The Girl from Krakow Read online

  He did his best for these Tartars, delivering three pregnancies, one of which survived, treating the wounds of adolescent boys brazen enough to taunt the guards, even treating several shot while trying to escape. There was nothing he could do for the elderly, dying of exposure and hunger. Gil was able to enforce hygiene firmly enough that he did not have to deal with typhoid, though there was nothing he could do about the dysentery. At the end he estimated that three hundred of his train had died along the way. The chief medical officer of the deportation congratulated him; some trains had lost half their consignment. There were hard figures on how many people had been forcibly relocated, about 200,000. But there had been orders not to keep track of fatalities.

  When the exercise was over, almost forty thousand NKVD security personnel were to be moved back to the Ukraine. On the return journey from Kiev, Gil found himself in a compartment of physicians who had participated in the deportation. For three days the train rattled north to Moscow. The whole compartment argued about the morality of what they had done. Gil had no interest in the debate.

  PART IV

  ENDURING

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Margarita Trushenko, Volks-Deutsch, was standing on the platform as the 21:00 Warsaw express glided to a halt at Karpatyn station.

  She knew herself as Rita Feuerstahl, not even Rita Guildenstern—she had never been able to call herself that. She never would again.

  So Rita Feuerstahl was standing there on this night in late October 1942, trying as hard as she could to change her identity into Margarita Trushenko. She began by concentrating on the catechism she had once known by heart, back in the gymnasium of the Dominican sisters. Inevitably, her mind began wandering.

  I’m not the same person who learned these sentences by rote the first time fifteen years ago. Ten years from now, everyone I know will have been thinking of me as Margarita Trushenko for so long and so completely that I really will be her.

  An initially imperceptible hum now gave way to an increasing roar as the passenger train rumbled in from the east. Once the engine, bearing two swastikas, had passed, the line of carriages slowed until the entire train precisely bracketed the platform.

  As each coach glided by, Rita could make out the effaced Polish national railway markings underneath the Reich Bahn insignia on the doors, until finally one stopped and swung open before her.

  Lifting her case into the rack above her head, she felt its uneven weighting as the two heavy volumes within shifted from one side to the other. She knew why she had taken them. It wasn’t to remember Freddy. She needed them. The books had become a center of gravity, and not just in the valise she had raised up to the luggage shelf above her seat. They had become her center of gravity. It was ironic that in the ghetto, where what she had really needed were food and shelter, she had found exactly what she’d always been looking for: the real why of things she’d been searching for as long as she could remember. Reading them over and over, those two books had slaked a thirst that had been with her since the Dominican sisters’ gymnasium.

  She settled herself in a seat. In a few minutes, the blackness of the darkened town and then the night turned the window beside her into a mirror. She couldn’t see through the reflection of her face, and so she began to stare at it, trying to make it the face of Margarita Trushenko. Changing her identity shouldn’t be so hard. Starting now, everyone around her would help, assuming she lived long enough for them to do so. Myself, me, my identity. Just a useful illusion, like much else foisted on us by natural selection. What quick work Darwin makes of the philosophers’ great puzzles.

  The train was rattling through a countryside that in daylight would have reminded her of journeys to Lvov three years before, which would have made her remember the slightly nervous anticipation, the rush of pleasure at seeing him—was it Gil or Tadeusz?—on the platform in Lvov, the pure sensation of sexual release, the intimacy of a shared meal, the chagrin of returning home that last time with Urs. As it was, she remembered none of this. She was already a different person from that Rita.

  Noiselessly the conductor came up behind her and cleared his throat to alert her to his presence. Not noticing how his German uniform had frightened Rita, he doffed his cap and asked for her ticket, in German, which he duly punched and walked on.

  At ten thirty Margarita Trushenko alighted from her train and walked up the long quay beneath the glass and wrought iron roof of the Lemberg Hauptbahnhof. That’s what the signs said everywhere—not Lvov, Lemberg. There was not a Polish sign to be seen. She was greeted by Fraktur—gothic printing everywhere. Directions to the Befehlshaber—military headquarters; Wartehallen—waiting rooms; the Gepäckaufbewahrung—the left-luggage.

