Authors: Gemma Liviero
C
HAPTER
16
We receive a visit from someone Femke knows in the village. Anuska is a Polish Catholic who has lived in Zamosc her whole life. Her children have grown up and moved away. One of them died fighting the Germans at the beginning of the war. Anuska seems to know a lot of things. She keeps us informed. Femke thinks that she could be a spy for the Polish resistance. There is also a rumor that one of her sons is a partisan, that he is responsible for killing Germans and blowing up one of their trucks.
Femke offers her some tea. It is clear that Anuska wants to talk to Femke, but she looks my way. I am surprised by Femke’s response this time.
“It is all right,” she says. “He can listen.”
I feel something close to gratefulness. So many times I have been called a stupid boy.
“I’ve heard some things,” says Anuska. “It is about Greta. She is not the only one who has been taken. I have heard of others across Poland—young women and children, stolen. Have you heard of something called
Eindeutschung
? Children are adopted by Nazi Party members in Poland, to propel the Aryan race. They are taken to orientation centers where they are assessed to see how German they can become.
“Children’s racial characteristics are examined. Some who are not German enough are sent to the camps, rather than being returned home. Others are sent to Germany and other countries to be adopted by Nazis, or placed in breeding programs. This is what I have heard but I don’t know how true it is.
“I have heard that some of Hitler’s officers steal children for themselves . . . and women too.”
“That’s ridiculous,” says Femke.
Anuska shrugs her shoulders and pulls down the corners of her mouth. “That’s what I heard.”
Femke is unconvinced but I am absorbing every part of this story. It is possible that it is true, because the Germans do many things that we don’t expect.
“The children from here . . . where are they taken, do you think?”
“There are camps in the east and the south for the ones they don’t want, and the ones they want are sent to the west . . . whether to Cracow first or Lodz, I am not certain.”
“And the general who was here . . . do you know where he is from?” I ask.
Femke shoots me a look and then turns away before Anuska has seen. My aunt does not want me to talk freely. She does not want my thoughts voiced. She does not trust anyone, not even Anuska. But Anuska is keen to deliver information.
“Cracow.”
“Do you know his name?”
She shakes her head. “No, but someone overheard him giving orders to bring news to Cracow. That’s all I know.”
After Anuska is gone, I say, “I can go, Femke. I will take the train.”
“You will be questioned if you take the train.”
“On foot then.”
“You are crazy like your mother. There is no safe way.”
“But what if I leave through the forest and come in to Cracow from the north?”
“I have heard that the Russians are hiding in the forests. It is dangerous. They will shoot you before they question you.”
“Russians?” Whether the Russians are on our side or not depends on who you talk to.
“It is wilderness in there; you will never make it.”
But she says this with neither passion nor ridicule—as if she no longer cares, as if she no longer wants to control what I do.
I brush Mama’s hair and tie it in a knot, like she used to wear it. It is not exactly like she had it—it is not as tight and neat—but it is pulled back from her face to expose its heart shape. The scar does not look as angry as it did. It is slowly fading into her skin.
I am so tired that I fall asleep beside her. When I wake up, she is lying on her side, facing me, her eyes watery.
“I love you, Mama,” I say.
I wipe away her tears with the back of my hand. She nods that she loves me too.
I take Mama a bowl of soup because she does not wish to leave her bed today. I sit on the side of the bed but she does not reach for the bowl. She is not hungry. As I begin to leave, she suddenly grips my arm. I look at her hand—the one on her bad arm. It is much stronger now, her grip firmer.
“Get Greta,” she says. I think she has heard what Anuska said. I think she has heard what I said to Femke.
I do not tell Femke, even though I am bursting with the news that Mama has spoken clearly. She does not say anything after this but I am forming a plan. In Femke’s cupboard there is a map of train lines and roads in Poland. When Femke is out milking our last remaining cow, I study the map, but it is not detailed. I have no idea how long it will take me to get to Cracow or how to find my way through the forest.
