The Things We Cannot Say

With the Nazis occupying Trzebinia, Alina is restricted to the farm. She and her parents work to keep the farm productive, fearful it will be confiscated and remanded to Germans coming into Poland. Production quotas are increased, and the Dziak family begins to feel the pinch of rationing. The Nazis order everyone to carry identity papers, under threat of arrest.

The work on the farm is backbreaking. Alina only permits herself to think about Tomasz at night as she tries to sleep. She feels helpless: “I had no power to change my lot. All I had was the breath in my lungs and a tiny fragment of hope that if I kept moving forward, I could survive until someone changed my world” (92).

One beautiful autumn afternoon, her farm work done, Alina chooses a pretty sundress and heads out to enjoy the afternoon. A Nazi truck pulls up on the road, and a young officer eyes Alina but says nothing. Alina pretends she is gathering berries—she has left her identification papers back at the house. Her father appears, and the soldier asks for directions. As it turns out, the soldiers are lost. They drive off. Alina knows she was lucky. That night, her mother cautions her that should a Nazi soldier ever accost her again, she is not to resist. For the Nazis, rape “is a weapon” (99). It is a tipping point for Alina. The soldier had “taken [her] innocence without ever coming within a hundred feet of [her]” (100). One night when Alina cannot sleep, she smells sugary aromas from the kitchen. She surprises her mother, who is processing strawberries into preserves. It is illegal—she is skimming food from the harvest quotas the Nazis take. Alina cannot help but wonder whether her parents are stashing food somewhere in the farmhouse.

While out working in the fields one morning, Alina happens to see a new brick column, a chimney, in the distance, with a churning cloud of black smoke coming from it. She smells a terrible stench. Her mother reassures her that the chimney is at the Jewish work camp, and the furnace provides warmth during the cold weather and warm showers for the Jewish workers. Within two weeks, the family receives news that the twins have both died in Nazi work camps, although the details are fuzzy. The news sends the parents into despair. Alina, for her part, is furious with God. She reflects, “I didn’t want to be a person of faith anymore—if God would let such terrible things happen, I wanted nothing more to do with Him” (112).

By spring, the Nazis decree that anyone caught helping hide Jews will be arrested along with their families. Alina struggles to help Tomasz’s sister, young Emilia, understand hate. It is a difficult concept for the child. Alina overhears a conversation between her parents and a neighbor that hints strongly that Tomasz has been seen in the woods and is being harbored on one of the nearby farms. That night she sneaks out, knowing the risks. Because her mother keeps her identity papers, she goes without them, determined to ask the neighbors about Tomasz.

Along the way, Alina is sure she is being followed. She panics, and just as she decides to run for her life, she hears her name whispered. She is stunned to see Tomasz, leaner, his hair unkempt, looking weary and filthy but unmistakable, even beneath a wild beard. Their reunion is tearful. They hold each other and kiss, and Alina likens the moment to heaven: “It was heaven to be with him again—heaven to press my lips against him and to breathe him in, all of him, the smell of the woods and even the scent of his sweat” (131).

Tomasz makes Alina promise to tell no one he is back. He is hiding in the woods, scavenging food and sleeping when he can, although he will not tell her what happened back in Warsaw. When Alina returns home, she feels for the first time in a long time “a glimmer of hope” (138). Over the next several nights, Tomasz returns to the farmhouse, and the two talk quietly at her bedroom window. She gives him bread and strawberry jam. When her father overhears them at the window, they decide to risk meeting in broad daylight on the hill behind the farmhouse. Alina tells her mother she needs time to meditate, time to pray a rosary. Her mother, knowing exactly what Alina is doing, tells her to be careful. The two lovers meet in the woods every day for 20 minutes. For Alina, the “world seemed utterly perfect in that moment” (156).

When Alice Michaels returns home from the hospital, she is met by her daughter, Callie, who is incensed that a substitute teacher assigned her homework that everyone else was doing, like she was regular student or, as she says, glancing at her younger brother, “a retard” (115). The word makes Alice cringe, angry at her daughter’s insensitivity and arrogance. Her husband, meanwhile, struggles in the kitchen to make dinner—the counters are a mess. Alice retreats, with a bottle of Merlot, to the refuge of a warm bubble bath. Later, she tells Wade her doubts that her grandmother is confused when she communicates that she wants Alice to find Tomasz, even though he died last year. Wade criticizes her, claiming she is using her grandmother’s obvious dementia to create drama.

The next morning, Alice heads to the hospital. When she arrives at her grandmother’s room, Babcia is alert and points to two letters she has set out. The first letter is addressed to Alice herself, some 10 years earlier, from her grandmother. In it, Babcia asks Alice to accompany her to Poland on an urgent matter she would explain later. The letter was dated the week before Alice was set to graduate from college, which was upended when she discovered she was pregnant. Apparently, Babcia never mailed the letter. The second letter is much older and written in Polish. As Alice scans it (she does not know the language), she notices her grandmother is crying.

Using the iPad app, the old woman types “Alice plane Poland.” Alice understands that her grandmother wants her to fly to Poland now, which seems impossible because of Alice’s complicated family commitments. Wade could certainly not run the house for any period of time. She feels terrible. After her grandmother gave her a life of love and support, she cannot do this one thing Babcia is asking of her.

She asks her mother about Babcia’s request. Her mother is little help. Growing up, she says, her parents never talked about the war or about life in Poland. She does admit there were moments when she suspected that her father was actually Jewish—he never seemed comfortable in a Catholic church—and she thought that might be something sensitive that they had kept secret. Alice doubts that is what bothers Babcia, and she is sure her grandmother will not give up.