The Children's War

by Stroyar, J. N.

  “Eventually!”

  “—enact education reforms, restructure the economy—”

  “What about compensation for our suffering? What about all the murders?”

  “—privatize industry, open up foreign policy, ease censorship—”

  “What about justice? After all these years!”

  Ryszard interrupted his list. “Too divisive.”

  “What about restoring our independence?”

  “Impossible, at least in the near term. The complete scattering of peoples around the Continent would lead to mayhem if we tried to divide things along nationalistic lines. Millions would have to be relocated, land confiscated, nationalities assigned to people without one. It’s a recipe for disaster. There’s going to have to be some sort of united Europe.”

  “You mean all mixed into one happy pan-European family?” Peter scoffed.

  “Do you see any other way?” Ryszard asked calmly. “I’ve studied the demographics. If we start drawing lines on the map, we are guaranteeing border wars and civil wars and genocide.”

  “And the lingua franca?”

  “German. What else? If there is a sufficient concentration of speakers for another tongue, then that region can be bilingual.”

  “So in your scheme, they win. It’s that simple—a European Union under German hegemony.”

  “Why not? All of North America speaks the language of one tiny, foggy, backwater island.”

  “That was done voluntarily—”

  “Yes, so the American Indians say.”

  “—whereas everything we have here is based on force,” Peter argued, ignoring Ryszard’s interjection, “and it must not be allowed to continue!”

  “I’m dealing with reality, my dear brother-in-law. You can construct whatever fantasy world you want, but the truth is they have had more than half a century to leave their mark on this continent, and if we try to go back to the way things were, we’re asking for slaughter on a massive scale.”

  “So you’re saying Joanna and Andrzej died for nothing?” Peter asked bitterly.

  “Of course they died for nothing! I don’t believe in causes which cost children their lives! Do you think there was meaning in their deaths? Do you?”

  Affronted by Ryszard’s patronizing tone, Peter responded darkly, “I want this regime toppled.”

  Ryszard blew a stream of smoke into the air, then eyed his brother-in-law meaningfully. “Ah, yes, and you have been so effective in your efforts,” he sneered.

  Annoyed by the truth in Ryszard’s words, Peter chose to ignore them. “What you’re suggesting—we could have had better than that by dealing with Hitler in ’39 without a war!”

  “Yes, without a war which we lost.”

  “So what you want is National Socialism with a human face,” Peter sneered.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Ryszard replied, unruffled.

  “What about the revolution?” Peter asked, exasperated.

  “We can’t afford such romantic nonsense. The system must be dismantled slowly, not overthrown—otherwise there’d be a power vacuum and a hundred, no, a thousand different groups vying for control.”

  “I think you enjoy being in this hierarchy and you don’t want to dismantle it! You’re power mad.”

  “And you’re bloodthirsty. Do you want to change things for the better or do you just want revenge?”

  Peter almost blurted Revenge! but then thought better of it. “Maybe,” he answered carefully, “meting out justice is not inconsistent with establishing a just society.”

  “Do it on your own time. Once we’re in a position to change things, we can’t afford to lose the support of mainstream society.”

  “You mean the bastards who destroyed Europe in the first place.”

  “The criminals of that era are mostly dead. The children raised with this system cannot know what they are doing. What would you do, punish an entire population?”

  Peter thought of Teresa. Was she guilty by birth? That was all too familiar a concept. “We could be selective.”

  “Assuming we’re omnipotent and have nothing better to do with our time, yes. Otherwise, it’s unrealistic and the alternative to a peaceful transition is civil war. Do you want a bloodbath?”