Into my knapsack I put a dinner knife from the kitchen, some clothes, and some food too.
Femke has made a big dinner. I am allowed two helpings of stew. This is rare because Femke is usually tight with food portions. My attempts at small talk sound forced but she doesn’t seem to notice.
Femke goes to bed early, just as I had hoped. I lie on my bed still dressed in my clothes and listen for the squeak of Femke’s lamp as she winds down the light. Then I wait an hour. Mama lies waiting also, with eyes wide open. I kiss her good-bye. She tries to say something but her sounds have gone again.
“Don’t worry, Mama,” I whisper, “I will be safe.”
As I open the front door some minutes later, a light is ignited behind me. Femke is standing in the entrance to her bedroom. I stand like a trapped animal, frozen to the section of floor in the doorway.
“You will need to take a coat. The summer is nearly over and you have not thought of enough food. You will need much more than you have stolen.”
I can’t believe she knows.
“Shut the door and come and sit down.” She pours two glasses of vodka. The drink burns my throat, but I feel warmer. “You should take a bottle of this for when it gets cold.”
“No, thank you. I plan to get there before the end of autumn.”
“It will be harder than you think.” She pauses. “Henrik, your father was a good man.”
“Why do you say those things about him then?”
“Because for years I have wished it were me he took away and not Karolin.”
“You should tell Mama this.”
“She already knows. She is far too intelligent to be deceived. Why do you think she doesn’t fight me about it? Because she feels guilty that she had the life I wanted. I was stuck here taking care of your grandfather . . . miserable old bastard that he was!”
“How did you know I was going?”
“You are a boy. Boys are useless at hiding things. Not like girls.”
She goes to the cupboard and takes out a sack. Inside, there are two boiled eggs, pieces of cheese, bread, fruit, and dried bacon.
“My father and I travelled right through the forests once, to the other side. You might come upon others who can guide you through, but be careful of them. Try not to show yourself until you have observed them first. Walk stealthily. Have your wits about you. I have no maps of the wilderness, but once you are on the other side, you must follow the Vistula. It will take you to Cracow.”
She tells me about the terrain, about the hills and the waterways and the wildlife.
“If anyone can do it you can, I suppose—someone with your tenacity. You badger everyone till you get your way; let’s hope that this works for you in future. Now go, before I cry.”
I hug her small, wiry body and this time she hugs me back.
“Come back,” she says.
Crossing the fields behind Mr. Lubieniecki’s house, I see the lights are still on behind his newspaper windows. I wish I could say good-bye. The night sky nearly disappears as I enter the forest. With only some partial moonlight, I stumble on uneven ground, my knee landing on something sharp, and I reach down to feel the sticky liquid oozing from the scratch. I sit against a tree to wait for the guidance of sunrise, wondering if it is impossible what I have begun, then attempting to put those thoughts from my head when I remember Mama’s face. There was belief. I listen to the faint tapping of gunfire in the distance, and the warplanes which sound like a swarm of bees. At some point I fall asleep and wake with the sun streaming through the trees.
It is my first full day of walking. There are few trails in the forest to follow. In the morning the sun must always be behind me, and in the afternoon it must be in front. Femke also said to follow the waterways, which lead to the river. She said noise will guide me eventually. Many more trucks than before are travelling the roads between the cities.
There is a track in the forest, perhaps an old one, and I follow it for a while, weaving through the tall firs and the low undergrowth, sparsely covered with red-and-orange leaves. The air here is free of the battle smoke that travels on the wind.
Several times I stop to drink some water. The forest makes lots of rustling and groaning noises. But my fear is not of anything in the forest—it is the potential for failure that scares me, the possibility that I will die too and Mama will lose us both.
I hear what I think is a car but it is far away and, faintly, the sounds of running water. I can also smell something like rust, but more putrid, and I see a large hole in the earth ahead of me. I walk towards this and the smell grows stronger, and the buzzing of insects is loud in my ears. I peer over the edge and am not prepared for what I see. I draw back to cover my nose and my mouth. The contents of my stomach rise and bile sits at the back of my throat.
