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

your head low, that was the lesson I had learned from the war. Tata had fought for his country and it had gotten him killed. Stay out of everyone’s way and you might have a chance of coming out on the other side.

Yet as I neared Ana Lucia’s house (I had long stopped regarding it as home) I kept thinking about the girl beneath the grate. Ana Lucia was out when I returned, so I gave the cherries to Hanna. “It’s only half enough,” she said, not ungrateful but afraid of Ana Lucia’s terrible wrath.

“I’ll keep looking for more,” I promised. Of course, by the time I might find any more cherries, it would be too late for tonight’s dessert.

Hanna thanked me, which was more than my stepmother would have done, and set about making her pie. I considered what to do with the rest of my day. It was Saturday and I might have gone to the shops or even to see a film at the one cinema that still admitted Poles. I didn’t want to run into any of my old friends, though, or worse yet, Krys. So I climbed the stairs to the tiny garret on the fourth floor of our house, which used to belong to Maciej. It was a narrow space with a sloping roof that required me to stoop not to bump my head. But it was the quietest part of the house and the room farthest from Ana Lucia’s, with a view of the Old Town cathedral spires across the weathered rooftops of our street. I claimed it as my bedroom after my brother left and spent much time there painting. Oil colors were my favorite medium and my teacher Pan Łysin´ski commented more than once that I might study at the Academy of Fine Arts. Of course, that felt like a long-forgotten dream.

Today I was too distracted to paint. I looked across the river in the direction of Dębniki, thinking again of the girl in the sewer. I wondered how long she had been down there and whether she was alone. Later as night fell and the sounds of Ana Lucia’s dinner party carried on, I curled up in the old chaise lounge that occupied most of the space in the garret, wrapped in an old quilt my brother had left there. I was tired from the long walk across the river and back and my eyes grew heavy. As I drifted off, I pictured the girl. How did she sleep in the sewer? Was she cold? My house, which I had always taken for granted, suddenly seemed like a palace. I slept in a warm bed, had enough to eat. These basic things now felt like treasures. I knew then and there that, despite my fears and hesitation to get involved, I would go see the girl again.

Or at least I would try, I decided the next morning, after I woke, stiffly unfolding myself from the chaise lounge, where I had spent the entire night. I would return to the sewer grate, but there was no guarantee she would be there. I dressed and went down to breakfast, planning my secret return to the place where I had seen the girl. I thought of a half-dozen excuses I could give Ana Lucia if she asked where I was going. But her party had carried on deep into the night and she did not come down to breakfast at all.

I put on my coat and hat and prepared to leave, then stopped again. I should bring something for the girl. Food, I decided, remembering how pale and thin she had looked. I walked to the kitchen. Recalling the smell of Hanna’s sumptuous cherry pie baking, I hoped there might be some left over from dinner the previous night. Hanna kept the kitchen spotless at my stepmother’s insistence, though, and there were no bits of food or leftovers lying around at all. I reached into the bread bin and opened a tightly wrapped loaf, ripping off as big of a piece as I dared and shoving it in my pocket. Then I started from the house.

Outside, the sky was heavy and gray with clouds, the April air still more winter than spring. This time I took the tram since I did not have an excuse to be out as long as I had the previous day when looking for cherries, and I did not want Ana Lucia to find me gone and start asking questions. As the tram clacked along the bridge over the Wisła, I looked at the unfamiliar, industrial neighborhood on the far bank. My doubts renewed: why go back and see the girl at all? I didn’t know her and to do it meant risking everything. I would be arrested or worse if I was caught. Yet for some reason, I could not turn away.

I arrived at the Dębniki market just before ten. The few locals who still dared were making their way to church. It was more than an hour earlier than I had come the previous day after my run-in with Krys. I should have waited a bit longer, I scolded myself. Going to the grate at the same time would surely offer the best chance of seeing the girl again. I walked the market square, browsing idly to buy some time. But it was Sunday and most of the stalls were closed. I couldn’t be gone from home too long, so fifteen minutes later, I started around the corner toward the sewer grate.

I peered down, seeing nothing but darkness. I waited uncertainly, hoping that the girl might appear soon. I saw a few churchgoers peer curiously into the alleyway as they passed, noticing me. My nervousness grew. I dared not stand over the grate looking down for too long in case someone witnessed my unusual behavior and asked questions or pointed me out to the police that seemed to linger on every corner.

Several minutes passed and the