The Medallion Read online

  From the wedding of Itzhak and Rosa Dunovich

  August 17, 1938

  Warsaw, Poland

  CHAPTER ONE

  Warsaw, Poland

  September 1939

  Plummeting from the ceiling, the library dome’s chandelier exploded into a million crystal shards as it crashed to the floor—the floor polished three days before to a high sheen. Sophie Kumiega dove beneath the reading table as the bomb hit, shielding, as best she could, her stack of first editions, and the baby in her womb. A second bomb rocked stonework and shattered the floor-to-ceiling window, despite row upon row of crosshatched tape. Marble busts exploded. Great chunks of plaster crashed to the floor. Acrid flames burst from the shelves.

  “Get out! Get out of the building now!” Stefan Gadomski, the library’s junior officer, cried.

  “Move those books first! We must save the books!” insisted the librarian in charge, shoving a cart at breakneck speed to the far end of the building.

  “If we move them, the next bomb is likely to fall there!” Pan Gadomski shouted.

  “Then we will move them to the basement,” the librarian shouted back.

  Sophie could take no more. She’d worked hard to obtain her position in Warsaw’s library—a coup for an English foreigner, a greater coup for a woman. But she would not risk their baby—the baby she and Janek had prayed for, saved for, planned for every day of their married lives. Even now, Janek played cat and mouse in his Polish fighter plane, dodging the Luftwaffe in bomb-bursting skies above. The least she could do was save their unborn child.

  She dropped the first editions into their designated crate and had nearly made it to the door when the librarian thundered after her, “Pani Kumiega, come back! If we lose our library, we lose everything!”

  But Sophie didn’t turn. She feared she might relinquish her purpose, as crazy as such hesitancy was. She’d always submitted to authority, but not now. Two children had perished within her in two years. This child must live.

  Sophie cowered in the shadow of the library door, uncertain which way to turn, to run. Day after day, more of Warsaw was being reduced to a war zone, and still the relentless bombs fell on new targets or punished old. Low-flying Heinkels strafed men, women, children, without mercy, without discrimination.

  Finally she dodged between buildings, crouching beneath overhangs and awnings and in the crevices below steps as far and as long as she could. If they could not see her, would she be safe? Which could be worse? To be crushed by a familiar roof or gunned down in the street by German planes? Block after block she alternately crept and ran through the rubbled city, praying for the safety of her husband, praying for their baby, praying that their apartment building had not been obliterated. She reached their street and had glimpsed her apartment in the block ahead when a brief whistling came from high overhead, a sudden silence, then a brilliant flash of white light and fire before her, opening a chasm without end.

  “Sophia! Dear girl, you must wake up. Please, please, wake up.”

  Janek, dearest Janek. Sophie barely heard him through dense fog and a constant rumbling in her ears. She tried to open her eyes, but her lids lay too heavy.

  “She’s coming round.” Another voice—Pani Lisowski, her neighbor from across the hall, surely.

  “Thank God! We thought we’d lost you. I thought . . .”

  Through slits Sophie did her best to focus, to find her husband’s face, but it wasn’t there.

  “You’re alive. That’s all that matters.” It was her neighbor, her friend, old Pan Bukowski.

  Her heart caught. “Janek? Am I bleeding? Am I bleeding?” Fear pushed her up.

  “No, no, my dear, lay back—only your forehead and knees.”

  “I’ll find bandages. You musn’t get up, not yet.” Pani Lisowski again.

  “Your Janek is in the skies, still fighting for us.” She heard the pride in Pan Bukowski’s voice.

  Sophie pushed hair from her forehead; her fingers came away sticky and red. “An explosion. I remember an explosion.”

  “The whole street is gone . . . rubble.”

  “Our apartment?”

  “The front blown off—open, like a doll’s house,” Pani Lisowski insisted.

  Sophie tried to remember if she’d washed the dishes that morning. What Pani Lisowski must think if she’d left a mess upon the table for all the world to see.

  “Stay here, stay quiet,” ordered Pan Bukowski. “I’m going to get help and then salvage what I can. I’ll come back.”

