The Winter Guest (27 page)

When they reached the house, Helena tended to the fire while Ruth undressed the children from their wet snow clothes and put some soup on the stove to warm. Every meal was soup now—beet soup, cabbage soup, potato soup—thin and watery and indistinguishable from one another, designed to stretch the little that was left and to make the belly warm if not full. She glanced at the alarmingly low supply of potatoes in the cupboard. She should talk to Helena again about killing the mule for meat.

Ruth picked up a stack of plates she’d washed that morning. The location where Mama always kept them, halfway across the kitchen, had never made any sense to Ruth. She paused, then moved them to a spot closer to the sink.

“We could go, even without him,” Helena said in a low voice after they sat down for dinner. Ruth stared at her in disbelief. Had she gone from depressed to delusional? But her eyes were clear and eager.

“We don’t have passes. We don’t even know the way.”

“Yes, of course.” The light in Helena’s eyes extinguished and she withdrew into her melancholy once more.

Suddenly Ruth pictured Sam above her in the dim light of the chapel. Heat rose in her, mixing with bile, and she pushed back from the table. “Excuse me.” She ran outside in time to be sick, heedless of the stench of her own vomit rising in the steam from the snow.

She straightened, gasping for air. It was not the food that had made her ill. She had been so tired the past few days, even before the climb. It was as if something was pulling the life from her, feeding on her as the way she sometimes felt the children did, only much more internal and intense. Children, she thought, Maria’s swelling midsection appearing unbidden in her mind.

Ruth bent over to wretch again, then straightened, counting. Six weeks. Her stomach had ached weeks earlier with what she thought was her impending flow. But it had not materialized and she had been so caught up in everything that had happened she had ceased to notice. Panic rose in her. But it couldn’t be, not from one time, not from her first time. But as soon as she thought it she had no doubt: she was pregnant with Sam’s child.

Fear seized her then. Sam was gone. Her child would have no father. How could she possibly manage? And they couldn’t hide it from the neighbors—they knew there was no man, they would ask questions and the dates wouldn’t bear out her lying and saying it was Piotr. She would be disgraced. No, it could not possibly be true. She pushed the thought, too awful to contemplate further, from her mind.

Ruth returned to the house, wiping her mouth and trying to smile. “Are you all right?” Michal asked with concern.

She forced herself to stop trembling. “I’m fine. Just an upset stomach.” Helena was staring at her strangely and she wondered if her sister did not believe the excuse.

They all went to bed early that night, tired from the walk to the pond. “The wood,” Helena remarked in the darkness, and Ruth wondered how long it had taken her to notice that the pile had been replenished. Was Helena simply grief-struck or was her mind slipping as Mama’s had done?

“Mischa brought it.” Ruth considered pointing out to her sister the extra work her weakness meant for the rest. Then she stopped—Helena had enough to worry about. Helena did not speak further but soon began to snore. It seemed in recent months that they had switched places, Helena sleeping more soundly as if preferring her dreams to the life they had here, Ruth tossing restlessly with her guilt. She felt her own eyes grow heavy.

Sometime later, a noise in the darkness jolted her from sleep. Ruth looked up to see if Helena had gone to the water closet, but her sister lay beside her sleeping. She slipped from bed, checking all of the children beneath her fingertips.

Ruth walked to the kitchen. A loose shutter, perhaps. Closer to the doorway, she stopped again. This time, footsteps crunching against the snow were unmistakable. She opened her mouth to call for Helena but no sound came out. Fury rose in her as she remembered the policeman who had come, his near-violation. She considered going for Tata’s gun, but even as she did, she knew she would never have the nerve to use it. Instead, her hand closed around the poker by the fireplace, cool and hard. She would not let him hurt her again and she certainly wasn’t going to let him near the children.

There was a tentative knock at the door. For a moment she considered not answering it, but it would not stop whoever was on the other side. Taking a deep breath, she swung the door open, then stepped back and raised the poker. But before she could lower it and swing it at the intruder, something hit the ground by her feet with a heavy thud.

Ruth reached for the light and it flickered on. She gasped.

There, on the floor of the cottage, lay the American soldier, Sam.