In the ground are several people who have been shot. Their skin is gray and in their chests and faces are bullet holes, which look like splashes of black paint. They have been executed and thrown into the space, like garbage. They have not even been covered up but were left to rot.
I run far from the hole, deeper into the forest, and do not stop running for what seems like hours. The tears on my face dry in the wind. Eventually, I rest and the forest looks the same as it did hours before, and I can hear the planes again, and I wonder if I might become trapped in here forever.
People come here to kill or be killed. I have to be careful. I have to walk more lightly.
It is late when I see bright lights through the trees and smell the burning of timber. When I am nearly upon the site, I see that it is a village that has nearly burnt to the ground. Flames leap high into the air from a pyre of furniture, books, and photographs. Smoke hangs in the air like curtains around the remains of burning houses. I hear the sounds of whimpering and see a woman crying. She has no shoes; her shawl is tightly pulled around her shoulders. She is cradling the head of a man while she weeps. She looks up and puts out a hand.
I am knocked in the shoulder by a tall man with a gun. I am wondering whether he is responsible for the decimation, but he helps the woman to her feet.
“Get out of here,” he says in a foreign accent. “The krauts will be returning soon and they will shoot you.”
As I walk away, I stare past the houses to the village center. I see several more bodies lying there.
I run into the forest, coughing from the smoke and retching from the smell of blood. Deeper in the forest seems a safer place to be, but there is no place that I can escape what I have seen.
The next day I wander numbly, shocked by the treatment of people who have committed no crime.
The skies are gray and I can no longer follow the sun. It is the third day and already most of my food is gone. I walk down a hill that I think must lead to the river. I suspect that I have not been going straight towards the river, but in a zigzag pattern or perhaps in a loop. By the afternoon the sky has become so dark that it feels like night. A loud crack of thunder pierces the sky, reminding me of the bombing of our town. Then the rain comes and it is heavy, and I walk in sodden shoes. The ground is slippery. My clothes, which are plastered to my skin, are like weights around my body. I am so tired. I have had only a few hours’ sleep in the past few days.
I can find nowhere to take shelter so I sit once again with my back to a tree. There is much pain in my head. I feel around in my bag and hold out my empty water bottle to catch the rain. I eat the remaining pieces of food and put my coat over me and the bag beneath me to protect it from getting drenched. Bread is stuck in my throat, which feels sore and swollen.
I lay my head against the tree and, unaware and not caring about time, fall into a broken sleep that is interspersed with images of rotting corpses and blood-splattered fields.
When I wake, my mouth is dry and my jaw is so stiff I can barely open it, and my head feels like it will explode. But that is not the worst thing. There is a gun pointed at my forehead. Two boys, perhaps older than me, are talking in Polish. They are telling me to stand but my legs and arms aren’t working. One prods me with the gun to make me move faster. I try to stand but my head feels like it weighs too much to hold up.
“He is ill,” says one.
“Can you walk?” asks the other one with a softer voice.
“We should take his stuff,” says the first.
The other seems to ignore this and asks again if I can walk.
I nod and then fall in behind one of them, while the other walks a few paces behind me. My vision is blurred by the pain behind my eyes, and the light, dull as it is, burns through the top of my lids. I realize that one boy is carrying the pack that holds my drawing book but I don’t care.
I don’t know how long we have walked but I feel my legs getting weaker and think they may give way beneath me. My skin feels as if it is burning and I take off my shirt.
One of the boys tells me to keep moving. The world starts to fade and I sink to the ground. I feel one arm catch me and then there is nothing.
C
HAPTER
17
I dream of Mama and Greta in the fields behind our farm. I dream of Mama’s golden hair and Papa smiling and writing in his journal. I dream of our apartment in Germany and I am my age now and Papa has come home from work to find that Greta is gone and blames me.
