He laughed: “I’m not going to murder you, woman. You don’t need to be worried about me. It’s the river you should be worried about… and the border guards.” He nodded up ahead and she saw searchlights raking the waves, illuminating the trees along the shoreline, and lingering over a pile of boulders that sat in the middle of the river.
“Will they see us?”
“Probably.”
“What should we do?”
“You’re not going to do anything. You’re going to sit there and let me do my job.”
The border stealer guided the boat to a place in the water where the river was squeezed into a frothy tumult between two granite cliff faces. There he let the current carry them past the searchlights, rowing furiously first with one oar and then the other, in an effort to keep off the rocks that threatened them on either side. Only once did the light fall on them, but it was only for a fraction of a second. Even so, she could hear the impotent crackle of rifle fire behind them, answered by similar fire from the Polish side.
The current carried them swiftly along past beaches and coves that seemed like suitable places to pull in. When she asked the border stealer about them he only grumbled “patrols” and kept rowing. At an unlikely place he rowed into a rocky cove and guided the boat up alongside a fallen log. “All right. Here you are,” he said, tying the painter line to the log and returning to his seat.
“Here?” she asked looking at the jagged rocks that acted like a fortified barrier around the shoreline. “How are we supposed to get in from here?”
“That’s your problem. But whatever you do, you better be quick about it. There’ll be patrols up and down here looking for you. You’ll have a little more time because of the rocks. They won’t think to look here. They won’t think you’re stupid enough to try, so you better get going.”
Berta had no choice but to pay the man. She took off her boot, counted out the money, and handed it over. He counted it quickly and pocketed the bills. “The best way in is through there,” he said, pointing into the gloom.
“Where?”
“You’ll see once you’re in. Now off with you. I have to get going.”
She took off the other boot, tied them together, and hung them around her neck. Samuil did the same. Then she stood a little unsteadily in the rocking boat and climbed over the side, lowering herself into the frigid water. Samuil followed and she could hear him sucking in his breath as he let go of the side of the boat. They couldn’t touch bottom yet and had to feel their way along the slithery bark of the log. Soon Berta was fighting the current, grabbing on to a boulder while reaching behind with her free hand for Samuil. But he had caught his own boulder and didn’t need her help. They scrambled over the rocks, over a mossy outcropping, a crevice, the roots of a dead tree, moving from one slippery surface to the next. In some places the rock faces were serrated and spiky, in others smooth and slippery. Berta led the way, shivering in the cold, picking her way in the dark. She was careful to keep her footing, changing direction only when she had to, but always keeping an eye on the shore and adjusting their course whenever she could.
They crossed a place where the rocks were piled on top of each other, their sharp, ragged-toothed outcroppings jutting out in all directions. Her fingers were numb and stiff and it was hard to get any strength out of them. She was about to tell Samuil to be careful when she heard him grunt, his feet scrambling to find purchase, and a splash.
“Samuil!” She whipped around in the dark and lost her balance, falling forward and landing on the sharp edge of a rock. She broke her fall with her hands, but sliced open her leg just below the knee.
“Mameh!”
She turned back and dislodged her foot that was wedged in a crevice. The water was nearly up to her hip now and icy cold. It numbed her leg so she didn’t realize how deep the gash was, how it cut through muscle and tissue nearly to the bone. There was hardly any pain so she assumed that it was warm water running down her leg and not blood.
Chapter Twenty-one
March 1920
BERTA DIDN’T want to lean on Samuil. She didn’t want to appear sick or injured because it might draw attention to them. She wanted to walk off the train along with the other passengers, one foot in front of the other, down the steps, and into the station. So she waited until they were nearly alone in the carriage and then stood. The pain was so intense it made her dizzy and she had to sit back down.
“Mameh?”
“Shush, keep your voice down. I’m all right. I’m just going to have to lean on you a little.”
Fichmann had told them where to go once they crossed the river—to a shtetl and a house, whose occupants were part of the rabbinical underground. The rabbi’s wife cleaned the wound and bandaged it, gave them dry clothes, changed their money, bought them train tickets to Warsaw, and taught them how to say Warsaw and American Embassy in Polish without accents. All along the border and in the larger cities there were houses like this one, sanctuary for fleeing refugees on their way to America. They were funded by those already in America through a variety of organizations with names like Relief of Jewish War Sufferers and European Jewish Appeal.
Samuil helped her off the train. It was hard getting down the steps. She had to lean heavily on the railing and put most of her weight on the other leg. Once they were out on the platform, she limped over to a post and leaned against it, waiting to catch her breath.
“Warszawa?” she asked a porter who happened to be passing by.
He hardly gave her a glance. He was bored by her ill-fitting secondhand clothes, her dirty bundles, and the shoes the rabbi’s wife had given her that were so big she had to shuffle along to keep them on her feet. Without a word he nodded to a nearby platform and walked on, stooping to pick up a coin dropped by some passenger hurrying to catch a train.
Since the train wasn’t due for another hour she decided to find the pol’za, the facility, where she could clean the wound and change the bandage. She found it in a little alcove off the main thoroughfare. It was for ladies of a certain class, expensive women who traveled with maids and nannies and were married to men in industry or in respectable positions in the government. It was late and so it was nearly empty. An older woman, expensively dressed with a cigarette between her fingers, looked up when Berta came in and watched her with curiosity through a haze of smoke. A seamstress was at the woman’s feet pinning up the hem of her dress that had most likely gotten caught on her heel.
An attendant in a starched black cap and jumper and white shirtwaist stepped over to Berta and pulled her aside. She put her lips to Berta’s ear and whispered sharply in Polish so as not to make a scene. Instead of leaving, as she knew the woman wanted her to do, Berta reached into her pocket and brought out a handful of coins and dropped them into the attendant’s hand. The attendant looked at them and then up at Berta. She was confused. Berta nodded to the porcelain sinks and to the stack of clean Turkish towels that sat on a little table by the door, motioning to them and then to herself. The attendant asked her a question in Polish and Berta nodded without knowing what she said, but guessing she was clarifying Berta’s request to use the facility. After that the attendant poked at the coins in her hand, probably thinking that she could get fired for something like this. But in the end she pocketed them, waved Berta in, and led the way through the room, grumbling the whole way in Polish.