  Rita decided to head for the Gepäckaufbewahrung. Surely the rules in force in Karpatyn were to be followed here. Wandering around in the night on the street with a suitcase was an invitation to police inquiries. She walked directly to the open bay and passed her bag across. In return for a few groschen, she was handed a small claim check. As she turned around, a rather nice young man in an overcoat with a turned-up collar came up to her, took off his hat, and hugged her. He was clean-shaven, shorter than Rita, with curly brown hair.

  “Darling.” It was a voice too loud for her ears only. “I’m so glad to see you.” Then, in a whisper, his mouth at her ear, “Your name, dear, quickly.”

  “Margarita,” she whispered back, her cheek still brushing his ear.

  Again, just a little too loud: “Margarita. Thank goodness you’re back.” He took her arm and walked her out of the station and into the square beyond. He paused to light a cigarette and offered her one. “Take it, even if you don’t smoke. It helps.” They stopped, and Rita looked back at the glass ceiling of the entry hall, barely illuminated against the black sky, then turned to the brighter arch of the station entrance. It had not changed in four years. Everything else had.

  “I do smoke. Thanks,” she said, exhaling. “What does smoking help? Who are you; what is this all about?”

  The young man smiled. “My dear, smoking helps because nice women don’t smoke in the street, especially nice Jewish girls. Back there were about a half-dozen SS and Gestapo, ready to pick you up and send you straight to Lemberg ghetto—or would have sent you there, if there still was one. Didn’t you see them closing in on you?” He nodded back to the station. “I saved your pretty little neck in there.” They walked along, and he continued, “Coming in alone from the east on a late train is a giveaway around here.”

  “I have nothing to hide from the police,” Rita insisted.

  “Of course not. That’s why you gave a complete stranger such a warm hug and your first name. Any little Jewess would have shrieked for protection against this masher, yes?”

  “Really! Take me back,” Rita huffed. “I insist.” But when he stopped, shrugged, and began to turn, she resisted. He had called her bluff. As they resumed walking away from the station, she asked his name.

  “Jerszy Sawicki, at your service, ma’am.”

  “And why are you risking your neck for me?”

  “Patriotism, my dear, pure patriotism.”

  “Where are we going, then?”

  “A hotel not far from the station. We’ll be there shortly.”

  A few moments later, they were at the Hotel Nowozytny, a rundown nineteenth-century tenement grayed by fifty years of coal dust, with a single door and two windows facing the dark narrow street of similar buildings. A man in shirtsleeves and a leather vest was sitting on a milk can leaning back against the outside wall. He rose as they approached and entered the hotel ahead of them.

  The door opened to a small lobby with a narrow counter in front of a row of pigeonholes with keys in them. There was a steep staircase going up, and beneath it a back door, probably, thought Rita, for an outhouse, which had ceased to be used only long after the hotel had been built.

  The leather-vested man who’d entered before them was the clerk. He took a toothpick—or was it a matchsti
ck—out of his mouth and spoke. “Jerszy, bringing me another guest?” He looked at Rita. “Staying with me, or your own room?”

  “How much is a single?”

  “Two marks. Identity card, please. It will be returned in the morning.” She laid it down with a thump, along with a reichsmark note. The man copied her details into a thin, worn, stained ledger, handed her a key, and walked back outside into the night air, muttering, “First floor, number 2, best room in the house.”

  Jerszy took his own key off the row, number 5, and they moved up the stairs.

  Rita reached the first door and began fumbling with the heavy skeleton key. Jerszy offered to help, but she refused. When it was finally opened on the third try, he tried to invite himself in. Rita blocked him. “It’s been a long day. I am tired. Perhaps tomorrow.” She tried to smile as she firmly closed the door.

