The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  There was a light knock on the door, and she closed the lid of the jewelry box and returned to the living room. Marysia stepped into the room unbidden. Zosia quickly wiped at the tears in her eyes and smiled at Marysia.

  Marysia did not smile back. She stared down at Zosia’s hand. “You didn’t lose much time removing your ring, did you?” she noted.

  Zosia glanced down at her hand and then back at Marysia. Shrugging, she replied, “It was bothering me.”

  “What was that all about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you had enough, Zosia?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That ‘I love you.’ What was that for? You’ve never loved him—why not let him leave in peace?”

  “I thought he’d like to hear it.”

  “You thought you’d like to keep a hook in him so that you can draw him back whenever it suits your fancy!” Marysia accused. “For Christ’s sake, Zosia, haven’t you bled him dry? You got what you wanted out of him! Why couldn’t you let him go? He’d have had a chance in England, with Barbara, she’d have been there for him! Now, he’ll never take it—he’ll keep remembering that you said you loved him!”

  “Oh, he’d have come back no matter what I said. He wouldn’t abandon the child.”

  Marysia sighed. “I suppose you’re right.” She walked over to the couch and sat down heavily. “But what are you doing, Zosia? What have you become? Where is the sweet little girl who loved Adam?”

  “Still in love with him.” Zosia sat down as well.

  “Does that give you the right to abuse others?”

  “I’ve been kind to Peter. Look, he freely admits that most of the problems we have are his fault.”

  “And you freely accept that. How very fair of you.”

  “He’s too needy to ever be there for me. I treat him fairly, considering how little-I get out of the relationship.”

  “Oh, Zosia! You’re beginning to believe your own propaganda! Just think what he’s done for you! If only you would open yourself to accepting—”

  “Oh, get real. He couldn’t even comfort me at the funeral!”

  “Comfort you? He was the one injured in the bomb blast, he was the one who was arrested and stabbed and forced to watch Joanna’s murder!”

  “My daughter!”

  “His daughter, too! For Christ’s sake—they did it to hurt him! Are you in collusion with them?”

  “Marysia!”

  “He’s barely recovered from his wounds and a deadly infection, we pull him out of a sickbed and drag him to the funeral, and where are you? Holding on to Tadek!” Marysia spat. “Your husband was nearly murdered and you publicly cling to your lover!”

  “He’s not my lover.”

  “And I bet,” Marysia added bitterly, “he apologized for not being there for you.”

  “Marysia,” Zosia begged, “have some mercy. I’ve lost Joanna—”

  “And I bet,” Marysia continued, “that you let him take the blame for that as well.”

  “He was the one who had to insist on going into town with her.”

  “Who insisted that it was important for him to go into town regularly? Who dragged him out of the encampment when he didn’t want to go?”

  “That was ages ago! He didn’t have to go into town once he got back from America!”

  “He didn’t know you were done with him!” Marysia hissed. “How was he to know he had served his purpose?”

  “He got Joanna killed!”

  “And why was she killed?”

  “To punish him for speaking out in America,” Zosia answered, exasperated.

  “And who insisted that he speak? Who gave him no choice about the matter?”

  Zosia shook her head, refusing to be drawn in.

  “And how did they identify him once he fell victim to the bomb blast?”

  Zosia didn’t answer.

  “His numbers, wasn’t it? Who insisted that he not spend a penny of the money he raised on himself? Who said it was too expensive and pointless looking into having those numbers removed?”

  “He didn’t have to go into town!”

  “And who insisted that she just had to return here?”

  “He could have stayed in America, if he had wanted.”

  “You knew that he couldn’t stay, not if you returned. Oh, Zosia, you never once thought of what your brilliant strategy was doing to him.”

  Zosia rolled her eyes. “I happen to remember that you were a party to all these decisions, a long time ago. You thought it was a good idea then, now you’re suddenly shocked by what it involved?”

  “No, I’m shocked by what you’ve become. You’re trying to be as cold-blooded as Ryszard, but that’s not you, honey. And in compensation, you’re being cruel.”

  “I’ve not been cruel!” Zosia protested. “I saved a man’s life, I gave him a home, and I provided him with a family and some sense of stability.”

  “You told him you loved him, and then you ruthlessly rejected every opportunity he gave you to make that true. You let him think he was unlovable, that he had somehow failed you, and you let him take the blame for everything that went wrong after that point. You complained that he was never there for you, but you never let him close. You manipulated his actions, using his gratitude like some sort of cattle prod, and his love for you as a chain around his neck.”

  “He didn’t need to fall in love. That was his choice.”

  “You took advantage of someone who was vulnerable, and you haven’t stopped. Jesus Christ! At least Elspeth Vogel would have called it by its real name!”

  “Marysia, you’ve said quite enough!” Zosia stood. She was trembling with anger and her hand shook as she pointed at the door. “Get out!”

  Marysia stood as well. “And what have you done it for? Cold-blooded professionalism? The cause? Honoring Adam’s memory?” She shook her head. “I don’t want my son honored in this fashion. And I wonder at a cause that would turn the kind woman that I knew into this monstrous being.”

