He was truly grateful for the stamps. Since leaving home, adding to his collection had become nearly impossible. What should have been a bounty of exemplars from many more countries than ever before became the source of a nagging frustration. Whether traveling with Galina’s family or cooped up in barracks with other detainees, he was never alone, never able to sort the collection he carried so faithfully from one place to the next. There was never any money for new stamps, or time to pore over the exquisite miniature images, to wish or to daydream.
He missed the faraway days of his boyhood, the hours spent reading catalogs, sorting, pasting, admiring his stamps, laying aside duplicates to trade for wonderful new acquisitions. He knew now that in those moments, with his mother nearby offering fresh pastry, he had been completely happy. Why was it when others suffered shortages and derivations, she always had a bit of sugar for his tea?
Of course, he understood; his father was a Party member. His position in the postal service gave him privileges, like higher rations for everything from bread to shoes. He wasn’t sure why his mother chose to drink her tea unsweetened. It must have been her religion, which he knew to be based on sacrifice, atonement, self-denial, full of saints and martyrs and a strict moral code driven by guilt, with good behavior receiving its sweet reward in some mystical promised land.
She had insisted on having him baptized. It was, as far as he knew, her single act of defiance against his father. It was 1925, the fervor of the revolution still fresh enough to those who could feel its benefits in their own lives. “Would you deny your son the possibility of divine protection?” she had argued. “Are you sure the Party can save his soul?” And his father had assented, defeated, perhaps, by some deeply buried seed of doubt, and by his love for his young wife. Or so the story had come down to Filip, who felt no need of celestial mercy but loved his mother even more for her fierce demands on his behalf. How are you, Mama? he wondered. How are things with you now?
2
THEN ONE MORNING in late April, the Germans were gone. The most glaring sign, aside from the missing sentry at the gate, was the absence of trucks.
“They must have rolled them out without starting the engines,” someone speculated, “or we would have heard them.”
It was a clean sweep. Every piece of Nazi correspondence, down to supply requisitions and copies of weekly reports, was gone. A quick look around confirmed they had taken everything easily portable, including the civilian cook and all the provisions. What had happened? Why the stealthy disappearance?
Some men did not wait to find out. They gathered up their things and set out of the camp gates without a backward glance. “It could be a trick.” Grisha removed his glasses and polished the lenses on his shirtsleeve. “They could be waiting to pick us off around a bend in the road.”
“Why?” Filip argued. “They could have starved or beaten us right here, without wasting bullets. No one would know what happened, not for a long time. This makes no sense. We should go.”
“We promised them our support,” Ilya, sitting on a bench in the kitchen, rested his arms on his knees. “An army does not kill its own soldiers.”
“We accepted their support in our struggle,” Grisha corrected. “It’s not the same thing. We’re fighting not for Fascism but against the tyranny in our own homeland. So we need to stay together as a unit. We’re no good to anyone spread out over the countryside.”
“No one but ourselves. And I don’t see anyone doing any fighting.” Filip walked around, peering into sacks and boxes, opening cupboards, rummaging in drawers. “What’s for breakfast?”
They managed to cook up a porridge from whatever edible remnants they found—a grayish unappetizing sludge of which each man had to eat, thankfully, only a small portion.
For the rest of that day and the next, Grisha organized some training exercises and the men went along, for the most part for lack of anything better to do. Others went out to scavenge for food. They came back with several rabbits and a scrawny rooster; no mean feat for hunters armed with sticks and a hastily improvised slingshot. The Germans, of course, had taken all the guns.
A foray into the darkest recesses of the root cellar turned up half a sack of seed potatoes. “We should plant some, now that it’s spring,” Ilya suggested. But the hungry men ignored him.
“We won’t be here long enough to harvest them. Use them sparingly, though,” Grisha decreed. “ Make them last a few days.” The resulting stew, seasoned with wild onions and the first early dandelion greens, was palatable enough.
“What happens when we run out of rabbits?” someone asked, giving voice to the general concern. “I doubt the locals will want to feed us.”
