The Search

by Maureen Myant

  Jan scrambles down the steps to the man and crouches beside him. The man is unconscious, his shirt covered in blood. Jan’s head is swimming; he can’t stand the sight of blood, and there’s so much of it here. He’s never seen so much since the morning his father died, all those men, lying in front of Horak’s barn, drenched in scarlet. Mustn’t think of it, concentrate on what’s happening now, get the razor off the man. He swallows hard to try to control his nausea and reaches across to move the razor away. As he does so the man stirs; his eyes open and lock onto Jan’s. They are pale blue, lifeless. Jan starts to speak, to say something comforting, but the words won’t come. Scenes from the past are crowding in on him. He’s back at Horak’s farm, in the cherry tree, watching men like this one slaughter his father and friends; he’s in a forest in Poland listening to a man plead for his life, begging to see his wife and children once more. He can hear Marek chiding him: They’re the enemy. Do you think they’d show any mercy to you?

  Jan hesitates. He can’t save this man, how can he? He’s a German, a Nazi, a murderer, and he deserves to die. He’ll leave him here; it’s what Marek would want. He’ll climb back up, grab Lena and run, get far away from this hellish place.

  But Marek wants more than that; his voice is insistent: Come on Jan, don’t let this opportunity slip by you. You could kill him; see how easy it would be. Grab the razor, slit his throat, there’s no fight left in him. Finish him off. Avenge your father’s death; it’s your duty. The voice is so clear he looks up expecting to see Marek, but there’s no one there.

  Jan seizes the razor and looks at the man. He tries to read the expression in the man’s eyes. It should be terror, but there’s no fear there. Resignation, that’s what it is. He wants Jan to kill him. Jan drops the razor. He can’t do it. He can’t kill a man in cold blood. He closes his eyes in despair. He can’t even leave him to bleed to death; he’ll have to try to stop it.

  “No,” the man yells. His eyes are full of the terror Jan expected to see when he grabbed the razor from him, but he’s looking past him up to the opening of the hiding place. Jan turns round to see a pitchfork coming towards him. Just in time he moves out of the way. It crashes into the hiding place, grazing his thigh. Jan squints up to see who threw it. It’s Gisela, her face red with fury. Behind her is Lena, crying, looking terrified. At first Jan thinks she is weeping for him; his heart leaps that she cares, but no, she is calling another name, Willi, and pointing past him at the man. She doesn’t seem to care that Gisela has just tried to kill him. The thought hurts him more than anything. “Help me,” he cries, “he’s bleeding to death.” He climbs up the ladder, his legs trembling so much he thinks he’ll fall.

  Gisela grabs him and shakes him until he can hardly breathe. “What did you do to him, you little bastard?”

  Somehow he finds the strength to free himself from her grasp. “I didn’t do anything. He’s cut his wrists with a razor.”

  Gisela pushes past him and climbs down the steps to the man. She rips her skirt to make bandages. The man speaks to her. “I did it, Mother. The boy was trying to save me.” A moment later he slides back into unconsciousness. It doesn’t look too good to Jan. Gisela wraps the material round each wrist, and pulls as tight as she can. “Go and find my husband, he’s in the fields,” she shouts up to Jan. “Tell him I’ve found Wilhelm. Tell him to hurry. Please!”

  Jan doesn’t know what to do. He wants to grab Lena and run – but if he does, the man could die, and he owes him. If it weren’t for him, Jan would be dead.

  Lena is terrified by all the shouting. Before he can stop her she starts to climb down into the hidey-hole. “Willi,” she cries. “Mutti!” Jan pulls her back up, but she resists and keeps trying to get down beside them.

  “Come with me,” says Jan, but she screams and pulls away from him. In despair he shakes her. “Please Lena, come with me,” he says. But again she screams out, “No.” He tries speaking to her in Czech, but she ignores him. From the hidey-hole, Gisela is still yelling at him to get help. He wants to run away, but he can’t, he has to help. “Forgive me, Tati,” he whispers as he goes out into the rain to find Friedrich.

  Gisela holds her son as if he were a baby. “Hold on, hold on,” she says over and over. “Vatti’s coming.” It kills her to see her son like this. Wilhelm opens his eyes, but she can see he isn’t focusing. Her heart is torn in two. Where is her husband?