  “I said, get out!”

  Marysia did not leave. “Zosia, we have all given away a part of our humanity in order to continue this fight—that’s the price we must pay. But don’t give away the ability to love.” Marysia reached up to try to stroke Zosia’s cheek, but Zosia angrily pushed her hand away.

  “I am not going to fall in love again,” Zosia hissed. “I will not be hurt again! Damn it, if I choose to organize a propaganda campaign and have to convince the speaker to take part, then I hardly think I should be condemned as monstrous! And if I make a mistake and marry someone I shouldn’t have, I refuse to be vilified for the rest of my life because of that!”

  “If you feel that way, then why not let him go? With your three little words, you’ve destroyed his chance for freedom.”

  Zosia swallowed, unable to answer the question. Why had she said those words?

  “It’s not wrong to love someone, Zosia. Not even your husband. Why not give him a chance?”

  Zosia shook her head. “It would never work.”

  “Have you ever tried?”

  “Please leave, Marysia.” Zosia gently grabbed Marysia’s arm and led her to the door. “I need to be alone.”

  She saw Marysia out the door and closed it tightly behind her. Then Zosia turned back and surveyed her living room, seeking the comfort of the familiar as Marysia’s wild accusations reverberated through her mind. Only then did she notice the small vase of wildflowers. They were freshly picked; Peter must have collected them early in the morning and left them for her. There was no note, no promises, no pleas—just the flowers that he knew she so loved. She knelt then, knelt to pray as she had not done since Adam had died, but no words came to mind: the years of inattention had left her barren of comfort. She began to cry in earnest then.

  15

  “IWONDER WHY JÄGER?” Barbara asked as they stood alone on the deck of the ferry. “I mean, Niklaus is obvious, but I wonder why they
chose Jäger for our last name.”

  “I think it’s their idea of a joke. A play on my last name,” Peter replied, staring off across the water. He could not help but think how much Joanna would have enjoyed the ferry crossing. The wind carrying the taste of salt, the untrammeled view to the horizon . . . She had so loved taking that cruise around the island of Manhattan with Zosia. They had been careful then, he had not gone along in case there was any media attention, but Joanna had filled him in on all the details.

  “Halifax?” Barbara repeated a bit more loudly, thinking that the wind must have swallowed her words.

  “Chase,” Peter responded. “The English verb chase can be translated to the German jagen. Get it?”

  “Oh. Jäger, hunter; chaser, Chase. I see.” Barbara wrinkled her nose in annoyance at her tenuous command of English. “Don’t you think it’s dangerous using such a name?”

  “No . . . or maybe, or I don’t know.” It was hard to care. Mistakes were so inevitable that it seemed that only luck kept them alive in any case. Would it have hurt less if Joanna had been killed by the bomb blast? Or by a car accident? Or by disease, like Anna? She would still be dead, the only difference is he would have been unaware of that surveillance photo. They could have pulled it off; she had been so convincing! But for that photo, she might still be alive.

  Barbara huddled closer to him and he put his arm around her. It was cold out in the bitter sea breeze, and even the bright sunshine could not warm them, but the air felt fresh and they both preferred shivering in the wind to the crowded and unprivate atmosphere below.

  As they stood and gazed in silence, the nebulous shadows on the horizon became recognizable as the white chalk cliffs of Dover. He pointed them out to Barbara.

  “I know,” she said without thinking. “I’ve been watching them for ages.”

  “Oh.” He suddenly felt foolish. He fumbled in his coat and located his new sunglasses. He held them a moment trying to convince himself that they were not ominous, but as he brought them toward his face, he could feel the knife tracing a pattern over his eyes, and he decided to put them back in his pocket and settle for squinting. As he let his eyes relax again, the cliffs slipped back into unfocused possibilities, and his thoughts turned to his last words to Zosia. He should have said something more profound or more conciliatory. The problem was, each time he thought about it, he thought of something different he should have said. Her declaration of love had surprised him—perhaps he should have told her he loved her as well. It would have been a lot better than what he had said. If he was killed, would she raise their child knowing that the last thing he had said to her was so stupid?

  “You don’t have to wear that just because we’re posing as married,” Barbara said, pointing to the ring that he was twisting round and round his finger. “German men often don’t.”

  He stopped fidgeting with it. “I know,” he responded absently. After a moment he added, “I want to.”

  Several hours later their train was speeding through the Kentish countryside and they both watched the view in fascination. Barbara had never been to England, but he was equally unfamiliar with most of his country. He had in his life only ever been outside the Greater London Administrative District—GLAD, in its ludicrous English acronym—on six occasions, only three of which hadbeen legal, and none of those journeys had taken him southward except the oneway trip he had made in a closed and windowless carriage en route to his imprisonment.

