Stefan was one of the last to board the train. He stood within grasping distance of the carriage furthest from the engine, waiting for her. She couldn’t give him a last hug—not with so many people watching. The formal handshake made her insides turn to ice.
“Do widzenia,” he murmured. Till we meet again.
Like a prayer, Martha whispered it back. But in her heart, she knew that it wouldn’t—couldn’t—ever be.
As he hauled himself up by the handle of the door, Stefan let his free hand swing down and brushed her cheek with his fingers. He stood in the doorway and followed her with his eyes as the train began to move.
“And they’re off!” The major came striding up to where she stood. “Let’s hope the Russkies don’t eat them for breakfast . . .”
A great cheer went up from the carriages as the train gathered momentum. The DPs were waving flags made of scraps of red and white fabric—the colors of Poland. The cheering was a cry of hope. Everyone on board wanted desperately to believe that their country would really be free, as promised.
Martha stood on the empty platform, looking down the track, watching the plume of smoke rise to meet clouds tinged pink and gold with the rising sun.
“You should smile,” the major said. “This is what you came here for: to get them home.”
It was a lonely drive back to the camp. The roads were deserted. Even the fields looked bleak, stripped of their grain crops and vegetables. Martha wondered where the train would be now. The first stop was Nuremberg, where more cars would be added. Then on to two more German stations before crossing into Czechoslovakia. It would be almost halfway through October by the time the train reached Poland. According to the army, it was already snowing there. An image flashed in front of her: Stefan searching for his wife and child in an icy wasteland of bombed-out buildings. What would he do if he couldn’t find them? What if the Russians arrested him and took him away before he’d even had the chance to start looking? What if . . . She braked sharply at the gates of Seidenmühle. She had to stop thinking about it—about him. But the way her insides surged at the memory of him kissing her goodbye in the darkness of the trees made that next to impossible. The image of his face as the train had pulled away was etched inside her head. She knew that look would come back to haunt her whenever she closed her eyes.
She couldn’t face going back to the office. Not yet. Instead, she pulled up a few yards beyond the gates and wandered down to the river. The early morning mist had melted away. Dew sparkled on the grass along the bank. She sank down, feeling the cold wetness on the palms of her hands, not caring if the moisture seeped into her clothes. The water flowed past her, smooth and silent. In the distance she could hear the people left behind going about their daily business. It was impossible to think of Stefan not being among them.
She thought of the day, nearly four months ago, when she had sat beside a different river, halfway across the world. That morning in New York, she had been scared and excited in equal measure: scared of Arnie finding her and dragging her back, scared of the flight across the ocean—but excited at the prospect of the new, unknown life that lay ahead. What would she have done if she could have seen into the future? If she could have felt the heartbreak of standing on that platform as the train pulled away?
As she gazed across the water, she saw a feather, white and perfect, drifting past her. Her eyes followed it as it moved gently with the current. It looked so delicate, so fragile—and yet it glided down the river with all the strength and balance of a boat. It was not struggling to escape. It was simply allowing itself to go where time and the water would take it.
She watched it disappear around the bend that would carry it to the faster stretch by the mill wheel. No way to know if it would stay afloat in that choppy water. Perhaps it would go under for a while. Perhaps it would emerge a few yards downstream, bedraggled but intact.
Martha stood up, wiping her wet hands against the sides of her jacket. As she walked back to the car, she felt a curious sense of calm. This was the path she had chosen. She couldn’t fight against the direction it had taken. Accepting this was a kind of surrender. But it was the only way to find peace.
As she drove into the main part of the camp, she caught sight of a figure coming toward her, waving. It was Aleksandra. She was carrying Rodek on her hip, and she gave a shy smile when Martha got out of the car.
“I make special breakfast for you.” Aleksandra had mastered English quicker than Martha had picked up Polish. “You like take him? I bring it to cabin.”