  The narrow room had a bare overhead bulb, a single bed with the springs showing beneath the mattress, a rickety cupboard, a window that looked down on the street above the hotel entrance, and a door behind which stood a sink. A showerhead dropped from the ceiling, with a drain in the middle of the floor. There was no toilet in the room.

  The next morning Rita was up at dawn. She dressed quietly, put on her coat with its cargo of coins and morphine sewn into the hem, and made her way down the stairs. The same clerk was on duty, but snoring, with his head on the counter. There was no point in taking her key with her. She had left nothing in the room. She placed her key into its pigeonhole and slipped out the door.

  Now, where to go? Be careful, Margarita! She knew exactly one person in Lvov, or rather Lemberg: Dr. Stanislaw Pankow, the physician Urs had sent her to and who, in turn, had referred her to Gil. Now, where was his office? She began by retracing her steps to the station. From there, one turn and then another led her back to Pankow’s medical cabinet. When she arrived at seven thirty, it was far too early for a doctor’s practice to be open. The safest thing seemed to enter the building and wait on the staircase landing above his office.

  As she sat on the wrought iron stair tread, the chill rose from it through her body. Repeatedly she stood to shake it off.

  Promptly at nine o’clock, she heard Pankow arrive, unlock his door, and switch on his light against the winter’s morning gloom. Rita came down the stairs, remembering that for this meeting she had to chance being Rita Guildenstern again, and knocked on his door.

  “Come.” The command was peremptory. He wasn’t expecting a patient. Pankow looked up from his desk. He did not place her. “Do you have an appointment, Panna . . . or is it Pani?”

  “Dr. Pankow.” She paused. “I was a patient of yours briefly, four years ago. Rita Guildenstern.”

  Pankow thought for a minute, and then his face grew red. He put his pen down, straightened in his chair, raised both of his hands to his waistcoat, and began smoothing it down, obviously disconcerted. “Yes, I remember.” His face had turned to a glare. “How dare you come here? Your conduct was a scandal in the local profession. It was intolerable. Please, go immediately.” By the time he finished, however, his dudgeon had been replaced by anxiety. It was as though she were contagious.

  Rita’s sense of danger made it impossible to feel any chagrin. “Please, Doctor, I am alone in this city and know no one. I don’t know where to turn. Can you help me? I don’t need money or a false identity. I only need somewhere to stay, at least for a few days.”

  “I am unable to provide you with any assistance whatsoever.” There was anger in the tone, incongruous with the fear in his eyes. “It would endanger my practice, my patients, and my family.” Not to mention yourself, she thought. “Please leave immediately.” He rose and gestured toward the door with a finality that brooked no further importuning.

  Rita had a hand on the doorknob when Pankow said, “Stop a moment. I cannot think why I do this, but your paramour visited me in July 1941. He was about to decamp with the Reds, as one might expect of a Spanish communist.” Pankow stood, went over to a cabinet, opened it, and handed her a small package. “He asked me to get this to you. Now I have. Take it. Go!” He walked to the door and gestured her out. Rita could hear him lock it behind her.

  Returning to the hotel seemed the only immediate option. They still had her Ausweis. When she arrived Jerszy was in the narrow entrance, passing the time with a new clerk, whose look added no new charm to the hotel. “Your identity card, miss.” The clerk handed it back with a palpably suggestive look.

  “Where have you been, Rita?” Jerszy was relieved to see her. He looked at the small package she carried. “What’s in the box?”

  “I went out for breakfast.” Why had he called her Rita? Had she been betrayed already, or slipped and given the wrong name?

  “Shall we go up to your room, Rita?” He said it again. How did he know?

  “Yes, let’s. But my name is Margarita.”

  “I know, but it’s a mouthful. So I shortened it,” he explained as they mounted the stair.

  She opened the door, and they entered. With the door closed, Jerszy moved toward her. “I enjoyed that hug last night at the station. Can we try it again?”

  “Maybe when you come back from the station with my case.” Rita fished the claim check from her coat pocket.

