“Do you have a name for her?” Marysia asked, stroking the infant’s face with her finger.
“Joanna,” Adam answered proudly. “After Grandmother.”
They continued to admire and fuss over the infant, each taking a turn at holding her until finally Zosia panted, “May I hold her?”
They all looked up at her as if surprised. “But of course!” Marysia said, and placed the baby on Zosia’s breast.
Adam grinned at Zosia. “Since you got her, I’ll go have a cigarette. I’ve been dying to have one. I’m beat from all that!”
Zosia, Marysia, and Anna all burst out laughing, but Adam was already gone. “Shall I try and feed her?” Zosia asked.
“You can try,” Marysia said, “but I doubt she’ll be ready to eat.”
Zosia held the baby to her breast and crooned over her little miracle of creation whilst Marysia and Anna began cleaning up. Another series of contractions began about the time Adam returned, and he took Joanna into his arms as the placenta was delivered.
Marysia and Anna were still busy making Zosia and the room presentable when her first visitor arrived. “Is anyone home?” Alex asked in his peculiar accent as he tapped lightly on the doorjamb.
“Dad!” Zosia exclaimed.
Alex grinned benevolently at his youngest daughter. He was a stocky man with hair that had gone completely and somewhat prematurely gray. “Silver” he called it with his usual authoritative and all-knowing manner. “So, where’s my grandchild?” Alex asked as he bustled over to Joanna. “Can this little bundle possibly be her? My goodness, what a little cabbage!” he said as he whisked her into his arms. He stroked the tiny fingers and asked, “So, how did it go, sweetheart?”
“Whew!” Zosia sighed. “I think I’ll revise the number of kids I’ll have downward a bit.”
“Oh, that wasn’t so bad!” Adam assured her breezily.
“How would you know?” Alex asked pointedly.
“I think I’ll go have another smoke,” Adam said by way of an answer, and left the room.
“Dad!” Zosia pretended to chide.
“He doesn’t appreciate you,” Alex grumbled.
Zosia glanced guiltily toward Marysia and said, “Well, he was worth marrying just to have Marysia and Cyprian as my in-laws!”
Alex looked back at Marysia and smiled his agreement. “Yes, your mother and I are glad, too. All the more so now.”
“Now? Why now?” Zosia asked, suddenly suspicious.
“Alex!” Anna hissed. “This is hardly the time!”
“What, what’s going on?” Zosia asked, looking from one to the other.
“It’s not bad news, don’t worry,” Alex explained. “We’re just getting transferred. We asked for it, and it’s come through.”
“You want to leave?” Zosia asked, incensed.“You asked for it? You didn’t tell me!”
“Calm down, little one. You know your brother’s been transferred to Göringstadt.”
“Yes, quite a coup for him.”
“Well, we’ve decided to go there as well and help out. He’s been having a very hard time of it, and with yet another baby due . . . Anyway, they can use the help, and besides, it will be a move up for both me and your mother.”
“Mother?”
“I’ve been elected to join the Warszawa Council once I’m there,” Anna replied.
Zosia raised her eyebrows in surprise and wondered if either her brother or her father had something to do with that.
“Yes, and I’ve been put forward as a candidate for the government-in-exile. I need to be up there to coordinate my campaign and to get to know the leadership a bit better.”
“You!” Zosia exclaimed.
“I can’t imagine why they want me. I guess they think my English fluency is a boon.” Alex had grown up in England and had only learned Polish when he was deported back to his father’s homeland by the new Nazi government.
“Oh, don’t be modest,” Marysia chided. “Everybody knows you’re a natural for politics.”
“Maybe. Anyway, there’s no rush. We won’t be leaving for some time, but once we’re gone, Marysia and Cyprian have promised to take care of you, so you won’t be alone.”
Zosia was hardly a child, but at the moment she did not feel like pointing that out to her father; instead she reminded him, “I’ll have Adam, too.”