  Peter fell silent. He felt rather perturbed because he had recognized something about himself in Ryszard’s questions. He was no longer driven by the need for a just society, and indeed, if the Nazi leadership confessed its sins and righted its wrongs, that would no longer be enough: he wanted to see them hang. Peaceful evolution was not sufficient, the revolution had become a goal in and of itself. The righting of injustices, the restructuring of society, all took a backseat to his deep-seated need for vengeance, and when he closed his eyes and imagined the changes that would be wrought in the future, he no longer saw peace and prosperity and freedom, he saw Joanna’s murderers swinging from gallows, he saw his tormentors on their knees begging in vain for mercy, he saw Berlin as leveled as Warsaw had been. He saw revenge.

  “Just imagine that you get the world you want,” Ryszard spoke into Peter’s thoughts. “What do you think the economy would look like?”

  Resenting the patronizing tone, Peter responded too quickly, “Who gives a fuck about economies?”

  “Grow up!” Ryszard snarled. “Economic chaos means starvation and riots! You’re asking for death and destruction as your idea of justice. Look at the numbers and think!”

  “What are the current numbers?” Peter asked quietly.

  “One hundred fifty million German or Germanic citizens. Of those, about two million are in prison or concentration camps and have been stripped of their citizenship.”

  Peter nodded, repeating, “Two million.”

  “Thirty or so million non-Germans who have obtained full Reich citizenship. Altogether, that’s roughly one hundred eighty million people who have a vested interest in the current status quo and who would be the possible victims of any revolutionary terror. Then there are about eighty million subjects without citizenship. These are people who are governed by the Basic Law and the Minimum Guarantee of Rights. Of that number, about fifty million are in untied, paid employment and would have questionable loyalty to any revolution. The other thirty are in tied jobs. They receive minimal salaries and housing but must remain with their employer unless given permission to move. Even they would have a reason to fear abrupt change.”

  “And the rest?” Peter asked. “How many natural allies do we have?”

  “There are about thirty million people in forced labor. About sixteen million of these are in conscription with a finite service length. The remaining fourteen million are either in indefinite or permanent forced labor. Eight million of those are living in camps, prisons, and industrial barracks and are completely cut off from the outside world. Of the remaining Zwangsarbeiter, about five million work in shops, restaurants, and other small businesses. The remaining million are in domestic employment, mostly in and around Berlin.”

  “Only a million?” The number did not match intuitively with Peter’s own experience, but then he had been a resident of a wealthy and politically connected suburb. “Didn’t the number used to be much higher?”

  “Yes, in the forties it was, and the promise was that every German hausfrau, no matter how lowly, would one day own a servant, but that proved to be unworkable, and the Labor Ministry pulled back on the numbers.”

  “Why was it unworkable? Was there unrest?”

  “No. Not unrest, fraternization,” Ryszard explained. “You wouldn’t believe the number of conspiracies between German women who wanted to skip the joy of eight pregnancies and the servant women who wanted to keep their babies. Even without sham adoptions and faked births, they found there were problems with children raised to speak fluent German. Once you get rid of the language differences, our people are indistinguishable.”

  Peter’s thoughts turned to Josef and his wife, and he wondered if they were together with their child. He remember
ed Josef ’s vehement denial of paternity, Martin’s sly look. “But that has always been true in Europe. What makes things different now?” Peter wondered aloud.

  Ryszard shrugged. “I would guess, in the past, the strong combination of religion, malnutrition, and ignorance kept the lower orders in their place. Now, well, we still use malnutrition, but we’re very weak at utilizing religion properly, thelower stratum is being educated by the Undergrounds, and . . .” He rubbed his chin as he thought.

  “America,” Peter suggested. “It’s a thorn in their ideological side.”

  Ryszard nodded. “Yes. Proof positive that the mob can rule.”

  “So they cut back on domestic help.”

  “Yes, particularly women. You and your ilk are a genuine status symbol, held only by the most politically trustworthy. And even then . . .” Ryszard opened his hands, indicating his unwillingness to refer to Peter’s affair with Elspeth.

  “All right, so you think we’re too mixed and confused to disentangle.”

