The Hands of War

by Marione Ingram

  Later that day I saw Frau Pimber coming toward our shed. I put my head in the door and alerted Mother, then ran to the dugout. While the two women were talking, I went to the well and looked into its cool and silent depths. I needed to make some sense out of what I had seen, to give it another interpretation or a different outcome. But staring into the well thinking about what I had seen made me feel worse.

  As I rose up and turned to leave, Frau Pimber’s hand flew against my face. She hit me with such force that I was knocked against the stone facing of the well. Too startled to cry out, I ran away as fast as I could, feeling that if I didn’t escape I would experience the same fate as the cat. I raced toward our shack, holding my flaming cheek in my hand, wanting desperately to be comforted by Mother. When I reached the door, however, I stopped and tried to compose myself, not wanting to upset Mother too greatly, fearing that she might try to do something rash, and feeling vaguely guilty, as if I had done something to provoke Frau Pimber. As I stood there gulping air, I touched the back of my head, which had begun to sting a little where it had hit the wall. My fingertip felt slightly wet, and I soon saw that I had bled a bit, not much but enough to make Mother wildly angry. So I turned and ran away from our shack and into the woods.

  I ran through the trees until I came to a broad ditch, which I leapt going full tilt, landing at the edge of a narrow dirt lane. I scurried across the road even though I knew this was strictly forbidden and plunged into the field of green and golden wheat on the other side. I ran low through stalks almost as high as my head until I felt sure that I couldn’t be seen from the road. Then I stopped and caught my breath and looked about me. The wheat seemed to be moving and I could hear it rustling, so that for several seconds I thought I was being pursued, but it was merely the wind caressing the bristling stalks. The sky was so full of light that it was like a dazzling smile that entreated me to smile back despite my fears and the sting on the back of my head. My lips opened and widened when a blood-red poppy caught my eye. As I watched it nod and sway gracefully in the breeze, all thoughts of the recent unpleasantness evaporated.

  I crept toward the poppy as if it were a bird that might fly away. Then I lovingly examined its exquisitely simple features. Four crimson, fan-shaped outer leaves casually overlapped, cupping a pale green pod set beneath a miniature shower of gold-tipped stamen. After I had admired it from every angle, noticing also that a black design in the bottom of the cup blurred to purple, I plucked the entire flower, cutting the stem low so as to include all the green buds. Then I looked around for more.

  The field that had looked from the road like rippling cloth of gold was stippled with softly glowing poppies and dark blue cornflowers, while countless white-petaled daisies serenely beamed yellow faces back at the sun. How wonderful, I thought. Marguerites are Mother’s namesake flower, the cornflowers match Rena’s eyes, and I adore poppies like nothing else. But after I had gathered an overwhelming armful, I realized that, as had been the case with the stolen apples, I could not take the flowers home with me. Mother would know that I had crossed the road into the field and my flowers therefore would give her pain rather than pleasure. Even though the Americans and English had landed armies in France and the Russians were furiously punishing the German armies in the East, giving us genuine hope that the war would not go on forever, I knew that we could not take any chances.

  Standing with the flowers at the edge of the field, I was so disappointed that I wanted to cry. Instead I turned and walked back among the golden fuzzy stalks, stopping when I reached what I judged to be the center of the field. There I lay down my flowers, arranging them in a circular pattern, and went to pluck more. I heaped these upon the others and kept collecting until I had gathered enough to make a thick, soft pallet. Then I lay down on my bed of flowers and looked up at the sky.

  I watched the platinum sun move like a shuttle through layers of fleece. Beneath the clouds a flock of birds wheeled and soared and changed directions in a flash, repeating their acrobatics in every quarter of the sky before plunging into a corner of the wheat field. I forgot that I was hungry, forgot the flames and screams and Marie Pimber’s cat, even forgot that Mother would be listening to the BBC and worrying because I was not there. I closed my eyes but didn’t make pictures in my mind as I usually did while lying in bed or in our earthen dugout. I didn’t want anything to interfere with the beauty of the moment and the wonderful feeling of solitary freedom. Listening to my own heartbeat, the rustling wheat, and the strange pulsing sounds of insects, I must have fallen into a light sleep.

