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

splashing noise, the sound of thick boots moving through water. Everyone jumped instinctively, preparing for the worst. We relaxed once more as Pawel came through the opening bearing a satchel of food. “Hallo!” he greeted brightly, as if meeting us on the street. He visited us twice a week on market days, Tuesdays and Saturdays.

“Dzień dobry,” I replied, genuinely glad to see him. Not long ago, we were unsure if Pawel would return at all because Mama had run out of money.

Each week Mama paid Pawel for the food he would bring us next time. But a few weeks earlier, I found her searching forlornly through the satchel. “What is it?” I had asked.

“The money, it’s all gone. We have nothing left to pay Pawel.” I was surprised by her bluntness. Usually she kept problems from me, sheltering me like I was a child and not nineteen years old. I soon understood why she had told me. “We need to give him the necklace,” she explained. “So he can barter it for money or melt down the gold.”

“Never!” My hand rose instinctively to my neck. The necklace was the last piece of my father I had, my last link to him. I would sooner starve.

I quickly realized that the sentiment was a childish one. Papa would have given up the necklace in a heartbeat to feed us. I reached around my neck and loosened the clasp and put it in Mama’s hand.

When Pawel came that day, she held the necklace out to him. “Take this for the food.”

But Pawel refused. “That was your husband’s.”

“I have nothing else,” she admitted to him finally. Pawel stared at her for several seconds, wrestling with the news. Then he turned and left.

“Why did you tell him that?” Bubbe demanded. The Rosenbergs, it seemed, were out of money as well.

“Because there is no way to hide having no money,” Mama snapped, returning the necklace to me. I refastened it around my neck. Each night, I lay awake with my stomach grumbling, worried that he had left us for good.

The next Saturday after Mama told Pawel we had no money, he had not appeared at his usual time. An hour passed, then another, the Rosenbergs finishing their Shabbos prayers. “He’s not going to come,” Bubbe declared. She was not mean, just a grouchy old woman who did not bother to mute her opinions—or suffer others’ when she thought they were foolish. “We will all starve.” The notion was terrifying.

But Pawel had come, albeit late, still bearing food. No one had mentioned money again since. We were his responsibility and he had not abandoned us, but rather somehow kept finding food. He handed the satchel to Mama now and she unpacked it, placing the bread and other items in a canister she’d managed to hang from the ceiling of the chamber to keep it dry and away from the rats. “I’m sorry to be late,” he offered contritely, like a deliveryman who had been expected from the shops. “I had to go to an extra market to get enough.” Feeding all of us with the limited food supply on the streets and not enough ration cards was a constant challenge for Pawel. He had to scramble from market to market across town buying small bits at each so as not to attract attention. “I’m sorry there isn’t more.”

“It’s wonderful,” Mama said quickly. “We’re so grateful.” Before the war, Pawel would have been a street worker, barely noticeable. Here, he was our savior. But as she pulled a loaf of bread and a few potatoes from the bag, I could see her calculating how to stretch it to feed so many mouths in the days before Pawel brought more.

Sometimes Pawel would linger a bit to talk to us and share news of the outside world. But today he left swiftly, saying that he had been away too long shopping and was needed at home. His visits were always a bit of light in our dark, dreary days and I was sorry to see him leave.

“We need water,” Mama said when Pawel had gone again.

“I’ll go,” I said, even though it wasn’t my turn. I was eager to escape the too-close chamber, even for a few minutes. Before the war, I had always been on the move. “Shpilkes,” my grandmother would say in Yiddish, the fondness in her voice making my restlessness sound like a compliment when otherwise it surely was not. When I was a child, I loved to play outdoors with my friends, chasing stray dogs down the street. As I grew older, I channeled my energy into walking the city and finding new corners to explore. Here, I was forced to do nothing but sit. My legs often ached from the lack of motion.

I thought Mama would say no. She forbade me from leaving the chamber unless it was absolutely necessary, fearful that the narrow walkways beyond these walls would spell certain doom for me as they had Papa. “I can do it,” I pressed. I longed for space and privacy, a few minutes away from the watchful stares of others.

“Take the trash as well,” Mama said distractedly, surprising me. She held up a small bag, which was to be sunk to the base of the riverbed with stones. It always seemed strange to me that one could not leave garbage in a sewer. But there could be no sign that we were here.

Outside the chamber, I gazed longingly down the tunnel in the direction the water flowed, away from our hiding place. I desperately wanted to escape the sewer, fantasized every day about running away. Of course, I would not leave Mama. And the truth was that as awful as things were down here, they were a million times worse above. Many times we had listened in horror as screams rang out from the streets and then there were gunshots followed by silence. Death hung like a scepter above, waiting for all of us if