by John Smolens
“Bones?” I said in Polish. “Chicken bones.”
We could only communicate in short bursts of Polish and German, or the two languages cobbled together. “I find under pillow,” Sabaneyev said. “Means I die.” It was a cold, raw morning, and white plumes of vapor poured from our noses and mouths. “Today Werner smile at me. He knows.” He tossed the bones to the ground. “This war. I am forced into Russian army and made to work. I am captured by Germans and I am made to work. I am captured by Americans and I tell them I am Russian, an ally. But I have no papers. Americans do not know what I am and they send me here and I am made to work. Here I die? No.” He spit on the ground where the bones lay. “Here I leave.”
“Where will you go? Back to Russia?”
“To Stalin? To work and die?” Sabaneyev grinned at my stupidity. “I live in America.”
“Far, Dimitri. You don’t know how far it is to America. Many versts.”
Werner came out from behind the bushes. I picked up the saw, but as I turned to the tree we had felled, Sabaneyev put his hand on my sleeve. “You must to go, too. Here you die. You know that.”
I pulled my arm away from his grip and began sawing a limb of the tree. “I know.”
Sabaneyev glanced at Werner, who was buckling his belt. “We talk tonight. Go soon.”
Getting out of Au Train Camp wasn’t the problem. It was staying out. Transferred prisoners brought word about escapes from other camps. Most escapees were caught within hours; few remained at large for more than a day. (“At large”: a colloquialism I love—when I first heard it I thought that being a prisoner made me “at small.”) The methods of escape were not as unusual as the reaction of Americans when they encountered a prisoner on the loose. He would be a man with a strange accent and poor command of English (if any), wearing a prison outfit, yet it often wouldn’t dawn on them that they were dealing with an escapee. Sometimes they would take these men in and offer them coffee or a meal. In one instance the police chief in a small town gave a prisoner a lift. Even when Americans understood that they were dealing with an escaped prisoner of war, they were seldom alarmed. A number of prisoners were harbored by women—in one case, a mother in her mid-forties fell in love with a prisoner half her age. One of the most famous stories was about the Luftwaffe pilot, Hans Peter Krug, who escaped from prison in Ontario and rowed a stolen boat from Windsor to Detroit, where he was given shelter by an American named Gordie Stephan. Eventually, Krug made his way to Chicago and down to the Southwest, with the intention of entering Mexico, but he was captured in San Antonio. Stephan was the first American tried for aiding an escaped prisoner; he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to hang (though later the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment).
That night Otto Werner came to my barracks and handed me a note. “This is an order from Kommandant Vogel. Don’t be late,” he said.
I sat on my bunk and opened the note, which read: Officers’ Barracks, midnight tonight.
The note meant a tribunal. Vogel and the others expected me to sneak over to their barracks and stand before the German officers and listen to them try me. Sabaneyev, a Russian captured by the Germans, could simply be given a small pile of bones and killed. As a captain in the Italian army I was being granted the privilege of a trial where evidence would be offered and I would be allowed to speak in my defense. Most likely they would build their case around my work as a translator and a teacher of English as evidence of my willingness to assist the enemy. After the discussion with Dalrymple, I had no doubt they would also use my handling of the football team, particularly the fact that we made certain decisions by taking a vote to remove our German goalie from the team. To close their case, they would argue that I was in collusion with a known communist, Adino, who was unable to be present to refute such claims. No matter how flimsy or circumstantial the evidence, no matter how strong my defense, the verdict was predetermined. They put on this charade not for the accused, but for the accusers; it was essential that they act according to what they perceived to be strict military justice. I would be punished immediately. In other camps, convicted “traitors” were often beaten badly, and it would take several days for them to die.
As I tucked the note in my shirt pocket, I looked down the length of the barracks. The other men seemed preoccupied—except Sabaneyev, who was lying in his top bunk facing me while he smoked a cigarette. When I nodded once, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling above him.
In the morning a cold wind swept through the hills above Lake Au Train as we climbed off the trucks, gathered our tools, and spread out in the woods. It was Friday, the last day we’d work before the New Year arrived Monday, which would be a holiday. As usual, the Americans who drove the lumber trucks had already marked the trees they wanted cut. Sabaneyev and I walked among the trees, until we found a pine with a white tag nailed to it.
Otto Werner followed us, empty-handed. “You did not appear at the trial, Herr Verdi.” He had the high, cracking voice of a teenager who has recently entered puberty. “Kommandant Vogel and the officers were greatly insulted. I am to inform you that you were tried in absentia and found guilty. It was a unanimous decision.”
“They took a vote?”
“The trial was flawlessly executed,” he said.
“I have no doubt,” I said. “You are all masters of execution.”
I nodded to Sabaneyev. We set the blade against the bark, fell into the push-and-pull rhythm of sawing, and quickly cut into the trunk. Pale sawdust showered my arms as the damp air became thick with the smell of pine sap.
“Your punishment will be announced after mess tonight,” Werner chortled.
