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

street at the base of the bridge, the police dragged a woman in her twenties from a building. Her once-fashionable A-line skirt was torn at the hem and her white blouse was soiled. On the upper sleeve of her blouse she wore a white armband bearing a blue, six-pointed star. I could tell from her clothes and matted hair she had been hiding somewhere dirty. For a second, I wondered if the woman was one of the people with Sadie. But the woman was not wet, nor as filthy as she would have been coming from the sewer.

The woman was holding two children, an infant in one arm and a toddler in the other. She did not fight the police as they led her toward the back of the awaiting truck. But as she neared the truck, one of the Germans waiting there tried to take the children from her arms. The woman reared back, refusing to let go of them. The German spoke to her in a voice too low for me to hear, but I imagined him telling her why the children had to go separately—an explanation that no sensible person would believe anymore. He reached for the children once more, but the woman shook her head and pulled away. The German’s voice rose, ordering her now to obey. “No, please no!” the woman begged, clinging desperately to her children. She broke away from him and started running toward the bridge.

But the bridge was barricaded by the police and choked thick with people. There was nowhere for the woman to go. One of the Germans pulled out a pistol and leveled it at her. “Halt!” Around me, there was a collective gasp from the onlookers.

“No!” I cried aloud. A bullet could kill not just the woman, but her children. I prayed that she would stop and do as the German ordered.

“Shh,” the man who had been in front of me scolded. He had dropped his cigar and it now lay squashed and smoldering on the bridge. “You can’t do anything. You’ll get us all killed.” The man was not concerned for my safety, but his own. German reprisals against the local Polish community were swift and severe, and dozens might be killed for a single act of protest or defiance.

The woman kept running toward the bridge. But her gait was slow and awkward as she carried the children, like an animal already wounded yet still trying to flee. A shot rang out and several people around me ducked, as though the shot had been aimed at them. The woman was not hit. Had the German fired off-target as a warning or actually missed? The crowd around me stood silently, as if mesmerized by the macabre spectacle. The woman started across the bridge. Then, seeing that the way forward was blocked by barricades and the crowd, she turned to the wall of the bridge and started to climb over. The German aimed again and I could tell by the intensity of his expression that this time, he did not intend to miss.

The woman did not look back, but flung herself without hesitation off the edge of the bridge with her children. There was a collective gasp from the crowd and a sickening thud as the woman and her children hit the water several meters below.

For a minute, I wondered if the Germans or police would go in after them. Seemingly satisfied that the woman and her children could not have survived the leap, the officials turned away and the crowd began to disperse. However, the barricades remained, with several police remaining to form a makeshift checkpoint, leaving the bridge unpassable. I knew I would not be seeing Sadie today. Even if I could get across the bridge, it would not be safe to go to the grate now. I started sadly back toward home.

Thick raindrops began to fall as I recrossed the city center, pelting the cobblestones, which gave off an ancient, earthy smell. The pedestrians and shoppers scurried home now beneath umbrellas, a sea of bobbing black mushrooms. My hair and dress grew soaking, but I was so shaken by what I had seen that I scarcely noticed. I pictured the woman and her children as they jumped from the bridge. Had they died upon impact or drowned? Some part of me imagined them swimming to safety and coming out of the river to freedom farther down the banks. But the truth was that, in the broad daylight of a spring morning, a woman had just killed herself and her children in front of my very eyes, rather than be taken and separated from them by the Nazis. And I, along with dozens of other people, had stood by and watched.

I had been out longer than I expected on my failed trip to see Sadie and it was nearly noon when I returned to our house. Ana Lucia was entertaining again, this time a smaller gathering for Sunday lunch. I had skipped breakfast that morning in my hurry to get to Sadie, and as I imagined the buffet spread of meats and cheeses, my mouth watered. But I would sooner eat dirt than join them.

I tried to slip through the foyer and up to my room unseen to change out of my wet clothes. But as I neared the stairs, a German officer stepped from the toilet into the hall and blocked my way. “Dzień dobry, fräulein,” he said, his greeting a clumsy mix of Polish and German. I recognized him as Oberführer Maust. He was a high-ranking SS colonel who had recently transferred to Kraków, I’d heard Ana Lucia tell one of her friends a few weeks earlier. Drawn to his power and influence, she had quickly ingratiated herself to him, and he had become a regular fixture by her side.

And not just at her lunches and dinner parties—the previous night when I had gotten home, Ana Lucia’s dinner party had ended but one guest had remained