22

Hearing a crash, Helena leaped from bed and raced to the front room. Ruth hovered over something on the ground, poker raised. As the lump unfolded, Helena gasped in disbelief. “Sam?”

She rushed forward to help him, concern and joy mixing with her shock. She touched his cheek to make sure that this was not a dream. He was here, really here. But his face was nearly as pale as the day she had found him in the forest and his eyes were half-closed. “Are you all right?”

Sam opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Helena assisted him into a chair. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist, and buried his snow-covered head against her, clinging to her tightly.

Feeling his chill against her midsection, Helena panicked. “Ruth, he’s freezing.” Her sister stood motionless, still clutching the poker and staring. “Warm some water, please. And bring blankets.”

Karolina cried out then. “I’ll get her,” Ruth said, hurrying from the room.

Helena raised Sam’s face to her, running her hands over his cheeks and chin, clearing the thick ice from them. She had expected never to see him again. She attempted to bat back her tears without success, then let them flow, heedless as they cascaded downward, pelting onto his cheeks and melting the snow that clung there. He looked different. Heavy stubble covered his jaw, reminding her of when they first met. His complexion was eerie pale. He was sweating profusely despite the cold and his breathing was labored, as though he had run a race. The trip, from wherever he had been, had taken everything he had, and perhaps more than his newly healed leg could handle. But he was here.

Ruth had not reappeared, so Helena rushed to pull a blanket from the cupboard and wrapped him in it. She pulled his wet boots and socks from his feet. His toes were a worrying shade of gray and she hoped he would not lose them to frostbite. She knelt and began to rub his feet to warm them.

As she worked, she studied him. It seemed so strange to see him here, in a house with real walls, a roof and furniture, instead of the bare chapel. Where had he been all this time? Tata’s coat was gone and in its place he wore a thick brown leather jacket, worn at the elbows and seams. He looked more like the other Sam, the one she did not know. But even now, huddled and freezing in the chair, he seemed to fill the room with a kind of light.

“Thank you,” he said in a hoarse voice, finally able to speak. “I’m sorry to come here unannounced—”

“Sorry?” She cut him off, her voice harsh with disbelief. “I’ve been frantic for some news of you. I had no idea what happened to you. I’ve been sick with worry.” Tears welled up in her eyes again. “I thought you were dead.” There was a moment of awkwardness between them, for even though he had returned, his sudden disappearance still felt somehow a betrayal.

“Excuse me,” he apologized, looking over her shoulder. Helena was suddenly ashamed of the small room with its simple, worn furniture. But it wasn’t the cottage he was noticing. Behind her, Dorie had appeared. She stared at the strange man who seemed to fill the room, eyes wide. Her lower lip quivered. “Hello,” he said gently.

Helena stood up. “Sam, this is my sister Dorie.” Ruth came back into the room, holding the baby. “And these are my other sisters Karolina...and Ruth.” Helena could not disguise the note of reluctance in her voice.

“A pleasure,” he said, starting to stand, but Helena put her hand on his shoulder, not wanting him to overexert himself. “You never mentioned that you had a twin,” he said to Helena, his voice less surprised than it genuinely should have been. Helena glanced out of the corner of her eye at Ruth to see if she was angry at having been left out, but her face remained impassive.

Sam reached for her hand, but Helena stepped back, still stung by his betrayal, the scars deep from the weeks of worrying. She had been so certain he had left for good. She wanted to hit him, pound on his chest.

“I thought you’d been arrested or killed.” Helena could not keep the pain and accusation from her voice as all of the uncertainty of the past few weeks finally broke free.

“I know. And I’m sorry for that. But they came for me, you see.” Her eyes widened. “Your attempt to reach the partisans worked,” he said. Her jaw dropped slightly. Alek had seemed so certain he could not help. “They came for me without warning and said we had to go right then.”

“Alek found you?”

“Not him personally.” No, of course not. To Helena, Alek was the face of the resistance. But in reality it was so much bigger than that. Sam’s eyes darkened. “The partisans undertook some sort of action against the Germans. There were reprisals and, well, Alek is nowhere to be found.” Helena’s stomach twisted as she thought of strong, brave Alek, who had seemed to represent hope for them all. Sam continued. “The messenger who came for me was a young woman actually.”