  “Gisela, you come up here so’s I can get down there and bring him up.” Friedrich’s voice is just above her. “We need to get him back to the farm.” She’s reluctant to leave Wilhelm, but Friedrich should be able to carry him, she certainly can’t. She climbs up and lets Friedrich into the hole, watching as he struggles in the tiny space to hoist Wilhelm over his shoulder.

  The rain has stopped, thank God. Friedrich carries Wilhelm back to the farmhouse. Gisela has run on ahead to start heating some water to warm him up. If he doesn’t die from loss of blood she fears he will die from the cold. The two children trot along behind her, Helena’s finding it hard to keep up. Gisela’s yet to find out who the boy is and why he has come to their farm, but already she’s thanking him in her heart for saving her son.

  I had no choice, thinks Jan. I couldn’t leave him to die. And Lena knew him; he must have been a friend to her when she arrived here all alone. He saved my life; I couldn’t leave him to die. The arguments sound shallow to him. What would the partisans have done? They would have slit his throat without a second thought or at the very least left him to die – a German man, the age to fight. He was the enemy after all.

  But if he is the enemy, why is he hiding in a farm in Germany and not fighting in the army? Jan can’t understand what’s going on. And why did he try to kill himself? It doesn’t make sense.

  ‌29

  Despite his mother’s care and his father’s entreaties, Wilhelm is fading away. He resists eating and turns his head to one side whenever Gisela tries to feed him some soup. She’s frantic with worry. He lost a great deal of blood, and if he doesn’t eat he has no chance. For two days she leaves his side only to go to try to make something to tempt him to eat, but nothing works.

  Friedrich is very quiet. He knows that Wilhelm has lost the will to live, and he can’t bear it. He hasn’t left the house since he carried Wilhelm home; he couldn’t care less about the farm and all the work that has to be done. What’s the point when his only son is dying?

  Jan sees their preoccupation and thinks this would be a good time to flee, but he can’t get Lena to budge. She’s stuck to Gisela’s side all the time and is wary of Jan. I’m her brother, he tells himself, and I can’t get her to come with me. He doesn’t want to admit it, but Lena has grown away from him, changed beyond recognition.

  He listens to every conversation he can, makes himself useful round the house. He picks up that Wilhelm has been in hiding; that he has run away from being in the army. This confuses Jan. Does this make him a good man, does this mean he doesn’t agree with what the Nazis are doing? It must do, otherwise why would he run away? Perhaps he’s like the soldier who saved him over two years ago, the young man who leant against the tree, vomiting, his eyes so full of fear when he looked up into the tree and saw Jan hiding there. He didn’t want to kill. But he didn’t have to follow orders, thinks Jan. He could have shot the man who told him to do it. A little voice argues back, But then he would have been killed too, and the men in our village would still have been shot because some of the soldiers were enjoying it, laughing as they stood around in their break from the shooting, they would never have joined in a rebellion. It’s all too confusing for Jan. He had thought all Germans were bad, and now he can’t make up his mind about Wilhelm and his parents.

  At night he can hear Gisela sobbing. It’s hard listening to a grown-up cry. Jan used to think that adults didn’t cry for he never saw his mother or father weep. Now he realizes how lucky he was. In this family there is much sadness.

  Jan stays quietly in the background watching the drama all
around him. He makes himself useful, terrified that Gisela and Friedrich will throw him out, but they don’t even seem aware of him, they’re so desperately worried about their son. Once, when Gisela was washing herself, he crept into the room to look at Wilhelm. There’s little left of him. Jan has seen death many times, and death is in this room. He jumps back, startled, as Wilhelm opens his eyes. “You were going to kill me, weren’t you?” he says.

  Jan nods, miserable.

  “I don’t blame you. I have done terrible things.” Wilhelm turns his face to one side.

  “Men like you killed my father, killed all the men in my village,” says Jan. “I wanted to avenge them.” He tells Wilhelm about the massacre, watches while Wilhelm weeps for the deeds of his country. He’s about to tell him about Lena when Gisela returns, shoos him out of the room.

  “Mother,” whispers Wilhelm, “Mother, I have something to tell you. Can you get father?”

  Gisela, who is half asleep, stirs. She’s terrified at what is happening to her son. She runs to the bedroom where Friedrich is blessedly asleep and shakes him awake. “Come quickly, Wilhelm wants to speak to us.” Friedrich jumps out of bed and comes through to the bedroom.

