“Is it possible?” Anna asked. “Where is your husband? He was with you?”
The sun dipped and the air was suddenly sharp with the cool breath of evening. Through the canopy of yellowing leaves, Yael could see the sky speckled like the belly of a trout. Her lips moved, but no sound emerged.
“She is never wrong, old Fayga. She has the ability to see.” Anna bent closer and rested the palm of her hand gently next to Yael’s. Yael felt the soft pressure of its weight. Anna touched her fingers. “You didn’t know?”
Yael shook her head. She could not believe the old woman’s words, and yet suddenly she knew, she felt in the very core of her being, the truth of it. That it was so. That she was bearing a child. That she was bearing his child. That, at the age of sixteen, in the midst of war, in the midst of horror, this time of madness and death, she was to give birth to the child of a mute.
“Where is the father?” Anna asked again, her voice soft with concern.
All Yael could do was to wave her hand in the vague direction she felt Aleksei’s farm was. She could still find no words that might encompass her shock, that might make normal a world set once more upon its head.
“Is he alive?”
Yael shook her head, signifying only her inability to comprehend, but Anna let out a low moan and clenched her fingers tight, squeezing them so that they hurt. Her eyes pressed closed and a tear fell down her cheek.
“It’s not that…” Yael began, but Anna stopped her, with a finger laid gently upon her lips.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. She leant forward and hugged her tight, so that Yael could smell the pleasant fragrance of her body, the scent of tobacco on her hair and the faint mustiness of her clothes. Releasing her, Anna got up.
“You stay there, don’t move!” she said. “I’ll get a couple of the boys to move you closer towards the fire.”
“There’s no need to worry,” Yael stammered, “I’m feeling much better.” But already Anna had turned away and was heading back across the forest floor to the fire and the huddled groups.
“Oh Aleksei!” Yael breathed, pressing her eyes tightly closed. She could not conceive of a child in her womb. It made no sense – but the thought of it, the thought of life stirring inside her – the picture of a baby cradled in her arms as she stood beside Aleksei, filled her with an inexpressibly sharp pain that threatened to overwhelm her again. She had to get back to him. That was the one thought that circled round and round her head, I must get back to the farm. I must.
“How are you feeling?”
Yael opened her eyes, startled at the male voice so close to her. Maksim was kneeling in the leaves by her side. His face was sober with concern. He seemed to wish to reach out and touch her, but restrained himself.
“I’m fine,” Yael said.
“The old one says you’re pregnant.”
Yael nodded, her hand over her belly, as if, perhaps, protecting the seed implanted in her womb.
“She could be wrong,” Maksim said, rocking back on the heels of his leather boots. But he said it without conviction, as if he too believed in the old woman’s capacity to see what others could not. The concept that she might not be pregnant ricocheted around Yael’s heart, startling her once more, at how ready she had been to believe, and how much, despite everything, she wanted it to be, wanted to know that she was not alone, would never be alone, that Aleksei was not distant but now forever a part of her. That something had been born of that peace and happiness.
Maksim stood up. He brushed the dirt and leaves from his trousers and looked back over his shoulder at the two young men who were approaching with a blanket.
“Nu, va,” he said, slowly, almost sadly, Yael thought. “May God bless you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Come on then!”
The two boys were little older than Yael. They were muscular, not large, but strong, with tough-looking faces that were split with grins. They spread the blanket on the ground and carefully lifted Yael onto it.
“I can walk,” Yael protested.
“Maybe,” one of the boys said, “but Anna will give my ear a tongue-lashing if we let you.”
Between the two of them they lifted the corners of the blanket onto their shoulders, forming a stretcher, and hauled her across to the fire. Yael felt the eyes on her as she approached the large crowd of people that milled around. Old morose men sat slumped before makeshift shelters, women stood talking, quietening as she passed, clicking their tongues and shaking their heads. Small children ran about, scattering leaves.
The boys slowly lowered the blanket onto the ground by a shelter made from birch and roofed with branches of fir, the needles of which were brown now and shrinking back, leaving gaps through which Yael could see the last remaining light of day.
The camp was split into two groups: there were the partisans, mainly young men and women, and then there were the elderly, the sick and the children. It consisted of perhaps fifteen young people, Yael counted, most of a similar age to her, though Maksim was probably in his late twenties and there were two men who were in their thirties, one of whom was slightly retarded, but, Anna assured her, a brave soldier and almost invisible when he wished to be.
Maksim drilled the partisans daily and held frequent meetings with scouts who constantly reported back to the camp concerning the whereabouts of the Germans. Occasionally small groups disappeared into the woods. Sometimes they would be gone for days at a time. When they returned, they would empty out bags of food onto a blanket and Anna would divide it up and log it to ensure a proper record was kept so no one could steal any, or to prevent the risk that anybody should be favoured, or be seen to be favoured more than others.
The older women took care of the cooking and Yael was amazed at what they managed to produce from the meagre supplies brought back by the partisans and from the herbs and fruits of the forest and game trapped by the men. As the autumn drew on, they enjoyed a diet of rabbit, mushrooms and wild vegetables. Yael’s health returned. Within days she was on her feet, feeling vigour return to her muscles. She did not like being counted among the sick and elderly.
