The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  His bed was moved and he was loaded into an ambulance of some sort. He realized they were probably moving him to a more secure location. Though they had placed him in a private room with a guard, the hospital was not in a prison and was probably deemed inadequate to their needs. He stirred and a face peered down at him. It looked like Tadek.

  “What happened?” he heard the Tadek look-alike say.

  I’m delirious, he thought. Can I keep my mouth shut, or should I kill myself now? There was still something to live for: Zosia and their unborn child. Revenge. But if he was delirious, could he risk staying alive? His tongue moved to the tooth. Still intact.

  “I think he’s in shock—and he’s feverish,” the Tadek look-alike said to somebody else. “Better unload that tooth.”

  Peter felt someone gently pry open his mouth with a strange little instrument. “Where is it?” he heard an almost panicked voice ask.

  “Oh, yeah, Zosia said it’s not in the usual place—I guess he already had some false teeth. I think she said that one.” The Tadek look-alike poked a finger into his mouth.

  Don’t touch me, he thought and tried to turn his head away. “Hold still!” the other voice commanded angrily as they proceeded to dosomething he could not quite understand. “Got it. That should stop him from doing anything stupid. I swear that stuff causes more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “What happened?” yet another voice asked. It emanated from a third face he did not recognize at all.

  “Peter! Wake up! It’s me, Tadek! Where is Joanna?” A hand smacked his face gently.

  Peter looked at the Tadek look-alike. What a stupid question for an interrogatorto ask! Well, if he did not know what had happened, there was no harm in telling him that. “She’s dead,” he croaked. “Strangled.”

  “Oh, God!” Tadek moaned. He turned to his companions. “I’ll stay with him, you two go and find out if there’s any truth to what he said. Maybe he’s mistaken. It should be easy enough to find out, somebody will be talking about it, I’m sure.” Tadek was ready to have the ambulance pull over to let his companions out, but then decided to see if Peter could assist them further.

  “Where did this happen?”

  Peter blinked and looked at him. It was beginning to feel like reality. Was it really Tadek? How did the impostor know Tadek’s name? Had he already betrayed them all? Again though, there seemed no reason not to answer his question. “In a cellar. In a town house about a kilometer from the hospital—toward the train station, I think.”

  “I think I know where that is,” one of the other two said. “They have that whole block near the market square converted to cells.”

  Tadek nodded grimly. “Okay, see what you can learn.” He turned to Peter and, stroking the sweat from his forehead, said softly, “Don’t worry, you’ll be okay. You’re safe now.”

  Peter remained in their farmhouse for a day and then they moved him to the encampment. He was recovered enough to be aware of what was happening, but he did not react to the events around him, preferring instead to withdraw into his illness. At Szaflary, he was placed in the infirmary for observation; people came and went, discussions were carried out over him as though he were insentient, and effectively, he was.

  He heard a male voice, one he did not immediately recognize, asking, “Will he make it?”

  “We think so,” Marysia’s voice answered out of the haze.

  “And it has been confirmed about Joanna?”

  “Yes. There’s confirmation,” Marysia replied sadly.

  Peter felt his own overwhelming sadness blur the words into undifferentiated tears. He turned to listen closer, but when he moved his head, the burning heat of the flames seared him and he had to duck back into the pool of tears and view the world through their murky waters.

  “Dad?”

  He shook off the last of his sleep haze.

  As he opened his eyes, Joanna peered at him with a look of concern. “Are you okay?”

  “What are you doing here, sweetie?” he asked, aware that his words sounded muffled. Maybe it was the noise of the flames. He should bank the ashes for the night. Had anyone done that?

  “They said you were sick. Are you okay?”

  “I have a fever, I guess.” Why did her face keep shifting like that? “I thought I lost you.”

  “No, it was just one of your nightmares.” Joanna absently plucked some ashes off her sleeves.

