The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  “Manhunts?”

  “Yes. I guess you don’t have them.”

  “I don’t think so—not if I understand how you are using the term.”

  “What I mean is, the master race needs slaves and they tend to use up the ones they have fairly quickly, so every now and then—rather frequently, in fact— they simply close a street or raid a building or invade a house or whatever, and they grab everybody there and take them away. It’s not really like an arrest since they don’t even pretend you’ve done something wrong; it’s just, well, a manhunt. They usually send the adults to factories, farms, mines, and so on. Tadek lost his wife that way.”

  “Really?” Peter could not imagine that harsh, unyielding man ever having had a wife.

  “Yes, newly married, living in Kraków. They closed a street she was on and simply took her and everyone else away. That was ten years ago.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Came here. He heard the mountains were off-limits, so he made his way to the nearest village and then simply walked in. For all we know, he may have been trying to commit suicide. But whatever the case, Zosia—she never follows the rules—Zosia spotted him and escorted him into camp.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, he was interrogated, his story was checked, and he’s been here ever since.”

  “So, he went through the same process that I did.”

  “More or less.”

  “And you let him live.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But he wanted me to die,” Peter stated bitterly.

  Katerina shrugged. “Anyway, they still go on.”

  “What?”

  “The manhunts.”

  “Oh.”

  “They take children, too.”

  “Children?”

  “Yes. Some get adopted, most get taken for domestic labor, although I’ve heard that there are such shortages of children that they use adults now for that as well.” She looked at him, cocking her head to the side thoughtfully. “I guess you’re further proof that that’s the case.”

  Peter met her look, but did not match the small smile she gave him. Somehow all that he had endured did not feel like “further proof” of anything. He was no more a bit of economic data than he was somebody to be bought or sold.

  “Of course,” she continued, “I have a theory about that.”

  “Oh?” He wasn’t sure what she was referring to and suspected that he would prefer it remain that way, but he could not think of any sensible way of preventing her from proceeding.

  “Yes. I think you—and others like you—were simply used to test their retraining programs. They like refining their psychological techniques, and they have come a long way! I think they found an intelligent, well-educated, independent-minded, physically fit adult quite a challenge. Time was, someone like you would simply scare them into chaining you to some machine and working you to death in a few weeks. Don’t you think it’s interesting that they took so much time and effort to train you and then threw you into the very midst of their society? Hmm?”

  “Interesting isn’t the word I would have used for it at the time,” he answered dryly.

  “Nevertheless, it’s an intriguing commitment of their resources.”

  “Only four months,” he said, aware that this vague defense was quite damning.

  “But that’s a lot of time to spend on someone who could be put to work in a factory immediately!”

  “They’ve never been known for not wasting time on cruel diversions. Or for efficiency, despite their much vaunted reputation to the contrary. And, in any case,” he added, despite that it contradicted what he had just asserted, “I worked every day of those months in some capacity.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, but that’s neither here nor there—the point is, why train an adult to do a job that a child is so much better suited for? Other than shortages, of course.”

  “They used to use adults all the time.”

  “But they changed that policy in the sixties!”

  “Well, maybe they’re changing it back!” He felt more and more irritated without knowing exactly why. He just felt sure that somehow his character was under attack.

  “That’s exactly my point!”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too tired, but I’m just not following you on this.”

  “What I’m trying to say is, they decided children are the most malleable and therefore the most trustworthy once they’ve been properly trained. Now for decades they use kids—nearly every adult working among them, in their households, I mean, has never known any other life. But suddenly they use adults again. Maybe it’s hard to get enough kids. But then, if there are shortages, why train someone as obviously problematic as you must have been? Someone with your background!”

  “I don’t know.” He worked to keep the anger out of his voice with little success.

  “Oh, just think of it! If they could break somebody like you without physically, or even mentally, destroying you, then what a coup that is! What wonderful proof of their superiority! Somebody as confident as you willing to work obediently among them, not threatening their families, not disrupting their society, not indulging in violent acts!”

  Peter felt his face grow hot with shame: her words provoked a sharp memory of his humiliation in Karl’s study. Why had he given in so easily? But what alternative was there? He looked down at the table, waiting helplessly for her to finish.

  Suddenly a thought occurred to her. “You didn’t, did you?”

  “What?”

  “Commit any violent acts?”

  For a moment he felt like lying, but he was too tired to construct a careful, consistent story, so he finally answered truthfully, “No.”

  “No bullet through your friend’s brain when you left?” Katerina suggested with unappreciated humor.

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “No . . . ?” She drew her finger across her neck and made a noise like a knife slicing through flesh.

  “No.”

  “Whyever not?”

  Why not? More time to escape? Less risk? A commitment to nonviolence? The children? He settled on that.“He was a father.”

  Katerina snorted her disbelief. “That’s just an excuse.”