“What can I do,” she asked Anna, “to be useful?”
“You can get well,” Anna said. “You will be no good to anybody should you get sick.”
Anna was a pretty young girl. She wore a fur coat decorated with a leopard-skin pattern. “Fake,” she told Yael. “It used to belong to my grandmother who had bourgeois pretensions, but was never anything more than a provincial shopkeeper’s wife and not a very successful one at that, no matter how hard she pushed my poor grandfather.” Anna’s hair was dark and shoulder-length. She was quite short, shorter even than Yael, but her ebullient personality made up for it.
“Maksim laughs at me for this,” Anna chuckled, fingering the coat. “He says I am no better than grandma, dreaming of marrying a rich capitalist, like in the American films.”
They glanced across the forest floor to where Maksim was sitting with a group of three young men who had returned from scouting the north. He was seated leaning back against the trunk of a thick birch, his military jacket flapping open, cigarette smoking in the corner of his mouth. Maksim carried a quiet authority. He seemed to be respected by everyone in the camp, particularly the elderly, who he took the time to talk to each evening. The small boys would salute him and he would salute them back. The response never failed to suffuse the boys’ faces with a glow of pride.
“He looks sad,” Yael said to Anna.
“Maksim?”
“I mean,” Yael clarified, “he seems so quiet and controlled, as though he is somewhere else, or wishes he was. But I suppose that’s understandable. We all do.” She looked away, watching the young children chase each other round the fire.
“He is a private man,” Anna said. “He does not speak much of himself.”
“Where is he from?”
“From Russia. Nobody knows quite where. There are stories…” she paused, glancing ac
ross at Maksim. “That he barely escaped Stalin’s purges. He is a hero but he is not a communist.”
Yael looked at Anna, noting the tone of respect, of affection, but Anna caught the glance and laughed. “You think I have feelings for Maksim?” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m not a romantic, and I’m not in love with Maksim. He is a great leader though. A brave man. But that is it.”
She paused, then reached out and touched Yael’s hand. “And your husband? You miss him? What was his name?”
“Aleksei,” she answered truthfully.
“What happened?”
But Yael shook her head. She realised she was wilfully allowing Anna to continue with the misconception that she had been married and that her husband was dead, but she could not begin, did not want to begin to explain her story to the young Jewish girl.
Later that evening when Anna had left her Yael considered her next move. Now she was feeling so much healthier, she longed to start back towards the farm to see if the Germans had moved on, to see whether it was safe to return. She imagined running down the slope to the farmhouse, Aleksei opening the door and her falling into his arms. She imagined the look on his face, late in the evening, as they lay in bed when she would tell him she was pregnant. That she was bearing their child. She fell asleep that night planning the journey back through the woods.
25
She woke to the sound of movement. Opening her eyes she could see figures flickering in the faint pre-dawn light. One of the partisans was kicking over the smouldering embers of the fire, while others were pulling down the shelters from the trees. Yael sat up, rubbing her eyes. It was a cold morning. Her bones were stiff and her muscles ached when she moved.
“What is it?” she asked when Anna came by, close to where she had been sleeping.
Anna’s pretty face was creased with sleep and concern. “We have to move,” she said shortly, “the Nazis are moving closer. There’s a platoon just a few miles down the road. Maksim has sent scouts forward to find somewhere safer.” Anna scuttled away, gathering the disparate tribe together, gently shaking awake the elderly, taking care that the store was packed safely and entrusted to a couple of the young partisan soldiers.
By the time the sun had begun to rise they were moving, a long, silent column pushing through the deep undergrowth of the forest. A small group of the partisans stayed back and covered over the evidence of their camp. The traces of the fire were buried and leaves scattered. They took the bloody carcass of a buck that had been killed some days previously and dragged it back and forth, pulling it away in the opposite direction to that taken by the column.
“If the Germans have dogs there is no chance they would not pick up scent of us. Hopefully the smell of the buck will excite them, and it’s that trail they will follow,” Anna explained.
They walked for the rest of the morning, making quick progress, despite the thick undergrowth that clotted the heart of the deep forest. As they walked Yael glanced back over her shoulder, as Aleksei’s farm became further and further away.
“The Germans are still afraid of the forests,” another partisan explained to Yael. “They venture this deep only if they have to. The woods still belong to the partisan groups and they know it.”
By midday they had come to the edge of a lake. The water shimmered, reflecting the dull sunlight. They stopped for a while, the partisans making sure the crowd kept in the shade of the forest, in case planes should pass over.
The lake was in the hollow of a valley. The hills rose around it steeply, heavily wooded. A bird cried. The children shuffled and moaned. The quietness was profound. A large shape skimmed the tops of the trees and swooped down to the side of the lake. The stork settled in the shallows, the water rippling out from its thin legs. It stood motionless as Yael gazed down at it. Its head turned and it seemed to stare up the grass bank to where she was seated. Yael shivered.
A young partisan rose from the group and cocked his rifle. Yael glanced up, as he raised the gun to his shoulder.
“No!”
