Authors: Gemma Liviero

Pastel Orphans (14 page)

“These are the trials of war,” says one. But it is said without emotion. These people seem devoid of sentiment.

They have been travelling for six weeks and plan to stay here for several weeks, since the manor house is a secluded base to work from, nestled in difficult terrain. A track that led here from a village, before the war, has become overgrown, and its entranceway is disguised. It is unlikely that Germans will bother them here.

I am disappointed that they are staying because it means I cannot escape with Otto as easily. They have someone on lookout twenty-four hours. They are planning to head southeast eventually, because they hear there will be more trouble in Zamosc. I listen carefully as they tell of more Jews being taken and farms stolen.

Kaleb tells them that Zamosc is where I am from. They are interested in this and question me on business there. I am pleased to tell them all the information I know but am suddenly concerned for Mama and Femke, and I wonder if I will be back in time to help them.

Upstairs, I discover that my things have been moved to Tobin’s room and Kaleb’s to Rebekah’s. The partisans have taken over the other three rooms. They are everywhere, filling up all the spaces in the house so there is nowhere for privacy. The house is suddenly smaller. But there is relief at least for Rebekah, who has the safety of her brother.

I am grateful that Tobin is rarely in our bedroom as he likes to be close to the partisans. He stays up late with them and returns to the room a couple of hours before dawn.

The partisans have many meetings over the next few days. The rooms are filled with cigarette smoke and a metallic smell of weaponry. Tobin is there and Kaleb sometimes, and sometimes me. They study maps marked with German stations, train lines, camps in the east, trade routes, and factories. They know where they can steal explosives. Several of the partisans leave early one morning to get these. They may be gone for several days.

In the meantime, the rest of the group will travel to a German village many miles away. Kaleb and Tobin will accompany them. I am told that I must stay and guard the house with Rebekah. With so many gone, this would have been a good time to head for Cracow, except that Otto—who was meant to go on the mission with the partisans—has a fever and might not last our trip. He has told me that the journey will be long, treacherous, and cold. The weather is already turning. There are frosts in the morning and I am wearing my coat to bed.

The group leaves while we are sleeping. I check on Otto, who is still burning with fever. Rebekah puts cold cloths across his body; then we both spend the rest of the day cleaning the house and the partisans’ clothes. I resent that I am reduced to performing these domestic duties instead of searching for Greta.

Once the chores are completed, Rebekah disappears in the direction of the river and I sit on the back terrace with my sketchbook. I sharpen my pencil with a knife and, from memory, draw a picture of Eri. He sits on a tree stump cleaning his rifle. I draw his deep frown lines, and a cigarette, half finished, hangs from his mouth.

Rebekah startles me. I did not hear her come up behind me with the buckets she carries to fill the water tank. I offer to help.

“It is too late. I have walked all this way anyway. You can go back and get some more if you want.”

She disappears into the kitchen and I follow her.

“Actually, we have enough for now,” she says. “Keep drawing. It is a good record to have.”

I return to my drawing and she comes to watch this time. I am aware of her gaze and find it difficult to concentrate now.

“Do you have one of me yet?”

“Yes. Do you want to see it?”

She nods and I turn back the pages so that she can see the one I have drawn of her at the cabin table, her head bent.

“It is good,” she says. “But you have made her too pretty.”

“No,” I say. “It is exactly as you look.”

She blushes and it is the first time that I think she might like me. The thought hurts, knowing that I plan to leave her. We are interrupted by the return of her brother and the partisans, one of whom is missing. They wash at the basins, their faces grim. I am afraid to ask how their mission went because there is no hint of celebration in their expressions. Tobin arrives soon after with teeth gritted. He does not wash, but instead marches inside and up to his room, where he slams the door.

Rebekah and I follow Kaleb inside. We learn that they were all lying in wait to ambush some German officers. They were supposed to wait until the truck carrying several of the officers was nearly at a checkpoint where the group was hiding in bushes beside the road. But Tobin started to shoot before they reached the checkpoint and this alerted them to stop their vehicle.

The partisans fired at the vehicle, eventually killing the four Germans, but they lost Machail, who is now buried in the forest. Eri has told Tobin that he will not be accompanying them on the next mission. That he needs to grow up first.

While the partisans gather in the dining room for their meeting, Tobin, who is now excluded, storms around the house looking to pick fights with Rebekah. I learn from Otto that Tobin went directly to Otto’s room and kicked him in fury. I am so enraged with Tobin, I confront him on this.

“Who do you think you are?” shouts Tobin.

“A human, unlike you.”

He shoves me hard and I fall backwards onto the ground. I stand to face him again. I will not back down. I am ready to fight, but the noise has alerted one of the partisans.

“That is enough,” the man shouts at Tobin. “Don’t you think you have done enough damage today?”

Eri arrives and the two men glare at Tobin, who curses and heads to his room.

I decide not to mention that Tobin has kicked Otto, since the partisans are unlikely to share my sympathy.

It is the night of the next operation and the men are leaving Tobin behind. He is angry and says that the partisans are stupid Jews who don’t have any idea about real fighting. I do not like this talk—considering he is the only non-Jew amongst us—nor that he carries his gun with him to every room.

“Why don’t you leave to fight the war elsewhere?” I ask.

“I might just do that,” he says, sneering. “I might even tell the Germans about this house full of dirty Jews who can be taken to the camps.”

Rebekah looks down. Her hands are trembling and to stop them she grabs the edge of the table.

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” I say. “We are all on the same side.”

Tobin clenches his fist and I think he might hit me. I am ready if he does, though my chances of beating him are slim.

