The Girl from Krakow by Alex Rosenberg

Author:Alex Rosenberg [Rosenberg, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Published: 2015-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

Warsaw on a winter evening. Steam spreading from the brakes on the carriage wheels, merging with condensation from the breath of travelers as they hurried down the quays. Only the station Kommandantur—the Wehrmacht office—was lit up against the gloom.

Rita needed to melt into this flood of travelers. She needed to do as they all did—no hesitation, no searching around, no inquiring looks. She walked past a man in uniform—surely this was the Blue Police, from the color of the tunic—scrutinizing a shabbily dressed passenger’s papers, his ticket, his face. Move past, not too fast, not too slow. Out of the station, turn left, left again, Topazowa Road, four streets down, parallel to the tracks. Rita tried hard to look like a Warsaw girl eager to get home after an eleven-hour rail journey. Like any street facing the noisy, grimy tracks of a city railway terminal, it was a line of narrow tenements, with few lights, some small bars and cafés, and hardly a person on the streets. At number 46 she rang the bell marked only “4th floor.” There was no buzzing her in. Instead, she heard the clop clop clop of wooden shoes making their way down the stairs. When the door was opened, a hand reached out. Rita put Bilek’s card in it.

The door swung wide. “Come in, please.” It was a tall woman with brown bangs, in her late thirties, thin, and rather studious-looking, wearing a white blouse over a navy blue skirt, and a heavy woolen cardigan sweater that looked as though it had been made for a man. After a more careful examination in the light of the room, the woman smiled, handed back the card, and offered her hand. “I am Krystyna. You are . . . ?”

“Margarita, Margarita Trush—”

“Let’s stick with Christian names. It’s safer. Come up. Let me take your case. It’s a long way to the fourth floor.” When they arrived Krystyna carried her bag into the flat, its windows overlooking an air shaft formed by contiguous buildings, covered by a black sky. She turned to Rita. “A cup of tea, Margarita? Then I think you’ll want to go to bed.”

“I am full of questions, but I suppose they can wait.”

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