“Ah, yes, your husband, too,” Alex conceded.
Zosia furrowed her brow, then asked, “If you’re leaving, Dad, there will be an empty seat on the Council here, won’t there?”
Alex smiled at his daughter. “Yes, good thinking. I’ll talk to Katerina and see what we can do for you.” Katerina chaired the Council and was, by virtue of her position, her vast experience, and most of all her unyielding personality, a woman of considerable influence.
“Won’t it seem a little stacked if you, Adam, and my mother all have Council seats?” Julia asked from the doorway.
“Julia! Look at my little girl!” Zosia enthused. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
Julia came into the room, greeted everyone with kisses, and then taking the baby into her arms, declared, “A niece! I’ve waited so long for a little girl in this family!”
“Just like I’ve waited for a son-in-law,” Marysia commented somewhat sourly, having noted the smell of alcohol that accompanied her daughter into the room.
Julia shot her a contemptuous look and said, “When one is deserving of me.”
“Olek—” Marysia began.
“Has turned out to be a fine lad,” Zosia interjected. “And I’m sure he’ll welcome his little cousin with open arms.”
“Indeed he will,” Julia agreed. She turned her attention back to the baby and cooed at her. “She’s beautiful, Zosiu. Absolutely marvelous! Congratulations to both of you. How do you feel? How did it go?”
The others drifted out as Julia and Zosia chatted. Adam joined them after a time, and then their mutual friend Tadek stopped by. Tadek was a tall, lank man with dark brown hair and icy gray eyes. Only six years prior, he had joined their group from the outside as a rather unusual recruit, having first attempted suicide by walking, unescorted and uninvited, directly into the no-man’s-zone that surrounded their mountainous retreat. Zosia had been out and about that day and had decided to disobey orders and bring the interloper in alive. They learned he had just lost his wife to a street roundup, that she had been put in an SS brothel, and that he had, in desperation, sought them out to gain their help in rescuing her. Of course, they did no such thing—with all the criminal depravity that was perpetrated in the name of the Reich, they could not afford the resources to single out and save one lone woman from a life of sexual slavery.
Despite that, Tadek offered them his services and was accepted into their ranks. He moved up rapidly in the hierarchy and was valued for his cool analyticityand his ability to make decisions unemotionally. Only once had he screwed up, in an unapproved and bungled attempt to rescue his wife. It had cost a number of his comrades their lives, and only with great difficulty had he come to terms with that failure. Since then he had been exemplary in obeying the rules, and since then it was said that the only thing that could rile his temper was the irrationality of his fellow conspirators and their willingness to take useless risks.
Tadek greeted both Julia and Zosia with a kiss on the lips.
Adam cleared his throat. “Ahem. If I might remind my dear comrade,” he joked, “the lady is now a married woman.” He tapped his cheek to indicate where Tadek should have planted the kiss for Zosia.
“Sorry,” Tadek responded, and he bent down to Zosia and kissed first the left cheek, then the right, then the left again. He held the last kiss, running his tongue over her skin and creeping upward in a line of little kisses to nuzzle her ear. Zosia giggled in response, and Julia giggled as she saw Adam turn bright red.
“Is that better?” Tadek asked his friend. He did not wait for an answer, instead turning his attention to the newborn. He cooed and fussed over t
he sleeping baby now in Julia’s arms, and they discussed the birth and Joanna’s future and then news and local gossip, and at length, the conversation turned to Julia’s work.
“It has just gotten to be too much,” Julia conceded after she had described her efforts in Berlin several months earlier. She did not look up as she spoke; rather, she stared entranced at the infant, stroking her nose repeatedly as if to invoke magic.
“But it all went well?” Zosia asked. “Didn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. Every time it goes well until it doesn’t; then you’re dead, end of story. I’m tired of it.”
“We all have to die sooner or later,” Adam commented. “No one gets out of this life alive.”
“Well, I’d rather not die sooner.”