  Peter looked up at her, but he could not match the intensity of her stare. He looked back down at the table. Could he admit that it had just not occurred to him?

  “What about sabotage?”

  “No.”

  “Vandalism?”

  A smile flitted across his face as he thought of the useless acts of his youth. In all his years with the Reusches and Vogels he had not even defaced one poster! “No,” he admitted quietly, then summoning whatever dignity remained to him, he looked up at Katerina and added, “not unless you count the times I carelessly splattered my blood around.”

  Katerina took the mild reproof as humorous and nodded her approval of his morbid sense of humor. “But seriously, I bet your progress was tracked, from a distance, and every month you functioned as desired, someone congratulated themselves on their methods.”

  “Hurrah for them,” he responded bitterly. It wasn’t enough what he had endured, now Katerina was making him feel as though he had failed to disprove their theories and techniques. But it made some sense. Why hadn’t it occurred to him at any point?

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” Katerina offered.

  “No?”

  “No, really. I just thought you might be interested.”

  “I guess I would be, if it weren’t all so personal.” He remembered his introduction to the Vogel household, remembered Karl assuring Elspeth: He’s quite safe. How had he been so sure? “Maybe later, when I can put some distance between them and me, maybe then I can analyze it all rationally.”

  “Yes, we’d be very interested in your responses. If they’ve become very good at what they do, we need to know. We need to prepare our people.”

  “Yes, I suppose with the manhunts you are
all in danger anytime you enter a town or village,” he said, wondering at the courage of the ones who volunteered to return.

  “Oh, no. Usually we manage to equip everybody with papers making them essential personnel in their locale—so in general, our people don’t get taken. After they’re finished with their jobs or need a break, they just come back here.”

  “Do the ten of you run all this?”

  “Oh, essentially. Political parties and a parliamentary representation were maintained for some years after the Germans invaded, but that was unsustainable. We’ve maintained a political wing with all the trappings of democratic representation so that it will be easier to organize an interim government after liberation, but for the time being, we’re run on military principles and under martial law. The Council gets orders from above, but we run the day-to-day stuff.”

  “Above?”

  “Yes, above—and that’s all you’ll get to know about that.”

  “Fair enough.” He shrugged. He had no interest in probing where he was not wanted. It was one of the hardest things he had had to learn as a young recruit: to dampen his insatiable curiosity. But the lesson had been important and he had learned. In some ways he was astonished that Katerina was so loquacious. He appreciated her answers, but worried slightly that she might be overstepping her authority or the agreed wisdom of the Council. He decided to change the subject to something less dangerous. “Isn’t ten an awkward number? What happens if you get a five-to-five split vote?”

  Katerina laughed; she almost doubled over with mirth at that question. “We don’t get many yes–no type questions,” she finally explained. “I know that yours was that sort . . . well, not really—I’ll tell you all about that sometime—but anyway,usually when we poll ten people, we get twenty different votes! I swear all we do is squabble. No, the vote never splits in half. It’d be a miracle if we ever got five of us to agree on anything!”

  He nodded. Clearly Katerina was prone to exaggeration, and perhaps all that she had told him was colored by an agenda, but he found he liked her, even if, in her abrupt honesty, she was not particularly gentle. He felt tired and his eyes were growing weary, so he decided not to ask any more questions. After they had sat for a moment in silence, Katerina finally told him the point of their return to the library. “Before we finish, I want to show you some documents that we have copies of here. Perhaps you’ve seen them before, perhaps not.”

  She led him over to a volume of Reich documents from 1940 and paged through until she found two separate entries. The first was a set of directives signed by Brauchitsch, the commander in chief of the army at the time, entitled “Orders Concerning the Organization and Function of Military Government in England.” It contained details of the German occupation of Britain. One plan was that “the able-bodied male population between the ages of seventeen and forty-five will . . . be interned and dispatched to the Continent.” That had indeed happened, and many had not returned. During the 1950s the policy had changed, and the internment had metamorphosed into the current six-year labor draft. Other rulings directed how hostages would be taken, how posting placards would be a capital offense, how all but the most mundane household items would be confiscated, and how ownership of a radio would be punishable by death.

  Peter was familiar with most of it: he had read pieces of this and other documents, he had learned the history of his people since the war, and he had experienced the day-to-day occupation of his country all his life. There was little in the plans that had not been implemented in one form or another. He looked up from the entry, curious as to what Katerina expected him to say. While he had been reading, she had pulled down several other volumes and had marked entries in each. She indicated that he should read the second entry that she had selected and refer to the other volumes as necessary, then she sat down to wait as he did so.

