by Irma Joubert
“I’m going now,” the man said after a while. “You’re to stay until your sister is well.”
“Okay,” she said.
The woman—her name was Rigena, she’d heard—said something about plants and motioned that Gretl should look after the two little ones. She thrust the baby into Gretl’s arms and left.
Gretl looked at the baby. It was an ugly little creature, too pink. And it gave off a sour smell. There was no crib to lay it in, so she put it on the floor. But the baby opened its mouth and bawled. She grabbed it, picking it up from the floor. The little girl watched with large brown eyes from under the table.
“Mutti?” Elza murmured from the bed.
Gretl rocked the baby and replied, “No, it’s me, Gretl. Are you better now?”
Slowly Elza opened her eyes. They were very red. “Why are you bouncing that baby?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“It’s the only way it will stop screaming,” said Gretl.
“Oh.” Elza closed her eyes again. “Water,” she said softly.
Gretl looked around. There was a pitcher and a tin mug on the table, but she couldn’t bounce the baby and get water at the same time. She put the infant back on the floor.
The baby screamed. She grabbed the mug and dipped it into the water. Under the table the little girl also began to cry. Gretl lifted Elza’s head and held the water to her lips. It dribbled out, but Elza managed to drink some of it.
“My head hurts,” said Elza. “Make the children stop crying.”
Gretl picked up the baby and jiggled her. It helped, but the little girl was still crying. She saw a bowl with honey on a shelf. She dipped her finger into the honey and popped it into the little girl’s mouth. She instantly stopped crying.
“Where are we?” whispered Elza.
“In a house,” said Gretl. “But I don’t know where Mutti and Oma are.”
It was quiet for a long time. The little girl came out from under the table and motioned with a dirty finger that she wanted more honey. Gretl struggled to give her the honey while jiggling the baby at the same time.
When Elza spoke again, her voice was so soft that Gretl could hardly hear. “Mutti and Oma couldn’t have escaped from the train,” she said. “The gap was too small.”
“But they said they would!” Gretl cried.
Elza’s eyes were closed. “Just to make us feel better,” she whispered.
“Where did they go, then?” Gretl asked.
But Elza didn’t answer. Her breathing was shallow and rasping, her cheeks were blood-red, and her sweaty black hair clung to her scalp. I must wipe her face again, Gretl thought. But it was simply too much. She couldn’t jiggle the baby, feed the little one honey, and wipe Elza’s face all at the same time. So she left it.
After a while Rigena came back with the two little boys, who were making a great deal of noise. The baby began to scream again, and so did the little girl. Rigena rocked the baby and shouted at the boys to go outside to play. She fed some wood into the stove, put a pot with a little water on top, threw in a handful of leaves, and motioned to Gretl to wipe Elza’s face. Gretl hoped Rigena wasn’t a witch.
She wiped and wiped Elza’s face. Rigena allowed the leaves to cool and tried to feed Elza the leafy water. But Elza couldn’t seem to wake up and kept choking.
When darkness began to fall, Gretl went outside. She sat down and leaned against the wall of the house. Three goats were chewing their cud, and a few ducks were waddling toward the house.
Elza was very sick, she knew. Mutti and Oma were gone, she didn’t know where.
She tried to think about other things, such as Oma’s Hansel-and-Gretel house in the forest, but then she missed Oma and Mutti even more. She thought about Switzerland and Peter and Heidi, but now that Elza was sick, she didn’t know how they would get to Switzerland. She tried to think about the story of the wolf and the seven little goats, and the one about the ugly duckling who became a swan, but nothing helped.
She wasn’t usually afraid, but now she was. Not of the darkness or the bombs that might fall or of Rigena, who might be a witch.
She was afraid because she had never been so alone.
For the first time she began to cry.
2
When the Nazis had closed down the University of Krakow and interned most of the professors, Professor Sobieski and his wife fled just in time. A former student, now a metallurgical engineer at the steelworks, took them into his home, where Jakób and two others were secretly continuing their studies. Jakób hoped he would be able to complete his final year at the university when the war was over and qualify for his degree.
Tonight the professor and Jakób sat on a hard bench at a narrow wooden table in a candlelit kitchen. They had finished with the complicated mathematical formulas and the analysis of chemical compounds. The other two students had already disappeared into the dark.
“I have to go to Krakow next week,” said Jakób, “but I’ll be back the week after.”
Never one to ask unnecessary questions, the professor nodded.
“I’ll try to bring back that book you’re looking for.”
“You probably won’t find it.” The candle flickered, throwing dim shadows on the stone wall. “Nietzsche’s words . . .” Professor Sobieski took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and polished them carefully. “Nietzsche’s words about blood and horror being at the bottom of all ‘good things’ have come true. No nation has ever experienced the kind of oppression that Poland is undergoing now.”
“True, Professor,” said Jakób. He felt exactly the same about his country’s suffering.
