I had hurried past the ghost town uneasily and now stood at the base of the bridge that spanned the wide stretch of the Wisła. The river separated the city center and Kazimierz from the neighborhoods of Dębniki and Podgórze to the south. I gazed over my shoulder at the hulking Wawel Castle. Once the seat of the Polish monarchy, it had presided over the city for nearly a thousand years. Like everything else, it was part of the General Government now, taken by the Germans as the seat of their administration.

As I looked at the castle now, a memory loomed of a night not long after the invasion when I had taken a walk. As I had reached the high embankment over the river, I saw boats clustered around the castle. Large crates were being carted from inside and carried up a ramp onto a boat, the heavier ones wheeled. A heist, I thought, my childhood imagination working overtime. I imagined summoning the police, being hailed as a hero for foiling the plot. The people who were taking things did not look like criminals, though. They were museum workers, stealthily slipping our national treasures from the castle in order to save them. But from what? Plunder? Air raids? The paintings were being rescued, yet we were being left behind to face whatever fate awaited us under the Germans. I knew then that nothing would be the same.

On the far side of the bridge sat Dębniki, the neighborhood where Hanna thought there might be cherries to buy. Its skyline was a mix of factories and warehouses, another world from the elegant churches and spires of the city center. I paused on Zamkowa, a street close to the river’s edge, to get my bearings. I had not been to Dębniki on my own before and it had not occurred to me until now that I might get lost. I hesitated, looking at the low building on the corner, which seemed to be a loading site for crates onto a barge that was docked at the river’s edge. It was not the sort of place I was comfortable asking directions. But there were no passersby whom I might ask and so it seemed my best option if I wanted to get to market in time to get the cherries and save Hanna. I steeled myself and started forward toward a group of men who stood smoking by a loading dock.

“Excuse me,” I said, and I saw in their faces just how out of place I was here.

“Ella?” I was surprised to hear my own name. I turned to find a familiar face: Krys’ father. His strong brow and deep-set eyes were a mimeograph of his son’s. Krys had been raised in the working-class neighborhood of Dębniki. His father was a stevedore, and his family utterly unsuited to ours, Ana Lucia had reminded me more than once. I had been to Krys’ house just a few times to meet his parents. Though he would never admit such things mattered to him, some part of him, I suspected, had been embarrassed to show me the small house on a plain street where he had been raised. I had been charmed, though, by the simple warmth of his family, and the way his mother doted on her “baby” even though he was a strapping twenty-year-old who towered over her by nearly a foot. I had loved spending time in their home, which was as welcoming as my own was now cold.