  Wilhelm’s voice is weak. “The boy, Johann. He’s not German.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me. He’s from Czechoslovakia. All the men in his village were murdered by our soldiers.” Wilhelm has tears in his eyes.

  “Hush, Wilhelm, you don’t need to speak. You must rest, get back your strength. Shall I get you some chicken soup?”

  He shakes his head. “Please, just listen to me.”

  Gisela falls silent as he tells them about the massacre in the village and how the boy saw it all.

  “His face haunts me,” says Wilhelm. “Because of us, he is alone in the world. He must have seen everything. His father was been killed, perhaps uncles, brothers. I don’t know. But he saw it all, a slaughter just like the ones I took part in. And yet, he doesn’t hate me.”

  Gisela makes a comforting sound, but there’s nothing she can say really. Her son is tortured by what he did, and nothing she or Friedrich does or says will change that. She and Friedrich are as close to Wilhelm as they can be, for his voice is weakening terribly. Gisela urges him to stop, save his strength, but he insists on going on.

  “It will be all right, don’t you see? I’m dying—”

  “No!” wails Gisela.

  “Don’t be afraid. My faith has returned. If a child like the boy can forgive me, then God in Heaven will show mercy. I am so sorry for what I’ve done. And the boy, he will be a comfort to you. You must look after him.” He closes his eyes.

  “Wilhelm! Look at me. You’re not going to die. You’re not.” Gisela is almost hysterical. Friedrich takes her into his arms to try to comfort her.

  Downstairs, as he’s cutting bread and cheese for his supper Jan hears the wail from the room above and bows his head. In spite of everything he feels sorry for Gisela and Friedrich. Even at his young age he can see how terrible it is to lose a son.

  They bury Wilhelm in the hidey-hole. Jan has to help Friedrich carry the body up to the barn. Friedrich wants to do it himself, but he has eaten nothing since Wilhelm’s suicide attempt, and when he starts off he stumbles. He carries Wilhelm’s body back into the kitchen and indicates to Jan to help.

  It’s dark and cold outside. Winter isn’t far off. There’s a smell of snow in the air although it’s not yet November. Jan can hardly hold on to Wilhelm’s legs he’s shivering so much, but he grits his teeth and concentrates, and somehow they reach the barn without dropping him. Jan stands aside as Friedrich carries his son into what was a hiding place and will now be a tomb. Friedrich spends some time arranging Wilhelm’s body, and Jan begins to worry that he will never resurface. But a moment later he does.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll bring earth from the field and fill this in,” he says to Jan. They’re the first words either of the parents have spoken to Jan since the incident. Jan says nothing in return, but follows Friedrich down to the farmhouse.

  It takes most of the following day to fill in the hidey-hole. Friedrich is crying and never speaks. Gisela is back in the farmhouse, sitting at the table, staring into space. Not even Lena can make her smile. Jan feels the burden of their sorrow, feels that somehow he is to blame. If he only had to consider himself he’d leave this instant, but he has Lena to worry about.

  She’s unhappy; he can see that. She’s picked up on the adults’ mood and is very quiet. Once or twice he tries to play with her, once she manages a smile, and he is delighted. But the next minute she runs and buries her head in Gisela’s lap.

  In this way, they exist beside each other for several weeks. The adults ignore Jan save to give him food and occasionally ask him to do some work. Jan in turn stays out of their way as much as possible, does as he’s told and tries to be helpful. The weather has fully turned now, and he dreads being thrown out. He’d be lucky to last a day out there. It’s a tense existence, though, and he’s constantly wary.

  One night at supper, Jan is taken by surprise when Friedrich addresses him. He’s so used to being ignored most of the time, that at first he doesn’t realize that Friedrich is speaking to him. When Jan takes too long to answer, Friedrich loses his temper and shouts at him, “Who the hell are you?”

  “Johann,” stutters Jan.

  “No, you’re not.” Friedrich gets up from the table, goes to the cupboard, and takes out a piece of paper. He waves it in front of Jan. “You’re pretending to be a Hitler Youth, yet this letter says they’re in Berlin with their parents. It’s time you told us who you really are.”

  Jan finds this hard to follow. He says nothing.

