The Woman with the Blue Star, Pam Jenoff [highly recommended books txt] 📗

could not stop thinking of Krys. I imagined him returning to the woman at the café and continuing his conversation with her as though nothing had happened. Who was she? Had he met her while he was away? Despite everything, I knew that Krys was an honorable man and I could not imagine that she had been in his life when we were together. But he seemed like a stranger, and the pieces between when he left for the war and now were behind fogged glass, obscured from view.

I could not stay in Kraków, I decided. There was no future for me here anymore. Kraków was the biggest small town, my friends and I had often joked. We were forever running into one another. I would have to see Krys, and even if I didn’t, the city would be laden with painful memories. Paris, I thought suddenly, as my brother’s face appeared in my mind. More than once in his letters, Maciej had urged me to come. I would rewrite my letter to him, ask him to send for me as soon as he was able. The war might make it difficult, even impossible, but I knew Maciej would try. I took the letter that I had planned to mail to him from my basket and threw it in a nearby trash bin, intending to write another one after my errand.

I looked up at the sky. The sun was high now, signaling that it was almost midday, and I still had done nothing to get the cherries that Hanna needed. I started in the direction of the Rynek Dębnicki, the neighborhood’s main market square where vendors brought their wares to sell on Saturdays behind the simple wooden stalls. As I neared the market, I marveled that it was still open—there was almost nothing for sale anymore after years of rationing and deprivation. There was no meat for sale and hardly any bread, and what little produce there was had already begun to rot. Sequestered in my world of privilege and protection, I didn’t often see the hardships that the ordinary people were facing during the war. Now as I watched the locals scurry between stalls to see what was available and whether they could afford it, our differences loomed large. The shoppers here were thin and their cheeks hollow. They seemed unsurprised by the lack of food available for purchase, but rather took what they could get and left with their baskets and satchels largely empty.

I walked toward the nearest produce vendor, scanned the meager offerings at the stall, mostly potatoes and some rotting cabbage. “Dried or canned cherries?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Cherries grew plentifully on trees outside the city in early summer. If properly preserved last year, they should not have been scarce. But the Germans had stripped Poland of so much of its natural bounty, from crops to herds of cattle and sheep. Surely they had taken the cherries, too. Still I asked the man in case he had some that were not displayed for sale that he might be willing to part with for a price. I half wanted the vendor to tell me he was out of cherries so that Ana Lucia would be unable to make her special treat for the German. But that would just give my stepmother another chance to crow about my failures.

He shook his head, cap bobbing atop a deeply lined face. “Not for months,” he answered through tobacco-stained teeth. I was annoyed to have come all this way for nothing and that Hanna had been wrong. The vendor looked remorseful to have lost out on the sale. Impulsively, I pointed to a bunch of chrysanthemums he was selling. His face brightened. “You might want to try the czarny rynek around the corner on Pułaskiego Street,” he added, as he took the bright red flowers and wrapped them in fresh brown paper. He handed me the flowers and I put a coin into his leathery palm.

I was surprised that there would be two markets so close together. But when I rounded the corner, I discovered that the location he had sent me to was not an established market at all, but rather a narrow alleyway along the back of a church where a dozen or so people were clustered. I understood then. Czarny rynek meant black market, an unlicensed place where people sold goods that were forbidden or scarce for a higher price. I had heard of such places, but had not actually known they existed until now. The few sellers here had no stalls, but splayed their wares on old blankets or tarps on the ground, tenuous stands that could be picked up in an instant if one had to flee the police. There was a mix of everything, from hard-to-get foods like chocolate and cheese to a contraband radio and an antique gun so old I wondered if it would actually work.

I considered turning away. The black market was illegal and one could be arrested for buying or selling on it. But I could see a fruit seller halfway down the alley with considerably more produce than the actual market had. I started forward. Here there were dried cherries, at least some, splayed on a soiled tarp on the ground. I took all there were and paid the toothless proprietor, using most of the remaining coins my stepmother had given me. I popped one of the cherries into my mouth for good measure, trying not to think of the dirty fingernails of the merchant who had just handed them to me. The sour sweetness caused my jaw to tingle. I sucked on the pit as I walked, then spit it into a nearby sewer grate.

I stepped over the grate, taking care not to catch the heel of my shoe. From below there came a rustling that startled me. I jumped. Probably just a rat, I told myself, like the ones that came out at night to