Maksim stood. He reached out and pushed down the barrel of the rifle. The young partisan frowned.
“The Germans are a long way off now, they will not hear.”
“It’s not that,” Maksim explained. “There’s no purpose in killing the stork, it’s treyf. Forbidden.”
The young partisan laughed. “Treyf? And pigs are acceptable?”
Maksim shook his head. He turned away and pulling out a packet of cigarettes from his pocket extracted one. He took his time lighting it. The smoke dissipated slowly in the clear still air.
“The stork is a tsádik,” Maksim said seriously. “In Hebrew its name is Chasidah, deriving from the word chesed meaning kindness.”
He paused again to take another drag of his cigarette. Yael gazed up at him. His voice was intense, impassioned, and his eyes glittered with energy, though every movement of his body seemed slow and considered, as if he fought to control the vigour of his being.
“If it is such a tsádik, then why is it forbidden to eat it?” another of the partisans asked. “If its essence is clean and good, surely it should be good to eat?”
“That I don’t know,” Maksim said, “but Rashi claimed its name came from the fact that it was kind to its neighbours. It’s common knowledge that the stork is the most caring of birds with its young.”
“Listen to him,” one of the older partisans laughed, “our very own forest rebbe!” But the laughter was kind, and even Maksim himself smiled.
Later, Maksim stood by the lake’s edge, smoking another cigarette. Seeing him there on his own, Yael wandered down to join him.
“Anna was telling me about you,” she said, eying him.
He glanced sideways at her, but said nothing.
“There wasn’t much she could tell,” Yael conceded, seeing his look. “She said you were a very private person.”
“Anna talks too much,” he said, but not unkindly. “If I told her anything the whole world would know within a few minutes.”
He tossed the cigarette down in the shallows of the water and for a few moments watched as it floated on the surface, its tip sizzling. “And you…” he paused and turned to look at her fully. She looked down at her feet. “Little Anna does not seem to have found out too much about you either.”
Yael turned towards the water. The sunlight danced lightly across its silky surface. Maksim seemed about to say something else. His lips opened, but then he seemed to think better of it. He ran his hand through his hair and for moments they stood in silence on the edge of the lake, listening to the sound of the water’s gentle lapping, to the murmur of voices from behind them in the forest.
“Do you think we will get through this?” Yael asked, glancing up into his dark features.
He nodded. “Yes,” he said simply. “We will.” He reached out and touched her hair. “We will.”
They continued walking in the afternoon, working their way back into the forest. At one point they had to traverse a field. Scouts went out ahead and positioned themselves in various places, then the group split up and hurried across the field in twos and threes, keeping low, trying to remain inconspicuous.
By evening they had marched about ten miles east, working their way closer to the Russian border. All the time Yael was aware they were heading further and further away from Aleksei’s farm. When they stopped that evening they began erecting their shelters among the low-slung branches of the trees so they were hidden on all sides by brambles and deep grass. Yael stood at the edge of the camp and gazed back through the trees the way they had come.
Rarely did Yael pray, beyond the ritual words offered occasionally on special feasts and holidays, it was not a custom she had been brought up with, but as she stood facing the setting sun, squinting slightly, she asked that God might allow her to make the journey back, that she might find him once again, and the peace that they had enjoyed might be restored. Placing her hand on her belly she muttered, “For the child. For our child.”
But this did not stop her sense of the foolishness of it. That in the midst of war, as all around the slaughter continued, God should care about the fate of her love. She imagined her prayer as a small flicker of light rising in the late afternoon air, dissolving in the coppery reds, the violet shadows and the darkening blues of the sky. “A still small voice,” she murmured to herself, remembering the words of her father. “It was not in the thunder nor the lightening, nor in the strong wind, but in the still small voice that God was.”
When she turned back, she noticed Maksim too was stood on the edge of the camp, smoking a cigarette, gazing out through the trees, and she wondered if he was thinking of a love left miles away.
In the partisan unit everybody had their role, even the elders. Some were charged with the task of collecting firewood, keeping the fire burning, some foraged for berries and mushrooms and other edible roots. Others looked after the children, cooked. Some cleaned weapons. There was a tailor who mended clothes and a shoemaker who did his best to keep the unit well shod. Anna was in charge of arranging the domestic duties, whilst Maksim was in overall command of the small partisan unit, and of the soldiers. That night Anna asked Yael to help the women with the children.
There were seven children with the group, ranging in age from four to ten. Esther was the only girl. She was seven years old and wore a red ribbon which was threadbare and greasy from her unwashed hair, but which she insisted on keeping, and treasured, Yael discovered, as if it was the finest silk. While the boys romped, fighting imaginary battles with German troops, Yael sat with Esther in the gathering gloom and combed and plaited the young girl’s hair.
“Tell me a story,” Esther demanded, leaning back against Yael.
For some moments Yael hesitated, trying to think of something that would amuse the girl. She told her then about the great grandmother of the grafas Tiskevicius.
“When I was younger, before the war, the school I went to was small. It was held in the house of the grafas Tiskevicius. Sometimes the old man would come in and interrupt our lessons. He would tell the story about his great-grandmother.”
The Song of the Stork Page 11