  Suddenly a large, rough hand covered my mouth and most of my face. A man’s voice, gruff and urgent, was telling me or asking me something over and over in mangled German and some language I couldn’t identify. Occasionally, he would loosen his grip on my face so that I could breathe and answer him, but his breath was so bad that it was even more suffocating than his hand. In response I shook my head violently, covering my ears with my hands to indicate that I didn’t want to listen to him anymore. Although most of what he said was incomprehensible, something in the center of my being told me that he wanted to know exactly what I must not tell him. My fear was so transparent that my tormentor paused, bent his head closer and kissed both my eyes. When he withdrew his lips I could see that tears were running down his bristly face, streaking the grime in a way that made him look like a sad clown who was trying to laugh. Tears also began to trickle from my eyes.

  The man continued to command me but his voice was much gentler, sounding almost as much like a plea as an order. He stood me up so that my head was level with his and looked at me with eyes as blue as the cornflowers but so searching that I closed mine, as if to keep him from reading my thoughts. I understood that he wanted me to take him to Mother, but I couldn’t do this because I knew that if she were discovered she would be killed and so would Rena and probably even Helga. At the same time it was clear that the man would not let me go until he got what he wanted, and there was nowhere I could run if I should escape his grasp. Remorse and guilt at the thought that my disobedience might cause Mother’s death overwhelmed me. It would be better for me to die here on these flowers, I thought, but I knew that I couldn’t make that happen.

  The man didn’t try to hurt me. Instead he knelt and held me loosely in his arms. I was convinced that he was not German, much less a Nazi. His attempts at speaking German were so clumsy that it was easy to pretend I couldn’t understand him. He was bony and wretched and filthy looking and I was fairly certain that he had been a prisoner although I couldn’t tell what kind. Beneath the grime and whiskers his skin was pale and the close-cropped hair on his head and the hair on his hands and wrists looked reddish-blond. I didn’t think he was Jewish, but it was clear to me that he had suffered a lot.

  I don’t know how long the impasse lasted, only that I began to cry again and that the man clasped me firmly in his arms and did his best to reassure me that he meant no harm. I believed him but knew that didn’t make it okay for me to betray our hiding place. Eventually, still feeling like I had swallowed fire, I led the man across the road toward our shack.

  Mother was standing outside when we approached through the trees. She turned pale and clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. The man came near and spoke to her earnestly but haltingly in crude German and some other language. Mother didn’t say much in reply, but picked me up in her arms and carried me inside, leaving the door open for him to come in behind us.

  Mother didn’t scold me for leaving the area and leading the man to our hiding place, but she didn’t have to. I was ashamed of my behavior and aware that the man’s presence increased the possibility that we would be discovered and killed. Although we were undernourished, he was starving, so we shared what food we had. Late at night, he would go foraging for more, but he was not very successful and his efforts increased the risk that we might be discovered. He understood the situation and didn’t remain with us for more than a week or so. Despite my lingering shame at
having betrayed our hiding place, for the brief time that he was with us, he made me feel that I was very special.

  “You saved my life,” he would say, looking at me with love in his eyes, repeating the phrase and stroking my hair.

  I learned that his name was Carlo and he was from Yugoslavia, a country I hadn’t heard much about. He had been arrested after his country had fallen to Germany and had been deported to East Prussia to work in coal mines near the Polish border. When the Red Army began to approach the area, he and other slave laborers were marched west to work on defensive fortifications deeper within Germany. During the march he escaped and began to make his way toward Belgrade, where he had a wife and daughter he hadn’t seen in almost three years. Travelling only at night to avoid recapture, he had been hiding in the woods when he saw me dash into the wheat field to gather flowers.