“How many are we?” Grisha looked around, took a rough count. “Fifty, give or take a few.” More men had left that afternoon, but some who had gone earlier had come back to the relative safety of the camp. “Once I make contact with a larger unit, we can combine forces, go where we’re needed.”
Filip couldn’t imagine where that might be. If Stalin had succeeded in driving the Fascists from Soviet soil, it seemed absurd to fight the Reds in Germany. What if they were captured? Were these old men so deluded by, whatever, idealism or nostalgia, that they couldn’t see the only possible outcome? There would be no trial, no repatriation or gulag sentence. He could see them now, each stripped of any usable clothing, lined up to receive a bullet in the head. Field justice.
He was seized with panic. If the Germans had lost—and why else would they abandon the camp?—then the Reds could be anywhere, drunk with victory and eager to exact revenge on those who had attacked their homeland. “We’re sitting ducks here,” he said. “Don’t you see? We have no weapons, no food, no supplies. Not even a radio. Count me out.” His fingers gripped the edge of the ROA patch, ready to rip it off his sleeve.
“Wait!” Ilya held Filip’s wrist. “Grisha sent some men out to get news. We owe him that much.”
“We owe him nothing. Or I don’t, anyway.” Filip was suddenly aware of everything that irritated him about his father-in-law: the calm benevolence, the senseless piety, the infuriating patience of the man, even the careful way he crafted his useless decorative pieces. “You do what you want.”
“Filip. Wait. We have to stay together, you and I. How else can we hope to find my Ksenia and Galya? Your wife and newborn child?” Ilya dropped his hands to his sides and looked at the younger man with a pleading expression of such reasonableness it made Filip’s blood boil.
“Fifty men. Fifty men armed with slingshots will liberate the Soviet Union. Bah! You’re all crazy.” Filip turned with a dismissive wave of the hand and headed toward the barracks, the offending patch hanging from his sleeve by a few loose threads.
And then they heard the trucks.
3
THEY DROVE IN SLOWLY, as if on parade—four open trucks overflowing with American soldiers, waving and cheering like big unruly children. These were followed by a half dozen covered vehicles holding wounded men in various stages of recuperation.
“The war is over. Hitler is dead,” the fair-haired sergeant told the assembled inmates, his words rendered into heavily accented but adequate Russian by a soldier Filip’s age.
“What’s that I hear, Grisha? That sound . . . ,” Filip, standing a few feet behind, asked in a voice loud enough to carry over the murmuring crowd.
Grisha gave his head a quarter turn, as if listening. “What sound?”
“The sound of a door slamming. The door to our home. Every man here wearing this damn patch can hear it clearly.” He tore the loose ROA insignia off his sleeve and jammed it into his pocket.
The sergeant held up a hand for silence. “All right. You are to stay in this camp as DPs while we process your documents. Your status is ‘stateless’ unless you have valid papers to the contrary, in which case you will be repatriated as soon as we receive the go-ahead.” He scanned the hollow-cheeked faces, unshaven and sallow and mostly expressionless, though some registered a
nxiety, and some relief. “The processing will begin at once, followed by a visit to Corporal Dominick Macaluso, also known as Nick the Barber. You’ll report to your assigned work detail in the morning. That’s all.”
Two men brought the kitchen table outside. The sergeant himself did the questioning, filling out the forms in large rounded letters that looked fresh and innocent after the precisely etched German script they had become used to.
Processing was rapid; the registration line snaked around the yard but moved at a good pace, the sergeant assisted by an enlisted man who knew a little Russian. Name, age, place of birth, occupation. Luggage search for hidden weapons or contraband. Barrack assignment, work detail.
“Tell them Yugoslavia,” Ilya, standing behind his son-in-law, whispered in his ear.
“What? Why?” Filip protested.
“I’ll explain later.”
That left Filip in a quandary. If the old man was right about the need to conceal their true origins, how could he, Filip, claim to be an interpreter with knowledge of German and Russian? On the other hand, why would they need one? He knew as much English as he did Serbian—none at all.
