The Things We Cannot Say

Alina relishes the time she spends in the woods with Tomasz. They dream of their life after the war, a “fresh beginning” (168) in America, where Tomasz will become a doctor and the two will have many children. Children, he says, “are both our hope and our future” (171). Tomasz shares with Alina the story of meeting an extraordinary pediatric surgeon in Warsaw named Saul Weiss. When he first arrived in Warsaw and the Nazis invaded the country, Tomasz immediately enlisted in the Polish army, but the Nazis quickly overwhelmed it. The captured Polish soldiers were given two options: join the Nazi army or they and their families would be executed. Tomasz had no choice. He understands he betrayed his country and that when the war is over, he will be held accountable. Because of his proficiency in German, he was put in charge of relocating Jewish families into the rapidly expanding Warsaw ghetto.

It was then when he met Dr. Weiss and his wife, Eva. What struck Tomasz was the Jewish couple’s kindness and composure. When Dr. Weiss shared with Tomasz a long-shot plan to escape the ghetto through the city’s sewer system, Tomasz agreed to accompany them. The plan worked, and the three went into hiding, heading back to Trzebinia, more than 100 miles away, using a network of resistance fighters for food and shelter. By the time they arrived at Trzebinia, Eva was noticeably pregnant, and Tomasz was determined to pay back the couple who saved his life by keeping them safe in a farmhouse of a local who provides the shelter in return for gold. “I wouldn’t be the man you deserve,” he tells Alina, “if I didn’t help these people. […] I’m not a monster” (178). The baby is born, and for several weeks now Tomasz has been scavenging the countryside for food. Alina is stunned by the story. Her life is now in jeopardy—she is helping someone who is hiding Jews from the Nazis. She does not care. In her eyes, Tomasz is heroic, risking his life to help the Jewish family. Alina promises she will help.

Weeks pass and fall approaches. Alina worries about Tomasz surviving in the woods. When Alina is stopped by a German soldier searching the woods for Jewish refugees, it is only the intervention of her mother, who appears out of nowhere, that saves Alina. Her mother figured out long ago that Alina was meeting Tomasz and has been shadowing her to protect her. To Alina’s surprise, Alina’s mother wants to help. Since the deaths of her sons, she understands that passivity is cooperation with the Nazis, that doing nothing allows evil to flourish. She shows Alina a secret second cellar underneath the barn where, for months, she has stored flour, eggs, fruit preserves, and potatoes. She wants to offer Tomasz the food to help the refugees. She also wants Tomasz to live in the cellar against the fast-approaching winter. Initially, Tomasz declines the cellar (it is too much risk for Alina and her parents) but wants the food. When Alina makes the food conditional on Tomasz moving into the cellar, he agrees.

When Tomasz arrives, Alina’s mother cannot believe how thin he looks. During the day in the cellar, he and Alina cuddle in a makeshift bed. Although he departs every night to take food to Saul and his family, he stays in the cellar during the day, even when he overhears his own little sister Emilia visiting. Weeks pass. Just when Alina believes the arrangement will work, Nazi trucks roll up to the farmhouse. Alina heads down to the cellar, but her parents do not join her. Huddling with Tomasz in the darkness, she cannot make out what is happening above her. When the truck departs and Alina emerges, she is shocked to find her parents gone. Tomasz vows to find out what happened and heads to town.

Alina huddles in the dark cellar until Tomasz returns. He says that her parents were relocated to the nearby work camp, known as Auschwitz, the camp with the furnace chimney that Alina noticed. He refuses to lie. He tells her that the camp is not a work camp but an extermination camp where hundreds of Poles, Jewish and Catholic, are executed every day; the stench is the smell of their bodies burning in the camp’s crematoria furnace. Alina struggles to understand. Tomasz tells her that a photographer in Warsaw secretly filmed conditions at the camp and that there was a plan to smuggle the film canister out of occupied Poland to the Allies, who were not aware of the death camps. Although Alina wants to stay as long as they can in the security of the cellar with all its provisions, Tomasz tells her they cannot. The time to fight back has come.

Alice Michaels cannot see how she can drop everything and fly to a country she knows nothing about for some nonspecific mission, even for the grandmother she loves. Her husband urges her to go. He can run the house while she is gone, despite her reservations about how he will handle Eddie. As they talk, Alice remembers when they were first married: “In the early months of our relationship, we talked until sunrise more than once, and I never felt so important” (196). Wade asks Alice, “Do you still love me?” (204). Alice admits that Eddie changed everything, because unlike Wade and Callie, Eddie needed her. Wade sees Alice’s time away as a chance to treat Eddie with more responsibilities. It is time, he tells Alice, to challenge him, to “loosen the reins” a bit (198). Angrier than she wants to admit, and hoping Wade will see how difficult handling two such disparate children really is, Alice books a flight. Wade enlists a licensed guide, Zofia, to meet Alice in Krakow and get her to Trzebinia. That night, Wade and Alice make love.

Telling Callie she is leaving for a week is more of a challenge. Callie panics, sure that her father cannot run the house or handle Eddie. Alice heads to the hospital and tells a tearful Babcia the news. Her own mother dismisses the mission as another indication of her ever-rebellious daughter’s impulsive and irresponsible thoughtlessness.

Even as she boards the plane, Alice struggles with the heartache of leaving Eddie. When she arrives at Krakow, she feels alone and helpless. She gets to her hotel and then strolls around the beautiful and picturesque city. That night she Skypes her family. She can tell something is off, although Wade assures her everything is fine. Later that night, she gets a text from Callie telling her how proud she is of her mother. That is enough to give Alice heart.