THE LIGHT STARTED to weaken and the last of the winter sun drained away. Sophia had found French tutoring work for Anna. Anna was a terrible teacher and spent most of her time sighing or laughing at the terrible slow progress of the children of Sophia’s friends and church congregation, but was given food to take back to Margo’s house with her in payment. Every week she went to Margo’s bank in the city and tried to explain about her account in Kraków, took letters signed by Theo and Sammy attesting to her identity, and every week she left penniless, imagining their money mouldering away in infested Kraków.
Janina and Margo took in laundry and filled the house with the smell of soap and starch. Janina’s hands began to crack and swell, but she liked to stay in the house behind Margo’s walls, and to listen to Margo gossip about the neighbours, providing laughter or a shocked face as required, and earning Margo’s friendship with her receptive audience. Even Alicia helped, steaming sheets in the kitchen, folding their canvas-like whiteness, laying them next to each other to notice the different shades, how they glowed in different ways when held up to this or that corner of the room.
Sophia worked hardest to find something for the heartbroken Karolina. She took her to her church, where Karolina, uncomplaining, washed pots and arranged donations; she found her pupils to tutor, and Karolina would teach them in a dull monotone, tears sometimes filling her eyes until she would put her head on the desk in Sophia’s house and close them.
Anna had limited patience with it. ‘For God’s sake, I wish there were more books here to distract her; it’s the only thing she really loves,’ she said one day to Sophia.
‘But that’s perfect! I’ll find her something at the library! I’m in charge of the archive – oh! We should have her look after the Polish books! There are so many and she can categorise them – we’ll work together!’
So Karolina and Sophia left every morning for the library, Sophia chattering happily, as though there were no war at all, Karolina in a carapace of worry. Sophia brought her home every evening with paper and pens for Alicia’s sketches, and gossip about people the others had never met: Veronica is going to get married, Ria has disappeared, they say the whole family has gone. Alicia listened in envy, wishing she could work outside the house too, but kept on sewing and darning and mending what Margo gave to her every day, and at night, sketched the house and the swollen family: Janina’s wrinkled hands, the edge of the window frame, the view from the top of the street.
Isaac went back to school to finish his final year, came home with stories of new German and Polish boys, new drills between Latin and French.
Sammy looked more and more harassed; his gelatinous cheeks hung in sadness more often than they stretched to show his usual beam. He sat in silence while the family and Janina made small talk over simple meals, was slow to rise to Margo’s prodding to chime in with someone’s name (‘Who is it, Sammy, that awful woman with the eyebrows and she wears those ugly rings? She has lots of children Anna could tutor …’), and if Isaac – it was always Isaac – asked about his day, and the others would hush, in case there was news of Adam, he would only shake his head.
At night, Sammy lay next to his wife, whispering to her in her sleep.
‘Things are getting worse,’ he would whisper, watching her face to see if she was hearing him in a dream. ‘The cases are piling up, but I can’t help anyone.’
He moved onto his back, staring at the ceiling. Imagined the sky beyond it, the ceiling dissolving to leave them all exposed to the cold air. He felt the weight of them all: his wife and son, his sister-in-law and nieces, the old woman, dragging on him somewhere in his stomach, and released a violent sigh of anger at Adam for disappearing, for being arrested, for running, for dying in the street, whatever he had done, for leaving him with this, for weeks and who knew how much longer, when it was only meant to be for a few days. Then he apologised to Adam’s spirit, if it had come to that, and the spirits of their parents, and got up to pace around the upper floor of the house and bite the inside of his cheeks until they bled, waking up the women downstairs, who took turns watching the shadows moving through the floorboards and hear the weight pressing down from above, Margo’s gentle snoring in the background.
Even through his fug of anxiety Sammy left for work every morning and returned every evening. Every day he answered the same question from Anna, ‘Any news?’ with the same response, ‘No change.’ Over the weeks it became such a habit that the words lost their meaning and became like the other inane politenesses of good mornings and how are yous and will you have some tea. Routine soothed and lulled them all, even Sammy, even Karolina.