  “Oh, just a nightmare. Of course, I have lots of them,” he responded, relieved. He thought he had lost her! He had thought she was dead! Killed! What a relief. He decided not to tell her just how awful the nightmare had been, she might take fright. The flames roared in his ears. He could hardly hear what Joanna was saying. She looked happy, bouncing up and down across the room. Then she decided to fly and swooped low over him, up to the ceiling and back down again. “Where are your wings?” he asked, surprised she could fly without them.

  “Oh, they got dirty, so I took them off.” Joanna swooped past him again, then settled on the chandelier overhead. The flames from the candles leapt around her. He shook his head in confusion. Something was wrong—she didn’t know how to fly without her wings! He struggled to ignore his confusion; deep down he knew what would happen if he pursued his doubts.

  Instead, he turned away to tend the fire. They were running low on fuel. Somebody threw a log in, but the log was moving. He looked at it and realized it was his mother. Then his father fell in as well. He reached for them but the flames beat him back. “More fuel!” somebody shouted, and he saw Allison and Terry and Geoff and his other friends dumped in. Then Adam.

  “That looks fun!” Joanna declared, and leapt into the flames.

  “No!” he screamed, and leapt in after her. “Come back!” he howled as the fire burned his flesh and his skin turned molten and slid off his bones. “Come back,” he moaned.

  Marysia mopped his forehead. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”

  After a while it was decided that he could rest in his own rooms more easily. Zosia tended to him, and Marysia, and Joanna’s teacher, Basia, and others. They placed cold cloths on his forehead, washed him, treated his injuries. As he showed signs of recuperation, they read to him and kept his mind occupied with trivialities. No one discussed what had happened, no one asked, not even Zosia.

  She chose to read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair to him and spent long hours narrating the amusing and irrelevant story. Once she was done with that, she tried Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz, but he shook his head in incomprehension too often,and she finally decided it was too difficult. As she put the book down by the bedside, she looked into his eyes and decided he was well enough to talk.

  “They’ve learned Joanna is dead,” she said, her voice distant and detached. “Did you know that?”

  He nodded.

  “They said you witnessed it,” she stated calmly.

  He nodded again.

  “Do you know why they killed her?” she asked gently.

  He closed his eyes and nodded.

  “What happened, Peter?”

  He took a deep breath, and keeping his eyes closed so that he would not be distracted by her reaction, he said, “They strangled her in front of me, to punish me for my interviews in America.”

  He kept his eyes shut waiting for her next question, but there was silence. Finally he opened his eyes, but she had left the room. He cried out, “Zosia?” but there was no answer. Calling out her name repeatedly, he climbed to his feet and staggered into the living room, but she was not there either. He was too exhausted to continue farther, and he sat on the couch and buried his face in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably. Marysia found him there and walked him back to his bed.

  “Where’s Zosia?” he asked as the room spun around him.

  “She went into the forest to mourn her daughter. She stopped on her way out to ask me to come and see to you.”

  “Why did she leave me like that?”

  “Maybe she needed th
e privacy, or maybe she went to find someone who could console her.”

  7

  THE MEMORIAL SERVICE was held the following day, when Peter was well enough to walk. Olek and Tadek supported him as they progressed slowly through the woods to the sight of Adam’s gravestone. The day was beautiful— crisp and clear—the sort of day Joanna loved.

  Peter did not join in as they said the requiem mass—he had never bothered to learn the words. Usually he stood aloof and remained respectfully silent or, some might say, cynically observant, as they carried out their rituals. This time he stood beneath the branches of the pine with Zosia at his side, with Olek ready to offer an arm if he needed it. He stood and listened to the alien words, to the mournful chants, and wished that he could believe in soaring spirits. Dona eis requiem, they pleaded. Grant them rest.

  The wind rustled the needles of the pine, a few drifted down to the ground. The simple white stone, devoid of any inscription, was placed next to Adam’s. Peter heard Zosia sob next to him. He wanted to reach for her, but he was afraid she would reject him, would push him away as the one who had failed to save Joanna.