The professor carefully hooked his spectacles around his ears. A crack ran through the middle of one lens. “First Germany invaded Poland from the west, then the Soviet Union from the east, then they divided Poland between them as if we haven’t existed as a sovereign nation for the past thousand years.”
“True, Professor.” Sometimes the professor took a long time to make his point.
“But what the Nazis did in the south is even worse,” said Professor Sobieski.
The closing of the university was still an open wound.
“The University of Krakow is all of six hundred years old, one of the oldest universities in Europe.”
It was quiet for a while. Jakób also understood what the professor was not saying. “I agree, Professor,” he said.
“To close the university! It’s disgraceful!”
The elderly man didn’t mention his colleagues who had disappeared.
Jakób nodded.
“You know, Jakób, I believe the Nazis aim to eradicate the word Polak from the vocabulary. Poland will become a colony and the Poles will be the Russians’ slaves. The country will be a reservation, nothing but a labor camp for the Third Reich.”
So that was what was bothering the old man. “We won’t allow it, Professor,” said Jakób. “The Home Army has a lot of support—we estimate around two hundred thousand men—who will rise up to fight when the time is ripe.”
“What are you waiting for, then? When will the time be ripe? Has our nation not suffered enough already?”
“We don’t have the means, Professor,” Jakób tried to explain. “We have a reasonable supply of small arms, but not enough heavy armament. We don’t want to act prematurely. In Operation Tempest, through sabotage—”
“Is it true,” Professor Sobieski interrupted, peering past the crack in his lens, “that you’re considering collaborating with the Soviets?”
Jakób chose his words carefully. “Some people are talking about it, ye
s, Professor, but I don’t trust the Communists.”
“I fought in Russia in the Great War of 1914. I don’t trust them either.”
“I fear the Russians even more than I fear the Nazis.” Jakób leaned forward, speaking earnestly. The professor was the one person who would understand what he was saying. “I believe after the war Russia is going to emerge as one of the great world powers, possibly the greatest. I believe the Western nations who are presently bending over backward to accommodate their ally in the East are going to cry bitter tears one day.”
The professor nodded. “We must restore the Soviet-Polish borders established during the Treaty of Riga in 1921,” he said thoughtfully. “Remember the words of the great patriot and poet Mickiewicz . . .”
Later, when Jakób was walking home in the dark, he knew that Professor Sobieski hadn’t understood his fear. Maybe he had just not listened. The full moon lit up the silent landscape and bathed him in a great loneliness.
The streets of Krakow were deserted. The Jewish quarters were quiet as the grave, the centuries-old synagogue in ruins. The clip-clop of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones was silent, the brightly colored flowers and jumble of stalls on the market square gone. Even the bugler at the church with its twin towers had been silenced. Only the wide, deep waters of the Vistula continued to flow unhindered.
But at least Krakow was still there, Jakób thought, with its ancient buildings and its castle and the Church of St. Andrews. If the Home Army hadn’t found out about the landmines and defused them in time, the face of the city would have been completely changed.
Twice along the way he was stopped and ordered to produce his papers. He felt the tension between his shoulder blades. He knew his documents were in order, but the Gestapo could always find something wrong if they wished. After each confrontation he walked on as calmly as possible.
A black swastika on a huge red banner was on display at the university. Jakób did not stop to enter. Professor Sobieski’s book would have to wait until the war was over.
He had dropped off pamphlets at the home of Andrei Kiernik’s parents the night before. His father would print more and continue to distribute them. When Andrei had walked him out, he had said, “You should visit that woman on whose farm you buried the ammunition.”
“Why? Is there a problem?” Jakób had asked.
“No. But she asked me to tell you to come.”
Jakób had sensed that Andrei was hiding something. It was probably nothing serious, or Andrei would have warned him, he reassured himself as he took a shortcut through a field. He walked at a fast pace. It was a two-day journey on foot back to Częstochowa, and he wanted to be home before dark the next evening. He had tucked a packet containing secret information and documents into the front of his shirt, where he could feel it rubbing against his chest.
The farmhouse looked even more run-down than it had a year ago, when he had come here to bury the ammunition. In one place the roof had caved in completely and a beam stuck up in the air at an odd angle.
“There’s a child here you must take,” said Rigena as soon as he appeared.
“Good afternoon, Rigena,” said Jakób.
“Yes, good afternoon. She’s Jewish, she can’t stay here,” Rigena said, tucking a strand of black hair behind her ear.
“A little girl?” Jakób didn’t understand what Rigena was trying to tell him.
“I can barely care for my own children. I can’t keep her here.”
Jakób felt a heaviness inside him. Where would he go with a Jewish child? He asked the first question that came to him.
“Where did she come from?”
“I suppose she was on the train full of Jews you blew up,” said Rigena and jiggled the little one on her hip.
