The Things We Cannot Say

Although the novel moves chapter to chapter between the story of Alina in Nazi-occupied Poland and the story of her granddaughter Alice Michaels in contemporary Florida, this study guide will separate the stories.

In the Prologue, Alina recalls her hastily arranged wedding in 1942 amid the squalid conditions of a refugee camp in the Russian town of Buzuluk. She and her husband, identified as Tomasz, have survived for more than three years in horrific conditions in their hometown of Trzebinia in Nazi-occupied Poland before escaping to the safety of Buzuluk. She acknowledges that in the darkest moments she never abandoned her love for Tomasz. The wedding, serenaded by a scratch choir of camp children (war orphans) singing a traditional Catholic hymn, signaled for Alina that the war was at last over.

The novel turns back to summer 1938. Everyone in the rural town of Trzebinia in southern Poland knows that Alina Dziak, who grew up on her family farm outside of town, is destined to marry Tomasz Slaski, the handsome son of the town’s respected doctor. Their childhood friendship has blossomed into a magical love that is about to be tested. Tomasz is to depart to begin medical studies in distant Warsaw. As they comfort each other before Tomasz heads to the city, Tomasz promises Alina he will return and that they will be married: “All I know and all I need to know is that whenever we are apart, I always miss you, and I know you feel the same” (25). The night that Tomasz departs, Alina’s mother gives her daughter her most precious possession, her own mother’s wedding ring, and assures Alina that someday when Alina marries Tomasz, she will wear the ring.

Within weeks of Tomasz’s departure, rumors begin to swirl about a possible German invasion of Poland, a bald land grab that causes concern as Trzebinia is barely four hours from the German border. The rumors incite anti-Jewish sentiment as people blame the Jews, the target of Nazi aggression. Initially, Alina and her family dismiss such rumormongering, certain the Polish army can defeat the upstart Nazis. Then on the morning of September 1, 1939, they hear the thunder of German tanks, and the family heads to their cellar. Alina is claustrophobic, and the three days the family spends hiding in the close darkness terrify her. Bombs shake the cellar. They listen to alarming news bulletins on a wireless radio. They wait. They pray. When they emerge from the cellar, they hear the Nazi government is occupying the town and has summoned everyone to a meeting in the town square. There, the soldiers execute the mayor and the town’s most prominent doctor, Tomasz’s father, as a demonstration of their power. Alina tries to comfort Tomasz’s little sister Emilia, who is horrified by watching the soldiers shoot her father.

Alina’s family fears the Nazis will confiscate their produce and even the farm itself. The Nazis issue an order that all children over 12 will be relocated to work camps. Alina is 14. Her two older brothers, twins, heroically volunteer, and the Nazis relent and allow Alina to stay to help with the farm. Before her brothers leave, however, they tell Alina that she cannot hope for Tomasz’s return. They say that Warsaw is occupied, the university is closed, and Tomasz himself is either dead or conscripted to a work camp. As her brothers depart, Alina cannot bring herself to abandon hope that Tomasz will return to her.

The story of Alice Michaels, Alina’s granddaughter, is set nearly 80 years later in Winter Park, Florida. Alice, married with two children, is a full-time mom. Her own mother, a respected circuit judge, hoped her daughter would follow in her footsteps. Alice studied journalism instead until two weeks before graduation, when she found herself pregnant. Alice never tells her mother that the pregnancy was deliberate, that she did not want a career or to be like her mother. Now, more than 10 years later, she struggles to handle the challenges of her younger child, Eddie, who was diagnosed on the autism spectrum and who has no verbal skills, communicating instead through a language app on an iPad.

Alice’s grandmother, now 95, has been taken to the hospital after having a minor stroke in her retirement community. Alice knows her grandmother as Hanna Slaski. Alice and Eddie are on the way to the hospital when Alice stops at a grocery store to get Eddie his yogurt. Eddie, however, has a meltdown in the store when he notices the yogurt has changed its label. Alice manages to get Eddie to the car, but not without thinking harshly about her husband Wade, a research executive whose job provides him an easy out from taking care of a special-needs son with whom he has never bonded. Wade believes Alice coddles their son: “Wade would say all of my efforts enable a spoiled little boy who could be closer to typical if we just pushed him more instead of pandering to him” (76).

When they arrive at the hospital, Alice sees that her grandmother is weak but stable. Alice’s mother is there but on her phone, distracted by her court commitments. Alice grew up particularly close to her grandmother, whom she calls Babcia, a Polish term of endearment. She can tell Babcia is agitated as she struggles to communicate something to Alice. Desperate to help, Alice gives her grandmother Eddie’s iPad with its communication app. The older woman types out “Find Tomasz.” Alina’s husband of more than 40 years, Tomasz, a successful pediatric surgeon, died just the year before. Alice assumes Babcia is confused, but Babcia presses the issue and then begs Alice to “find box.” Alice’s mother heads to Babcia’s room in the retirement home and returns with a box she retrieved from under the bed. Babcia immediately finds a vintage photo, dated 1941, of a handsome, if thin, young man with piercing eyes. Agitated, Babcia types, “Find Tomasz” and then “Trzebinia,” the town in Poland where she grew up. Something in her grandmother’s demeanor causes Alice to believe her grandmother is not confused. She resolves to “do whatever [she] can to help [Babcia] find whatever it is she’s looking for” (88).