  The accusations he had hurled at himself ever since the explosion played through his mind. Why had he insisted on going into town alone? Why had he let them see he recognized Joanna? Why couldn’t he come up with a better explanation for her presence? Why did they have to go down that street then? Why didn’t they leave town earlier? Why hadn’t he told her to run the moment he had realized what had happened? Why did he ever walk out of that party? How could he have been so careless as to be photographed with her? Why didn’t he send her back inside the moment she had appeared on the steps? How could he have spoken so freely in the NAU? He knew what they were like, did he really expect they would ignore his words, let him live in peace after what he had said? Why did he come back?

  He should never have come to Szaflary in the first place, he should have stayed where he belonged—at Elspeth’s side, serving her needs. He should have killed himself immediately upon realizing he had been captured. Or during those few seconds between their telling him what they were going to do and their doing it. If he had committed suicide, maybe, just maybe, they would have spared Joanna. They might have used her as a hostage; she could have been ransomed. He could not get around the thought that it was his life that had cost her hers. If he had never met her, she would still be alive, still reading her books and singing her songs. It had been his responsibility to see Joanna safely in and out of the town, and he had failed. It had been his bold words on camera that had provoked their revenge. It had been his . . .

  He stopped. Such thoughts were useless and with them one could go insane. There was always risk, there was always a possibility of doing something wrong. There was also the possibility that he had unknowingly saved her life a year ago and gained a year of happiness that they might not otherwise have had. Who knew what the future might have held if he had done things differently. There was, he knew, no point in berating himself. They had murdered her to punish him, and the more he fixated on his own actions, the more successful they were. They had murdered her because that was their way—they were the killers, it was not his fault, even if he had made a mistake or been careless. He could not have been expected to have foreseen the sequence of events that led to her death.

  Yet, the rational argument carried little weight in his mind, and even as he mentally looked around for other possible culprits, he knew that the others, Zosia in particular, would be thinking the same thing about him. How could he reach out to her when she might think it was all his fault? She must certainly blame him! It was not fair, they were at fault, too! Why had Alex insisted hecome to the NAU? Why didn’t Alex realize what it would mean? Why hadn’t Anna insisted that Joanna stay safely indoors at that party? Or better yet, not even go? Why did Zosia let him go into town alone? Why couldn’t the Szaflary Council control the terrorists who had exploded the bomb? Why didn’t they warn him that the situation was so unstable? Why wasn’t Tadek there earlier, before they had a chance to kill her? What had taken them so long? It was their fault—they were the ones who had raised her to be an enemy of the state, who hadn’t supplied her with a safe identity. It was Zosia who was the assassin, who continued to fight the government when she could retire to the countryside and live a life of relative security. Why did she even have a child if she wasn’t prepared to give up the fight to take care of her? Why had she ever let Joanna out of her sight?

  Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy, they begged repeatedly. Yes, someone have mercy. Someone.

  When they all went down on their knees, he knelt as well and prayed to whoever might hear him to take care of his little girl. His beautiful Joanna. He begged Adam’s forgiveness for his failure to protect her, he asked Allison to watch over her for him, he looked to his parents to sing her to sleep. Long after the others had returned to their feet, he remained kneeling, his fists pressed to his mouth to stifle his sobs. Oh, little girl! Oh, sweet, precious, lively, intelligent, happy little girl! What have we done?

  The children, her school friends, gathered into a group and sang a special song they had composed for her. Peter could not move, he could not raise himself to his feet. The tears blurred their faces, and their words were drowned out by the throbbing in his ears. He heard the melody through the ocean of sorrow that washed over him. Salt water and waves of sadness.

  “Captain?” He looked up to see Olek squatting down next to him. “It’s over, sir. Shall we go?”

  Peter was still on his knees, the crowd was drifting away. Barbara stood next to Olek. Marysia stood behind them looking at him rather strangely. “Where’s Zosia?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “She’s with Tadek,” Marysia answered. There were tears in her voice, and her face was red as though she had been crying.“Go to her, she needs you,” she added softly.