“Occupation?”
Filip hesitated. Student? Ridiculous. Interpreter? Too risky. Carpenter? Patently untrue. Then he remembered stringing lights at the amateur theater, splicing brittle wires together, which, with a little instinct and a lot of luck, had lit the stage for their plays. “Electrician,” he said bravely, hoping his poor skills would not be tested.
“Place of birth?”
“Yugoslavia.” The sergeant kept writing.
“What city?”
“Belgrade. But I’ve been in school in Germany for several years,” he added.
“Papers?”
“Lost in the fire, in Dresden.”
“Huh. Right. Stateless. Barrack three. Be ready for work in the morning.”
Stepping aside, Filip heard Ilya say, “Yugoslavia.”
The man looked up. “Another one. How do you say bread?”
“Pogacha,” Ilya replied, to Filip’s surprise.
“Occupation?”
“Craftsman.”
“That’s not an occupation. What work can you do?”
“I can make beautiful things out of simple materials,” Ilya protested, “with my tools.” He pointed to his toolbox, which lay open on the table between them.
“Lovely. We’ve been looking for someone like you, no doubt. In the meantime, you can push a broom and empty bedpans in the infirmary.” He snapped the lid shut and slid the box toward its owner. “Stateless. Barrack three.”
A dozen men were sent to clean out the barn. The rest were put to work making a barbed-wire enclosure in one corner of the camp, with a shallow ditch at one end.
“I wonder if they’re bringing in animals. Cows or sheep. Maybe dogs?” Filip speculated, wrapping rags around his bleeding fingers. “Damn, this hurts.”
“Then why use barbed wire? And why the ditch? Animals would fall in, break a leg. And there’s no roof, no shelter from the weather,” another man replied. “Here, hold this end steady while I fix the door.” The “door” was a flap of the same merciless material, hinged to the enclosure with loops of heavy wire. “That should do it,” the man said, giving each loop one last twist with his pliers. “Isn’t that your father? What’s he doing?”
“He’s not my father.” They stood a moment and watched Ilya walk around the enclosure, his eyes fixed on the ground.
“What treasure are you finding there, Ilya Nikolaevich?” the man called out.
Ilya stooped to pick something up. “Treasure it is, boys. Treasure it is.” Smiling, he showed them several scraps of wire, each no more than a few centimeters, glinting in the palm of his hand.
Filip walked away, heading for the farmhouse headquarters to report the job finished. The old man’s losing his wits, he thought. What now?
Nothing much happened in the next few days. Some lumber appeared—used boards with rusted nails and peeling paint, and each barracks’ occupants were permitted to build a table and benches. Grisha organized a morning exercise routine. Participation was voluntary, but most men came. There wasn’t much else to do.
“Reminds me of home,” one of the men said while waiting his turn to wash at the rain barrel outside the kitchen door. “Doing exercises to the radio before breakfast.”
“Reminds me of school,” Filip answered. “And the Pioneers. Keep your body clean and strong for your country.” At least it’s not combat training, he thought. I’ve had enough of those games.
Ilya spent his free time at the newly built table, pounding his wire scraps with a little mallet from his toolbox. He was cordial with anyone who came by to watch, whether fellow detainee or American soldier, keeping up a steady pace, ignoring their amused expressions. Under his single-minded efforts, the wire bits grew longer and thinner and more pliable. He twisted them together end to end with infinite care, in nearly invisible joins. Soon he was ready for business.
They paid him with anything they had: cigarettes, crackers, Hershey bars, a few German coins, stamps from the letters every soldier carried in his breast pocket. He accepted everything and kept working, turning out pin after pin, learning the unfamiliar names. Nancy. Evelyn. Rosemary. Molly. Edith.
