. If the paper was somehow found and traced to Jacob, it could be dangerous. I thought of our marriage certificate and rings, hidden in a book underneath my mattress in our apartment. Nobody knew that I still had them.
“Emma, I know this is difficult for you,” Alek said when the paper was gone and the flame extinguished. The air around us was dark and cold once more. “You must have faith. Jacob is okay, and you are not alone. At least you have your family.” His voice sounded hollow as he said the last part.
“What about you, Alek?” I could not help but ask. I knew only from what Marta had told me that he had a wife and that she was not in the ghetto.
“My family lived in Tarnów before the war.” His voice was flat. “My parents weren’t fighters. They were terribly afraid. The night before the Nazis came for us, they lay down in bed, took something. The next morning they were dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said helplessly.
“And my wife is not in the ghetto,” he added. I could not tell from his tone if he considered this a good thing.
“So