Throughout my dreams, I see the faces of the boys peering over me and then also there is another: a girl’s. I think at first she is Mama, but then realize that this girl is my age and has dark hair. She brings wet cloths and places them on my forehead. She does not smile.
“He might have a disease,” says one of the boys standing over me. “We might all get sick. We should carry him deep into the forest and leave him there.”
“No,” says the girl. “Don’t be an idiot.”
I go back to dreaming. I dream I am running from gunfire and Rani is there and he is telling me to run faster, but when I turn, he is gone and there are other boys from my school. I know that Greta is in this group somewhere and I call her name but someone says that she has gone back to Germany.
“He is a dirty German.” The voice comes from the other side of a wall. I have been muttering in my sleep.
The bed is wet from my sweat and I am covered with a blanket. Through the window I can see the tops of trees and white clouds. When I try to sit up, pain rises to the front of my skull. I lie back down, shut my eyes, and wait for the pain to disappear again. When it is gone, I look around the room. I am in a small bed in a small room, in a cabin of some kind. The floor has wooden boards that are rough and uneven. The blanket is coarse. I hear moving water somewhere in the distance.
I attempt to sit up again, this time rising slowly, easing my head into a vertical position. I am wearing only a singlet and undershorts. I stand and search the corners of the room for my trousers but they are not here, and neither are my shoes. Something has been pushed against the door so that it cannot be opened from the inside. I climb back under the blanket, weary from the effort of standing.
Sometime in the afternoon, I wake up to the sound of logs being rolled away from the door. One of the boys enters. His rifle hangs from the back of his shoulder. I can see him more clearly now. He is tall and thin with a long face. His shirt and trousers hang off his body like washing on a line.
“Who are you?” His Polish has a Yiddish accent.
“I will tell you if you give me my trousers.”
He ignores my request. “You nearly died,” he says. “You should be grateful we found you; otherwise, you would be food for the wolves.”
The door swings back and the shorter boy enters. He says nothing but has dragged in a chair and moves to sit beside my bed.
“What is a dirty German boy doing in the forest?” he asks.
“I live in Poland. My parents lived in Germany for a while. Are you running from the Germans?”
“What do you think, Professor? Of course we’re hiding from the Germans. They have stolen our parents and our homes.”
“Welcome to our new home,” says the taller, skinny boy, wryly.
“Is this your house?”
“The partisans built it.”
“Partisans?”
“Yes, Jews and Poles hiding here, ready to attack the German army.”
“What about the Russians? Are they here too?”
“Russians?” they query suspiciously.
“I heard a rumor that some might be hiding in the forest.”
“You’re not working for them, are you?”
“No,” I say quickly, fearful that this might seem as bad to them as working for the Germans. “I am a Jew like you,” I say to the taller one. The shorter one sniggers.
“It is true.”
“If it was true, you would be cut.” He stares at my crotch and makes his fingers into scissors. I am suddenly afraid that he will ask me to pull down my underpants for proof.
“I wasn’t . . . My mother . . . she wasn’t Jewish—”
“Leave it,” interrupts the taller boy. “What does it matter? He is clearly on the run from them. What are you doing this far from the town?”
“I was trying to find the river.”
The shorter, stocky one sniggers again. He has ears that stick out like a monkey’s.
I tell them about my sister being taken by the Germans and about how I am going to find her.
“You will never find her. She has probably been shipped to the camps by now or killed,” says the monkey.
I stand then, my fists clenched by my sides. I am angry. The tall one with the rifle points it at me.
“Calm down, boy.”
“I wish to leave now.”
“Without your trousers?” And they both laugh this time.
The taller boy goes out and comes back in. He tosses me my trousers and I climb into them, embarrassed by their scrutiny as I do this.
“You know, you would have died if it were not for my sister,” says the taller boy.
I remember then the girl in my room. As I am trying to picture her face, I see her through the window, walking towards the house, carrying bundles of sticks in her arms.