He worked carefully, without haste, twisting the wire into a fluid rendition of each name. Sometimes Filip sat nearby, watching. Not helping; he had neither the skill nor the inclination. He considered his father-in-law’s craft to be not much better than a parlor trick, like those bazaar artists who will sketch your likeness for a few pennies, making you look just like anyone else. He liked the chocolate, though, and cherished the American stamps that came his way.
The day Filip saw Sergeant Evans standing at Ilya’s table, he leaned the broom he’d been using to sweep the yard against the barracks wall and sauntered over. He sat down on an upturned crate and muttered, “This has to be the cleanest piece of ground in all Germany.”
“We’ll have work for you soon,” Evans said curtly, nodding at the broom. “The road needs repair, and there’s cleanup building projects in the area.” He spoke in a curious blend of languages, German and English words tripping over each other. “Lots of work. Just waiting for orders.” He turned to Ilya. “Can you do Priscilla?”
“Write it for me.” Ilya slid a notepad and pencil across the table.
“And Gary. Do Gary, too.”
“Pri . . . sci . . . lla.” Ilya studied the name, sounding out the letters. “Your wife?”
“My little girl, not quite two years old.” He took a photograph from his wallet. A plump, sweet-faced toddler clutching a stuffed rabbit gazed at them with wide, serious eyes. “She doesn’t know her daddy yet. And Gary.” He pointed to himself. “That’s me.”
When the pins were done, Evans rewarded Ilya with a small coil of fine-gauge copper wire. “Better than money,” Ilya said. “Thank you.”
“I have a little girl, too.” The German words fell from Filip’s mouth almost before he thought them.
“Where? Near here?” Evans held the name pins in his hand, rubbing his thumb gently over the graceful letters.
“I don’t know. We were taken away before she was born.”
“So how do you know?”
“Men who arrived after us said one of their wives had seen her at the hospital,” Ilya put in.
“The grapevine,” Evans muttered in English, pocketing his pins.
“Pardon?” Filip threw Ilya an annoyed glare. Why did he always have to interfere?
“Grapevine,” Evans repeated. Then in broken German, “Gossip telegraph. Never mind. Come to me in the morning; I’ll find you some work.”
When Evans had gone, Filip turned on Ilya. “Why couldn’t you stay out of it? Why tell them how we know? It doesn’t concern you.” He felt the foolishness of his words at once, but the damage was done.
“The birth of my first grandchild and the welfare of the two people who mean more to m
e than anyone in the world? Could anything concern me more?” Ilya gathered up his files and pliers and placed them into his toolbox. “These people are not the enemy. Maybe they can help us.” He closed the lid, secured the latch, and walked off with the box under his arm.
“Not while we’re cooped up here!” Filip shot back.
He found a quiet shady spot behind one of the barracks. A little way off, some of the men were playing a game, kicking a ball around. A ball—a bundle of rags wrapped around a handful of stones; he had watched them fashion the thing last night, with much joking, intent on their project as if making a Christmas present for a child. A child, he thought, the image faceless, silent, vague. My child.
He lowered himself to his haunches, back against the sun-warmed wall, and rolled a cigarette. His eye caught a movement in the newly grown grass. Three fledgling birds hopped around, pecking at the ground, their movements swift but jerky, as if unpracticed. They were tiny, with the familiar markings of the breed, miniature copies of the full-grown sparrows they would soon be, but with the endearingly disheveled look of all animal young. His memory brought up the image of the baby elephant in Dresden, the spiky tuft on its smooth head, the little trunk flailing in the air. Galina’s hand extended, unable to reach it, the chagrin on her face. He shook his head, as if to clear his mind. When he looked again, the birds were gone.
The next day, he was assigned to a new work detail: finishing the barn for use as an infirmary. And he met Anneliese.
4
FILIP DID NOT KNOW how long she’d been standing just inside the doorway, watching him and two other men unload portable cots from the truck. She was pretty, with short reddish hair and laughing eyes. She wore men’s trousers and a shirt that had once been red, the rolled-up sleeves revealing firm, lightly freckled arms. Older than his own twenty years, he was sure, but possessed of a radiance that made it all but impossible to guess her age.
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