  Carlo told Mother and me that he had a daughter my age and that it felt like he was holding her when he put his arms around me. He also said that even as a prisoner in a remote labor camp, he had heard about what the Germans were doing to Jews. When he talked about the cruelty of the Nazis or about his wife and daughter, he would sometimes begin to cry. At such times I would try to comfort him and go close to him so that he could stroke my hair or give me a hug if he liked. Although much thinner and more emotional, Carlo reminded me of Father and helped me to recall things about Father that I seemed almost to have forgotten.

  After Carlo left us, I began to think again about the beautiful poppies and cornflowers and daisies and yearned to return to the wheat field. In my mind I often pictured and rearranged the flowers. At night I even dreamed about them. In one dream the flame-like poppies set the field on fire and I ran about trying to put out the flames until I finally collapsed on a bed of flowers that turned out to be water lilies in a still pond. Lying quietly on a huge lily pad in the center of the pond I knew I was safe from the fire. But when I heard voices wafting over the water, I forced myself to wake up.

  * * *

  On an exceedingly windy evening in early autumn Frau Pimber opened our door, thrust her massive body through the frame, and shouted that a thunderstorm was on the way. She said that Mother and I must help her gather hay and put it in their small barn before it was ruined by rain. Mother insisted that I stay with Rena if there was going to be a storm and followed Frau Pimber out the door. Within a few minutes the storm hit. Lightning flashed and cracked and thunderclaps shook the walls of our shack. Wind stripped the tar paper from our roof, after which hailstones rattled the bare wood like handfuls of hurled pebbles. I rocked Rena in my arms, but after our one light went out she began to wail as loudly as she could and I wished that I could broadcast the sound so that Mother would hear it and come running.

  As the thunder and lightning gradually moved on the rain increased in intensity, creating the sensation that we had drifted under a waterfall. Soon I could hear and feel rain coming through the roof in several places. After lighting a lantern I tried to move things around to minimize the damage. But the rain continued to pummel us and the leaks became more numerous and both Rena and I grew more and more miserable. Twice the storm let up for a time until fresh gales roared toward us. I spent the intervals of relative calm in the doorway holding the lantern to help Mother make her way to us as rapidly as possible. When she didn’t return, I began to worry about her more and more, imagining all sorts of mishaps that might be keeping her away, including treachery by Frau Pimber.

  After what seemed like hours, the wind and rain departed and the dripping stopped inside our house. I put Rena to sleep by telling her a story about a girl who fell into a lake looking at her own reflection in the water but was saved by her sister who gave her a beautiful new dress that she made herself to replace the one that got wet. When Mother still didn’t return, I became even more fearful that something might have happened to her and that she might be trapped under a fallen tree or in need of help. At the same time I was certain that even if she was injured she would never forgive me for leaving Rena. I decided to go and look for her anyway.

  As I started out an almost full moon escaped the clouds long enough to reveal large puddles ahead. But it didn’t stay out long enough to enable me to avoid them. So I sloshed through water almost up to my knees and mud that tried to pull my shoes off my feet. After I had waded to within a few yards of the barn I heard an unexpected but not altogether unfamiliar rustling sound that I couldn’t quite identify. Not wanting to stop, I stepped ahead and was surprised and horrified to feel the ground give way entirely. I slid off-balance into a torrent in which I could neither swim nor stand.

  Stone fists battered and scraped my body as the current pulled me by my dress through the water, suddenly jerking my head below the surface for terrifying seconds. Although Father had taught me how to swim, nothing could have prepared me for this. Wildly thrashing about, gulping filthy water, and grabbing at everything my hands touched, I was tumbled headlong by the current until I slid to a halt in a shallow stretch of what I then recognized as the barn’s drainage ditch, greatly enlarged and coursing with water as never before. Frantically trying to scramble up a steep bank I slid and fell back into the surging current and was swept along several more yards until I became beached again in a shallower passage. I was on my back in the frothing water and too petrified to move when I became aware of the rhythmic whooing of the barn owl that I had seen last summer and had listened to in my bed at night. I remembered that the bird’s proud but benign way of looking at me had reminded me of my grandmother and I was reassured by its repeated calling, which was like a ship’s foghorn giving friendly warning in the darkness. Reassured by the sound of this kindred spirit I recovered my composure and began calmly to feel with my feet for rocks that would hold. Then I reached out until I found roots and rock ledges that I could grip with my hands. Slowly but carefully I clambered out of the enlarged ditch and saw that it was not nearly as deep as it had seemed. Then I stood and listened again for the sound of the owl. Instead, I heard Mother call my name. I ran to her and held her tightly, greatly relieved that we were both okay and reunited again. She practically had to pry me loose so that we could get back to our storm-stricken home where, mercifully, Rena was sound asleep and miraculously dry.

