The Song of the Stork

by Stephan Collishaw

  ‘They can kill me,’ she thought at one point. ‘I’m too tired for this.’ But the moment she thought it, she was disgusted with herself. Anger seeped into her bloodstream. Her muscles tautened and her nerves quivered at the thought of those who had died and she was strengthened and knew she would not let them catch her. That she at least would survive.

  It was pitch black and she had dozed off when Aleksei eased open the wardrobe door and gently tapped his fingernails against the wood. Yael’s eyes flickered open and she felt a tremor pass across her nerves.

  “Aleksei?” she whispered, but he hushed her.

  Carefully he prised open the partition. A weak light illuminated the room against which he was silhouetted. The air was cool upon her face. Yael fell forward and Aleksei caught her. Gently he lifted her out of the gap, took her in his arms and carried her across to the bed where he laid her tenderly. The relief was enormous. Her body sank into the softness of the mattress. Aleksei stroked her hair, anxiety twisting the shadows on his face. He pulled her softly, but insistently, pointing towards the door.

  “Let me lay still,” she whispered, desperately. “I can’t move.”

  Aleksei shook his head.

  “Please,” she begged softly.

  Aleksei’s muscles were tight with fear. He looked wretched, Yael thought. She glanced towards the door to the kitchen, across which the curtain had been drawn.

  “Are they through there?” she whispered, nodding towards the doorway.

  Aleksei shook his head again, but eased her up into a sitting position. He indicated towards the window and stood and unlatched it. A cool breeze wafted through. Faintly Yael could hear the sound of talking, low voices, muttering somewhere in the darkness. Aleksei pulled her up to the window. He pointed out towards the black shadows of the forest. Wearily Yael nodded. She felt so tired she felt she would vomit if she moved again, if she had to stand once more.

  Aleksei opened the window wider and leaned out. Confident no one was there, he quickly ducked back inside the room and lifted Yael up. She swung her legs over the sill and stopped a moment. Aleksei stood before her. She leant down and kissed him, then slipped down onto the ground, flattening herself against the grass.

  22

  The ground was dew-damp and quickly soaked through Yael’s clothes. From the front of the house, she heard a commotion – a shout and the sound of angry voices. She shuffled forward, worming her way through the grass. Footsteps stopped her a moment and she saw a figure run past her in the darkness. When the soldier had gone, she moved on, as fast as she could. Her hand scraped against a stone sending a jolt of pain up her arm, but she did not pause.

  When she was closer to the line of trees, and sheltered by the thick darkness, she got to her hands and knees and scuttled to the shelter of the forest. Turning, then, she looked back down the field. A fire burned brightly at the back of the house, close to the well, and its dancing light illuminated Aleksei stood against the wall, his hands folded on his head, surrounded by shouting soldiers. One moved forward and hit him hard and he staggered back and fell against the bricks. Another raised his rifle and seemed about to fire. A scream caught in Yael’s throat. She stopped it with her hands, clamping them tight across her lips, sealing in the sound, so her breath rushed out through her nostrils.

  Aleksei stood up slowly. The soldier lowered his gun. He shouted at Aleksei, but the moment of crisis seemed to have passed. Before he went back inside the farmhouse, Aleksei hung around by the German tents. He accepted a cigarette and wandered out into the darkness, staring into the shadows. Yael tried to wave to him, but he was looking in the wrong direction and she feared revealing herself. He turned finally, and threw the cigarette in the fire. Still he paused before entering the door. He turned one final time and Yael saw the pained expression on his face.

  When he had gone, she withdrew a little into the woods, crawling into a thicket, and there, with her arms wrapped tight around herself, she slept. Sleep came surprisingly easily and was deep and seemingly dreamless. When she awoke the first stain of light was seeping across the sky. It was cold. Yael shivered, her teeth chattering, her muscles trembling uncontrollably. She looked around, unnerved by the unfamiliar, and yet all too familiar surroundings. How she wished she could crawl into the crook of Aleksei’s arm, curl up tight in the warmth.

