She struggled to remember what she wanted to say. “What are you doing here, Sam? Are the Americans coming to help us?”
“No.” Her heart sank. The talk of the Americans entering the war had been growing in recent months, whispered everywhere from the hospital corridors to the market in the town square. And if the Americans weren’t coming yet, then what was he doing here? “That is, I mean...” He broke off. “I really can’t say too much,” he added apologetically. Then he frowned again. “You must be taking a terrible risk coming here.”
Not really, she wanted to say, but that would be untrue. “Everything is dangerous now,” she replied instead. In truth, finding him was the most exciting thing that had happened to her in years, maybe ever, and she had been eager to return. “Especially going to see my mother.” She told him then about sneaking in and out of Kraków, her near-encounter with the jeep. “Of course, if not for the German I would never have come this way and found you.” She could feel herself blush again.
He did not seem to notice, though, but continued staring at her, his brow crinkled. “I wish you wouldn’t go to the city again.”
Helena was touched by his concern, more than she might have expected from a man she just met. “That’s what my...” She stopped herself from telling him about Ruth, the fact that she had a twin. She did not want to acknowledge her prettier sister. “There are five children in the family, including me. I’m the one who has to go check on Mama. My father is gone and there’s no one else to make sure she’s cared for.”
Helena’s thoughts turned to her mother. She’d actually seemed better today. For once she’d been awake and hadn’t mistaken Helena for her sister. And she had reached for the bread that Helena offered. For a second, Helena had hesitated; she had hoped to keep the extra food for the soldier. She was overcome with shame and had quickly broken the bread and moistened it. “Pani Kasia says that they’re going to kill us,” Mama had announced abruptly as she chewed, gesturing to the woman in the bed next to hers. She had an unworried, slightly gossipy tone as though discussing the latest rumor about one of the neighbors back home.
Inwardly, Helena had blanched. She had worked so hard to shield Mama from the outside world. But the hospital was a porous place and news seeped through the cracks. “She’s a crazy old woman,” Helena replied carefully in a low voice. For months she had done her best to keep the truth from her mother without actually lying to her, and she didn’t want to cross that line now.
“And sour to boot,” Mama added, smiling faintly. There was a flicker of clarity to her eyes and for a second Helena glimpsed the mother of old, the one who had baked sweet cakes and rubbed their feet on frigid winter nights. There were so many things she wanted to ask her mother about her childhood and the past and what her hopes and dreams had been.
“Mama...” She turned back, then stopped. Her mother was staring out the window, once more the cloud pulled down over her face like a veil, and Helena knew that she was gone and could not be reached.
“It’s so brave of you to make that journey every week,” Sam said, drawing her from her thoughts. His voice was full with admiration.
“Brave?” She was unaccustomed to thinking of herself that way. “You’re the brave one, leaving your family to come all the way over here.”
“That’s different,” he replied, and a shadow seemed to pass across his face.
“How old are you, anyway?” she asked, hearing her sister’s phantom admonition that the question was too blunt.
“Eighteen.”
“Same as me,” she marveled.
“Almost nineteen. I enlisted the day after my birthday.”
“Did you always want to be a soldier?”
“No.” His face clouded over. “But I had to come.”
“Why?”
He bit his lip, not answering. Then he lifted his shoulders, straightening. “When I joined the army, they sent me to school in Georgia, that’s in the southern part of the United States, for nearly a year. I had to learn to be a soldier, you see, and then how to be a paratrooper.”
Helena processed the information. She had never thought about someone becoming a soldier; it seemed like they were already that way. But now she pictured it, Sam donning his uniform and getting his hair cut short. “Is that why it’s taking so long for the Americans to come?” It came out sounding wrong, as though she was holding him personally responsible for his country.
But he seemed to understand what she meant. “In part, yes.” His brow wrinkled. “Some people don’t want us to enter the war at all.” How could the Americans not help? Helena wanted to ask. Sam continued, “Everyone has to be trained, they have to plan the missions...” He paused. “I probably shouldn’t say too much. It’s nothing personal,” he hastened to add. “I’m not supposed to talk about it with anyone.”
“I understand.” But the moment hung heavy between them. She was a Pole and not to be trusted.
“They don’t know,” he explained earnestly. “I mean, the American people know about Hitler, of course, and the Jews there are concerned for their relatives, trying to get them out. Until I came to Europe, I had no idea...” He stopped abruptly.
“No idea about what?”
Sam bit his lip. “Nothing.” Helena could tell from his voice that there were things that she, even in the middle of it all, had not seen. Things he would not share with her. “Anyway, our rabbi back home said that—”
“You’re Jewish?” she interrupted. He nodded. She was surprised—he didn’t look anything like the Jews she’d seen in the city, shawl covered and stooped. But there was something unmistakably different about him, a slight arch to his nose, chin just a shade sharper than the people around here. His dark hair was curly and so thick it seemed that water could not penetrate it. “You don’t look it,” she blurted. Her face flushed. “That is, the Jews around here...”
He smiled, not offended. “There are different kinds of Jews. Some, like the Orthodox, are more observant than others, and they dress differently.”
That was not quite what Helena had meant, but she was grateful to let it be. Thinking of the empty streets and shuttered shops of Kazimierz, and what the nurse had told her about the ghetto and her sister about the Jews of Nowy S˛acz, she was suddenly nervous for him. Not just a foreigner, but a Jew. The full danger of his situation crashed down upon her. “Did they make you come?”
“No, I volunteered.” He cleared his throat. “That is, the kind of work I do...” She wanted to ask what that was exactly, but she knew he wouldn’t say. “It’s a really big honor and I raised my hand to be considered. At first they said no—they were worried that being Jewish I might let emotions get in the way.” His face was open and honest in a way that she liked, as if he could not hide a single feeling. So unlike here, where everyone kept their eyes low to avoid trouble. “Are you Catholic?”
Helena nodded, picturing the worn old rosary Mama kept in her bed stand drawer, even at the hospital. She had insisted on dressing the children in their best clothes and going to Mass each Sunday. Helena always dreaded the stares of the other villagers, wondering where their father was, speculating that he was sleeping off another night of drinking. After Mama got sick and had gone to the sanatorium, Ruth had stubbornly persisted in herding the children to church. But then their better clothes became too small and threadbare to wear and after Tata died they stopped going altogether. “Everyone is here, more or less.”
He did not speak further, but stared off into the distance. “What are you going to do now?” she asked finally.
He paused. “I don’t know. Stay here for now, I guess. I don’t have much choice with this leg.” He finished the bread and looked at her with a serious expression. “When you found me, was there any sign of anyone else?”
She