“Don’t you want to contribute anything? Do you just want to retire?” Adam asked pointedly.
“I have contributed!” Julia snapped.
“So did you talk with the Council?” Zosia asked before Adam and Julia started sniping at each other.
“Yeah, they’ll assign me to work on-site. If I don’t want to, I never have to leave here again.”
“Great!” Zosia enthused. Maybe it was the relief of having the birth over with, but for some reason she was feeling munificent toward the entire world, and though, like Adam, she could not understand Julia’s gnawing fears, she did recognize that they were real.
“So why are you looking so glum?” Tadek asked Julia.
“It’s Olek. I asked them to remove him from active duty as well, but they say that I don’t have the right to make that sort of decision for him. They want him to keep patrolling.”
“Well, everyone does. Why shouldn’t he?” Adam asked.
“I don’t want him to take that risk. I don’t want him involved in all this.” Julia waved her hand expansively. “Why can’t he have a normal youth?”
“Big question,” Zosia said.“How does Olek feel about it?”
“Oh, he wants to do it all. He wants to be like . . .” Julia threw an angry look at her brother. “You know, always out there, right in their face, killing the enemy. Our angel of vengeance.”
“It’s not vengeance,” Adam retorted. “Each and every one is a judicial execution, ordered by our courts.”
“Julia, you know better than that,” Zosia chided gently.
Julia shrugged. “Whatever they are, it involves being out there among them. That’s what Olek wants. Nothing subtle like propaganda work or organization. No, he admires his uncle!”
“And his mother, I would guess,” Tadek said. “I know you’ve grown weary, but you are one of our best and your son knows that.”
“Was,” Julia corrected. “I’ve lost my nerve. Not only for me, but for him. He means too much to me.” She handed the baby back to Zosia.
Zosia beheld her infant for a few moments thinking about what Julia had said. “I have plans for my child,” she said at last, though she did not reveal what they were.
“So did I,” Julia said with a wan smile. She stretched and shook her head and with it her mood. “But that’s neither here nor there. Now I have different plans. All I have to do is train my replacement and that’s it, I’ll be free!”
Tadek knocked discreetly on the wooden arm of Julia’s chair as Julia emphatically repeated, “I will be free!”
15
I WILL BE FREE, Peter thought as he wandered the grounds of the housing estate contemplating yet again the possibility of escape. Rather than go through tedious and useless planning, he gave in to his urge to daydream and imagined what it would be like to live as a free man again. Since he was daydreaming, he allowed himself to cobble together a fantastic scenario where Allison was still alive as well. She had not, after all, been dead when they brought her out of her flat, or better yet, it had been a double agent who had been in her apartment that night. Allison had not even been there; she had gone into hiding and had waited these four and a half years for him to return so they could start their life together.
He shook his head in faint disgust. In that direction lay madness. Better to base his plans on reality, and the reality was, it was not as easy as he had thoughtit would be. After his release into Herr Reusch’s hands, he had wisely given himself several months to let his injuries heal, to rebuild his strength and regain lost weight. The time had passed quickly, and though he felt better, he did not feel as well or as strong as he had hoped.
His initial, straightforward plan to simply leave at the first opportunity was complicated by two things. The first was that he knew if he was recaptured, he would be sent back to torture, and he did not feel he was ready to stomach that risk. The second complication was the Reusches’ trust in him. Logically, of course, it should not have had any effect; yet, strangely, he felt a loyalty to this couple who had, in effect, rescued him from hell. He did not know if they would be held responsible if he escaped, but he feared their leniency toward him might well cause them to be suspect.
He had also learned a number of things over the months that he had been with them. Most did not bode well for his chances. For one thing, patrols were frequent and intrusive. Those that recognized him usually left him alone, but the several times he had wandered more than a few hundred meters along the highway had unnerved him. Each time he quickly drew the attention of a passing patrol, his papers were checked, and he was sent back to his home base with a stern warning not to wander too far without an appropriate pass.