  She longed to be back there at the house with him, even in the wardrobe, stuck in the few inches of space, unable to move. Just to be back within those familiar confines, to be near Aleksei, to know he was there for her.

  She crawled out from between the thickets and glanced around. A thin mist hung close to the ground, between the trunks of the trees. No breath of air stirred. The morning was preternaturally quiet. From the distance then she heard the sound of a motor cough. Her heart leapt. They’re moving, was her first thought. They’re going.

  She scuttled through the undergrowth, crawling as she neared the edge of the forest, pausing on the lip of the hill to gaze down into the clearing where the farm stood. The milky fog was thicker in the hollow. At first only the roof of the house was visible, and the chimney, a thin plume of smoke rising from it. The engine of a lorry was running, but there was no sign of movement in the German camp. A sentry squatted a couple of hundred metres away, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

  He would be awake, Yael thought. She imagined him waking alone in his bed and rising and wondering where she was. The pain in her heart was so intense she thought it would break. She hungered for him. For the small meaningless rituals that made up their days. Oi Aleksei, she thought, what am I to do? Where am I to go?

  She felt suddenly nauseous. She bent down and vomited on the pine needles and thin grass. What little there was in her stomach came up with the bitter taste of bile. Worried the sound of her retching would attract the sentry, she turned and shuffled back into the woods, wiping her mouth with the cuff of her sleeve. Seeking out her hideaway in the thorn bushes, she lay down and rested some more.

  The sun rose. It was a warm day, even in the shade of the forest. The Germans did not venture into the woods and Yael felt unable to move. The nausea left her after a while, but still she could not find the will to lift her body from the soft earth. She did not know what to do, or where to go. Later in the afternoon a deer poked around close to her. She withdrew herself frightened. When it had gone, she pulled herself out of the thicket and wandered once more down towards the edge of the woods to look out over the farm. The Germans had not moved, and showed little sign of doing so. Another soldier was on duty, pacing smartly across the field, working his way up towards the forest rim, south of where she stood. Other soldiers were lounging on the grass outside the farmhouse, cleaning rifles and boots, laughing and joking quietly among themselves. There was no sign of Aleksei.

  It was late when she started looking for food. There was little available in the close proximity of the farmhouse. She knew where to find fruit bushes, but most of the ripe fruit had been picked, and so she was forced to pick green berries, which were so sour she preferred not to try them despite her growing hunger. She found the same thicket to sleep in that night, but huddling herself away in the tangle of thorny tendrils, she could not sleep. She lay far into the night, caught between fear and loneliness in the eternity of darkness.

  The next day she felt sick again. She worried she had caught some fever, and thought of Rivka, dying in the woods. Further south there were more fruit bushes, wild berries and possibly mushrooms, Velvet Shank or Wood Blewits, and she went in search of these. She walked for a couple of hours, not wanting to go too far from the farm, nor to get lost, but she could find little food. That evening she felt faint. She sat at the base of a tree, her head in her hands, her stomach empty.

  The third day she began to panic. There was little food available in the immediate vicinity and she was forced to explore further afield. She got lost in the afternoon and sat weeping for an hour. When the sun began to set, she regained her sense of direction and began making her
way back through the forest towards Aleksei’s house, but she had gone too far, and weariness overcame her.

  She found it hard to concentrate and stumbled on the roots of trees. She fell once, banging her arm, chafing the skin. She cried for a while again, before pulling herself up and forcing herself on. The forest grew dimmer as she walked. At first she thought it was evening drawing in rapidly, but shaking her head and resting against the trunk of an old oak, she found it brightened a little. She slumped to the floor and held her head between her hands. Her head swirled, and the nausea returned. Before she knew it there was total blackness.

  Before she awoke she was aware of the movements around her. She lay still, drifting slowly out from the heart of darkness, her eyes pressed tightly closed. The voices and footsteps mingled with her dreams and for a while she struggled to separate them. The last image to flicker across her brain was of a stork. It sank down from the sky, its wings outstretched and landed over her, one red leg planted pole-like on either side of her. Raising its wings it clattered its beak, nodding its head up and down.