  That winter we were colder and hungrier than ever. We had been hiding on Frau Pimber’s farm for more than a year, and we were gradually growing thinner and weaker. But we were glad to be away from the bombings and deportations and greatly encouraged by the news that the Russians from the east and the British and Americans from the south were savagely battling their way toward us. Our dream that the war might soon be over was replaced by despair, however, when Frau Pimber came to our shack one evening to report that Father had been arrested. Mother was crushed and so was I at first. But remembering how the Gestapo had treated Uncle Fred, I refused to believe Frau Pimber. Father was too clever and too resourceful to let them catch him, I told myself. I was dying to say as much to Frau Pimber, but refrained, wanting to have as little to do with her as possible, which was difficult because she had begun to listen to news broadcasts at our place. When she told us not long after that Father had been sent to the crumbling Russian front, I felt completely vindicated. “He was too clever for them!” I said to her face. I told her that he could speak Russian and would find a way to join the Russians. This made her snort like an ox, but she didn’t contradict me.

  As the freezing winter yielded to the fickle rain-and-shine of early spring and the Allied armies bludgeoned their way ever closer, signs of other refugees appeared in the woods near us. A campfire occasionally flickered in the night and the smells of misery in flight mingled with the heady aroma of pine needles. We began to worry that one or more might invade our hiding place and gradually got used to the idea that sooner or later some sort of encounter was inevitable.

  So we were not too surprised on a blustery night in late April when Frau Pimber came to our hut trailing two desperate-looking men, both with bristly beards and bot
h wearing farm clothes apparently supplied by Herr Pimber, who was shorter and thicker than either of them. The taller of the two men limped and carried a crude cane and was much feebler than his younger, relatively robust companion. The latter’s eyes swiftly inventoried everything we had, as if to see if anything was worth taking. Despite his apparent good health he looked so haunted and so potentially violent that Mother paled when he asked Rena her name, and my younger sister shyly hid behind Mother and refused to answer.

  “Tell him your name,” Frau Pimber said. “He won’t hurt you.”

  When Rena remained silent, I decided to answer for her. “Her name’s Renate, and she’s only five.”

  Frau Pimber had brought some stale black bread and pale yellow cheese for the men to eat and had even brought portions for us. She said that the men could sleep outside or inside the shack or in the earthen dugout, that it made no difference to her. When Mother tried to say that she would prefer for the men to sleep in the dugout, Frau Pimber cut her short, saying that she knew we had let a man stay with us only a few weeks earlier.

  This was the first time she indicated that she had known or found out about Carlo, whose presence we had taken pains to keep secret. Her face was a pink mask shaded by a protruding kerchief so that it was impossible to tell whether she was conveying that she was more observant or more tolerant than we gave her credit for.

  After she left, the two men washed their hands and faces and devoured their bread and cheese, as did we. We noticed that the younger one was attentive to his comrade’s difficulties and that his ferocious look and manner gradually relaxed, so much so that I felt bold enough to ask him his name.

  “Rainer,” he said. “My name is Rainer.” He tried to smile, but it was obvious that he was out of practice. When I asked where he came from, he said they came from Neuengamme. He asked me if I had heard of Neuengamme.

  Like everyone else I knew that Neuengamme was a large concentration camp on the outskirts of Hamburg. But I didn’t say so because he looked much too robust to have been a prisoner.