The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  “I have a lot to do today.”

  “So do I,” Joanna said as she slipped past her mother into the kitchen. She greeted her father with a quick kiss, grabbed some bread and a slice of cheese, and headed for the door. “My class is going out on a morning excursion!” she explained as she waved good-bye.

  Both Zosia and Peter laughed. “My God, but she’s growing up fast,” he commented.

  “So busy!” Zosia agreed.

  “Well, that makes two of you,” he said, wishing she would take more time off. She really needed her rest. He had done everything he could; it was up to her to work the miracles from now on, and she just worked too much, ate irregularly, and there was too much stress in her life. “Anything happening today?”

  “Not really. I did talk to Ryszard yesterday.”

  “Any news?” Peter got up to put the kettle on for some tea.

  “Just a bit of gossip. I found out something about your friend Karl.”

  “What?” he asked, wondering momentarily what Karl would think of being referred to as his friend. He would probably be horrified.

  “He’s had another kid since you left. Or, I suppose, his wife has.”

  Peter spun around in surprise. “What! That’s impossible! Are you sure it’s not an adoption?”

  “No—clearly a birth. At least from what Ryszard heard. But why’s it so impossible? She’s young enough.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he responded with a little more control.

  “Well, I was curious so I checked. She’s only forty. She had Uwe quite young, just after her marriage, in fact.”

  “But she had her menopause years ago. She told me Gisela was definitely her last,” he replied casually.

  Zosia looked at him as if wondering something, but said, “Well, how old was Gisela?”

  “Eight when I left.”

  “Hmm. Maybe she simply meant that she intended Gisela to be her last.”

  “No. She said she couldn’t have any more. She lied,” he said as though it surprised him.

  Zosia tilted her head. “So?”

  “She lied. Outright lied,” he repeated despite himself.

  “Why were you even discussing it?”

  He hesitated, turned to put the tea into the teapot. “No reason,” he said, his back to her.

  Zosia disappeared into the bedroom to get dressed, but called out, “Well, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t know anyway. I mean, you did all their laundry and cleaned all the garbage, didn’t you?”

  “You know I did,” he answered, trying not to sound bitter. He hated when she mentioned things like that—her words always had a patina of disgust.

  “Then you could not have missed when she had her periods.”

  “I did. I guess she was discreet,” he replied, as he painstakingly wrapped the tea back up. “At times she was a very private person. Anyway, they have these little disposable things—tampons I guess they’re called. I gather Teresa and Ulrike used them and just flushed them away; maybe Elspeth did the same.”

  “Really?” Zosia said, amazed. “I never saw anything like that in Göringstadt.”

  “Maybe you should ask Kasia about it. They’re imported and I guess they’re at least available in Berlin.”

  “That would make life a bit easier, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, especially for whoever does the laundry around here.”

  “Oh, I do my share!” Zosia protested as she reemerged from the bedroom.

  He turned to look at her, not even bothering to show disbelief.

  “Well, I’m busy! Damn it, I hold down three jobs!”

  “Yes, I know you are. And you know I wish you would cut back on what you do, at least now,” he said gently. At least they had managed to change the subject.

  “I’ll think about it. But I really must dash. See you later!”

  With that she left, but he noticed that she turned to the right, toward Communications, rather than toward the meeting room.

  Once she was gone, he poured himself another drink and sat at the table staringmiserably at the amber fluid. Elspeth had lied. Outright lied. Clearly it had been for a reason. The only question was, how old was the child?

  He sipped the whiskey, letting his mind wander back to those days. Did he even recognize that man? Could he really have been like that?

  “I got you something,” Elspeth had said as she dropped her packages onto the table in the hall. She selected one of the parcels and handed it to him.

  He opened it and looked at the contents. Leather work gloves.

  “Your hands are rough.”

  He nodded, studying the gloves as though they were incomprehensible. Work gloves.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Am I permitted to wear these?” He fingered the leather absently.

  “Of course!”

  Of course. His hands were too rough for her, so he could wear gloves when he worked. It was permitted. There was no law against his wearing gloves. There was no law! Yet they had let him burn his hands on those chemicals for months.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Elspeth asked, quite angry. “You should say thank you!”

  “Of course, gnädige Frau,” he responded from habit.“Thank you, gnädige Frau.”

  “No, come upstairs and thank me properly.”

  He carefully set the gloves back on the table. “It will be my pleasure, Gnädigste.”

  His pleasure. Such lies! He brought his hand to his mouth, nearly sick with the thought of what he had said and done. How long had they done it? More than three months. More than three months. Nearly every day until he left. Without protection. They did not need it, she had said, she was past her childbearing years. Well past.