“Just go away,” says Rebekah, distracting him.

“See! You need a girl to fight your battles.” He turns and walks out the front door.

My heart, which was racing, slows to normal pace.

“He is mad,” says Rebekah.

Before the group leaves, Kaleb is told to stay and I am told to come. I am relieved that Kaleb agrees to remain behind because I would not have left Rebekah alone. Kaleb seems happy to let me go this time.

Before we go, I am given a short gun that is heavy but can be fired from one hand. I tell Eri that I am not used to fighting, that I have only had brief target practice.

“No matter,” says Eri. “You will get used to it.”

The walk is long. It is four hours, and I wonder how these men do it sometimes, night after night.

The men are crude and treat the women the same as men. The two women, Ailsa and Martha don’t care; they are just as lewd. Ailsa squats to urinate beside the path. She is not bothered that we can see.

We come upon a path that leads through several houses. We must be quiet because many of the Polish residents are “German snitches” now and they would give us away. The faint smell of gunpowder hangs in the air, and in the distance, there is the familiar hum of German planes.

In this village there are no German bases, but there are people here who are known to be spies. We have come to interrogate them, as they have information. It is late and we hear no noise from within the little house we have stopped in front of. Under the moon it looks peaceful and pretty, and I can’t imagine that bad people live here.

Eri takes a key from his pocket and with lightning speed opens the front door. I am curious as to where this key came from, but uncertainty and apprehension override curiosity when I am nudged in the back to move forward. We attempt to file into the dark house stealthily, but the floorboards creak under our steps. There are five of us: the two women, Eri, Danii, and me.

Immediately, the house is flooded with light and an old man points a gun at us from his bedroom doorway. He wears a long shirt over trousers and slippers, but he does not look sleepy. It is as if he has been waiting for us.

“Put the gun down,” says Danii. I understand that I am here to help translate from German to Polish, and from Polish to German, to replace Machail. Eri speaks some German but not as well as I do. I am here in case he does not understand something. The women are here for backup. I am told they are good with their guns.

“Put down the gun,” says Eri, his voice deep and steady. “You kill one of us, there are still four to finish you and your wife.”

I feel my bowels loosen slightly. I know what he is capable of. I know that this threat is not idle.

“My wife isn’t here. She is staying with our daughter who has just had a baby.”

“I doubt that. Put the gun down.”

“You will not kill us.” He has betrayed his own lie with that “us.”

“Not if you put the gun down.”

He puts the gun on the table and moves to a chair. He sits down gingerly, as if bending is an effort.

“Where have they been taken to?”

“Who?”

“You know who.” Eri takes a chair and sits in front of the old man. It is a tactic that Tobin used on me, perhaps taken from the partisans, who use it to interrogate face-to-face, to encourage conversation.

“I don’t know anything.”

“You are a spy. You know everything. The family who lived in this house . . . where were they taken?”

“I told you: I don’t know.”

“Get her!” Eri orders.

Ailsa goes into the bedroom, opens a cupboard door, and grabs the man’s wife, dragging her from the room. Ailsa shoves her hard and the old woman falls.

“You said you won’t kill us,” shrieks the old man, looking at his wife on the floor. He speaks no Polish. He is one of the new Germans placed here to spy.

“I said I would not kill, but I said nothing about not harming either of you.”

The wife is whimpering on the floor. The old man tries to snatch his gun off the table but Eri is quicker, lunging forward to grab the old man’s wrists and slamming them on the table. There is the sound of bones hitting wood and the old man cries out loudly.

“Silence,” says Danii. “You will wake the neighbors.”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Eri. “We will tell them that there is a spy amongst them working for the Germans.”

Eri points to me. “Sit the woman in the chair and hold your gun to her.” To Martha he says: “Search his papers.” And to the others: “Make a noose from the ceiling.”

The woman appeals to me for help. She says that her back is sore but I ignore her. In fact, I only glance at her eyes once, and then I hold the gun at her without really focusing. Perhaps it is the adrenaline running through me that I feel no sympathy towards the begging couple. Perhaps it is Eri’s hate, which has spread to me, or perhaps it is my memories of Rani and the shallow grave in the forest.

“Now, old man, unless you tell us where the family who lived here was sent, I will get my boy here to shoot your wife and then I will hang you.”

I see that Danii has strung up the noose over a beam like he has done this many times before. I wonder how it is that someone who heals can also assist with an execution. But then, here I am holding a gun on an old woman. It is not so strange in war.

“I know nothing.”

“Shoot the woman in the knee!” instructs Eri. It takes a couple of seconds to realize that he is talking to me.

I focus on the knee but I can’t pull the trigger. It must be several seconds before Martha pushes me out of the way and shoots the woman. The old woman shrieks in pain and collapses on the floor.

The female partisans seem more ruthless than the men, as if they have much to prove to the German army of men.

“All right,” says the man, crying now and begging us to leave his wife alone. I feel ashamed that I have not done anything yet, and ashamed that someone else had to, and ashamed also that I am part of such violence.

“The family you speak of was sent to Auschwitz.”

“What happens to the Jews there?”

“They are kept safely in prisons until the end of the war. They are well cared for.”

“I don’t believe you.” Eri points his gun at the wife.

“Stop!” yells the man, looking at his wife. “Please don’t kill her. I will tell! I will tell everything!”

Eri sits back down in front of him.

“Most of the Jews are there to work.”

“And others?”

The man pauses. “Some are used in experiments.”

Eri looks at me quizzically and asks me to repeat the translation, as if he can’t at first believe it.

“What sort of experiments?” he asks the man.

“Medical. To test medicines and drugs.”