  Opening her eyes she found a figure standing over her, blocking out the last of the sun’s rays.

  23

  The figure standing above her so frightened Yael, she wished she could faint again; that the darkness of unconsciousness would envelop her. She did not though. The light cut through the canopy of leaves with the last piercing fierceness of a July sunset, silhouetting the man.

  Seeing her eyelids flicker, he bent down so that his face was close to hers, and she felt his breath on her cheek. It smelt of tobacco fumes and something sharper, which she did not recognise at first, but afterwards realised was alcohol.

  “Anna,” he called, turning his head away.

  Yael opened her eyes a crack and caught a glimpse of his turned face. A strong jaw and prominent nose made his face seem determined. When he turned back, she squeezed her eyes closed again. He obviously noted this, for he laughed, a low, ironic chuckle.

  “Anna,” he called again, “the forest spirit has awoken.”

  He stood up and turned away. She heard the catch of a match, its sudden flaring and then a moment later caught the scent of tobacco. He moved away, but was replaced immediately by a young woman with short dark hair. Anna squatted down beside Yael and took one of her wrists in her hand, expertly placing fingers on her pulse, feeling for a minute, before laying it back on the earth carefully. She opened Yael’s eye with a firm, expert touch. For a few seconds she examined her, then grinned, holding her eyelid open so that Yael was forced to look directly at her.

  “Hello,” she said. Her grin was a little lop-sided, but it was frank and open and Yael could not help but smile back.

  “There,” Anna called over her shoulder to the retreating male figure, “she’s smiling! I told you she wasn’t a dybbuk.”

  “We’ll see,” the voice drifted back.

  Anna helped Yael to sit up. It was only when she was upright, her back rested against the trunk of a thick old birch, that she realised she was not where she last recalled being.

  “Where are we?” she said. Her voice was thin, almost inaudible.

  “Where are we?” Anna repeated. She had a metal canteen; she unscrewed the lid and passed it to Yael. “God only knows. The middle of the forest. A hole in the woods. Ask Maksim.”

  Yael took the canteen and brought it to her lips. Her hand was unsteady. She shook so much Anna reached out and steadied it.

  “You’re weak,” Anna said. “When was the last time you ate?”

  Yael shrugged. She was disorientated. The liquid was cool on her tongue, but she had trouble swallowing and choked when she tried to reply.

  “It’s okay,” Anna said, “you don’t need to speak. I’ll get you something to eat in a bit. Some soup. Something light, you need to be careful. It can be too much, you know, eating a lot when you’ve been without. There was this guy we found last year, hadn’t eaten much in weeks before he joined us. Stuffed himself. Couldn’t stop. Stole food from the store while the others were sleeping. It killed him. His body couldn’t take it.”

  Anna spoke quickly, the words tumbling out in a curious accent. She used the American word ‘guy’, which made her sound as though she had watched too many films. Perhaps seeing her effect on Yael, she laughed.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said, sitting back on her heels, “I always talk too much. Maksim says I’m his first line of defence, if the Germans come, he’ll pick me up under his arm and machine-gun them with words!”

  She laughed again, openly, heartily, and Yael found she could not restrain her own smile, despite feeling wretched. As Anna stood up, Yael glanced past her to the camp spread out in the trees. At its heart a small fire burned, and around it a large group of people stood or squatted. Blankets and sheets of canvas were tied between branches forming rudimentary shelters. Some of the people were armed, an array of weapons: a woman had a pistol tucked in her belt, as also, Yael now noticed, did Anna, two men had rifles slung in the crooks of their arms, and a machine gun of the type the Germans used stood on a tripod at the edge of the camp. These were not just young men and women though, there were old women and men shuffling around and children squatting by the fire, poking sticks into the flames. Yael was astounded.

  “Who are these people?” she croaked.