  There had been a pattern to it all, he could see that now. They had had sex, or rather she had had sex nearly every day, sometimes twice in a day. She paid him enough attention, was sufficiently patient for him to grow excited and erect so that he could serve her needs, but he rarely came. His exhaustion and incessant pain and fear made it physically difficult, the remnants of his pride and dignity argued against participating in such sham pleasure, and she rarely bothered to give him the time to overcome these obstacles. Her efforts were diverted to directing him how best to please her, and as soon as she was satisfied, she pushed him away, leaving him stranded to cope, on his own, with whatever emotions and physical desires had been ignited.

  Then, overnight, it had all changed. She had grown solicitous, friendly even. She had treated him with some dignity and respect, even when they were not in bed together. She showered him with little gifts, food, and kind words. His workload eased; pointless jobs that he had done for years suddenly became unnecessary. He had thought that perhaps she had finally learned to view him as a fellow human being and to like him for who he was, not for what he could do for her. She had given him time and encouragement and tenderness in bed, and he had responded to his newfound humanity by coming time and again, day after day. The frustrations of the prior weeks only served to ignite his passion, and he had responded like a well-trained dog to her commands.

  Just as it had begun, it had all stopped. If he had not been drugged by despair, it would have been obvious that he had clearly served his purpose, and that he had simply been demoted back to his natural, inferior status. For that week and some, he had been completely and blatantly used, and he had been utterly blind to that fact. The next month the pattern had repeated itself, and yet, he hadblamed it on her moods without giving it any further thought. And now there was a child.

  He groaned and buried his head in his hands.

  Zosia returned while he was still sitting at the table. “Peter,” she called out rather brusquely.

  He looked up at her, saw that she was only barely managing to contain her fury.

  “Is there something you’d like to tell me? You know, your wife, your close comrade, the mother of your child?”

  He turned away to rub his face with his hands so she could not see his expres
sion and shook his head slightly.

  “I went back and checked,” she said coldly, “after that little discussion about Elspeth’s fertility. Do you know what I learned?”

  He shook his head again.

  “The babe is a year old next month. That means Elspeth was pregnant when you left. Two or three weeks gone, I’d guess. Did you know that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is that why you left?”

  He shook his head.“No. I didn’t know.”

  “How could you?”

  “I didn’t know!” He had never meant to abandon his child!

  That was not Zosia’s meaning. “How could you sleep with her?”

  Oh, there was that, too. He should have told her long ago; now it was too late to explain. All he could say was, “You weren’t there, Zosiu, you can’t know what it was like.”

  “But I do know what collaboration is like!” she said coldly. The accusation did not surprise him. It was exactly what he had expected and exactly the reason why he had not told her earlier. Quietly he asserted, “I wasn’t collaborating.”

  She was unconvinced. “You slept with the woman!” she yelled. “You can’t claim she raped you, not like . . . Or was that voluntary, too?”

  “Zosiu!”

  “Do you just throw yourself at any of the master race who deigns to want you?”

  “Please, enough!”

  “Did she enjoy you? Did you like pleasing her?”

  “I don’t need to hear this.” He went toward the door, but she did not move out of his way.

  “Do you enjoy pleasing your masters?” she taunted, blocking his path.

  “Get out of my way,” he said, his voice low and threatening.

  “Does it give you a thrill to be with these superhumans?”

  “Move!” he ordered furiously. Still, he hesitated to push her; he felt far too violent to trust himself.

  She raised her hand. For some reason he was sure she was going to slap him, and without thinking he grabbed her wrist and wrenched her hand back down. “No!” he shouted. “Don’t you ever do that!”

  “Oh, so only your masters can hit you,” she hissed angrily, pulling her hand out of his grasp and rubbing her wrist. “You needn’t have worried, I wasn’t going to touch you. I’m not like your precious Elspeth. Or your superhuman Kommandant.”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “No.” She glared at him.

  For a brief moment he contemplated simply lifting her out of the way, but she would fight him and he might hurt her accidentally, and there was no telling what she might do to him in her fury. He turned back into the room and returned to the table to stare at the unfinished whiskey.

  “Did you enjoy being slapped around by them?” Zosia sneered.

  “Please . . .”

  “How did you do it? Did they punch and kick you to get you excited? Or did they do that afterwards as a reward?”

  “Stop it,” he whispered, trying to remain calm. “How could you have sex with one of them!”

  “I had to.”

  “Had to?” she nearly screamed. “Had to? You—” She choked on her words, then spat out angrily, “Collaborator!”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he said bitterly. But how could he explain? “What was it like?”

  He looked up at her deciding whether he should answer. How could he justify himself? Why should he have to? He looked into those angry eyes, searched for even a hint of jealousy. There was none. “You could at least pretend to be jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of what?” she asked, truly confused.

  “Never mind.”

  “Why did you do it? What, in God’s name, did you get out of it?”

  The question sounded genuine. What did he get out of it? “A bit of peace,” he stated dryly.

  “But you didn’t have to do it!”

  “I really had no choice.” He tried to recall his state of mind at the time, but it was too hard to remember, much less explain.

  “Men always have a choice! No one can force a man to get an erection! Certainly you didn’t have to come with her!”

