you believe that we will be deported?”
“It seems inevitable,” I said.
“Don’t you want to know what awaits us?”
“Do you know?” I turned to him in surprise. “Has someone come back to report?”
But I knew the minute I looked at him that whatever he had to tell me did not involve wide-open spaces or meaningful work or food and running water or comfortable accommodations. I sank back down, unable to face the grief and fear in his eyes.
“Do you want to know?” he asked again.
Mother had told me that even if the news was bad, she would prefer to know. Lying on that rooftop with Chaim, I was reminded that my mother was much more courageous than I could ever be. Even now that I had the chance to know what our fates were, I couldn’t bear to hear it said aloud.
“You don’t need to tell me,” I whispered, staring up at the bright blue sky. “I can see it in your eyes.”
When we finally returned downstairs, I walked into the back room, interrupting Elz·bieta as she worked with a group of children.
“Just give me a few moments,” she said quietly to the children and then approached me, concern in her gaze. “What has happened? What do you need?” I stared at her for a long, fraught moment, trying to absorb her goodness. Life is still good. Life is still worth living. See, there is still beauty and goodness in the world.
“I just wanted to see you before you left,” I admitted, and then I started to turn away, but she caught my hand. When I glanced back at her, she threw her arms around me, embracing me in the softest, sweetest hug I had ever had.
When Elz·bieta released me, she squeezed my forearm, then nodded, as if in that wordless interaction, she had said everything she needed to say.
17
Roman
20 September, 1942
Autumn was gradually taking hold, each day a little cooler than the one before. That afternoon, I ran the length of the block from the youth center to my home in pelting rain, thinking about the coming winter and all the desperate tactics we’d need to employ to survive the cold. I was shivering by the time I reached the apartment, so focused on the weather and my drenched coat and hair that I forgot to brace myself on the doorstep.
The apartment had been so crowded and so bustling with activity for so long. There were days when I thought I would go insane if I couldn’t find a moment of peace, when I thought the sheer stench of so many people living in that confined space was going to suffocate me. But then I threw our front door open, and instead of noise and smell and crowding, I found complete silence.
Often, when men face their doom, it is their mother they cry for. But that day, it wasn’t my mother I called for, it was my brother.
“Dawidek?” I whispered hoarsely. The rain was still bucketing down, but I could not bring myself to step inside. To do so was to confirm that my very worst fears had come to pass. To search each room and to find only emptiness would break me altogether.
No, better to stay in the cold and the rain.
“Dawidek?” I called again, my voice shaking. I held on to the doorframe, craning my neck to look inside, unable to convince myself to step across the threshold into the apartment. My voice echoed back at me. I waited, holding my breath in case my brother called back, in case his voice was quiet because he was hiding. I called him again, then again, then I sat on the front step, my feet flat against the floor, my elbows resting against my knees. I sat slumped, barely able to hold myself up.
I thought about taking myself to the Umschlagplatz. People sat there for hours sometimes. Maybe my family was still there, at the very first stop in their journey. If so, I could join them. And even if I failed to find them, I might be executed just wandering the streets after curfew. I had feared that possibility for so long, but that day, I was sure death would be a mercy.
I just couldn’t risk it until I was sure, and I couldn’t be sure until I moved into the apartment. The rain came down harder as darkness replaced the late-evening light. I was in such a sharp state of shock that time somehow both stretched and condensed.
“Roman?”
A