  “Don’t leave. Don’t leave me, Janek.” Her mind reached for his coat, but her arms refused to obey.

  “Your Janek will be back before you know it. I won’t be gone long. I promise.”

  “Bring me—”

  “Yes, I’ll bring all I can. Whatever is still there, I will place in your hand.”

  When Sophie opened her eyes, she lay on a pallet in a room smelling of smoke and scorched metal, burned paper and wood, smoldering hair. The only light came from a shielded lantern on a small table in the center of the room. Ash crusted her teeth, her tongue, matted the hair stringing her face. The rumble of explosions came from farther away, as if her hearing had dimmed. A dark form huddled in a chair beside her pallet. It was too slight, too slumped, too round to be Janek.

  “Pan Bukowski?” she whispered.

  The form stirred, sat up, lost its roundness. She heard the vertebrae pop in his neck. “Ah, you are awake, Sophia Kumiega.”

  “Pan Gadomski?” She had not expected her coworker, but then, the man was also godfather to her Janek.

  “Tak, it is I. It’s good to see you in the land of the living. You’ve slept for three days.”

  “What are you doing here? Where am I?”

  “You are in a storeroom in the basement of the library—the safest place I could find at the moment. Though here we’re likely to be buried in all the knowledge of the ages if this bombing continues. Still, that is better than the rubble of the meat market. At least, I like to think so.”

  “But, Pan Bukowski—the last I knew, Pan Bukowski—”

  “The radio reports one hundred people have been killed. You won’t recognize the city. The zoo is a shambles. Zebras, lions, tigers, wallabies—they’re saying all the wilds of Africa, of Australia, of the world have escaped. A pedestrian’s nightmare and a hunter’s holiday.”

  “What? They bombed the zoo?” It made no sense.

  Pan Gadomski shrugged, as if he could read her mind. “What of reason is found in this? Jan’s heart must be broken—he’s poured his life into that work—not to mention Antonina’s.”

  “The zookeepers. I know them. Janek and I love to . . .” But she’d heard nothing of Janek since the bombing began. Her eyes must have shown her pleading.

  “We’ve heard only that they’re fighting, called back, regrouping, doing all they can. Janek is a good man, a strong pilot. You must trust that, my dear.”

  Sophie swallowed, her throat thick. She knew Pan Gadomski worried for him too. He loved her Janek, almost like a son. She wanted to trust.

  “Mayor Starzyński is pleading with the citizens of Warsaw to dig trenches—there are signs everywhere, calling us to arm ourselves, to cross the Vistula and regroup for a defensive line. Shovels and trenches against German panzers,” he chided. “Still, I must go and help.”

  “Here? Now?”

  “Not yet, but they’re coming, crawling their way across Poland, preceded only by hundreds—thousands—of refugees pouring into the city. Ironically, they believe themselves safer beneath German bombers than in the countryside. No matter that most of Warsaw is now without running water, many without electricity.” He shook his head. “All is chaos, but all is not lost . . . not as long as Władysław Szpilman continues to play Chopin for Radio Poland.”

  “Pan Bukowski?”

  Pan Gadomski looked away. “France and England have declared war on Germany. Between explosions and the rubble of fallen buildings, our citizens rejoice in the streets—they even tossed the French military attaché into the air outside the embassy, all the while singing the Marseillaise. Do you know how poorly Poles sing in French? Thank God in heaven, at least we won’t be alone now. But we must wait it out. Victory will take time.”

  “Pan Gadomski—where is Pan Bukowski?”

  A long moment followed. “He had his son bring you back to the library when you passed out, thinking there might be refuge among the stacks. Apparently your apartment building is no more. I’m sorry.”

  “Janek . . .” Every picture, every book, every memory of Janek and their life together was in that apartment.

  “Your friend sent these for you. There is a photograph of your husband.” Pan Gadomski pointed to two bags. “After he sent you back, he salvaged all he could for everyone on your floor, before . . .”

  “Before what?”

  Pan Gadomski moistened his lips, hesitating again.

  “Where is Pan Bukowski?” Sophie insisted, while her heart quickened.

