The Girl from Krakow (24 page)

Rita’s interest quickened. “Do you know other Home Army couriers? Ones that operate outside of Warsaw, in the east, maybe?”

“We aren’t even allowed to know what each other looks like, let alone names. When couriers pass on messages or documents, we try to do it without making eye contact or looking anyone in the face. So, no, I don’t know anyone. And I don’t want to. All I need to know are passwords and dead drops.” Rita looked blank. “Places where I can leave or pick up a message without meeting the other person delivering it or picking it up. Listen, we have more urgent matters to discuss.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t stay here more than a few days. It’s not safe for me. You have a Polish identity card, yes? And a baptismal certificate?” Rita nodded. “Good. You must go to the
Generalgouvernement
bureau across the river to get a German
Kennkarte
. With your looks it should not be difficult. You tell them you are a refugee from the east. Complain about the Russians. They like that. If you can get a card, you can look for work, you can rent a room, and fade into the population. Find a room by looking through the newspaper classifieds. Better on this side than across the Vistula. This is a workers’ area, and they are used to transients and newcomers.” Rita nodded. She could do that.

“You speak Polish like a Pole. That’s critical. Any German?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t use it around Poles. Some will hate you; others will decide you are educated and shake you down as a Jewess. The Germans don’t know that’s a tip-off with Poles.”

Rita took the opportunity of a pause in her instructions. “Krystyna, I have to ask, have you ever heard of Home Army couriers saving Jewish children or taking them to safety, hiding them—anything like that?”

“I haven’t done anything like that. But I know it’s been done. There is a liaison from Home Army to a Jewish organization, the
Zegota,
that mainly channels money to Jews hiding here in Warsaw and around the country. They may do something like that to save children too. Why do you ask?”

Rita now sighed. She’d have to tell Krystyna if she was going to learn anything. “Maybe the
Zegota
could help. I have a child. He was with me in the Karpatyn ghetto till last spring. I gave him to a Home Army courier to bring to my parents, who seemed to be doing all right in the west. But they were taken in an
Aktion,
maybe before my child arrived. The courier was caught by the Gestapo before I could find out what happened to my son.”

“I see.”

“Is there any way I can find out what happened to him?”

“No chance the Home Army will help you. Just for starters, we have our own share of anti-Semites, and even the ones who aren’t won’t sacrifice security to help look for lost children. Look, there is still an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. If your son never got to his grandparents, perhaps he was taken there.”

“What do you mean, still an orphanage?”

“Well, there was another one, famous really, but it was shut down a year ago, and all the kids deported to the east. But there is another one there now, I hear.”

“How could I get to it?”

“Are you mad? You’re free; you might even survive. You want to go into the ghetto?”

“It’s my child, Krystyna.”

“Going into the ghetto is a one-way trip—except for the criminals, the Jewish mafia, the gangs that operate on both sides of the wall.”

“There are Jewish gangs in Warsaw?” Rita realized she shouldn’t have been surprised about this after her experience with Jerszy.

“There have been several, one pretty much emerging every time another one was eliminated by the Germans. First, when the occupation began, there was Group 13, named after their main office, 13 Leszno Street. These thugs might just as well have been Nazis, a branch of the Gestapo. They took on the
Judenrat
’s own police for a while. Then they switched to smuggling, and extorting, under the cover of a medical service. But they were liquidated. Other groups filled the vacuum. The Germans are too busy with the Russians to really keep a lid on things. The Blue Police are corrupt; there are still enough Jews in the city to blackmail, extort, sell protection to—why shouldn’t some of these parasites be Jews? It’s groups like them that make it difficult for the Home Army to know who it is dealing with in the ghetto. There are even rumors of a new gang called Zagiew, actually fighting for the Germans against the Jewish resistance in the ghetto. It beggars the imagination. Anyway, if there still are Jewish gangs operating on both sides, they are not advertising it the way they used to.”

“I see.”

Krystyna was not going to say more. “Look, Rita, like I said, tomorrow, out you go. Find a place, get a
Kennkarte
, disappear.”

“Krystyna, I think I have something the Home Army can use. But I need some help.”

They were sitting at the breakfast table. Krystyna’s agitation was evident. So was Rita’s, for that matter.

With a look of annoyance, Krystyna responded, “Yes, what?” She might as well have said, “Yes, what
now
? Jews, never grateful, always wanting more. Why did I ever get involved with you
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
?”
Well
, Rita thought,
can you blame her, either for her response or for her anxiety about the risks she is running? No. So, be patient.
Rita stood and went over to her coat, brought it back to the kitchen table, and began to rip the seams out of the bottom. Out onto the table came the remaining dozen vials. She laid them across the table and then went into her garret, coming back with the three parts of the syringe. “Morphine.”

Krystyna visibly relaxed. “Something we can always use.”

“It’s a gift to the Home Army.”

“And in return?” Krystyna was back to business.

Rita tore more of the seam out and began fishing out gold zloty coin after gold coin, until eighteen of the twenty coins were on the table. She left two still hidden in the seam. “I can’t go anywhere in Warsaw with a hoard like this, can I?”

“No. It would be stripped from you piece by piece or all at once. Just having it on you is enough to prove you are a Jew in most people’s eyes.”

“Yes. I’ve been told I am safer with nothing of value on me. I’d give these coins to the Home Army too, but I think I am going to need them. So, I need someone to keep them for me.”

“Well, it won’t be me. I told you when you arrived, you can’t stay here. You can’t come back here, ever. You have to forget all about this place and me. Besides, what are you going to need all that money for? You’ll get a
Kennkarte,
no problem. And then you’ll be safe.”