Helena looked at him levelly. “See, I told you that the women help, too.” She was struck with more than a twinge of envy for this unseen female who had been able to do for Sam what she could not.

He ignored her remark. “She said that Alek had high praise for you and your bravery.” Helena flushed, trying not to enjoy too much the note of jealousy now in Sam’s voice. “He was able to radio the partisans and find their location. But I had no choice—had to go with her then, and I had no warning or way to get word to you. It was too dangerous to leave you a note. I tried to arrange the stones in a way you could recognize.” So the pattern on the ground had been a message to her, after all.

“I understand.” Helena’s forgiveness was instant and complete.

“I buried the other items,” he added apologetically. “The cups and such. They’re all still there.”

Helena waved her hand. Such things did not matter at all. “So what happened then?”

“We made it over the border.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Surely his mission had not brought him back.

“I came for you,” he said simply.

“You found the partisans and then just left again?” His courage loomed before her, larger than ever.

“They’ll be none too pleased with me when I return,” he conceded. So he had disobeyed orders, risked everything to come back for her.

“And the other men from your unit?”

He shook his head sadly. “Not yet. There are rumors of some Americans, though, in the partisan camps farther south toward Bratislava. They offered to take me there.”

“But you didn’t go.”

“I told you that I wouldn’t leave you. Here.” He produced a tin of meat from his coat pocket.

Dorie and Karolina gathered hurriedly around the feast. “Slowly,” Helena cautioned, breaking off pieces for them, which they devoured just as quickly. Only Ruth hung back. “You don’t want to make yourself ill.” She looked over her shoulder into the bedroom where Michal, always a sound sleeper, lay undisturbed by the commotion. Deciding against waking him, she found a cloth in the kitchen and wrapped a few pieces of meat in it so he would not miss out.

She turned back toward Sam. Joy and longing rose in her and she fought the urge to throw herself into his arms. Instead, she put a hand on his shoulder, holding on tight so he would not disappear again. “They’re coming,” he said to Helena in a low voice as the children ate. “The Germans—I sensed something different from the aircraft I saw going overhead, and the partisans I met confirmed it.”

“They’re already here,” Ruth offered, stepping closer. Her eyes traveled to Helena’s hand where it sat on Sam’s shoulder and a small frown of disapproval crossed her face. “They’ve set up an administrative bureau in town.”

“I mean the German
army,
” Sam clarified. “Tanks and troops are headed this way.”

So the countryside would no longer be spared. “Why now?” Helena asked.

“The Russians. Relations between Hitler and Stalin are deteriorating and there’s bound to be war to the east.” Helena processed this, remembering his comments months ago about Russian barbarity that made the Germans look almost civilized by comparison. “The Germans coming through, shoring up their position—and looking for any possible pockets of resistance.” He turned to Helena. “We have to go now before they arrive. All of us.”

“You’re right.” Helena stepped away from Sam and the children toward Ruth. Her sister’s mouth was open, ready to protest. “Ruth, surely you can see that he’s right?”

Ruth looked out the window over her sister’s shoulder at the desolate expanse of night, the snow that stretched endlessly out to the horizon. “But we promised Mama we would stay.”

Helena stared at her, puzzled. Weeks earlier, Ruth had agreed to go, had even urged her to get Sam’s help. But now she was rooted and fearful once more. “No, we promised her that we would stay together and keep everyone safe—and we will. But to do that, we must go. Everything is different now. Even if the Germans are gone someday and we manage to survive, the Russians will follow and God only knows what they’ll want with us. We’re the parents now, Ruth, and we have to do what we think is best. I know that it’s scary out there. But we have to take the chance.”

Ruth did not respond, but shifted Karolina to her other hip. “Don’t you see?” Helena exploded, forgetting to keep her voice low. “There is no safety in standing back and not taking a side.” Dorie stepped closer to Ruth, whose expression remained unconvinced. Helena took a deep breath. “I’m afraid there’s more to it than that. You know that Mama was in a Jewish hospital, right?”

“Of course. Tata said that they took her in for the money, even though she wasn’t Jewish. He had promised to do some odd chores to pay for part of her keep.”