  With Tadek?

  Marysia extended her hand, encouraging him to stand. Once he was on his feet, she said, “I know they’ve done something terrible to you; I know you will need time to heal. But you don’t have that time right now. Go to Zosia, you two should be together.”

  “Why would she want to talk to me?” he asked forlornly. “She must think it’s my fault, she must blame me.” His own vicious thoughts trying to lay the guilt on Zosia’s shoulders ran confusingly through his mind. How could he have thought such things! He felt ashamed.

  “She’s smarter than that. She needs you, Peter! She’s lost her daughter—you should be with her. Go to her,” Marysia insisted.

  “It’s her daughter, sir,” Barbara said.

  Her daughter? Even Barbara could see what he had blindly missed!

  Zosia’s daughter! Nine months in her womb—a heartbeat, kicks, hiccups under the ribs. Nine months, day and night—there inside of her, a part of her. Then birth: the contractions, the pain, the struggle; a tiny wrinkled newborn, eyes squeezed shut, sleepy and afraid—a newcomer into a cold, bitter world. A baby, playing with her toes, batting at toys, sucking milk. A year at Zosia’s breast, sleepless nights, a tiny bundle to hold. Crawling, exploring, the first step, the first word. Sentences and giggling and running in circles around trees.

  Zosia’s daughter. The death of a father, holding Joanna close at night so that she would not be afraid, hiding her own tears to keep from breaking Joanna’s heart. None of these things had he seen or been there for. Joanna had sprung into his life three years old—full of happiness and confidence and love. Things she had received from her mother; things that he had never fully credited Zosia with giving Joanna simply because Zosia had never trumpeted her own role in her daughter’s happiness.

  Joanna had adopted him and made him feel at home, she had loved him and trusted him because she understood love and trust. She was confident and independent because her mother had taught her confidence and independence. She shared what her mother had already given her, and all he had done was congratulate himself on how well he had behaved as a f
ather. He had loved her as his own daughter, but that was only possible because Zosia had made room for him. She had not been jealous, she had not competed for her daughter’s attention, she had even let herself be excluded a bit in order to cement his own position in the family. She had shared her most precious treasure with him: Joanna’s love.

  That wonderful little girl! And now they had lost her, and all he had thought about was his own pain. He was so used to being tormented in his own private hell, so used to the idea that those around him inflicted or enjoyed his pain, that he had never once thought of all the people who were this time suffering with him. Joanna: Zosia’s daughter, Marysia’s granddaughter, Olek’s cousin, Tadek’s goddaughter, Basia’s pupil, Adam’s only heir.

  Stung by Barbara’s gentle rebuke, he looked around the dispersing crowd. In the distance, under some trees, he saw Tadek with his arms around Zosia; her head was buried in his shoulder. Peter walked unsteadily in her direction.

  Tadek saw him approach, gave him a long look as if deciding what to do. When Peter came close, he bent his head and whispered to Zosia, “Your husband’s here,” and tried to gently detach her from his chest.

  She tightened her grip and between sobs, stammered, “I can’t . . . Not now. Please . . .”

  Unbeknownst to Zosia, Peter was already close enough to hear her response and he felt ashamed. He wanted to retreat, but a desperate, almost angry gesturefrom Tadek told him to stay put. Tadek whispered something to Zosia that Peter could not hear. She released her grip and pulled back enough to nod at Tadek, then she turned toward Peter. Tadek’s hands dropped from her shoulders, and he walked away while the two contemplated each other in silence.

  “Hi,” Peter said softly.

  “Hi,” Zosia replied unsteadily.

  He offered his hand to her and she reached out to him and clasped it. Both of them were shaking. He wanted to apologize, beg her forgiveness, explain what had happened, but he realized that she did not need to hear about his feelings or fears at that moment. She did not need an apology for that would only provoke an analysis of his sense of guilt. It was not about him; it was about Joanna. “She was a marvelous little girl,” he said.