"Sir?
Sir?"
Józef had his eyes closed and head hung low, only supported by his right hand firmly pushing up on his forehead. The friendly voice of the waitress awoke him from his sleep, a state which he immediately scolded himself for being in. Looking down at his hands, he found a star of the Order of the White Eagle within his left hand. Luckily for him, his hand was situated conveniently behind his thigh, keeping the Polish commendation out of the view of the waitress.
The star itself had eight points, with straight, silver rays extending from its center. Every last one of those rays failed to glint in the shadow of Józef's legs, confirming for Józef that the Waitress could not see it. A red Maltese cross with white enamel outlining took up nearly half of the star, with the letters "R" and "P" written in gold on a white circle in the very center. A green oak wreath surrounded the white circle, seemingly sprouting the arms of the cross as well as four golden palmettes. Upon the red arms of the cross was the phrase "Za Ojczyznę i Naród", or "For Fatherland and Nation". On the very top silver ray there was a tiny scratch, hard to notice, but definitely there.
Shit, if anyone had seen that I'd get to talk with Witold face-to-face. He thought, hastily shoving the highest award in Poland into his pocket.
This'll be a bitch to get rid of."Have you decided on what to order?" Asked the waitress, whose annoyed look told Józef that he hadn't just nodded off for a few moments.
"Uhh..." He said, glancing at the upside-down menu he was holding along his his forehead. Unable to read it, he chose to just say exactly what he wanted. "I'll have svíčková with knedlíky and cranberry sauce."
The waitress wrote down the order, took the menu, and hurried away from the table. He looked over at the table next to him and found Rosalind sitting there alone.
At least I haven't missed the date.He'd been keeping an eye on the woman ever since he arrived at the university. So far, the TAP codes were relatively safe (mostly because nobody seemed to notice them). If she ever managed to find or crack them, he had to know. To that end, he had been secretly spying on her. He'd seen it all. There was no doubt about it: Rosalind was with the SS. It was a whole new level of danger for Józef. If there was the slightest crack in his cover, the slightest lapse in his fake accent, it would all be over. It didn't help that she knew Polish.
A man walked by and sat down at the table with Rosalind. Klaus Foerster, one of the other scientists working on the project. The two had started going out recently, which was perhaps the most suspicious event not caused by Józef himself. One was an SS officer and the other a lanky, bespectacled scientist. Rarely does a woman ask such people out completely out of the blue. When that woman is an SS officer and that scientist has just made possibly the most important discovery of the century, the only conclusion is that there's an ulterior motive somewhere in there.
As the two order their own food, the waitress brought his own. Svíčková with knedlíky and cranberry sauce-a favorite shared by both Józef and Witold. While he took a bite out of the cream-soaked beef, he heard Rosalind order knedlíky. Even though it was completely inconsequential, that first bite had a bitter taste to it as he thought about an SS officer liking the same food he did. Settling into the meal, he ate slowly and quietly so as to hear the couple's conversation better.
“You’re looking wan." Said Klaus, prompting Józef to stop chewing entirely lest he miss anything. "Something the matter?”
Józef used the following pause to finish chewing the beef, and took a quick glance at Rosalind. Just as Klaus had said, she definitely wasn't in the best of moods. He couldn't help but feel like she had no right to feel down. After all, this was a woman working for the Third Reich, a woman whose job was to oppress and kill according to the whims of a crazed dictator. He imagined that it was some petty problem, that Rosalind was fretting over a minor change while millions were being systematically exterminated.
"Actually, yes." Sighed Rosalind, reaching out to hold Klaus' hands after another pause. Józef began to drink his water, considering it quiet enough. "Their usual translator took sick yesterday, so they called me in to head to Auschwitz for the day."
Józef abruptly stopped drinking, forgetting to swallow and allowing the water to simply hang in his mouth. His eyes went wide at the mention of the name, and his stomach twisted as if he had been there himself. For a few horrifying moments, he was afraid that she would mention Witold. It would have made perfect sense. They call in a polish-speaking SS officer to deal with the mole, interrogate him, try to get some answers. Answers he would never give. If they found him out, his mutilated corpse would already be ashes in the crematorium. Just barely regaining his composure, he began to swallow the static water, not wanting to draw the slightest bit of attention to himself.
"They asked me to work with Mengele." She continued "Which was fine, I’m happy I could help, of course, but… it just shook me up a little, I suppose. I had to instruct the prisoners for him—they didn’t understand German—and there was this man. He was dawdling so I went to help him along into the cage and…"
The moment Rosalind mentioned Mengele, Józef spat out the remaining water in a mix of surprise and horror. All of the stories were true. All the experiments, the horrible torture that Witold's letters spoke of- it was all true. In a desperate attempt to mask his true reaction, he began to cough, hoping that the two would just assume that he had simply made an accident. It all seemed to be unnecessary, however, as both were too preoccupied with Rosalind's story to care or notice.
"He tripped into me, and he apologized. It was the strangest thing. You know, he was on his way to his death and he stopped to apologize to me for tripping, and then he was so scared when he looked at me it was just—I don’t know. Of course, I understand that he needed to be exterminated, I’m not trying to say anything like he shouldn’t be or anything like that I just… I just don’t much like working with Mengele, I suppose."
Józef could do nothing but continue to cough, an action which prevented anyone from seeing the absolute horror on his face. He could hear the poor man apologizing, broken by the horrors of Auschwitz. All he wanted to do was attack Rosalind, punish her for being involved in Mengele's unscientific and inhumane experiments. She didn't like being involved, but that meant nothing to him. As far as he was concerned, she might as well have been Mengele himself.
He didn't even hear Rosalind continue, and simply took another bite out of his svíčková. As if reflecting Józef himself, it tasted bitter.
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