He shuffled the photographs. Out of the corner of his eye, he was aware now of her neck, bare that warm morning, and the fine sprinkling of freckles that ended just above her collar.
The third photo was a studio portrait, likely taken at the time of Tomasz’s enlistment. In it, he wore a crisp uniform and deeply serious expression, while at his side his young wife smiled as if she had just been teasing when the bulb went off.
“And this is the card he sent me.” She turned it over and showed Lucius the postmark. Tarnów. He couldn’t help reading, Dearest Adelajda! We are all well. I am still with Hanek; he too is well. I think of you always and carry your photograph next to my heart. Tomorrow we go to—but a blue censor’s pen had cruelly removed the following two lines. She peered at it, as if, after so many tries, the words might suddenly appear. Then she placed it in the stack and folded the paper back up. The child stirred in her lap. “There, there,” she whispered. “Shhh, sleep. We will find Papa. Sleep.”
She turned back to Lucius. “He’s had a fever for almost five days now. I had thought it would have gone away. But you’re a doctor, maybe you know what’s wrong.”
He hesitated. I was. Not anymore according to the new Republic. But this mattered less than the fact that lectures and clinics in pediatrics belonged to the seventh semester, which he had planned to start that first autumn of the war.
He thought of the village children back in Lemnowice, trying to teach them to listen to their hearts.
“My patients were all soldiers,” he said.
She didn’t seem to register his answer. “I’ve been giving him this.” She took out a bottle of patent medicine, its miraculous effects prominently advertised on a bright red label. “The pharmacist said three drops whenever he’s crying. But all it does is make him sleep.” She touched his forehead with the back of her hand, then touched her own, then again touched his. “He’s still so hot.”
For the first time since the start of their journey, Lucius looked closely at the child. He must have been around two years old. He was barefoot, and the gown, likely his nightclothes, was of cotton, stained about the neck and hem. He slept with his arms thrown up above his head, like a pantomime of a person falling. Cheeks pink, fingernails almost translucent, ears like porcelain.
Lucius felt the attention of the other passengers as he examined the boy, but the child was so flushed it was hard to discern a rash. Were there any other symptoms? he asked Adelajda. Cough? Oh, yes. Diarrhea? Yes, a little. Bumps in his mouth? Not that I have seen. But he’s not eating? He just takes a little milk. He tried to open the boy’s mouth, but the boy resisted. He pressed an ear against his rib cage. A murmur? But with the rumbling of the train, he couldn’t hear. Glands swollen, but not to the degree he might expect in quinsy; though he was thinking of adults.
“Has he had his smallpox vaccination?”
She shook her head; there had been shortages, the doses had been reserved for soldiers. But she’d seen smallpox; he didn’t have the blisters.
Not yet, thought Lucius grimly. The cough made it less likely, but just the thought made Lucius’s ear and cheek feel warmer where they had touched the child’s chest. But I’ve also been vaccinated; he had to remind himself of this.
Fevers of childhood. Roseola, scarlet fever, measles, rubella, influenza…
Feuermann, with his internship at the rural clinic, would have known.
He looked at the tincture, which appeared to be a preparation of laudanum, without any mention of a dose. She said she gave it to him whenever he was crying? She was lucky she hadn’t killed him. So he could help, at least a little. He gave it back. “I would stay away from this.”
They were passing fields again. Beyond, he thought he could see mountains. They entered Tarnów. Now the signs of war were everywhere. Broken artillery filled the junkyards outside the station, and the grass traced discarded skeletons of trucks. Adelajda had returned the packet to her bag, and after a time he realized that she was crying softly. One of the old women watched her, emotionless, but the other passengers made an effort not to stare. He had the impulse to comfort her, but he didn’t know what to say. That she should stop looking for her husband? Go home, at least until the little boy was well?
“I am also going to look for someone I lost during the war.”
The words came unplanned.
There was silence. She sniffed, then turned, eyes beseeching. “Your wife?”
Almost. Perhaps one day…
“No, not my wife.”
“You loved her, though.”
She said this with such naturalness, that he answered, “Yes. I did.”
She brightened almost immediately. “Then you’re like me,” she said. “You know, a customs officer once told me that half the continent was looking for the other half. Now you, too. See?”
He nodded. There was something in her hopefulness that touched him like a balm. He could almost see her as she had been the moments before her wedding photo, a swirl of color and laughter, her eyes flashing, her flower-embroidered tresses swaying as she danced.
She said, “And you think she is in Lwów?”
“Not Lwów. I don’t know where she is. I last saw her at a field hospital, in the mountains. So I was going to return there first.”
“Oh, and when did you last see her?”
“June.” He paused. “In ’16.”
“’16?” He sensed a sudden slackening of her optimism. “’16. And you haven’t given up.”
He did not know whether she had meant this in admiration or in pity, and was about to add that he hadn’t been searching this whole time, when the train lurched and, shuddering, began to slow. The luggage rocked above them; the little boy nearly tumbled from his mother’s lap. He began to cry.
They came to a stop. Outside, a lone road led off through fallow fields, blotched with scattered clumps of wild mustard. The passengers looked at one another. One of the men took out his watch.
“I didn’t know we were stopping,” Lucius said.
“We’re not. Not until Rzeszów.” Adelajda leaned against the window to try to see. “Sometimes they have trouble with the rail. We have to wait. Sometimes for quite some time.”
Outside, a group of horsemen rode past, and Lucius sensed Adelajda tensing. Then the men rode back. There was shouting in Polish farther up the line, something about boarding, but Lucius couldn’t make out everything they said. Behind them there was a clatter as the door to the carriage opened and a voice called out. Then footsteps, banging on compartment doors.
In Polish: “Everyone in your seats!”
Adelajda’s son, who had finally quieted in her arms, began to cry again. As she stroked his hair, she leaned toward Lucius, and said, very softly, “Militias, loyal to Poland. The same thing happened last month. They are looking for enemy sympathizers. Because of the wars with Ukraine and Russia.” Then in a much lower voice. “Last time they detained all young men traveling alone. Say that I’m your wife.”
He thought of the detailed map to the province of Galicia, his father’s revolver, tucked neatly in the bag above his head. His old army papers, from before Natasza. “But my passport says that I’m unmarried.”
Now Adelajda didn’t drop her gaze from him. “No. We were married in Vienna in 1916, but the new Austrian Republic asked us to resubmit our marriage license prior to traveling. But they bungled it; Poles love stories about how the Austrians bungle things. This is our son. His name is Paweł Krzelewski: that is your family name, right? I saw it on your ticket. And my maiden name was Bartowska, like it says on mine. We are going to Jarosław to visit my aunt, Vanda Cenek. She is a war widow; her husband died fighting for Polish independence in the Pripet, a great patriot. We plan to spend a month with her at a small farm belonging to my cousin. It is too hot in the city for our child, who, we must remind them, is very sick.”