She and I butted heads, but I loved her, and I was grateful to her. I had to find a way to be less of a burden to her and to show my gratitude.
I don’t know how I lost him. I was distracted, and the market was crowded with others taking advantage of the improved weather. After a few minutes it occurred to me that I had probably wandered a little too far, and I turned and walked back to the apple stall—but by then, Mateusz was gone.
I scanned the crowd, waited a few moments, then approached the stall owner.
“Did you see which way my father went? He was the tall man with the cap and the beard. He was haggling with you over the price of your apples.”
“I remember him. He told me that today is your birthday. Was that a trick?”
I laughed.
“No, it is my birthday.”
“Well, in that case,” the seller handed me a bright red apple, “happy birthday.”
“Thank you!” I said, delighted. I took a bite, and the fresh, crisp taste flooded my mouth. “Oh, that is good.”
“I know,” the vendor said and chuckled. “He went that way.”
He pointed back in the direction I’d just come from. I supposed it was possible that we had passed one another without realizing it, so I thanked the man and walked back the way I’d come. This time, I looked carefully, but when I reached the entrance, Mateusz was still nowhere to be found.
For the first time, I felt truly vulnerable. This was exactly the kind of scenario we’d resolved to avoid as word of the Red Army cruelty had spread through the city. As a young woman walking alone, I was vulnerable to all manner of dangers.
In the absence of any alternative, though, I began to walk back toward the factory.
* * *
I would always remember strange details from that day. I walked fast because I wanted to find Mateusz as quickly as I could, but I did not run because I knew not to draw attention to myself. The breeze picked up a little and my hair was down, so it kept blowing into my face and sticking in my mouth. I walked past a bakery, and the scent of bread was in the air, making my stomach rumble. I hoped that Mateusz had apples waiting for me, even though I could still taste the first one on my lips.
I was wearing flat leather lace-up shoes that Sara had given me when I was working in the department office. The shoes were tan, but I was wearing blue socks, which I knew didn’t exactly match, but I was making do with the clothes I’d brought from Warsaw. The blue socks had a tiny hole over my left pinky toe that I had been meaning to darn, but I couldn’t be bothered to mend it. I was always putting that kind of thing off, and it drove Truda crazy.
I was wearing a gray skirt that was a little too big for me. As I walked, the waistband kept slipping down, and I had to keep pulling it up. I was wearing a white blouse beneath a scooped-neck gray wool sweater. I loved that sweater, even though it always itched a little.
Someone called out behind me, Soviet words I didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter because my heart sank anyway. Mateusz wasn’t sure what the rules were about papers now that the Soviets were in charge: we had been waiting for propaganda posters to appear on the walls to tell us what was expected. For so long, papers had been the difference between life and death so I still carried mine religiously. As I turned toward the voice, I reached into the pocket of my skirt to grasp my identity card.
It was three Soviet soldiers—a young one, maybe twenty-five, flanked by two older ones. The one on the left was overweight, his belly hanging over his belt, his cheeks a deep red, his nose bulbous and bumpy. The one on the right was the oldest. All of the men were clean-shaven.
They were walking steadily toward me. They looked angry, but it was a different kind of anger, one I didn’t know how to interpret, and I felt frightened.
I stopped looking at their faces, and instead looked at their khaki jackets and pants and the red patches on their shoulders and the tan of their belts and their high black boots. Soon, they were close enough to speak without shouting. Soon, they were close enough that I could smell vodka coming off them in waves. Drunk and fat in the middle of the afternoon, in a city and a nation that had been starving for years.
“Do you know how long I have been away from my wife?” the man with a bulbous nose said. His Polish was stilted, his accent thick, but he wanted to make sure I understood. I took a step back, but only one. I did not try to run. “Three years,” he said, his nostrils flaring. “Three years I have been fighting for this wasteland of a nation. Now we have freed you bastards, and the time has come for you to thank us.”
People must have seen them drag me into the alleyway. I thought about those people. I didn’t blame them for their inaction. The Germans trained us to pay no attention, and besides which, the Soviets had guns and knives and entitlement and rage. We had risen and failed, time and time again, and even when liberation came, we were only liberated to face more violence.
We had nothing left. I had nothing left. Those moments on the cobblestones were the lowest of my life. I burrowed deep inside myself, to a place I never knew existed, and I stayed there until it was over.
I lay bleeding and bruised on the cold cobblestones of the alley, and I was exhausted as if I had been running for days or years. My limbs shook with shock and cold. I had been surrounded by hatred for years, but this time, it was forced inside of me. I was scared, and I wanted to run, but I could not find the energy to get up. I barely had the energy to roll over, to vomit onto the street. Some of my hair fell into my mouth as I did, and it tasted of someone else’s sweat.
I gagged again, and this time my whole body seemed to contract. The urge to vomit echoed from my toes to my hair.
“Come on, darling,” a woman’s voice whispered into my ear, and gentle hands touched my back. “We need to get you out of here. My husband is going to carry you. You’re safe now.” She paused, then repeated the words, slower and firm. “You are safe now.”
More hands were on my body, and I was blind in my terror. No more. No more! I panicked, thrashing wildly, but the woman’s gentle voice came again.
“This is Wiktor. This is my husband. He will not hurt you, darling. We are trying to take you somewhere safe.”
I tried to focus on my breath, to calm myself so that I could regain control. This man was huge, just as big as the others, and if he wanted to hurt me, there was nothing I could do. Despite my best efforts, I was hyperventilating.
“Breathe now. You’re going to be okay,” the woman said, gently stroking my hair back from my face. I closed my eyes and wondered if this was all a nightmare. The edges of reality blurred as if I were dreaming, but not even in my worst nightmares had I had a dream like this.
They carried me up a flight of stairs, and then a door closed. I had no idea where I was nor who I was with. The man gently laid me on a sofa, and the woman covered me with something soft. Then, a wet cloth was against my forehead, and a glass was against my lips. Vodka, no. The taste of it made me gag. The glass was gone, then back again, only this time it was water. I took a sip, then collapsed back onto the sofa.