  “Not only that, but the people with the greatest interest in revolution are those who have been brutalized for so long that we have no way of knowing how they would react to freedom. One could guess though that their vengeance could be terrible and not particularly well directed. Do you want that for Magdalena?”

  Peter rubbed his forehead trying to erase the image of his innocent daughter being thrown onto a pyre of vengeance. “What do you suggest?”

  “Clearly we need to restructure the system and establish some openness. Maybe when that’s done, we can oversee letting the system gently collapse into a multinational Europe, but whatever we do, we can’t afford a violent overthrow of everything. It’s the only system we have and the alternative would be chaos!”

  “You’re assuming cooperation on the part of every revolutionary. That’s a lot to ask.” Could Peter pass his erstwhile torturers in the street day in and day out? Could they work side by side in some office in the interests of peace and prosperity?

  “Yes, it’s a lot to ask, but we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it. I’m hoping, at that time, that you’ll speak out as a voice of reason. With your experiences, your words could carry a lot of weight.”

  Peter’s eyes strayed across the room to the woman and the burly man. He had his arm draped around her waist and they were intimately close, both drinking. “Fine. I’ll do you a deal. You help me take the information directly to Szaflary, and later, I’ll be your voice of reason. I’ll say whatever you want.”

  “That was a rather quick change of heart,” Ryszard noted suspiciously.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “You have become rather usurious, haven’t you?”

  “Forgive me for having learned my lessons well. Is it a deal?”

  Ryszard nodded. “Sure. Just don’t waste this opportunity.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you can get a lot more than permission to come home out of this stuff. Ask for it.”

  “Ask for what?”

  “A promotion, at least. Or a Council seat. You have the skills and experience—they should have chosen you by now.” Ryszard lit another cigarette, then said into the silence, “The only reason you haven’t been put forward is that you’rea foreigner. Just like my dad. He had to fight for his place every step of the way. Even now he pretty much works alone.”

  “How could I get a Council seat? I thought the representatives were democratically elected.”

  Richard sputtered. “Believe what you want, but think about it. The elections must be conducted in absolute secrecy. Do you really think they’re free and fair?”

  “I was under that impression.”

  “Well, even if they are, how do you think the voters get the information on the candidates?”

  “The Underground press.”

  “Which is?”

  “Run by the Council,” Peter concluded. A Council seat, that would be nice. That would shove all the shit they had doled out to him right back up their noses. As he thought of the possibilities, he began to smile. “Will you help me get there? I need papers and permits. Something impressive, so I won’t be searched.”

  Ryszard thought for a moment. “Yeah, I can manage that for you. After all, I guess I owe you a favor.”

  “How so?”

  Ryszard glanced into Peter’s face, then waved away the question. “Just guarantee-that our people will eventually get the information, no matter what.”

  “No problem.”

  “You know, my handlers are going to be very annoyed with me if it gets out that I’m doing this on the side.”

  “I thought you were in a position to tell them what to do.”

  “I am. That annoys them as well.”

  “Well, I’ve always felt that if your own side doesn’t want to shoot you at some point in your career, you must be doing something wrong.”

  Ryszard laughed heartily. “So, I guess you’ve been doing things right all along!”

  67

  “AREN’T YOU GOING TO WARN THEM you’re coming?” Barbara asked rather worriedly. Only an hour ago, she had received a communiquó that indicated Szaflary was still ignorant of his plans.

  “No, they’ll just tell me to stay put,” Peter responded. She looked concerned, so he added, “Don’t worry, I’m sure when they hear what I have to say, they’ll have much better things to be angry at me about.”

  “Be careful.” She gave him a brief kiss.

  “I will. And I hope you two have a good life.”

  “We will. Take care.” Mark could barely hide his elation at Peter’s departure, but he gave it a brave attempt.