He also ascertained that as long as he wore his uniform, a pass that took him more than a few kilometers from his home would immediately be suspect. So, he would need to wear civilian clothes, but that would require a completely different set of papers, and then there were his permanent identifications. How could he hope to hide the metal wristband and the tattoo on his arm? Perhaps he could remove the band somehow, but with the slightest suspicion, his arm could be inspected and he would be caught.
He scratched absentmindedly at the number as he leaned against the side of a building and thought about his options. In the distance, he saw two young boys walking along, playing with a toy bow and arrow. They shot the arrow into the air, chased it, reloaded, and then repeated the exercise. Suddenly they stopped their game—one boy shoved the arrow up his sleeve, the other hid the bow under his shirt. Peter repositioned himself to look around the corner of the building to see what they were watching and was surprised to see that it was only a normal patrol. The guards strutted past the boys, who watched them solemnly as they passed, and then, only when the patrol was well past them, did the boys resume their play. He was struck by how odd the scene was: there was nothing wrong with the toy, the patrol would never even have noticed it, yet the boys, out of habit, assumed that if they were having fun, then they should be careful not to show it when the police were around. And the boys were Germans!
Such observations of civic stress, he felt certain, would be useful to the Underground, if only he could report them. But such observations also brought home just how daunting a challenge escape was: when even the citizenry, thebeneficiaries of the system, were afraid of their police, what hope did he have of avoiding their scrutiny long enough to reach and cross a safe border?
He wandered farther, to the edge of the complex near the bakery. He had noticed about a month ago that a new worker—a Zwangsarbeiterin —had arrived, and he was hoping to get a chance to meet her. Since Frau Reusch usually did all the shopping, he had no reason, and therefore no permission, to visit the bakery, so he simply made a point of regularly strolling past whenever he had a chance. Every time he had walked past since his initial sighting, she had either been busy or nowhere in sight, but this evening he was in luck for she was sitting outside on the ground, shelling peas.
She watched suspiciously as he approached but did not make a move to leave.
“May I help you?” he asked.
She glanced at the door of the bakery, then shrugged. “I guess they won’t object.”
He sat down next to her, leaning against the
rough concrete of the bakery wall. The midday heat had passed, but the heavy gray blocks still radiated warmth. The woman continued her work without bothering even to look at him. Peter studied her. She wore the woman’s equivalent of his uniform: a dark blue, sleeveless dress with a pale blue blouse underneath. She had long, curly, black hair that hung in an unruly mass and heavy eyebrows over small, dark eyes. She had full lips and a rounded face that made her look as though she had a double chin, even though she was not heavy enough to actually have one. She looked healthy enough, not emaciated or pale like some, and he guessed she was in her late twenties.
He grabbed a handful of the pods and began working on them, diverting his attention from her face and staring out across the expanse of sandy dirt that led right up to the ground-floor balconies of the nearest tower block. As he absently emptied the peas and discarded the husks, the woman gave him a curious glance. She laboriously worked on splitting a hull as he did several more in rapid succession. Finally she opened the hull and painstakingly extracted the peas one at a time. He cleaned a few more, looking now at the clouds as his hands worked mechanically.
“Where’d you get so good at that?” she asked almost accusingly.
It was, he thought, not so much a matter of his being good at shelling the peas, rather it was more a question of how she managed to be quite so incompetent, but he did not say that; instead he replied,“Don’t worry, it’s easy, you’ll soon get the hang of it.”
“Why should I?”
He brought his attention down from the clouds to look at her. It was a fair point and he replied somewhat apologetically, “No reason. No reason at all.”
They worked in silence for a few moments, then he asked, “What’s your name?”
“Maria.”
“That’s pretty.” He waited a moment, but she didn’t ask, so he offered, “I’m Peter.” He extended his hand but she ignored it.
The Children's War Page 12