1946

The army arrived from all directions. Not since Hitler’s blitzkrieg had there been such an organized onslaught. In flowered dresses and sensible shoes, they came, hauling pots and dishes, some still steaming, fresh from the oven. General Marthe coordinated the effort at the postal center, resulting in enough pierogies and beet soup and hunter’s stew to feed six wedding parties.

You think a postal center an odd place for a wedding party? Maybe, but it served well for our purposes. It is a big, open space with a high ceiling, and you can kill two pheasants with one stone there: pick up your mail and dance with the bride. Not that the bride could dance, but guests pinned money to my dress anyway. I wore a pale pink dress, not my choice, for Marthe had surprised me with a product of her own sewing machine. I’d wanted white, but it was impossible to turn down this dress, for I was trying to be civil, for Papa. I just wanted it all to be over so I could be alone with Pietrik.

It had been a difficult morning for two reasons. One was that the Riskas had phoned to say Felka had died the day before. They’d found her on their front stoop one last time. We buried Felka in our back garden. Zuzanna and Papa came by and watched as Pietrik dug his spade into the earth, and I wrapped Felka in Nadia’s blanket I’d brought her home in so many years ago. We all cried saying goodbye to our old girl, Papa harder than any of us.

I couldn’t help think that Felka had been a loyal friend to Nadia, waiting for her till the end, unlike me, who’d moved on with my life, planning my wedding with barely a thought that Nadia would not be there. Some friend I was.

The other difficult thing on my wedding morning was the blessing by the mother of the bride. So important is this blessing at a Polish wedding that if the bride’s mother is deceased the wedding party walks to the cemetery to visit her grave before going to the church. Of course we could not visit the lake at Ravensbrück, where Matka’s ashes had probably gone. Marthe had prepared a long blessing, but I chose Zuzanna to give the blessing instead, causing the heat to rise in Marthe’s face. Resigned as I was to making amends with Marthe, it was not always easy. Zuzanna came first in my life and always would.

The ceremony at the church was brief. Though free elections had still not taken place and the Stalinist authorities were not in official control, Moscow’s Polish Workers’ Party was becoming more entrenched by the day. They discouraged anything that distracted workers from the collective needs of the people, including church weddings. They considered them gaudy spectacles, so people were wary of being seen at them. As a result, only three of my nurse friends braved the ceremony, though it could have cost them their jobs. The few friends Pietrik had left from the underground were still hiding out in the forest. We all were careful, since just putting flowers on a former AK member’s grave was cause for arrest.

Guests were not shy about celebrating at the postal center, though, for it was somewhat private there. As soon as I arrived, guests surrounded me and pinned paper money to my dress, my favorite tradition of all. Where had Marthe and her friends gotten such food? Cold cuts, sausages, salads. Tree cake and delicate pastry angel wings! Maybe the food came from na lewo. The black market.

“Come. It’s time for oczepiny,” Marthe said.

Oczepiny is the ritual of taking off the bride’s veil and replacing it with a cap to show she is officially married. First the single women surround the bride and take her veil; then the married ones circle the bride and pin the cap.

Marthe clapped her hands above her head, and the single girls came around. “Zuzanna, remove the veil.”

“She knows what to do, Marthe,” I said.

The band played, and the young girls circled me, hands together, as my sister took the hairpins from Pietrik’s mother’s veil. My bad leg ached from standing so long, but how could I go sit with the old ladies on their folding chairs lined up against the wall? I’d dreamed of this wedding ritual since childhood.

Zuzanna handed the veil to me and joined the circle. I covered my eyes with one hand and tossed the veil with my other, timing it perfectly for it to land in Zuzanna’s hands. God willing, she would be next.

“Now married ladies assemble,” Marthe called to the crowd.

She held the white cap in her hand. Where was Pietrik? He was missing it all.

“Who will pin the cap?” I asked.

“I will,” Marthe said.

“But a married woman must do that.” The married women gathered about me in a circle, hands together.

Marthe stepped closer. “Kasia, that’s just an old folk tradition.”

The married women began circling around Marthe and me to the music. The smell of violet perfume and beet soup was overpowering. I grabbed a hand at random and pulled the tanner’s wife into the middle of the circle. “Mrs. Wiznowsky will pin my cap.”

Marthe took my hand. “Kasia. Please let me do this.”

One look at her brown eyes tearing up was all I needed. She had been good to me after all. Had fed Pietrik, Zuzanna, and me back to health. I let Marthe pin my cap and she burst out in a smile. You’ve never seen a happier person in your life.

I broke out of the circle, the paper bills flapping as I walked. Where was Pietrik? He’d been so quiet all day. I stopped on my way to find him to let a friend of Papa’s pin another zloty note to my dress.

I found Pietrik in Papa’s office, alone, slumped in the old leather desk chair, hands in his lap. The lamps were off, and a glint of light from a streetlamp hit the glass on a picture on the desk. It was Papa’s favorite, though my eyes were half-closed in it. The one with his arms around Zuzanna and me, taken by my mother.

“Come and join the party.” I brushed the millet from Pietrik’s hair, still there from when guests had thrown it as we left the church. The millet Papa had buried that night so long ago. Dangerous as it was to call attention to the ceremony, I was happy some had not been able to let the tradition of throwing millet go.

I knelt beside Pietrik.

“You haven’t eaten a thing. The hunter’s stew’s almost gone, and they just brought more of those sausages you like. Plus they’re going to dance the kujawiak.”

“Soon, Kasia.”

Pietrik was a quiet person, but he had never been given to such brooding.

“They are wondering where the groom is,” I said.

He was quiet for a long minute, his face in shadows. “What a coward I am, Kasia. My old underground reports hiding in the woods eating grass while I’m here feasting.”

The music in the other room reached a fever pitch.

“It’s not your fault Papa wants to protect his son-in-law. We have our troubles too, you know—”

“I am just thinking. About what my father would do if he were here. He was no coward.”

Though Pietrik seldom spoke of it, more rumors had surfaced about Katyn Forest, and though the Russians blamed the Nazis, we all knew it was the Russian NKVD who’d murdered thousands of Polish intelligentsia there. Captain Bakoski had most likely been among those executed.

“What are you talking about?”

I put my head in his lap and felt something cold and hard in his hand. As he pulled it away I saw a glint of light on silver.

“Papa’s gun?” I said. “Are you—”

“It makes me feel better to hold it,” Pietrik said.

I eased the gun from his hand.

“You’d better get back,” Pietrik said. “The bride can’t just disappear.”

Simply touching that gun, smooth and heavy, made my whole body cold. “They want to see you as well,” I said.

He made no effort to grab the gun back.

I opened Papa’s desk drawer and placed it inside.

“Oh, Pietrik,” I said, kneeling next to him.

We stayed there in the dark together for some time and listened to the guests sing as the band played “Sto Lat.” One hundred years of happiness for the bride and groom.