“Rebekah!” the tall boy yells from the window. “Your boy is awake.”
I am annoyed by the way he refers to me, but he is the one with the rifle so I say nothing.
“Out!” instructs the meaner one, who wears something between a grin and a sneer.
Outside the tiny room, there is a bigger room and a curtain separates it from another private area. There are two cots in the big room, and a fireplace. The place is smoky. There are also a couple of chairs and a table.
The girl is bending down near a woodstove. She has her back to me and I see that her long dark hair has been twisted into a plait. She turns and looks directly at me, curious but not overly so. She has already had time to study me, but this is my first chance to examine her without the haze of illness.
“You should thank Rebekah. Without her you would have died.”
Rebekah shakes her head. “Be quiet, Kaleb. I just did what most humans would do,” she says.
“Everyone except Tobin anyway,” jests the taller boy.
Tobin, it seems, is the friend of her brother, Kaleb, who is the taller boy. Tobin doesn’t laugh at this and says seriously, “We have to be careful of everyone. We have always said that. To trust is to fail. And he is a dirty German. He was talking German in his sleep.”
“It doesn’t mean that he is one of them,” says Rebekah. It is as if I am not in the room.
“My sister is right. He is just a boy looking for his sister. He is no threat.”
Rebekah is suddenly alert. “His sister? What about that?”
I explain the story of Greta’s kidnapping to the girl and she listens intently, her eyes studying me, taking in everything I say as if it is personal.
“I have heard of this,” she says sorrowfully.
“You have?”
“Yes, from the partisans. While our country is being repopulated with Germans, many Polish children are sent to camps to see if they are worthy of Germanization. Some are then transported elsewhere, and some girls sent to special centers.”
“Germanization?”
“A German purification program. It includes selecting girls to breed with Nazi officers, then taking their babies and testing them to ensure their race is pure.”
“Pure
dirt
,” says Tobin. And it is Kaleb’s turn to laugh but Rebekah doesn’t. It is clear from the grooves between her brows that she has not smiled in a long time.
“Do you know where these places are that the children are taken to?”
Rebekah shakes her head. “I don’t know . . . perhaps first to camps in the west.”
“I believe that she could still be with the man who took her . . . a general in Hitler’s army. I believe she is somewhere in Cracow.”
Rebekah doesn’t say anything. No one believes me. I can see it in their faces.
“If she is a Jew, then it is unlikely,” says Kaleb. “There are no processing places that we have heard of there. She will most likely have been taken to a camp or somewhere outside the city.”
“She does not look Jewish.”
“Neither do you . . . that much. But that won’t stop them from putting you in a camp.”
I clutch my stomach which has begun to cramp badly. Rebekah recognizes the cause. “You must eat first, before you go anywhere.”
“Only a small portion,” says Tobin. “And it can be part of your share.”
“Stop it,” says Kaleb. “We will share the next meal. The boy must eat. We pledged to help our country and that includes its people.”
Tobin looks sideways at me. He appears older than all of us, perhaps in the way he takes the lead. Rebekah is closer in age to me.
“We will go and find some meat,” says Kaleb.
“Are you hunting?” I ask.
“No, this time we steal.” And then the boys are gone and it is just the girl and me. Rebekah peels some onions. We sit across from each other at the table. I am suddenly aware that my hands are filthy and my clothes must smell, but she does not show any repulsion.
“Is there somewhere to wash?”
“There is a stream at the bottom of the rise.” She hands me a bar of soap and points from the front door, and I follow the track by which I saw her return earlier. It leads down a slope and into a narrow, flowing waterway. I strip down to my underpants and stand in the shallows to wash myself. Then I scrub my shirt and walk back to the cabin. It is a small log cabin with wooden shutters, like something out of a storybook, and I think of Greta and our stories. I hang my shirt over a log at the front door and enter the cabin shirtless.
“How long will the boys be?”
Rebekah looks up from her task through long dark lashes that surround oval black eyes. I am suddenly self-conscious about my narrow chest, my bony arms.