  Peter grabbed his bags, went down the steps, and climbed into the waiting taxi that would ferry him to the airport. Ryszard had decided the safest course was to fly Peter to Kraków himself. He said he had some business to conduct there in any case, and so he could carry the incriminating documents and computer, which in his possession would no longer be incriminating, and Peter could assume the role of his aide, using Stefan’s papers. The English Underground had obligingly altered the photograph, and Stefan would get to spend the time holed up in Ryszard’s hotel room with a bottle of whiskey and an amiable companion until his papers wended their way back to him.

  In Kraków, Ryszard planned to make a quick visit to an office and then return to Berlin, while Peter planned to take local transit through to Neu Sandez and then on to the village. Local travel was usually unhindered, and Peter felt he could manage that part of the journey without help. Once he reached the village, he would contact one of the border entry guides and convince him or her to escort him in. He would explain he had been issued an urgent summons and would express surprise that they were not expecting him. They knew him, they would give him no trouble. The trouble would come later, with the Council, and for that he was well prepared.

  “I can go it alone from here,” Peter said to the woman who had walked him across the border. She had radioed their presence and made sure that he was not accidentally shot at. Once inside, they had managed to catch a ride most of the way, and now that the truck had to drop them off, he saw no reason for her to continue with him. “We’re inside the internal borders and they know me personally here, so there shouldn’t be any problem.”

  “Okay, but be careful,” she warned. “After all, we weren’t expecting you, so if there has been some miscommunication, they might not be expecting you here either.”

  “It’s all right.” He was touched by her concern and the extra effort she had gone through to see him all the way inside. “They’re used to me walking around this area all the time. They won’t shoot at me.”

  “Farewell then.” She waved good-bye.

  He sighed with relief. It had gone terribly smoothly, taking only two days to work his way from Kraków into the mountains, and his story had not been questioned at all. As he walked along, he thought that it should probably worry him that he had slipped in so easily while unexpected, even if they did k
now him, even if he was generally trusted. Border security clearly needed a bit of reorganizing.

  Once he was sure his guide was well out of sight, he changed his direction toward Joanna’s grave. When he reached it, he cleared away the snow and contemplated it for a few minutes, thinking of his happy little girl and how her brieflife had been so cruelly destroyed. Then he smiled at her memory, and asking her forgiveness and blessing for what he was doing, he dug into the snow behind the stone and buried his treasure. It would be the obvious place for them to look, but he did not care. It would not go that far, but indeed, if anything untoward did happen, he wanted them to find the information. He had to admit, at least to himself and Joanna, that his entire presentation would be a bluff. If they did not give him what he wanted, if they arrested him, even if they shot him for treason, he still wanted them to have the information. They would find it here easily enough.

  He said a casual hello to the guard at the entrance and went into the bunker, heading immediately to his apartment before talking to anybody else. He needed to discuss everything with Zosia, and besides, he did not want to draw attention to his presence until she knew what was going on.

  The place was empty and neither Zosia nor Irena was in sight. It was also clean and organized. He walked through the room as though entering a stranger’s house. On a bookshelf, Zosia’s files had carefully been arranged using specially made dividers, each tagged with a subject and date. A thick blanket was spread on the floor, on top of a rug, to make a soft playing surface for the baby. Little toys and a mirror were heaped into a small pile at the corner of the blanket, ready for the baby’s use. The refrigerator contained fresh food, the cupboards were well stocked. Suspiciously he looked at the dish-drying rack: one coffee cup, one dish, one set of silverware. If Zosia had acquired a roommate, he was marvelously discreet.

  Peter went into the bedroom and scanned the clothes: his remained where he had left them, Zosia’s filled the other spaces, and the drawers that had once been Joanna’s now held Irena’s tiny things. Nervously, he opened the small wooden box in which Zosia stored her jewelry. Neither her wedding ring nor the necklace he had given her was inside. Her stiletto and silver ring were also missing. He stared at the nearly empty box and felt both relieved and ashamed of himself for checking up on her. He returned to the main room and opened the cabinet drawer. The diaries and his letters were still there, though the letters had been bound with ribbon into a folder.