  The tunnels of the coast and rolling hills inland eventually gave way to the sprawling housing of the suburban villages: the English slums, the German estates, the petit-bourgeois apartments of mixed German low-class or English Conciliators. Here and there were the “unreconstructed” zones—areas that had never been rebuilt after the invasion—and then there were the “illegal” zones— areas where the local administration had withdrawn housing permission and had then exacted a destructive revenge on the resultant squatters. The burned row houses looked abandoned, but Peter knew the streets of rubble hid thousands of homeless sheltering illegally among the crumbling brick walls. By virtue of their undocumented residences they were subject to immediate arrest or deportation for resettlement; nobody really knew what happened to them after that. Not surprisingly, “terrorist” acts were almost invariably followed by a city zone being declared illegal, or as the administration put it “unsafe,” and the resultant homeless population was driven to bribery and acts of desperation to find other legal residences.

  They stepped out of the carriage into Victoria train station. He scanned around, confused by the changes wrought during his absence. “Ten years,” he muttered.

  “What?” Barbara asked.

  “Nearly ten years to the day since my arrest. A lot has changed, there’s so few English signs anymore!”

  “It’s not illegal,” she stated as a sort of question.

  “No, just discouraged. You know, if you wanted to advance in a career, or stay in a good school, it was better not to speak it. Still, there used to be a lot of information posted in English.” He looked around a bit more. “That seems to have changed.”

  The taxi took them to a busy road near Eva Braun Station, just west of what had been Regent’s Park. It was a relatively undestroyed region of town and at the beginning of the gated German residential community to the north. Their area was not inside the gated community, but was easily accessible to the Germans who lived there and therefore attracted German specialty shops and their attendant low-ranking German residents.

  They looked at the row of buildings pressed one against the other and located their address. Downstairs was the bookstore they would manage—above that was their tiny flat. There were two more floors above theirs—both were apartments reached by a stairway located in the next-door building and therefore completely separate from their residence.

  They entered the store. A woman looked up questioningly from the book she was repairing.

  “The owner of the shop has sent me to take over the management of hisstore,” Peter said, handing her a thick packet of papers. “Here’s my letter of appointment and references.”

  “Ah, yes.” She smiled. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  That night they stayed in a bed-and-breakfast. As Barbara slept, he pulled back the curtain and stared out the window at the desultory nightlife, listened to the yapping of a dog, watched the mist settle on the ground. He tried to remember what life in London had been like, what he had been like back then, but instead, all he remembered was another strange little room and another sleeping city.

  It had all been because Karl had taken a business trip. Mercifully, Peter had not been required to go along, but less fortuitously, Elspeth had been forbidden from accompanying her husband. She fumed over her exclusion, mulled over it, and then, on Karl’s first night of absence, she had tiptoed into Uwe’s bedroom, tapped Peter on the shoulder, and indicated that he should follow her. She ignored his desperate, silent objections, and he had eventually followed her into her bedroom. As she shut the door behind him, he had pleaded quietly to be allowed to leave. With the children at home, with Uwe perpetually waking up, how could they possibly spend the night together?

  It was one of the most unsettling nights of his life. He had spent the entire time listening for movements outside the door, listening for Uwe to call him. He was completely unable to give Elspeth the attention she expected, and eventually, tired of cajoling him, she had fallen asleep next to him. He got up to leave then, but she awoke and commanded him to stay. So he did, nervously napping next to her the entire night. It was not even flattering—she did not want to spend the night with him, did not want to hold him as she slept, she was just using him to express her anger at Karl’s absence, and if they were discovered, he was the one who would die.

  The next day, at breakfast, Elspeth abruptly announced to the children that she would be visiting her sister Constanze near Dresden. Ulrike would be in charge, Teresa would help out, and Horst was warned not to bully h
is sisters during her absence. And, by the way, Peter would be coming with her.

  They left that evening, arriving late and checking into a hotel with the plan of visiting Elspeth’s sister the following morning. Once they were alone in the room, Elspeth ran her finger seductively down his face and along his shirt. “There! Now you not only don’t have to worry about the children, you also have plenty of time. But first”—she turned away to pick up the room-service menu— “what shall we have to eat?”

  It was the nicest meal he had eaten in a long, long time, and in the carefree atmosphere of their private room, Elspeth was almost charming. His worries eased as he refilled their wineglasses and he began to relax. He even toasted his “beautiful, merciful lady” with something approaching neutrality, if not actual sincerity. It was odd; upon their return everything would be back to the usual highly polarized hierarchy, Elspeth included, but for that night, she treated himas though he were an equal—give or take a few bad habits on her part and a few typical concessions on his. Long after she had fallen asleep, he stood and stared out the window looking at the nightlife of a city he knew not at all, but one that had, for a brief time, given him a measure of humanity.

  The next morning Elspeth made the trip to her sister’s house. She took him along like some sort of trophy to be sniffed at and inspected. The sisters hugged enthusiastically, then Elspeth plucked at his sleeve and pulled him to stand in front of Constanze, announcing proudly, “And this is my manservant.”

  “Not at all what I expected,” her sister exclaimed as she walked around him. “Mother described him quite differently.”

  “She would, wouldn’t she.”

  “Yes. Never quite satisfied with anything, is she?”

  “No,” Elspeth agreed tersely. “What did she say?”

  “Oh, that he looked nearly dead on his feet,” Constanze answered as though he were incapable of understanding her. “But he looks quite lively! I guess, though, that was when you had him working in a factory job?”