“They could be hours. They go to the farmers’ lands.”
“They steal from their own people?”
“They are not our people,” she snaps. “They are people who are German enough to be placed there. They are people who care nothing for Jews.” There is anger in her voice.
I talk then. I tell her about my papa dying, about leaving Germany. I tell her what happened to Mama. She listens carefully.
“They will pay,” she says. “One day, they will pay.”
“And your parents?”
“Killed.” There is something so final about this statement that I ask nothing more.
“Can I help with the cooking?”
“You can get some water in those buckets. We are always running out.”
I get the water, and make several trips back and forth. During the last trip I see the boys returning. They are arguing about the scrawny chicken they have stolen. Tobin says Kaleb was not fast enough, that he should have caught the bigger one.
Tobin takes the chicken and chops its head off like he has done that a thousand times already.
“Let me see your hands,” says Tobin.
I show him.
“They are a girl’s hands. Get plucking if you want to eat.”
“Can’t you see he hasn’t done it before!” says Kaleb, and he takes the chicken and begins to pluck the feathers slowly. It is obvious that Kaleb is the one without the experience.
“I am fine. I have done it before,” I say, and I show them how fast I am at preparing the chicken for cooking. I have Femke to thank for that.
I don’t want to be here amongst these people. But I have no choice. They have saved my life and they are providing food. As soon as the sun comes up the next day, I will leave. But something about the girl casts a shadow of doubt over my departure. The thought of leaving her sunk in such a muddy, desolate place makes me think of Greta, who may also be in a place where she is feeling sad and lonely.
The smell of boiling meat, which is cooked with onion, makes my tongue start to water. It has been days since I have eaten a warm meal. The others sit around the table, though I sit on a log because there are not enough chairs. Kaleb has divided the portions of food.
There are no lamps in the cabin, so Rebekah lights some candles while the boys talk. They have been scouting for German police stations over several nights. They have found one, only sixteen miles away. They plan to steal more guns for the Polish resistance, which will kill the Germans using their own weapons.
“Maybe the boy can get an education,” says Tobin without as much animosity now that he has food in his belly. I am eating fast because the food is the best I have ever tasted. It is as if this is the first time I have discovered eating.
“Look at the boy,” says Kaleb. “He will make himself sick from eating too fast.”
“How old are you?” asks Tobin.
I say I am seventeen. I am actually only sixteen, a couple of months away from seventeen, but I do not tell them this.
“Rebekah is nearly seventeen,” says Kaleb with a little more kindness to his voice. “And your sister?”
I pause because my throat feels suddenly tight at the mention of her, but I can’t let them see that I am weak. “She is ten.” Rebekah does not look at me this time. She puts food in her mouth and focuses on her dish.
The boys inform me that they are both eighteen. There is some resemblance between Kaleb and Rebekah, but Kaleb is much darker skinned, from the sun.
“So, what do you say to the education?” says Tobin. “Do you want to come with us to kill some Germans?”
“I can’t,” I say. “I have to find my sister.”
“You will not find her. I have said already that she is probably far from here or dead.”
Rebekah stands up suddenly, knocking her chair over. “What would you know?” she says angrily.
“A lot more than you. You are here cooking and cleaning. You do not go out there and see what we see. All the killing, all the death.”
“Shut up!” says Kaleb. “She knows more than you think. And she does as much as us. Someone has to be looking after things here.”
Kaleb turns to me. “You can come if you want,” he says, “or you can leave. Whatever you wish to do. I can tell you that shortly we will be heading in the same direction anyway.”
“Towards Cracow? When?”
“Maybe tomorrow if we are successful tonight. We are meeting up with the partisans who are west of here. You may wish to travel part of the distance with us until we meet at our other location. We have promised the partisans that we will steal guns. It is our mission.”
I think about this. Perhaps it is the only way I can find my way out of the forest, since I have made a mess of things so far.