Jakób closed his eyes. He couldn’t get that picture out of his mind. “No,” he said, “no one could have come out of it alive.”
“Then I don’t know. But you’ve got to take her.”
“Rigena, I . . .”
A child appeared in the dilapidated doorway. She was small and dirty and terribly skinny. Her face was ashen, her blonde hair thin and matted. But her eyes were big and blue, and she looked at Jakób fearlessly.
He felt a strange tenderness stir in him and looked at Rigena. “Why do you think she’s Jewish?” he asked.
“Her sister was dark, you know. And there was the nose.”
He looked at the child again. She was still staring at him. She was fair, with a pert, turned-up nose. “Where’s the sister now?”
From Rigena’s gesture he understood he shouldn’t mention it again.
Jakób shook his head. It didn’t seem possible. “Rigena,” he said desperately, “where could I take her?”
Rigena shrugged and turned to the child. “Get your bag,” she said.
“Does she speak Polish?” asked Jakób, at a loss. He felt as if a strong current were sweeping him along. He was used to being in control.
“She doesn’t speak. She understands,” said Rigena.
The child reappeared in the doorway. She pressed a small, flat bag to her chest, holding it like a shield.
“Is this all she’s got?” asked Jakób. “Doesn’t she have . . . clothes?”
“No, just that,” said Rigena. “You must go now, it’ll be dark in an hour. I don’t have any bread to give you, only apples.”
“I have enough food, thanks, Rigena.” He turned to the scrawny, blue-eyed girl. “Come,” he said, making his voice as friendly as possible.
When they had been walking for almost an hour, he took out his water bottle and unscrewed the cap. “Water?” he asked, sitting down to rest.
The child nodded. She took a few sips, then wiped the bottle carefully with her dirty dress before handing it back to him.
He was surprised by her endurance. He had been walking at a much slower pace than usual, often looking over his shoulder for her, but he had never stopped. She had not uttered a sound and stayed with him every step of the way. He didn’t know what he was going to do with her, though. “Are you German, or are you Jewish?” he asked.
“Jestem Polka,” she said. I’m Polish. Her voice was strong for such a young child, but her accent gave her away.
“I see.” He switched to German. “What’s your name?”
She did not reply.
“I’m Jakób,” he said. “Jakób Kowalski.”
When she remained silent, he got up. “We must keep walking while we can still see,” he said. “Are you tired?”
She shook her head and got up at once, still clinging to her bag.
Jakób swung his backpack over his shoulder and walked on. He kept to the road. He knew these parts. Hardly anyone except the local farmers ever used the road. He would hear any approaching trucks from a distance. There would be plenty of time to hide in the bushes.
Soon it became too dark to see. “We’ll stop here,” he said, still in German. “We’ll eat and sleep. The moon will be up at two; it might be possible to carry on then.” He didn’t know why he was explaining. Surely she was too young to understand.
He opened his bag and took out the bread and ham Andrei’s mother had packed for him. He would save the goat’s-milk cheese for the next day. He broke the bread, carefully sliced the ham into thin strips, and put it on the bread. “Here,” he said.
Wordlessly she took the bread. Her hands were small, the fingers incredibly thin and fragile looking.
He knew nothing about children, especially girls, Jakób realized. He didn’t know anyone with a little girl. The neighbors had two unruly boys.
; “Help yourself to the water,” he said. He felt awkward, inadequate.
“Thank you.” So she did understand German after all.
When they had eaten, he unrolled his thin blanket. “We must sleep,” he said, lying down.
She lay down next to him on the blanket, turned her back to him, and fell asleep almost at once.
For Jakób, sleep didn’t come. What was he going to do with this child? She could never keep up until they reached Częstochowa. It was much too far. Besides, it was unlikely that they would get home the next day. Their progress was too slow.
He would have to carry her. He just didn’t know how.
Little girls cry a lot, he thought. He hoped she wouldn’t start crying.
Around them the land lay dark and quiet. Peaceful.
Where would he go with her? He couldn’t take a German child home with him—Germans were hated in Poland. Neither could he show up with a Jewish child—his parents, especially his mother, were diehard Catholics.
He couldn’t think of anyone who would take her.
It was late when he finally fell asleep.
Something woke him. He felt the tense little body against him. Then he heard it, the distant rattle of gunfire. Instinctively he held out his hand. The bony little hand slipped into his own. “It’s far away,” he said.
“I’m not afraid,” she said. But the small, icy hand clung to him.
By the time the sun came up, they had covered a considerable distance. They had rested twice, drunk all the water in the bottle, and walked on. “We must fill the water bottle,” Jakób said.
She washed her hands and face at a stream. They each had a slice of bread and washed it down with water. “Please tell me your name,” he said.
“Gretl.”
“Gretl who?”
She said nothing more.
“Gretl Whatever, I don’t really know where to take you.”
“To Onkel Hans.”
“I beg your pardon?”