We ignored him and only stopped sawing when we heard the wood crack. I put both hands on the tree bark and pushed; the tree leaned over but wouldn’t fall. We resumed cutting, until the trunk began to tilt, then we stepped well away because sometimes the bottom would kick back off the stump unpredictably. Several prisoners had been injured because they had stood too close to a falling tree trunk. The tree crashed down to the forest floor and we looked at it for a moment as though expecting it to move. All around us there was nothing but the sound of other men cutting trees—the rhythm of saws and the knock of axes, which reverberated off the surrounding hills. Some men sang, believing that doing so would ward off an attack by wild animals. Adino and I sometimes used to sing arias by Verdi or Puccini, much to the annoyance of Wilhelm Ruup.
Sabaneyev picked up his axe and began to trim the lower branches from the felled trunk. He picked up several and tossed them at Werner’s feet. “Do something.”
“Why?” Werner said.
“To live you must work,” Sabaneyev said.
“Pile the branches over there,” I said.
Werner merely stared at us. He was a tall boy, perhaps not even twenty. Years earlier I had learned to see the war in a man’s face—not the war, but his war. In a man like Sabaneyev, you could see that he’d been captured, that he’d been worked like a slave, and that he’d only survived this long because he was strong and determined. In Werner’s pale face and his light blue eyes you could see that he hadn’t had much of the war. He had been captured too soon, before he’d seen enough. If anything, you could see that he was disappointed that he would miss the rest of the war. This was what he tried to hide with that confident smile.
“Stack branches,” Sabaneyev said.
Werner shook his head.
Sabaneyev leaned his axe against the tree trunk and went over to Werner. They stared at each other, and then Sabaneyev bent over and gathered up several branches. He walked around Werner, who folded his arms and looked pleased with himself. After dropping the branches on the ground, Sabaneyev sorted through them and selected a branch that was about three feet long.
I started to turn back to the trunk, but then said to Werner, “What was I charged with? Treason? Aiding the enemy?”
Werner nodded.
“Communism, did they work that in, too?”
“Yes,” Werner said. “Both you Italians are communists. And the Russian, too.”
Sabaneyev walked back toward us, raised the branch with both hands, and swung it like an American baseball player hitting a home run. The stick passed through the air with a whoosh, causing Werner to turn so that he was struck on the side of the head. Fortunately, he didn’t cry out. His body pitched forward, and he didn’t even break his fall as he landed face down in the snow and mud. His cap had been knocked off and blood soaked his blond hair.
“Communist?” Sabaneyev dropped the stick and began walking into the woods.
I looked around but couldn’t see any of the other men. The sound of their tools and their voices—some of them were singing—was muffled. I had come to like working out here in the woods. It was simple but purposeful labor, dull, repetitious, and safe. Though in prison, we were protected by the forest. But as I followed Sabaneyev up the hill, I was afraid, and after only a few steps I realized that I had no choice, that it was impossible for me to go back.
Soon we came to a logging road that ran along a ridge above Au Train Lake. We could still hear the faint sound of saws and axes in the distance, which meant they hadn’t discovered that we were missing yet.
Sabaneyev said, “We split up.”
“Yes.”
He pointed down the two-track road. “South.”
The wind, which was at our backs, was coming from the north. “I think so.”
“I want south. America.”
“Long way. Good luck.”
Sabaneyev extended his arm and we shook hands quickly. His palm was enormous.
I headed north along the road. It was easier walking in the tracks made by lumber trucks. Soon I reentered the woods—eventually, the guards would drive the logging roads searching for us—and moved through the snowbound forest, keeping the wind on my left so I was heading east in the direction of Munising. I followed high ground, avoiding frozen swamplands down below, and when I came to a clearing, I would break into a run, and walk when I reached the woods again. I could hear nothing but the wind in the trees. Around the middle of the day, it began to snow.
Several times during the afternoon I would stop when I heard vehicles on a road somewhere downhill from me. The woods seemed endless, eternal; but at dusk, I came to a vacant brick building and I rested in a doorway to get out of the wind and the snow. There was a road leading away from the building, which I followed once it was dark.
When I began to see lights ahead of me, I abandoned the road and worked my way down through the woods. Branches whipped my face and I had to walk with my arms held up to protect my head, until I came to the edge of the woods, where through the snow I could see a street lined with houses. Some had Christmas lights in the windows. I walked through backyards and alleys and found my way to the main street in Munising. The snow was steady and I saw no one, occasionally hearing a dog barking in the distance.
I came to the Imlachs’ house. Portions of the roof were gone. I walked around to the backyard, the ground strewn with wood and debris. Through the snow I could see the lights of the Frangiapani house. I went back to the Imlachs’ and found that the kitchen door was unlocked. Inside it was nearly pitch dark and smelled of charred wood. I made my way through the kitchen and into the dining room, which had a window that looked out on the backyard. From there I could see the Frangiapanis’ house, thirty yards away. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, pulling my wet coat tightly about me.
II. 1945
9.
I was awakened by a sound—a car door slamming. I got to my knees on the dining room floor so I could just see over the windowsill. In the backyard chickadees pecked at the ground, their shadows cast long by the early morning sun, and a police car was parked in the Frangiapanis’ driveway.