  “You’re not German, are you?”

  Nothing, safest to say nothing.

  “Wilhelm told us. The day before he died, he told us what happened in that village in Czechoslovakia. He said you saw your father die. Is that right?”

  Dear God, what can he say? His cover is blown, and these people are mad with grief. Why did he tell Wilhelm who he really was? “Meine Name ist Johann,” he says, trying to sound convincing.

  “No it isn’t,” roars Friedrich. “Your German is poor. You have a funny accent. You don’t understand all we say. You’re meant to be a Catholic. Say the Our Father. Go on, say it!”

  “I am a Catholic.”

  “Say it then, the Our Father. You’re old enough to know it by heart.”

  “Unsere Vater, wie…” Jan falters. He has no idea how to continue.

  “Tell us the truth,” Gisela’s voice is deadly quiet. In a way, Jan prefers Friedrich’s shouting. He hangs his head.

  Still quiet – “We know where you’re from, but we don’t know why you’re here.”

  Jan gives in. They know too much. “You’re right,” he says, “I’m not German; I’m from Czechoslovakia. My father was killed by German soldiers. My mother was taken away to a camp, and my older sister disappeared. But my little sister is here in this room. I have been searching for her for over a year.”

  He’s shocked them with this. They thought they knew his story, but they were wrong. Gisela’s face is white with fury. “Prove it,” she spits.

  Jan speaks to Lena in Czech. “Lena, don’t you remember me? I am your brother. You remember Mama and Tati, don’t you?” Her eyes are wide as he says this, but she doesn’t respond.

  Gisela smiles. “Helena, wo is dein Papa?” Lena points to Friedrich. “Und deine Mutti?” Lena blows Gisela a kiss. Gisela turns to Jan. “You’re lying.”

  Jan jumps up from the table. “I’m not lying. It’s the truth,” he shouts. Lena is watching all of this, her face pale. She has stopped eating. The baked potato is on her plate untouched. In an instant, it comes to Jan. He doesn’t know whether it will work, but it has to be worth a try. He crouches down beside Lena and starts to sing:

  “Jedna dvě tři čtyři pět, cos to, Lenko, cos to sněd? Brambory pečený, byly málo maštěný.” He’s
getting through to her; he can see it in her eyes, there’s a dawning light there. He sings the old nursery rhyme once more, pointing to her potato. “One, two, three, four, five. What have you eaten, Lena?” He pauses and she joins in, laughing. “Baked potatoes, too little grease on them.”

  “What is this? What are you doing to her?” yells Friedrich.

  Jan ignores him, tries another old song. This is one she loved when she was tiny; she used to play it with him a lot, she must remember it. He takes Lena’s thumb between his thumb and forefinger and shakes it. “To je táta, this is dad” – he goes to her next finger – “to je máma, this is mum.” He waits for a second as he always used to. She grabs his finger and finishes the rhyme: “To je dědek, to je bába, to je vnoucěk, malý kloucěk.” This is grandpa, this is grandma, and this little boy is the grandson. And as she always did when she was little, she tickled him as she said the last line. Jan laughs with joy. He tries some more Czech. “What is your name?” and this time she answers, “Lena.” A breakthrough. “Tell them who I am,” he whispers. “To je Jan,” she says to Gisela and Friedrich, adding to his delight, “my brother.” He couldn’t have asked for more.

  Jan feels sorry for the couple. They are devastated, Gisela waxen, Friedrich looking as if he’s aged ten years overnight. And after Wilhelm’s death they have no fight left in them. Friedrich sits down heavily in his armchair, which creaks in protest. Gisela flees the room. Jan looks at Friedrich unsure what to say, his feeling of triumph fading in the face of so much distress. “She’s my sister,” he says again. “I’ve been looking for her for over a year.”

  Friedrich stares at him with bloodshot eyes. “How did you find us? I don’t understand how you managed to find us.”

  “It’s a long story,” says Jan. “Maybe we should wait until your wife…”

  Friedrich’s shoulders slump. “She’ll never recover from this, never.” He gets up and rummages in a cupboard for a few seconds, bringing out a bottle of schnapps. He pulls out the cork with his teeth and gulps down a mouthful, grimacing at its strength. The colour returns to his cheeks. “God knows what she’ll do now.”