  “I’m sorry to tell you that your friend was hit, strafed by a plane as he left the apartment for the last time. His son was with him, caught him as he fell. He did not suffer long, so the son said. He brought these things for you yesterday.”

  “No . . . no!” Sophie’s heart stopped. It wasn’t possible. Pan Bukowski, her friend, her only real friend besides Janek since coming to Poland.

  “He said his father’s last words were for you. ‘Tell Sophia to fight, to keep faith.’ Something about, ‘Remember the Red Sea.’”

  The Red Sea . . . how Adonai will make a way where there is no way . . . It was what he’d always reminded her of when she was tempted to despair.

  The tension and the worry, the anguish Sophie had suppressed ever since Janek left
for the battle, ever since the first bombs fell on an unbelieving Warsaw, finally ruptured in her chest. The cry came first as gasping breaths, then deep heaves, bursting from a place she’d known only in the losing of her babies—primitive, naked keening.

  Pan Gadomski slipped from the room as the storm played out.

  When Sophie woke again, the lantern still burned, casting weird shadows on the wall. There was a small loaf of bread and some cheese on the floor beside her pallet, and a cup of water. The smells of burned clothing and hair were still there, but the silence was new. She heard only her own breathing . . . slow, fluid.

  And then she remembered. Pan Bukowski. Silent tears escaped her eyes, rivuleting her sooted cheeks, dripping down her neck. She swiped them away and sat up, her swallow painful. Had he been hit while saving her treasures? Nothing she owned was worth that.

  Sophie had no idea of the day or the time. She must be in an inner room—no windows. No wonder the bombing had sounded far away. Now she heard no bombing. Whatever that meant, it was a relief.

  A cramping in her belly brought her wider awake. She felt for the mound of her baby and breathed, relieved again.

  She must get up, must find the restroom, must eat something. But when she pushed back the blanket, her pallet was covered in blood.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Vilna, Lithuania

  “Are you mad? Tell her she’s mad. Tell her, Itzhak! Your wife is mad.”

  “Mama, she is not mad; she’s grieving. Her father was killed and she wants to go to her mother. Is that so hard to understand? I’m a man, and even I understand this thing.” Itzhak shoved his best shirt into the case and slammed the lid.

  “It is willfulness to go to Warsaw in such a time. She’s not settled, your Rosa, not strong. She’s—”

  “She is my wife, Mama, and I will thank you not to speak against her.” Itzhak could not understand the war that raged between the two women. Did his mother not think Hitler and his allies enough to deal with? Why must there be discord in his house?

  “But to travel now—this is meshugge! It’s too dangerous. Germans everywhere! Stay here, stay in Vilna until the spring, and then see. Perhaps it will be over by then.”

  “It won’t be over by spring, and how can it be worse in Warsaw than here? Germans first, now Russians less than a day away—we’ll be occupied yet again, and if you think the Russians are coming to save us, you’re me—” He stopped before he voiced the unthinkable. “We’re Jewish wherever we go.”

  “Already the roads are blocked, crawling with soldiers. It will be worse in Warsaw; mark my words!”

  “Maybe,” Itzhak sighed. “Maybe the world will end tomorrow, but before it does, Rosa needs to see her mother. She’s lost her pape. I should have taken her sooner. I’m done listening. She wants to go, and I will take her. We leave at first light.”

  “I’m sorry, Itzhak,” Rosa whispered as he held her that night, the moon casting its glow through the open window over their arms, their necks and cheeks. “I’m sorry to take you away from your family, but I can’t stay, not when Matka is all alone.”

  “Rosa, stop apologizing. There is nothing to be sorry about except that we did not go sooner, that I did not get you there in time to see your papa before . . . before all this. I never should have listened to Mama. You are my family. We are our family.”

  “We couldn’t travel sooner. I was—we thought—” But she couldn’t continue.

  He cradled her against his chest, kissing her hair.

  “Your mama blames me. She blames me because I have not borne you a son.”

  “She wants a grandson to carry on the family name, to look like me, and to hold her head up before Ponia Dziedzic, who has five grandsons. She will blame everyone until she gets what she wants. It’s not your fault. Things happen, they don’t happen. We don’t know why. We don’t have to know why. We keep going.”

