The Things We Cannot Say Read online

  “There is nothing we can do, Alina,” Father said softly. “I am sorry. What will be will be.”

  “We will pray,” Mama announced. “It is all we can do.”

  “No,” I said, and I shook my head fiercely. “You must go get her, Father. You must. She is a baby—all alone in the world. She is my family too! Please.”

  “Alina!” Truda groaned. “You are asking for the impossible. It’s not safe for anyone to go into the town.”

  I couldn’t let the matter drop, not even when my parents’ pleas for silence became sharp demands for me to drop the matter. When I started to cry and threatened to make the journey myself, Filipe pulled himself up from the dirt and dusted his trousers off. Mama groaned.

  “Don’t be foolish, Filipe! You have tempted fate once already—”

  “Alina is right, Mama. Aren’t we worse than the Nazis if we leave that little girl to fend for herself while her father works to save lives?”

  “If she’s even alive, Filipe. You may get to the town and find they are already gone,” Father said under his breath.

  “Father! Don’t say such a thing!” I gasped.

  “I’ll go too,” Stani sighed.

  “I think I should go, too,” Mateusz said quietly. It was Truda’s turn for an outraged gasp, until he added gently, “I will check on our home while we are on our way to the clinic. The boys and I will move fast and we’ll be careful. We can come straight back if we hear the planes returning—you know yourself it only took us ten minutes to get here yesterday.”

  Mama cursed furiously and threw her hands in the air.

  “You are trying to kill me, boys! You have tempted fate once already and survived. Now you are just trying to make my heart stop beating from the fear!”

  “Mama, we are just doing what you raised us to do,” Filipe said stiffly. “We are trying to do the right thing.”

  “But what if the bombing starts again—”

  “Faustina,” Mateusz said more firmly now. “You have heard the explosions, just as I have. They are coming from every direction, even to the west where there is nothing but farmhouses—the planes are not just targeting the town. We are no safer here than we will be in the town.”

  There was no arguing with that, and they left soon after—although my father instructed them to run up to the hill and to hide in the woods for a few minutes to be sure there were no more planes on the horizon before they exposed themselves in the clearing on the other side. As soon as the younger men had left, my sister and my parents fixed accusing gazes on me, and I felt myself flushing.

  It suddenly, belatedly occurred to me that I had convinced my own brothers and my brother-in-law to risk their lives, all in the hope that I could save Tomasz from grief. But I loved Emilia and Aleksy, and I was genuinely afraid for their safety. I didn’t regret convincing my brothers to go check on them—I was just deathly afraid that I’d just manipulated my way into an unimaginable loss. I tried to explain myself to my remaining family members.

  “I just...”

  “It is better that you do not speak until they return,” Truda interrupted me flatly. “You sit there, Alina Dziak, and you focus your energies on praying that you have not just killed our brothers and my husband.”

  That’s exactly what I did. The first time my brothers left the cellar, the minutes dragged by, but this was a whole new level of torture. In the end, the silence was punctuated by a different sound—the sound of a child wailing. We all ran out of the barn and found the twins walking side by side down from the hill, Mateusz following closely behind with Emilia high in his arms. She was sobbing, loudly and inconsolably.

  “Oh, babisu!” my sister cried, and she ran from the barn to her husband’s side. He gently passed Emilia to Truda’s waiting arms, and Truda immediately began to console the little girl. “Shhh, it is okay, little one. You will be okay now.” Once they were within the coverage of the barn, my mother walked to Truda’s side and ran a gentle hand down Emilia’s cheek, then she raised her gaze to mine. Mama was clearly very sad, but also thoughtful as she stared at me.

  I was quickly distracted from Mama’s gaze by Emilia’s continuing sobs. I turned my attention to my brothers and Filipe shook his head hastily.

  “Aleksy is fine. The clinic is fine too, other than some broken windows.”

