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

Lucia flashed daggers at me. “Enough questions.” She put her hand on Colonel Maust’s arm. “Darling, let’s not speak of such things in polite company and ruin our lunch. My stepdaughter was just leaving.”

“I must be going as well,” Colonel Maust said, folding his napkin.

“Must you?” Ana Lucia asked, seeming to deflate.

“Excuse me.” Not wanting to witness their farewell, I stood abruptly and pushed my chair back from the table so hard that the coffee cups rattled. I hurried from the room and up the stairs to the garret. There was a strange ringing in my ears as I processed what the German had said. The Jews were being taken to camps—all of them. What had I thought? I berated myself. I knew the ghetto had been emptied. Still, it had been easier to tell myself that the Jewish occupants had simply been “relocated” to live somewhere else—or to not think about it at all. Now the truth was laid before me impossible to ignore. The Jews were being imprisoned and used as slave labor, or worse.

Sadie flashed into my mind. She had fled the German liquidation of the ghetto, as surely as the woman I had seen jump from the bridge. And the same horrors that the German had described awaited her if she got caught. Though I had met her only a few weeks earlier, I felt like I had gotten to know Sadie and I did not want anything bad to happen to her. She had been through so much already and I could not stand the thought that she might be captured and taken away.

Sometime later, I heard the lunch gathering wind down, the wretched remaining guests make their way out onto the street. But I stayed upstairs for the rest of the day, wanting to avoid Ana Lucia’s wrath. Looking across the rooftops toward the far bank of the river, I pictured Sadie and prayed that she was safe. It would be a week before I could go to her again and know for sure.

The next morning when I went down to breakfast, Ana Lucia was already seated at the table. It was a rare occurrence that we met in the morning; I usually made it a point to be up and gone long before she came downstairs, which wasn’t hard, since she seldom awoke before noon. Neither of us bade the other good-morning as I sat down at the far end of the table.

“Ella,” Ana Lucia said, once Hanna had served me coffee and toast. I could tell from her tone, even more disapproving than usual, that the topic was not a good one. Was it the fact that I had left her lunch party so swiftly the previous day or asked too many questions? Perhaps it was something else entirely. I braced myself for her tirade.

“What were you doing at the Dębniki market?” she asked suddenly.

A lump formed in my throat. “Getting cherries for your dessert, remember?”

“No, I mean the second time.” I stiffened. Ana Lucia knew I had gone to Dębniki more than once. She continued, “My dinner party with the cherry pie was weeks ago on a Saturday. But someone saw you there after that.” Ana Lucia often appeared clueless. But her memory was razor sharp now. I realized I had underestimated her. Her eyes bore down on me, demanding answers. Our poor maid, Hanna, slipped from the room with a terrified look on her face.

“Well, you may remember I couldn’t get enough for the party,” I said, struggling to speak in an even voice. Ana Lucia smiled as she watched me squirm, caught in her trap. “But the seller said he would have some cherries coming in soon, so I decided to go back, in case you wanted Hanna to make the pastry again.” My voice was weak, the excuse implausible.

“You need to mind your ways,” she said, an unmistakable note of menace in her voice. “I don’t know what you’re up to.” I breathed an inward sigh of relief. “But I won’t tolerate anything out of line that would jeopardize our position.” She loomed over me now, eyes flaring, temper unleashed. “You interrupted my party yesterday uninvited.” I wanted to correct that her German friend had asked me in, but I didn’t dare. “And then you ruined it by talking about the Jews.”

“How can you stand it?” I burst out. “What they are doing to those poor, innocent people.”

“The city is better off without them.” She gazed at me unblinkingly. I recalled then how Austria, Ana Lucia’s native land, had welcomed the Anschluss, its annexation with Germany. Ana Lucia was not just consorting with the Germans for a social life, or to gain their favor. She actually agreed with them.

Sickened, I rose from the table. As I left the room, my mind raced. Ana Lucia knew I had gone back across the river. Thankfully, she did not seem to know why—at least not yet.

Upstairs, I looked across the rainy skyline at the drab, gray neighborhood on the far side of the bridge. I should not go back to the sewer. With Ana Lucia suspicious, she would be watching me more closely than ever. I did not know Sadie all that well. I had spoken to her only a handful of times, and it made no sense to risk everything for someone who was practically a stranger. Yet even as I thought this, I knew I would return to the grate. There was nothing to be done for that woman on the bridge—I had stood by helplessly as she took her life and those of her children, just like I had done nothing when Miriam and the other Jewish students had been kicked out of school. But Sadie was still safe, and in some small way, I could help her. I swore to myself then and there that, unlike the others, I would not let her down.

10

Sadie

I listened one Sunday morning as the voices at Kostka Church above the