  Jerszy brightened. “Good idea, kid. Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be right back.” He left the room, and she could hear him bouncing down the stairs. She went to the window. Looking down, she could see he had stopped to talk with the clerk, now lounging on the other side of the narrow street. Quietly she opened the window and listened.

  Jerszy was answering a question. “I was going to have some fun before I pass her along. But maybe there is something in her bag worth taking first.” He held up the claim check. “Back in a jiffy. Did you have to give back her papers?”

  “I thought she was a call girl, not some pigeon you’d brought in.”

  Rita didn’t like the image, but it gave her an idea. She closed the window and went to her coat. Removing one vial of morphine, she took it to the washroom. Then she remembered the package Pankow had given her. She picked it up from the bed and unwrapped it. There was no note, no label, only the diaphragm in its powder-blue case that Gil had tried to give her that last afternoon they were together.

  A knock at her door. She opened it. Jerszy stood before her, slightly breathless, holding her case. Foot barring the door, she held her hand out for the case. He handed it over. Rita said, “Go take a shower, Jerszy, then come back.”

  While he was gone, she inspected the case. It had been opened by a penknife at every seam. Jerszy evidently had some experience at this sort of search and was no doubt still carrying the knife, if not a second, more dangerous one.

  In the jewelry case, Rita found the syringe parts, and in a small sewing kit, the needle, apparently undetected by Jerszy. She put them together and placed them with one vial of morphine in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Then she took off all her clothes, putting back on only her slip.

  When Jerszy knocked again, she let him in. With no preamble whatever, he approached her and placed his mouth over hers. To his surprise she was responsive. Maybe she wasn’t a prim Jewess after all, he thought. Yid or not, she was a modern girl. Good. Holding her with one arm, he moved the strap of her slip off her shoulder to uncover a breast, which he began inexpertly first to squeeze, then to kiss.

  Despite herself Rita was becoming aroused. She could feel his erection, and it was having an effect on her—nipples hardened, her body now disregarding the cold of the unheated room. It had been two years since she had last had intercourse, and four since she had been satisfied by it. When Jerszy began to undress, she said, “I’ve got a diaphragm I’d like to use.” She reached for the case.

  Ah, so she really was a modern girl, Jerszy thought. “Very well.” He released her, and Rita went to the washroom. A few minutes later, she was back, holding the syringe and vial of morphine.

  “Jerszy.” Her voice was throaty and moist. “Have you ever
made love with a little extra stimulation? Opium, heroin, morphine?”

  He had not. Was he going to let this little tramp teach him new tricks?

  She opened her hand to reveal the vial and the syringe. “It’s beyond your wildest experiences, Jerszy. You must try it with me.”

  The temptation was strong, but he was still cautious.

  “Let’s do it.” She smiled.

  He nodded. “You first.”

  She nodded. “Give me your belt.” Jerszy sat down on the bed and pulled the belt from the loops of his trousers and handed it to Rita. She pulled it tight around her forearm, remembering the procedure she had learned the night she helped ease Kaltenbrunner’s death. She looked at Jerszy, willing him to follow her every action, willing him to respond to blood’s bloom in the syringe as she had. If he did not, she was in trouble.

  Filling the syringe with a massive dose of morphine, she found a vein in her arm, pierced the skin, and pulled the syringe back. Blood filled the cylinder, confirming contact with a vein, and there it was—the sight of it drawn into the syringe toppled Jerszy off the bed. In the ten seconds before he recovered enough awareness to realize what had happened to him, Rita had quickly withdrawn the syringe and expressed the blood, leaving the original dose for him. “Never mind, Jerszy, it happens to everyone the first time they see blood come up in a syringe. Give me your arm. I need to do this to you quickly, before the effect takes hold of me.” A moment’s bleary hesitation, then he rolled up his sleeve and laid his arm on her lap. Rita belted his upper arm and found a vein. This time Jerszy closed his eyes. Within fifteen seconds Jerszy had slumped unconscious to the floor. A dose this large was surely enough to put him out for a day, if not kill him outright.