  “Who, these?” Anna said, turning to survey the figures as though she had not really thought about them before. “They’re family! Our big family! I’ll be right back.”

  Anna walked across to the fire; Yael felt she had not meant her words literally, though looking around it could indeed have been a large tribe. A ragged family come out to camp in the woods. Jewish gypsies. It reminded her of a Sukkoth celebration from her childhood, when they had pitched a tent in the field of her aunt’s home. The whole family had lived in the tents for the week. It had been clear autumn weather, cold and damp in the morning, but clearing to bright dry days. The children made fires and played, and in the evenings listened to the bible stories, though none of the family were particularly religious. Yael loved to crouch by the bonfire in the evenings, as the first stars pierced the inky sky, and gaze deep into the flames, imagining she was an Israelite escaped from Egypt, from slavery.

  The man who had been stood over her, Maksim, was standing at the edge of the camp, in conversation. Anna crossed over to him and he bent his head to listen to her, then nodded and glanced across at Yael. Yael felt her cheeks flush as his eyes rested on her for a couple of seconds. But then he turned away, and Anna left him to his discussion with the young partisan wearing a black cap on the back of his head.

  Anna brought her soup. A young boy had wandered away from the family group and edged closer to her, his eyes wide.

  “Aunt,” he whispered, “is she dead?”

  “Does she look dead?” Anna shot back across her shoulder. The young boy regarded Yael, chewing his nails. He did not seem sure. He came no closer, but squatted down to watch as Anna spooned the soup carefully into Yael’s mouth.

  “We didn’t know if you would make it,” Anna explained as she offered the thin broth, which was little more than water flavoured with vegetables. “We had been on a raid, a small town twenty odd kilometres north of here. We found you as we were coming back. The boys thought you should be left, but Max was having none of it. ‘We can’t feed any more,’ they said. ‘She dies then she won’t be eating,’ Max figures, ‘she lives, you never know, she could help us.’” Anna grinned. “Where you from?”

  “From?” Yael coughed, as she struggled to sip the soup slowly from Anna’s spoon. “I was from Selo.”

  “Selo? They killed the Jews there years ago.”

  Yael did not know how to respond. The spoon had paused some centimetres from her mouth as Anna waited for a response. Yael felt exhausted. She longed for Aleksei. For the quiet certainty of the life they had lived in the confines of that little home.

  “I’ve been hiding,” she managed.

  “You’ve been w
ith a partisan group? You’ve been in the woods for two years? Who have you been with?”

  Yael shook her head. “No, I’ve been sheltered. The Germans came. I had to run.”

  Anna nodded. The faint outlines of her story seemed to suffice. Anna spooned the last of the soup into her mouth.

  “Do you think you can walk? We can move you in closer to the fire.”

  An elderly woman had detached herself from the huddled group around the small fire. She came over and took the shoulder of the boy, who was squatted amongst the leaves. Pulling the boy up, she turned to go, but then stopped, her eyes caught by Yael’s.

  “Ei, ei ei!” she cried quietly.

  She released the child’s shoulder and stepped closer to Yael. Her face was wrinkled, the skin dark, dirty and creased like old leather. Her eyes sparkled though. She bent down, pushing her face closer to Yael. Yael drew back from her, a little afraid. The woman’s hand reached out and touched her face. Her breath hissed like a burst pipe.

  “Ei, so,” she muttered.

  “What is it?” Anna asked the elderly woman, respectfully. “What do you see?”

  “She’s trógedik my dear,” the woman hissed. Then stepping back and straightening up, her eyes not leaving Yael’s, “She’s with child.”

  24

  Yael trembled. The old woman looked at her for a few moments longer, smiled at her pitifully, revealing a mouth almost totally devoid of teeth, then turned away, her hand on the shoulder of the young boy. Anna’s eyes widened.

  “Pregnant?”

  Yael struggled to find her voice but could not. Could not find words that might arrest the free-fall of her emotions. Instinctively her hand flew to her belly.