Kommandant's Girl. Pam Jenoff
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the keys with the dexterity and grace of one decades younger, playing full classical pieces from memory.
“I thought that might happen,” Krysia says a few hours later when the guests have gone. We are standing by the sink, drying the last of the teacups, aprons protecting our party clothes. She speaks in a low voice so that Elzbieta, who is sweeping in the next room, will not overhear. “I had heard the Kommandant was looking for an assistant, and I could tell from the moment he walked in that he had taken a liking to you.”
I pause to brush back a lock of hair that has fallen across my eyes. “Krysia, if that was your concern, why did you seat me next to him?”
Krysia looks up, the bowl she is drying suspended in midair. “But I didn’t! Now that you mention it, I specifically remember asking Elzbieta to put him next to me. I was hoping he might say something useful after a few glasses of wine.” She sets down the bowl and walks to the kitchen door. “Elzbieta …?” she calls. The young woman appears from the dining room, broom in hand.
“Tak, Pani Smok?”
“Did you somehow switch the seating cards around?”
Elzbieta shakes her head. “Nie, Pani Smok. You said you were to be seated in between the Kommandant and General Ludwig. I was surprised to notice the order had changed.”
“Thank you, Elzbieta.” The young woman disappears into the parlor once more. Krysia turns to me, her brow wrinkled. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Perhaps it was an accident,” I suggest, scrubbing harder at the stained pot and not looking up. The Kommandant must have switched the place cards in order to sit next to me. My stomach twists.
“Perhaps … anyway, I’m not sure that you working for the Kommandant would be entirely a bad thing.”
“How can you say that?” I ask in a loud whisper. “This will jeopardize everything. My identity, our situation …”
“Anna,” she interrupts. We had agreed that she should call me by this name all of the time, even when we were alone, to reinforce the habit. “This is the perfect cover. A hiding Jew would never walk into Nazi headquarters. And the Kommandant is one of the most important men in Poland right now.” She pauses. “You may in time be able to get close enough to him to help with our work.”
“Help? Krysia, I cannot work for the Nazis!” My voice rises, and Krysia quickly raises a finger to her lips, gesturing with her head in the direction of the dining room. “I’m sorry,” I mouth, embarrassed at my outburst. In that moment, I am reminded of the precariousness of our situation. How much worse can this charade get, now that I am expected to bear up under the close scrutiny of Kommandant Richwalder day in and day out? A wave of nausea sweeps over me.
Later that night, I lay awake, staring up at the oak beams that run across the bedroom ceiling, listening to dogs howling in the distance. My life has changed again, I think, and for the third time since the war started, I am ending the day nowhere near where I started it. One day I woke up in Jacob’s house and went to bed that night a prisoner in the ghetto. I had gone from being a Jew in the ghetto to a gentile in Krysia’s home just as quickly. And now I am going to work for the Nazis. A chill races through me and I draw the blanket closer, oblivious to the fact that it is May and not at all cold.
My mind rewinds to a few hours earlier, when the party had broken up. Kommandant Richwalder had been the last guest to leave, lingering in the doorway in his long gray military coat. He had taken my hand in his own, now clad in smooth leather gloves, and raised it to his lips once more. “I will be in touch in a few days, once all of the paperwork is complete.”
My hand shook as I retracted it. “Th-thank you, Herr Kommandant.”
“No, Miss Anna, thank you.” And with that he turned and departed. Lying in bed now, I shiver. The way he stared at me had reminded me of a spider eyeing a fly. Now I would be forced to go to work in the spider’s web every day. I shiver again, listening to the dogs’ howling echoing in the breeze.
CHAPTER 7
We do not hear from Kommandant Richwalder for several days. “It probably takes time to complete the background check,” Krysia explains when I comment about the delay.
“Background check?” I panic, certain that an investigation by the Nazis will reveal my true identity. But Krysia tells me not to worry, and a few days later, I learn that she is right. The resistance organization apparently extends throughout Poland, and there are people in Gdansk who are willing to verify that they had known Anna Lipowski, lived beside her, worked and gone to school with her, and wasn’t it too bad about the death of her parents? On Friday morning, nearly one week after the dinner party, I receive word via messenger that my clearance has come through and that I am to report to the Kommandant’s office the following Monday.
“We need to go to town tomorrow,” Krysia says that Saturday night after we have put Lukasz to bed.
“Tomorrow?” I turn to her in the hallway, puzzled. The stores are not open on Sundays.
“We have to go to church.” Seeing the stunned expression on my face, Krysia continues. “The mayor’s wife commented at the dinner party on the fact that I have not been there with you and Lukasz.”
“Oh,” I manage to say at last. I cannot argue with her logic. Krysia is a devout Catholic, and it only made sense that Lukasz and I would be, too. The fact that she normally went to mass every week but had not gone since our arrival might raise suspicions. Still, the idea of going to church sticks in my throat like a half-swallowed pill.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “We don’t have a choice. We have to keep up appearances.”
I do not answer but walk to my bedroom and open the wardrobe. I study my few dresses, trying to figure out which one most looks like the ones I have seen young women my age wearing on their way to and from church. “The pink dress,” Krysia says, coming up behind me.
“This one?” I hold up a cotton frock with three-quarter sleeves.
“Yes. I am going to have coffee. Care to join me?” she asks. I nod and follow her downstairs to the kitchen. A few minutes later, we carry our steaming mugs to the parlor. I notice her knitting needles and some bright blue yarn on the low table. “I am making a sweater for Lukasz,” she explains as we sit. “I think he will need it for the winter.”
Winter. Krysia expects us still to be with her then. I do not know why this surprises me. The Nazis’ stronghold on Poland shows no signs of weakening, and we certainly have nowhere else to go. Still, winter is six months away. My heart drops as I think of Jacob, of being without him for that long.
Trying to hide my sadness, I lift the needles to examine Krysia’s handiwork. She has only knitted a few rows so far, but I can tell from the small, even stitches that she is working with great care, and that the sweater will be lovely. The ball of yarn is kinked, and I realize that she must have unraveled a garment of her own to get it. “The color will match his eyes perfectly,” I say, touched once again by how much she is doing for us.
“I thought so, too. Do you know how to knit?” I shake my head. “Here, let me show you.” Before I can reply, Krysia moves closer to me on the sofa, placing her arms around me from behind and covering her much larger hands with my own. “Like this.” She begins to move my hands in the two-step knitting pattern. The touch of her hands, thin and delicate like Jacob’s, brings back a flood of emotions. My head swims, and I can barely feel the knitting needles. “That’s all there is to it,” she says a few minutes later, sitting back. She looks at the needles expectantly, as though I will continue on my own, but my hands fall helplessly to my lap.
“I’m sorry,” I say, placing the needles and yarn back on the table. “I’m not very good at such things.” It is the truth. My mother had given up on teaching me to sew when I was twelve, declaring my large, uneven stitches an abomination. Even now, looking down at the knitting needles, I know that Krysia will have to unravel and redo my few clumsy