  “But there are injured people in Aleksy’s home...and worse...a line of people waiting for help all along the street.” Mateusz approached me and spoke very carefully, his voice low and soft. “Emilia saw one of her school friends hurt...she ran off and hid in a cupboard. Aleksy said the wounded have been coming to the house since the bombing started and he didn’t have time to comfort her. He was very grateful—he asked if we could keep her until things are safer. It might be some days.”

  “Of course we can,” Mama murmured quietly. She took Emilia from Truda and held her for a moment, then passed the little girl to me. Truda and Mateusz embraced, and my mother began to kiss my brothers all over their faces. “You are too brave for your own good.”

  Emilia wrapped her arms around my neck. She pressed her tearstained face against my shoulder. Her entire body was shaking and she was breathing noisily between her sobs.

  “Alina, the noise was so loud...there was a bomb on Mr. Erikson’s shop and our house rattled and the glass all broke...”

  “I know...”

  “And Maja from school was asleep and her mother was shouting and Father couldn’t wake her up and I don’t understand why there was so much blood on her face. Why was there so much blood?”

  “Hush now,” Mama murmured. Truda approached me, her concerned gaze fixed on Emilia. She slid her arm around my shoulders and gently pulled me to the ground, curling up beside me. I settled Emilia across our laps, and as I stroked Emilia’s back, Truda began to sing. Mama sat opposite us, watching closely.

  “Just rest, little one,” Mama said softly. “You are safe now.”

  “But what about Tomasz?” she croaked, her little voice weak and uneven still. “He is all alone in Warsaw. What will happen to my brother?”

  No one said anything, and I tensed, then rushed to comfort her. Or maybe I was trying to comfort myself.

  “Warsaw is so far away,” I said firmly. “Planes probably can’t even fly that far. It is better that he isn’t here, Emilia. He will surely be safer there.”

  * * *

  Over the days that followed, we took turns crowding around Father’s wireless to listen to the news updates. His set was a crystal unit the twins had constructed a few years earlier, and that meant only one person at a time could listen on the tinny headsets. I jostled for my turn like everyone else, but I always regretted those moments I spent at the wireless, because the news was never comforting. Entire cities were being destroyed, but the small stories hurt the most. We heard endless tales of farmers shot in their fields from machine guns on planes and even one horrific story about a grandfather who was harvesting the last of his vegetables when a pilot dropped a bomb right on him. That story spoke volumes to me about the might of the invaders and the way our country was outgunned—we were simply peasants standing in dirt, totally defenseless against massive explosives dropped from airborne war machines by unfathomably hate-filled pilots.

  There were Nazi troops in our district within days of the bombing because the local army defenses were quickly overcome. After that, the bombing stopped but there were still more planes, only now they flew over us, but they didn’t fly back, and somehow, that was even worse. Soon, the trucks started coming, rumbling through the town, not yet stopping but promising just by their presence that one day soon, everything left intact after the bombing was going to be broken anyway. The men from my family made another trip into town, and again returned sullen.

  “There are notices hung everywhere,” Father murmured.

  “There is a town meeting tomorrow at noon, and we
all must attend.” Mateusz flicked his gaze to Truda. “We must go home tonight, my love. Perhaps if we are at the house, we can protect it.”

  “Protect it from the Nazis?” she asked, somewhat incredulously. “With what? Our bare hands?”

  “An empty house in the town is vulnerable, Truda,” he said. “Besides, the Nazis have breached the national border. Do you think that little hill is going to contain them? Now that the bombing has stopped, we are no safer here than we will be there.”

  “Did you see my father?” Emilia asked. Her voice was very small. She seemed to be shrinking by the hour, despite close attention from my sister, my mother and myself. Mateusz and Father both shook their heads.

  “Your father is still very busy helping people, but he is fine,” Mama said abruptly. “Alina, entertain the child. Let the adults talk.”

  We retreated into my bedroom and sat on my sofa, and I tried to play one of the counting games Emilia was so fond of, while simultaneously straining to eavesdrop on the conversation in the main part of the house.