  “No, but she would have made my life miserable if I hadn’t shown that I wanted her.”

  “I thought your life was already miserable!”

  “Even more so.”

  “But it was—is—completely illegal. She could hardly have turned you in or complained to Karl if you refused.”

  “She had other powers, Zosiu. She had the power to make my life a living hell. As it was, I gained a few things instead.”

  “Like what?” Zosia scoffed.

  “Some better food. An occasional hot shower. Less punishment.” A pair of work gloves.

  “Oh, so after your performance, what did she do, pop a bit of sausage in your mouth and say, ‘Good boy’?”

  “Something like that,” he answered caustically.

  “Ooh—you do sell yourself cheap!”

  “It was the only price I could get,” he hissed angrily.

  “That’s it? That’s your entire reason for sleeping with the enemy?”

  “And I had a bit of human contact.”

  “You call that human contact?”

  “I did then. I was so lonely . . .” he began, but Zosia’s look of contemptuous disbelief stopped him. He was infuriated and a torrent of words exploded from him. “It’s so damn easy for you, isn’t it! Judging everyone from your ivory bunker here! You’ve never experienced any of the things you so thoroughly loathe. You have no idea what you ask of others! You just throw that word collaborator around as a catchall condemnation with absolutely no idea what you’re saying! You’re despicable.”

  “And you’re a collaborator!”

  “And you’re a murderer—better to fuck than to kill!”

  “Those are judicial executions!”

  “What about the hostages? You cause them to die!”

  “If we give in to blackmail, we’re doomed. You know that!”

  “But it’s always someone else who suffers, isn’t it? When have any of your precious family or friends been put on a hostage list?”

  “We protect our own,” she replied evenly.

  “And I protected myself!” he yelled in reply.

  “By collaborating! You didn’t have to do it—you know the difference!” She sounded exasperated by his inane comparisons.

  “All I know is I didn’t cause anyone’s death by sleeping with Elspeth.”

  “Yeah, that’s you all right, just lie there and take it.” Zosia’s voice had dropped to a low hiss. “Let others do the dirty work so you can maintain your pristine martyr complex! Pick up a gun and fight, damn it! There’s a war on! But, no, you prefer to be beaten and fucked by your master race! You enjoyed it!”

  “And you murder people and sit in judgment of me!”

  “At least I don’t—” She stopped abruptly.

  “What don’t you?” he asked, sufficiently furious that he did not care what she said.

  “Nothing.”

  “What!”

  “I said—nothing!” Zosia clamped her mouth shut as if physically fightingback her words. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. The whole corridor must have heard them—just as well they had argued in English. She came over to the table, stood on the opposite side from him. In a measured voice she asked, “What about the child?”

  “What about it?” he said wearily.

  “Is it yours?”

  “I suppose so. I can’t imagine any other reason for her behavior.” He remembered how Elspeth had always stared at him as if determining his suitability for breeding purposes.

  “Would you have stayed if you had known?” Zosia interrupted his thoughts.

  He nodded. “I would have had to; I couldn’t abandon my child into that world.”

  “You would have been its slave.”

  “I know.” He picked up the glass of whiskey, swirled the liquid around. “But I couldn’t have abandoned my child into their hands
. Not after what I had seen. Maybe when it was old enough, I would have taken it with me.”

  “You wouldn’t have done that. You knew it was almost certain death.”

  “I know.”

  “And you would not have been able to tell it who you were. That would have been too dangerous for the child.”

  “I know.”

  “But you would have stayed anyway?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “So I could be there. Try to have some influence. Try to . . . Oh, I don’t know.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you sacrifice everything for Elspeth’s kid?”

  “It would have been my child, too.” He set the glass back down without drinking anything.

  “Why do men think that one sperm makes a kid theirs? If you couldn’t raise it as a father, how could you think of it as yours?”

  “I just would have.”

  “This baby isn’t yours, Peter. You contributed one minute of your time to its creation. You were duped. You shouldn’t feel any loyalty to it.”

  “Obviously many men would agree with you. They’ll happily walk away from their ‘one minute’s contribution.’ I can’t do that, Zosia. I’m not like that.”

  “So you would have stayed and served the family loyally just so you could be there for the child, just so that one day the kid could spit in your face.”

  “I would have stayed. I don’t know what else would have happened.”

  “You would never have left,” Zosia said rather sadly.

  “Probably not.” He pushed his glass around the table absentmindedly. “You’re right, I was fairly sure I was committing suicide, and Elspeth’s pregnancy would have tipped the balance the other way. It would probably have been enough to chain me there until I died.”

  They paused, both exhausted by the argument, by the emotions they had released like nuclear weapons on each other.

  “Would you like some whiskey?” he finally asked.

  “Yeah. I’ll get it.” Zosia went to the cupboard, poured herself a small amount, and added a bit to his glass. She stood next to him, lifted her glass. “Here’s to your fatherhood.”