I crawled to the corner of the room and stood up so I couldn’t be seen through the window. I was stiff and sore from the long trek through the woods, and I was hungry. Keeping close to the wall, I moved into the kitchen, which was completely burned out. There was a door, half opened, which led to the basement. I went downstairs and saw shelves stacked with canned goods, a workbench with tools—none of it damaged by fire. I gathered several cans in my arms—peas, wax beans, corned beef—and spilled them on the work bench. My hands shook as I picked up a hammer and started to drive a nail into the can of peas, until packing juice squirted my face, and then I saw that the corned beef had a small metal key attached to the bottom of its oblong can. After opening one end of the can, I worked the meat out with my fingers. The corned beef was salty, greasy, coated with a brown, gelatinous glaze, and I ate all of it in seconds.
I returned to the dining room and peeked out the window. The police car was still there. As I leaned back against the wall, I noticed a mirror across the room above a small hutch. In the mirror I saw a man, his gaunt, unshaven face and clothes covered in black soot, his hair matted to his skull. Out the window beside him, I could see a policeman step out the side door of the Frangiapanis’ house. He paused in the driveway a moment, speaking to someone holding the door open. When he got in the patrol car and backed out of the driveway, the storm door to the house swung closed. Exhausted, I lay down on the floor.
When I awoke, tree shadows lay across both backyards and another vehicle was in the Frangiapanis’ driveway: the commander’s Jeep.
At least a half hour passed before Corporal Marks and Commander Dalrymple stepped out into the driveway. This time there was no pausing; the storm door to the house closed immediately, and the two men got in the Jeep and left. After a few minutes, I was considering returning to the basement to get something else to eat, when the Frangiapanis’ side door opened again. Chiara came outside, wearing an overcoat and heavy boots, and she carried a wicker laundry basket tilted against her hip. She walked along a path in the snow into the backyard and began to hang bed sheets on the clothesline. There was no other movement anywhere—the houses to either side of the Frangiapanis’ were partially obscured by bushes and trees.
I rapped my knuckles on the window glass. I could only see Chiara’s boots below the hanging linen, and her hands paused above the clothesline. I knocked once more. She stepped around the linen, a clothespin in her mouth, and peered toward the burned house. I turned around and stepped sideways so that she could see me through the window. When she raised a hand to her throat, I moved back out of sight. In the mirror, I could see the confusion on her face. She took the clothespin out of her mouth, and after a moment of indecision hastily continued to hang the laundry. When she was finished, she dared look around the last sheet once, and then took the empty basket inside.
I went into the basement, where I found a canned Virginia ham on the shelf. I suspected that Virginia was in the southern part of the United States but wasn’t sure. Wherever it was, I was thankful that they raised hogs there, and that they also attached a small key to the tin.
It was dark when I heard footsteps in the backyard. I looked toward the dining room window and saw Chiara standing with her face right up to the glass, her hands cupped around her eyes. I got up off the floor, went into the kitchen, and opened the back door slightly. She came inside and I shut the door.
“They said they thought you’d come to our house,” she whispered. “I told them you weren’t that stupid.” She was absurdly bigger than I remembered—she wore a bulky man’s red-and-black checked jacket. “You must be starved,” she said, unbuttoning the jacket and producing a loaf of bread. She handed it to me, and then took a paper bag out of a pocket. “We only had some cheese in the house—but it’s a pretty good provolone. Tomorrow I’ll get some meat.” From another pocket, she produced a bottle. “And water—you must be thirsty.”
“No, I’m not hungry,” I said, taking the bottle. “But water I can use.” I unscrewed the cap on the quart bottle, splashed some water in my other hand, and rubbed it on my face. I could taste charcoal, but my skin felt good just to be wet.
“You’re not hungry?”
“Ham?”
“What makes the ham from Virginia so special? Is Virginia south, or west?”
She sighed in exasperation, and then began to remove the baggy corduroy pants she was wearing. She had difficulty getting them over her shoes, but after a moment of hopping around the kitchen she got them off. She was wearing another pair of pants. “These were my father’s,” she said, handing me the corduroys. “I think they’ll fit.”
“I must wash before I put anything on.”
“Then get out of those dirty things.”
She gave me the wool jacket and hat, and then tugged a sweater over her head; beneath that she wore a heavy flannel shirt, which she unbuttoned. “I have been imagining this for days, undoing some buttons with you, but I didn’t think it would be . . . in a burned-out kitchen.” She removed the shirt and underneath she was wearing another sweater. She took the pile of clothes from my arms and turned around. “Go on, if you’re so shy. I won’t peek.”
I took off my prison uniform—everything except my socks—and washed myself as best I could with the quart of cold water.
“Does your mother know?” I asked.
“No. If she did, she’d insist I bring you to the house so we could hide you in the attic. She told you about how she met my father in the last war and hid him on their farm in Italy? She tells everyone, and I was half expecting her to tell these soldiers when they came looking for you today. But she kept her wits about her, though I thought she might take a bite out of that commander.”
“Dalrymple—did he say anything about the other escaped prisoner?”
“There’s another one?”
“We split up in the woods.”
Though I was still wet, I pulled the corduroy pants and flannel shirt on, and said, “Okay, I’m decent.”