  “Everything is going to be okay, isn’t it, Alina?” Emilia asked me suddenly. She looked terrified, her huge green eyes wide within the frame of her pale face.

  I forced myself to smile.

  “Of course, little sister. Everything is going to be just fine.”

  * * *

  After a sleepless night, we made our way into the town square on foot. We walked along the road instead of up through the woods and over the hill—the road meant a longer journey, but it seemed that none of us were in a hurry to get to our destination.

  By the time we arrived, a crowd was already assembled at the square, waiting in a stiff, eerie silence. As we joined the group, I wedged myself between my parents as if they could shield me from the gravity of it all. Stanislaw left us to stand with Irene, the girl he was courting. Filipe had gone to seek out Justyna. Truda and Mateusz were there too, but to my surprise, had opted to stand with the mayor’s wife and her children. I scanned my way around the assembled crowd identifying each of the couples, and I felt dual pangs of jealousy and fear. I so wished that Tomasz was there with me. I was sure everything would feel less bewildering if only my hand was in his. Instead, I held his little sister’s hand, and I scanned the crowd for Aleksy. He was tall, like Tomasz, so I was sure I’d find him sooner or later, and then I could point him out to comfort Emilia.

  I felt disconnected from it all—at a place I knew so well on a sunny day that should have been beautiful, only nothing seemed beautiful—nothing even seemed familiar anymore. There were strangers among us, and they were somehow now in charge; and that very fact entirely warped the landscape that I had known as my home. Those men looked like statues in their stiff, impeccably pressed uniforms, with the impossible splash of red around the armband, the swastika they wore with pride. It occurred to me that the Nazi uniform removed their humanity somehow, drained them of their uniqueness—and left them a unified force of solidarity, like a solid wall encroaching upon our space. These were not even men—they were individual components of a machine that had come to destroy.

  The commander shouted around the square at us, entirely in German. At first, I listened only to the tone of his voice—the disdain, the aggression, the authority—but each word tightened the viselike grip of fear in my heart. I just couldn’t stand not knowing what he was saying, or even understanding why he didn’t even have the simple courtesy to speak to us in our native language. After a while, I turned toward Mama and I whispered, “What is he saying?”

  My mother’s response was only an impatient command to hush, but soon enough, I saw her eyes widen, and for the first time I saw fear cross her face. I followed her gaze to the corner of the square, where still more soldiers pushed two “prisoners” forward into the center of us all, their hands tied behind their backs. I scanned their faces and felt a punch of shock as I recognized them—our mayor was at the back, but right at the front, staring out into the crowd without fear or hesitation, was Aleksy.

  Looking back now, I suspect a brilliant man like Aleksy might have understood what his fate was, but he walked into the town square with his head held high. After scanning the crowd, his gaze landed on Emilia, and he smiled at her as if to reassure her. I tugged her to stand in front of me and wrapped my arms around her from behind. She was stiff within my arms, surely as confused as I was. Why is Aleksy in trouble? He’s never done a wrong thing in his entire life. Aleksy lifted his smile to me, and when our eyes met, he nodded once. He seemed calm, almost serene. That’s why I thought for a moment or two that everything would be okay, because Aleksy was the wisest man in the town, so if he wasn’t worried, why should I be?

  But then the commander grabbed Aleksy’s upper arm and he pushed him hard and to the ground—and Aleksy’s arms were tied behind his back, so his face slammed unguarded into the granite cobblestone that lined the square. Before he could even recover, another soldier slid his hand into Aleksy’s hair and pulled him up until he was on his knees. Aleksy could not contain a cry of pain at that, and it was all I could do not to shout out in protest too.

  Mama grabbed my upper arm, and when I turned to her, her gaze was locked on Emilia.

  “Cover her eyes,” she said flatly.

  “But why are they—” I said, even as my hands rose toward Emilia’s face. I heard the click of the handgun being cocked, and I looked up.

