“Did they take you?” Lukas asked. “Did they hurt you?”
“You can see the scars well enough, but Flint got me out before I’d healed so much that they could begin to torture me. But how long can I last in hiding? Look at me. I’m disfigured, and the authorities know it—my wounds were thoroughly described on my hospital chart. This little paradise won’t last.”
“All the more reason to come with me. We’ve escaped before. Maybe we can do it again.”
“It’s no good. It’s over.”
“Don’t give up hope. I can help you.”
“You can, but not in the way you think. They’re outside, waiting for you.”
“Now? Are you sure?”
“I don’t know anything for sure. There’s been a strange atmosphere in this town over the last few days. More cars pass through than usual. They may have found me already, or they may have found you and followed you here. And if neither is true, it will be soon.”
“Why didn’t you run?”
“I couldn’t. They have me where they want me.”
“This talk is all confusing. Why won’t you go with me?”
“Wait here.”
She rose and went into the other room but did not illuminate a lamp there. Lukas heard the wail of a child being awoken. She came back with a very small boy on her hip, not much more than a toddler, a cranky child with curly brown hair very much like hers. She no sooner sat down than the boy snuggled into her shoulder and fell back to sleep.
A hand seized his throat. “He’s ours?”
She nodded.
“How is that possible?”
“Small miracles happen. Not often, but sometimes they do.”
He wished he could see the child a little better, but he was so tightly tucked into his mother’s side that Lukas did not want to tear him away.
“If you had stayed away,” said Elena, “you might have been able to do him some good. One day maybe they will permit people to send packages from America. But what good are you to him here and now?”
“I didn’t know.”
“No. There’ll be no fighting our way out of this place, and there’ll be no flight to America. Everything has changed now.”
Everything had changed. She was right. He looked at the boy and was overcome with the wonder of him.
Elena let him look at the boy a long time.
“Is there anything I can do for you both?” asked Lukas.
“There is something. But it’s very terrible. I’m afraid to ask it.”
“What?”
“If you go outside and they are there, and if they try to seize you, let them take you alive.”
Lukas had not touched his tea. He looked at the cup and drank it all down. He considered what she said. If he did as she asked, they would torture him and might make him tell what he knew. He was not sure he could withstand torture.
“What good would it do?”
“They will have their prize. You are it. I’m not so foolish as to think I’ll get off. But if I’m lucky they’ll give me ten years for collusion if you don’t tell them about me, our past.”
What she asked was very hard. To give himself up to torture would be bad enough; to try to hold something back under torture would make the pain go on longer.
“What’s the boy’s name?” Lukas asked.
“Jonas. I wanted a simple name, with no history, no subtexts. I couldn’t call him after you.”
“No.”
Lukas looked at the child. He had never had quite this experience before, the sense of being able to look for a long time and feeling unflagging delight.
“What if there is no one waiting for me outside? Couldn’t I just walk away?”
“Yes, of course. You might be able to survive for a while and so might I, but I need to keep the child. It’s the first thing they’ll use against me. If I confess to being a courier, they’ll send both the child and me to Siberia. Maybe things will not be so bad in the camps for mothers and children. They don’t separate mothers and children anymore. Maybe we could stay alive. But if they really do discover all I’ve done, they’ll torture me too. And they’ll put him in an orphanage. You have to do whatever is right. I’m not sure what that is, but I do know he’d be better off with me in Siberia than in an orphanage here.”
It was unbearable to speak of these things, and so they whispered about other things, of people they had known and what had happened to them. They whispered under the sound of the radio. Time and again Lukas would stop to look at the boy. Time and again Elena reminded him that he could do as he chose.
Lukas sat with Elena through most of the night. He wanted to drink up the sight of the boy and the sight of her as well. He wanted to wait until there was a little light on the street, and when he saw the window begin to brighten, he looked long at the boy again and then returned to what would happen next.
“What should I tell them about you?” he asked.
“You must hold out for a while. You can’t tell them everything immediately or they won’t believe you. I was a courier once, you can say that. Say you came here hoping for a letter from your parents.”
He was afraid to kiss her because he was afraid of waking Jonas, but he had been afraid to kiss her before, years earlier, and he had found a way. Now he found a way again. She let him, heedless of who might be watching. He kissed the boy too, who awoke and cried out, pushing him away before settling back into his mother’s shoulder.
“I’m going to tell you an address,” said Lukas, “of a place in America. If you could get a letter out there somehow, I’d be very grateful.”
“I don’t know what I can do.”
“It wouldn’t have to be right now. Whenever you can. Even if it’s years from now. But you mustn’t write down the address, so you’ll have to memorize it.”
“All right.”
He gave her an address in America, the address of Monika’s uncle. He also told her what to say to Lakstingala if she had a chance to speak to him. They talked about the people they knew who had died. After the music from Warsaw ended for the night, she left the radio on and it gave off a sound of static that she did not turn down.
“I understand you were out of the country, in the West,” said Elena.
“Yes. I was in Sweden and Germany and France.”
“Tell me about those places.”
He described Stockholm and Paris and the towns he had visited in Germany. She asked him questions for a long time.
“It’s good to know life goes on somewhere,” she said.
Then much too soon it was full dawn. Lukas looked at the brightening window and then at Elena.
“Please don’t cry,” said Lukas.
“Why not?”
“Because if you do, I will too, and I don’t want to be taken with my eyes full of tears.” He paused. “Will you tell Jonas about me? Not for a while, but later, when he’s old enough to understand. Tell him I saw him and admired him and I knew he would be all right.” He could not say more for a moment.
“I will, I will.”
“And if you can, tell him about my parents’ farm by Rumsiskes. When this is all over, maybe someone will be left alive, my mother or my sister. It would be good for him to know there is family somewhere.”
“I will.”
It was all so hard. He had been willing to suffer, but he did not know it would be like this.
He wanted to stay longer, but it was time to go. He touched her hand and kissed her wet cheeks. Elena could not help herself after all. Neither could he.
Lukas went to the door and opened it. He wasn’t sure, but he thought there was a little movement at the periphery of his vision. He kept his hands visible but turned back to face the two of them at the table before he closed the door.