  The second selection was a long chapter of excerpts from diaries, logs, lectures, and directives. It told of the German plans for Poland—to convert the entire population into a slave labor colony, to annihilate the nobility, the clergy, the intelligentsia, the military and political leadership, and to exterminate any and all Jews and other “undesirables.” It spoke of how the Poles, bereft of all their leaders, could be forcibly sterilized en masse to prevent procreation and could then be safely worked to a slow collective death as slaves of the Reich. Footnotes, from later dates, sent him to the other volumes for documentation of the occupation and the plan’s implementation: gruesome experiments, enslavement, death camps, mass starvation, slaughter. There were handy charts and detailed numbers. All the sources were German officials who were quite proud of theiraccomplishments, and there were numerous photographs and other proofs that their accounts were valid. The documents were horrific in their cold-bloodedness: there was no expression of dismay, no question about the direction the Reich was taking, only cold, almost gleeful, accounts of human misery.

  After a long while he looked up. “Why did you have me read this?”

  “I imagine that you are familiar with the realities of the first series of documents.”

  He nodded.

  “So you will have an easier time understanding and believing the second set.”

  “I do. But that still doesn’t explain why.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I won’t explain now, because that would be pointless, you are not ready to understand. But someday, remember what you read here. Remember that we, too, have our own sad tales.”

  “You’re being rather patronizing.”

  She smiled. “Perhaps. But now that you have escaped them, you will look for a fairy-tale ending to your suffering. It won’t happen. It never does. And in your frustration, you will look to us to bring your salvation. Do not be surprised when we are unable to deliver.”

  He shook his head. “But you agreed to let me stay here! I don’t need more than that. I won’t expect anything. I’ve never depended on anybody but myself.”

  Katerina looked at him indulgently as though he were a sweet, naive child, but she did not say anything.

  “Is it still going on?” he asked, gesturing toward the words he had read. Anything to stop her from looking at him like that.

  “Some of it—”

  A spasm of pain shot up from his leg through his body and involuntarily he gasped.

  “Are you in pain?” Katerina asked.

  “Not really.”

  “The human body does not bear such abuse well.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  “I seriously doubt that,” she countered coldly. “Although they are less prone to crush bones than they once were . . .”

  He heard the catch in her voice. “Who are you thinking about?” he asked gently.

  Katerina frowned at him as if embarrassed, but her frown gave way to a sad smile and she said, “All these years and still I don’t forget. I was thinking of my sister. She was a courier for the Jewish Underground. She was small and slight and it was easy for her to slip through sewer grates in and out of the ghetto. She was caught by the Gestapo and . . .” Katerina heaved a great sigh. “The last we heard of her, they crushed every bone in her body while interrogating her. Naked, of course. Seems our ‘supermen’ are not above . . . The note smuggled out of the prison told us her arms were broken and the lower half of her body was in shreds.”

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said, feeling utterly helpless.

  “It was a long time ago. As I was saying,” Katerina continued brusquely, “unlike my sister, they did not intend to kill you, but they also had no intention of preserving your health, and consequently, you will be weaker and in pain for the rest of your life. You are, how shall we say, damaged goods? That was, after all, their intent: to make you inferior, so that you would be a suitable slave.”

  He ducked his head, unable to deny the truth in her words.

  “As a bonus, they were able to demonstrate their complete contempt for your life,” Katerina explained into his silence. “From an internal source we
have, I know that the attrition rate in those reeducation programs was around fifty percent. Most of those were simply killed when they were deemed unfit for work.”

  His eyes drifted nervously around the room. One out of every two. He had understood that statistic intuitively at the time, and it was no wonder that he had left their tender mercies and stepped into his new role with the Reusches so full of unnamed and unrecognized fear that he had not ever seriously considered doing anything that might cause him to be sent back.

  “You must have survived,” Katerina continued relentlessly, “not for any reasons of strength or determination, but because you showed sufficient pliancy.”

  “It was an act,” he muttered defensively.

  “Apparently a very good one,” she chuckled. “Anyway, they’ve refined their techniques, thanks to you and your fellows, so that now they claim an eighty percent survival rate. Not bad, eh?”

  “If you were already aware of these reeducation programs, why did you doubt my story?” he asked angrily.

  “It is not your prerogative to question the decisions of the Council,” she answered haughtily. “However, consider this: Was it just coincidence that your owner is highly placed in the Security Ministry? Perhaps he made some sort of deal for your life. You have exhibited an incredible desire to stay alive, and by your own admission you have no loyalties left. No command structure, no loved ones, not even a God that you must answer to.”

  “It’s not like that!” he insisted, but in his mind he heard himself promise: Whatever it takes.

  “Who knows?” Katerina shrugged. “In any case, we have taken an unnecessary risk in allowing you to live. Show some gratitude.”

  “Ah, so I should grovel at your mercy?” he snapped, regretting his words even as he spoke. He was grateful, but she had managed to make him feel that he had only exchanged one form of servitude for another!

  “Your anger is misdirected. It is not our job to rescue you, nor have we ever done you any injury. We owe you nothing. Our rule is, we are not guilty for their actions. And for you, I might add a second rule. You live on sufferance here, and you would do well to remember that.”