“He lied.” Helena swallowed. At the time it seemed a kindness to withhold the truth about Mama from Ruth, forestalling yet another chink in the fairy-tale armor her sister had constructed. But now it was her best—and only—hope at persuading Ruth. She had no choice. She prayed it would not be too much for her sister to bear. “Mama was half-Jewish.”

Ruth barked out a laugh. “That’s not true!” she said in a patronizing tone. “Honestly, Helena, how can you say that? She was the most religious of all of us—she went to church every week.”

But Helena shook her head. “The nurse told me after Mama died. She had papers.” Helena thought of the Kiddush cup she had sold. She wished she had the cup now so that she could show it to her sister. The Hebrew lettering would be physical proof, undeniable. “It’s true. And sooner or later, there will be questions.”

“No,” Ruth insisted, but Helena could see the truth taking hold.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Helena whispered softly. “But with Mama gone I was afraid it would be too much. It’s quite a shock, I know. But if the Germans check records and figure it out...” Helena did not finish the sentence.

“The Germans are very thorough,” Sam chimed in. “In their eyes, a Jewish parent makes you Jewish, and if there’s information in your mother’s file they’re going to know.”

Helena tried again. “There’s nothing left for us here. So you see now why...”

“We have to go.” Ruth finished her sister’s sentence decisively.

Helena started. “You understand now.”

“Yes, we need to go as soon as possible,” Ruth relented. Behind her, Helena felt Sam exhale. Ruth straightened. “I’ll go gather our things.”

But Sam shook his head. “There’s no time for that. We have to go now or it will be too late. Just get everyone dressed, no more than the clothes on their backs, and perhaps a bit of food if it fits in their pockets.”

“But, Sam, you need to rest. You’ll never make it otherwise. Just a few hours,” Helena soothed. “We’ll leave before first light.”

There was a creak from the bedroom door as Michal appeared. Before Helena could stop him, Sam rose with effort, then stepped forward. “You must be Michal.” He held out his hand, offering a piece of meat that the girls had not yet devoured.

The boy gazed up at the tall man, his face a mixture of confusion and awe. He looked like such a child in his nightshirt beside the soldier.

“It’s okay, Michal,” Ruth reassured him. “This is Sam and he is a friend.”

But Michal continued to stare at Sam skeptically, not convinced. Sam knelt down. “Do you like dogs?” he asked Michal, and the boy’s eyes widened. “I have the most wonderful dog waiting to play with you.” Dorie came to Sam’s side then and slipped her hand in his. Helena knew then that all of the risks she had taken had been worth it and her instincts to place her faith in him correct.

“We’re going on a trip with Sam,” Helena added gently.

“But what about Mama?” Michal asked. Ruth and Helena exchanged uneasy looks over his head. They could not risk telling him the truth now, and have him break down right as they were about to leave.

“Mama wants us to go,” Helena replied, regretting she did not possess the belief in the afterlife that might make such a statement more true. “She’s fine where she is, and we’ll send for her as soon as we’ve gotten settled.” She hated lying to him, but there was simply no other choice.

“But we should go get her,” Michal began again. “We can’t just leave her all alone!”

“No more questions now,” Ruth said firmly. “Back to bed, so we are all well rested for the journey.” She started toward the bedroom, then turned back. “How are we going to get there?”

Helena faltered. She did not even know where “there” was, much less have a plan. “I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out with Sam, okay? Trust me.”

When Ruth had ushered the children back into the bedroom, Helena set up a bed of blankets for Sam close to the fire. “Thank you,” he said as he took the pillow, fingering it with a reverence that said after the weeks of laying on the ground this simple comfort was heaven. Helena berated herself silently that she had not done more to make the chapel more pleasant for him during the time he was there.

She sat down beside him. Despite her admonition that he needed to rest, she could not bear to leave him yet for fear that it was all a dream and he might disappear again. Seeming to read her mind, he pulled her to him and put his arms around her, pressing her close. “Lena,” he whispered.

“I thought you’d gone forever.” Her eyes filled with tears and she brushed them back. A single drop escaped and ran down her cheek.