Rita drew a breath. “I have to get into the ghetto. I have to find the orphanage. I have to look for my child.” Krystyna was shaking her head. “I have to. It will take money. I need someone to keep it.”

Krystyna was still shaking her head, and now closing her lips into a tight grimace.

“Look, you told me yourself, yesterday, there are ways
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
what did you call them, dead drops? You can hold my money and pass it to me without anyone knowing, without any risk to you. You can even keep what I don’t end up needing.”

Krystyna was weakening, Rita could see. After a moment’s thought, Krystyna said, “All right, I am going to get zloty for this from the Home Army. They need hard currency and will give you a fair exchange.” She stopped. “There is a café down the street. It’s called
Le Chemiot
, French for trainman. You passed it coming here. I stop there in the early evening for a glass of wine—terrible stuff, but I do it every day at 18:30. If you need money, go in, have a beer or something, ersatz coffee, whatever. Hang your coat on the coatrack at the back, always inside out. That way I’ll know which is yours. When I come in, do nothing. When you leave, there will be money in your coat.

“I don’t know why I am doing this. It’s dangerous for you, for me, for the resistance.” Rita knew why. Like most humans, Krystyna would respond to human emotions with kindness, especially if there were something to gain. “Now, here’s a key. Out you go. You know where to go and what to do. When you come back for your things, I won’t be here. So put the key on the top of the doorframe when you leave. You are tall enough to reach it.”

An hour later, Rita was across the Vistula, in Three Crosses Square, central Warsaw, queuing at the
Generalgouvernement
Internal Passport Office, documents in her hand. After thirty minutes or so, she found herself in front of the bars of a window grill, confronted by the pinched, birdlike face of a man addressing her in German-accented Polish. “Tak—yes
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
?”

Wordlessly Rita handed across her Polish identity, her birth certificate, her baptism certificate, and the completed application form, along with the required photo, taken that morning at a little studio in Praga. The little man put a series of ticks against various items on his checklist, looked up, and addressed her in Polish: “Come back in a week.” Rita was ready for this. She began in her rehearsed German, “But,
Mein Herr Inspektor
, can’t it be today? I cannot go around Warsaw without papers, and I am applying for a job today, with the
Generalgouvernement
.” Then, with all the stealth she could muster, she slipped one of the reichsmarks banknotes Julia had given her that last night in Karpatyn across the counter. At the going rate of exchange for zloty, it was at least a week’s salary for the poor bureaucrat. At the same time and in the most pliant tones she could muster, she pleaded, “
Bitte, Mein Herr
, could you not do it for a good
Volks-Deutsche
?” She put her finger on her mother’s names in the baptismal certificate.

He grumbled. “Always the same. Special treatment.” Then more quietly, “Come back before we close at five thirty.” Then he looked up. In a voice louder than he seemed capable of, he called, “Next.”

On to the labor exchange, though how she was to negotiate this office without papers was beyond her. The office was in the next building, a holdover from the prewar Polish government office. Rita studied the listing of positions available in a glass case on the wall. She found one that might be promising—shopgirl in a department store—and moved to a bench. Again, another form to fill out on her lap, this time demanding work experience. Her only relevant experience was having been a customer in such a store. But that wouldn’t work here, so she mentioned positions at a few shops in Lemberg. Would they check?

“So, you are interested in the salesgirl position at Jablkowski Brothers? Not too many girls want to work there.”

“Why not?”

“It’s the neighborhood. Close to the ghetto. Lots of identity checks.” She looked straight at Rita, as if to say, “Jewish? Don’t take this job.”

“No problem. Please give me the address.”

“Very well. Report there on Thursday at eight thirty. Take your documents.” That gave her a day to find lodgings.

It seemed safe to ask the one obvious question a stranger might ask. “Exactly where is the Jewish quarter?” This was the ghetto’s official name. “With my luck, I’d end up on top of it.”

“It surrounds Mirowski Square, a few blocks north of the Jablkowski Brothers Department Store on Bracka Street. It’s easier to avoid now. Much smaller than it was.” Rita did not have to ask why.

It was almost noon when she came out of the labor exchange, too late to begin looking for a room. Everything decent advertised in the newspaper would already be taken. Besides, walking the pavement without a document in her purse would be madness. There was nothing for it but to find a hotel for the night and convince them she could show papers by the evening.

Rita joined what passed for noontime bustle. At the first intersection, she surveyed the streets in four directions. Three-story stucco buildings, all attached, all painted creamy pastel colors, mainly ochre, and visibly deteriorating after three years of occupation. Not many cars, and those bearing marks of German requisition. A few horse-drawn carriages. One felt sorry for the horses and their drivers, in that order. Both looked as though they knew their lives would end before the war did.

There, down the street, halfway back to the Internal Passport Office, stood a decrepit-looking building with a small sign she could just make out: a German name,
Hotel Handel
—the Hotel Commerce. She began walking toward it. From the moment she crossed the street away from the labor exchange, she felt a presence behind her. As Rita passed a narrow gap between two buildings, she was pulled back into it. She turned around to see two young men—boys actually, both smaller than she was—one brandishing a broken penknife blade. The slightly larger one began, “
Tak, suka Yid
. [So, Jew bitch.] One hundred zloty, and you can go.”

Rita looked at them, two urchins, probably starving in the streets, but prepared to threaten a woman for a zloty or two. The knife was real enough. But if she was going to survive in Warsaw, she had to be able to deal with this. In her loudest German, she began to shriek, “
Hilfe
! German lady being attacked by Polak street thugs. Someone, anyone, help a German woman undefended.” Then in Polish, “Do you hear? I am a German woman, and you will be in for it if they catch you
 
.
 
.
 
.” Back to German: “
Hilfe! Hilfe
!
” The boys looked at one another twice and began to scamper down the alley.