  “Will we ever be more than two?” Twin tears slid down her cheeks—tears that had become too familiar, constant companions.

  Itzhak wiped them away, pushing strands of hair from her eyes, and traced the fine chain from the curve of her neck to her chest, fingering the filigree of the medallion he’d placed there on their wedding day, the symbol of life as it was meant to be in Eden, of wholeness and home eternal, of relationship with Adonai. “We will be all that Adonai has prepared us to be, all that He means us to be.” He found her mouth and kissed her deeply, warmly. “You are all the home I will ever need, my Rosa.”

  The bomb-pocked streets of Warsaw were flooded with refugees—so many that Itzhak feared Rosa, petite and light, might be trampled by the handcarts, by the horses and drays pouring in from the countryside. He pulled her onto the curb just before a rope-led goat butted her side.

  “Where does he think to house a goat in the city?” Rosa shook her head. “All these people—where will they go? Who can take them in?”

  Itzhak didn’t answer her questions. Even now, after days of hiding by day and traveling by night through bombed cities and fields and woods, his Rosa did not seem to comprehend the magnitude of Germany’s invasion. Who knew what the Russians brought from the east? Everywhere, he knew, people ran for their lives, taking everything of value—to live upon or sell to survive all that would come. “It’s not much farther . . . just down this street and turn right at the next, I think.”

  “Your memory is strong, Itzhak. Oh, I pray our house stands. It would be awful for Matka to lose both Tata and her house in the same month.”

  Itzhak prayed the same. Yes, it would be hard on her mother to lose the house, but it would be a blow to Rosa, too. And where would they stay? How would they find her mother? He held little hope. Street after street had suffered from Germany’s blitzkrieg. And yet, in the middle of a decimated block, one, two, sometimes three houses stood without a scratch, or with perhaps only shattered windows.

  “There!” Rosa shouted, pointing. “There it is! Oh, thank You, Adonai, for sparing our house!”

  Itzhak no longer needed to pull Rosa along. She dragged him forward in her eagerness to reach her mother’s doorstep. She didn’t seem to see the overgrown front garden, but Itzhak noticed.

  “Matka! Matka! It’s your Rosa, come home! Let us in!” Rosa pounded on the locked door, but no one came. “She’s never locked the door before—never.”

  Never in your memory, my love. “I’ll check the back door. Wait here with our case.” Itzhak jumped from the stoop and rounded the corner of the sturdy stone house before Rosa could object. He’d met his mother-in-law only a few times before the day he and Rosa had married. He’d known her father better, having rented an apartment from the older man while attending classes in Warsaw for his electrician’s training. Marya Chlebek was a generous and fastidious woman, a loving and doting mother, but he did not think her strong. From the moment Rosa had received the letter from Pani Dobonowicz, a neighbor, saying that her father had been killed in the first days of the bombing, Itzhak had feared for his wife’s mother, fears he would not voice to his beloved.

  The back door, leading to the kitchen, was locked, the inner curtains drawn. Though dusk gathered, no light shone. He reached beneath the dusty mat and again beneath the cracked potted geranium, now dry and withered, standing beside the door. His own mother hid keys in similar places. Nothing. He ran long fingers above the door’s lintel and finally grasped a rusted skeleton key. How long it had hidden there, he could not imagine. Perhaps from the time Rosa’s father had built the house and carried his wife over the threshold.

  Itzhak drew a deep breath and unlocked the door. The kitchen was dark and chill, but clean. Each time he’d visited, the air had been filled with fragrances of chicken soup, warm black bread slathered in powidła śliwkowe—Polish plum butter—and even cinnamon kugel, a meal ending so sweet that his Lithuanian mouth had salivated. That was the most noticeable thing to Itzhak—the nothingness—and that was what constricted his heart.

  “Matka! Matka? Are you here? It’s Itzhak and Rosa, come home to you!” he called as he walked quickly from room to room. He wouldn’t keep Rosa waiting on the doorstep long, but he wanted to make sure of things first. He wanted to be able to prepare and care for his Rosa, whatever they found.