Pam Jenoff - The Other Girl

“Has she eaten?” he asked, gesturing toward Hannah.

“A bit, but I’m sure she could do with more.” She turned to Hannah. “Couldn’t you?” The girl nodded meekly.

Janusz walked to the stove, which stood in the corner of the cottage. The room was too hot and Maria opened her coat. He returned with a steaming bowl of stew. “Here.” Hannah took it and sat down in the crude wooden chair he had indicated.

“She can’t stay,” he said to Maria quietly as the child ate. “There are people who come through, men with supplies for the resistance. They could be here at any time.” She was surprised. She would not have suspected her curmudgeonly cousin to be a traitor like her father, but neither had she imagined him to be a rebel opposing the Germans. She understood then his reclusiveness, his preference for solitude and distaste for the prying eyes of neighbors.

But Janusz’s bravery seemed a liability now, complicating her dilemma of where to keep Hannah rather than solving it. “I have nowhere else to take her.” A note of desperation crept into Maria’s voice. She could not abandon the child.

“When are you due?” he asked bluntly, changing the subject. Maria faltered, thrown off-guard. The bump beneath her dress was so slight that no one had noticed it until now. “May.”

“Your parents must be pleased.”

“They don’t know. That is, we’ve fallen out since...since I got married.” She faltered, then lowered her voice so Hannah could not hear. “My father, he’s been helping the Germans.” The story tumbled forth and it felt good to finally confide in someone. Janusz nodded, seeming to understand. “You don’t seem surprised,” she said.

His mouth pulled downward. “I had my suspicions. Your father always took the path of least resistance. And he isn’t a bad man, but in these difficult times...” Though he did not finish the thought, Maria understood: the war brought out the extremes in people, some better and some worse. Janusz was fighting on one side, while his cousin had allied himself with the other. Maria wondered fleetingly if that was the reason for their falling out, but the break in their relationship had come long before the war.

Janusz turned and knelt beside Hannah. “The scarf,” he said, gesturing. “Where did you get it?” Maria had not noticed the slash of red hidden beneath the girl’s brown coat. But when Hannah pulled back the collar, Maria could see the rich wool, tightly knitted. Hannah removed her coat. Beneath it, she was paper thin. Maria could see marks on her arm, bruises that traveled upward.

Hannah lifted the scarf. “It was my father’s.”

Janusz extended his hand. “May I?” he asked. The girl hesitated, then nodded. He ran his finger over a gold eagle embroidered at the edge of the scarf. “Your father was a soldier?”

“In the Great War,” she said simply. The Jews had always seemed so separate to Maria; she had not imagined them fighting alongside ordinary Poles.

“Me too.” Janusz’s own decades-old uniform hung in the corner, freshly pressed, as though he might be called up to service again at any moment.

He turned to Maria. “Why did you come to me?”

She hesitated. “My mother always spoke so well of you.” It was the truth. Even years after the contact had ceased between Maria’s father and Janusz, Mama had said his name with affection, laughter creeping in as she’d recounted something he had said or done. She often had been silenced by Papa’s stormy look. It was hard to reconcile the lively young man of her mother’s stories with the gruff old man who stood before her now.

“Did she?” A glimpse of boyish hopefulness crept into his eyes.

“Yes.” Watching him process the information with an undeniable flicker of excitement, everything seemed to come into focus: Janusz had written the love letters to Mama. The realization crashed down on Maria like a rock from above, knocking the breath from her chest. Papa must have found out at some point, and that was why he and Janusz no longer spoke. But there was still much she did not know: Was it an unrequited love, or was there something more? Had there been an actual love affair between them?

The ground seemed to shift as an idea came to her. “I know,” she blurted out. “I saw the letters.” His face seemed to crumble under the weight of the secret he had kept all these years, now exposed.

A silent exchange passed between the two of them and she wondered if he would deny it. “How long have you known?” he finally said.

Maria shrugged. “Long enough. Keep the girl and I won’t say another word about it.” She hated that the words came out sounding like a threat. He might have helped anyway, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Very well, but just tonight. I need her gone in the morning. I can’t have a young child here, seeing things.”

“She’ll be gone before first light,” Maria promised. He did not answer but disappeared into the bedroom.

A minute later he returned carrying some blankets and a lamp. “Come,” he said to Hannah, who had finished eating. He led them down a ladder to the cellar. Maria followed. In the flickering light of Janusz’s lamp, she was flooded with memories of playing in the cellar as a child.

“I’m sorry she has to stay down here,” Janusz said, laying the blankets atop a thin layer of straw and setting the lamp beside it. “But people come unexpectedly sometimes.”

“I love it,” Hannah exclaimed, surprising Maria. She had liked exploring the cellar as a girl, but now it just seemed damp and dirty, cluttered with old junk and mouse droppings in the corners. “It’s so peaceful,” Hannah looking about her with wonder. Maria shuddered inwardly, imagining a home life so terrifying that a dark, strange cellar felt like a refuge.

Janusz heaved himself up the ladder again and a moment later handed down a blue nightgown to Maria. It still carried the faint scent of his wife, Elzbieta, though she had passed nearly two decades earlier. Sadness flickered across his face. He had not, Maria felt certain, been unfaithful to his wife. Rather, he had turned to Mama after his wife was already gone.

Maria passed the nightgown to Hannah. She looked away to let the girl change in private and peered up at the cottage through the cellar opening. Her mother had gone for long walks most days when Maria was younger—to breathe the fresh air, or so Maria had thought. Maria had wished to come along, too, but Mama had not taken her. At some point, the walks had stopped. Had her mother and Janusz met here or somewhere else? Images appeared in her mind of the two of them together. Suddenly eager to escape, she turned back to Hannah. “You rest. I’ll be back in the morning.”

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