  Aleksy’s death was somehow too simple and quick to be real, one single shot to the back of his head, and then he was gone. I wanted to protest—surely a life so big couldn’t end like that, without dignity or purpose or honor? But the soldiers tossed his body to the side as if it was nothing much at all, then they shot the mayor in the same way. I felt dizzy with the shock of it all, it was just too much to process on the fly. My own eyes had to be lying to me because what I was seeing was entirely illogical.

  Aleksy Slaski was a good man, but the very things that made him so central to our township—his intelligence, his training, his natural ability to lead—also made him an immediate target. To destabilize a group of people is not at all difficult, not if you are willing to be cruel enough. You simply knock out the foundations, and a natural consequence is that the rest begins to tumble. The Nazis knew this—and that’s why one of their very first tactics in Poland was to execute or imprison those likely to lead in any uprising against them. Aleksy and our mayor were among the first of almost one hundred thousand Polish leaders and academics who would be executed under the Intelligenzaktion program during the early days of the invasion.

  The shock wore off too soon for Emilia and she began shrieking at the top of her lungs. A soldier near to us turned his gun toward her, and I did the bravest and stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life, at least to that point. I pushed in front of her, and I begged the guard, “Please sir, please. My sister is distressed. Please, I will comfort her.”

  And I immediately turned—not even waiting for his response. I tensed, expecting the searing pain of a bullet in my own back, but even as I did so—I locked eyes with Emilia and I pressed the palm of my hand hard over her mouth. Her eyes were wild with shock and grief, but I pressed so hard that she was struggling to breathe through her now-blocked nose. The tears poured down her little face, and when I realized I was not about to be shot myself and she was finally quiet, I bent low and I whispered to her, “Can you be silent, little sister? It is so very important.”

  Her little green eyes were still glazed over. She nodded, a barely perceptible movement that I noticed, but didn’t entirely trust. Still, I loosened the seal of my hand over her mouth and she sucked in air but she didn’t shriek. The crowd began to disperse, but Emilia was catatonic—her eyes fixed on her father’s body, crumpled alone against the stone on the other side of the square. I slid my arm around her shoulders and I forced her to turn to my parents.

  “We cannot take her, not permanently,” my mother whispered to me fierce
ly. “We are too old and too poor and you are too young and on your own. The occupation will be hard and we just don’t know how...” Her voice broke, and Mama’s gaze flicked to Emilia’s face, and then she looked back at me, for a moment visibly stricken. But she raised her chin, and she hardened her gaze as she said, “I am sorry, Alina. But you simply must find someone else.”

  “I know,” I said heavily.

  “Then come straight home. This is no time to be wandering the town alone, do you hear me?”

  Frankly, I couldn’t believe they would leave me alone in the town at all after what we’d just seen, so I gave a shocked protest. “But Mama, surely you or Father will stay and help—”

  “We have work that needs doing at home. It cannot wait,” she said. I didn’t dare protest further, because she was clearly determined. I looked around for my brothers, but both had already left with their girlfriends—and then Mama walked off too, dragging a visibly reluctant Father behind her.

  I stared into the dispersing crowd as I learned for the first time the way it felt to force someone else’s welfare to a higher priority than your own instinct for safety. I wanted to crumble and sob, or better still, run after my parents like the frightened child they knew me to be. Instead, I wrapped my arm around Emilia’s shoulders, and together, we started to walk.

  “Alina,” Emilia said thickly, when we were some distance from the square.

  “Yes, little sister?”

  “My father,” she said, then her teeth started to chatter. “My father is gone. The man put the gun on his head and—”

  “He is gone, but you, my darling girl, you are still here,” I interrupted her. “But you mustn’t be afraid, Emilia. Because I am going to find a way to keep you safe until Tomasz returns.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Alina

  As Emilia and I walked from the square, I realized with a heavy heart that if Mama wasn’t willing to take the little girl on, there was only one other option. There were other families in the town who might accommodate her—but none I trusted enough to care for her the way she deserved.