by John R Burns
Kas had thought about this, his thin, filthy features squeezed into a doubtful expression.
‘So why does everybody hate you?’
‘You don’t.’
At that Kas had become awkward.
‘It’s....it’s different with you.’
‘No it isn’t. I’m just like every other Jew, but you help me a lot. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t here. It doesn’t seem right. Maybe I should have been with the rest so whatever has happened to them would have happened to me as well.’
‘You talk such rubbish sometimes,’ Kas complained, ‘and you’re such an ugly sod,’ were his last words before he ran off back to the main camp.
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When the first snow came it only settled on the higher branches leaving the floor of the forest clear. But the first strong winds saw the snow whipped across the camp forcing everybody to remain in their shelters. Leon would lie there listening to the wind lash through the trees as the snow piled up at the entrance of his burrow. He was wearing two pairs of trousers, three pairs of socks, a vest, two shirts, a ripped sweater and the constant army coat. Around his head he had wrapped lengths of sacking on top of which he had an old fur hat pulled down to his eyes. His boots had been found by Kas, made of leather and many sizes too big.
It was the third day of the snow when big Paul came back with his hunting group. They had come across a Pole lost in the forest who had told them about his village being burnt to the ground and some of its inhabitants shot. The village was over twenty miles to the north. He had told them there was one German unit in the area that was doing all the killing and burning. The officer in charge was called Brucker. The man had watched him giving out the orders before running off into the forest.
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‘She’s called Polyna Wodski,’ Benjamin told him, ‘lives on Vrina Street, the one that’s almost falling down it’s so old. She has two brothers who are supposed to be proper thugs. They work in the tannery. Her father works on the estate and her mother mends clothes. Is that enough for you? They moved into town a few weeks back and seem to have done alright for themselves.’
They were in Leon’s front room pretending to be studying one late spring evening. Leon had never listened to somebody speaking with such intense interest. He wanted to grab hold of his friend and squeeze out every last drop of what he knew.
‘There must be more.’
Benjamin had looked disgusted, ‘What do you mean more? Isn’t that enough to tell you that this girl is totally forbidden territory? She has a family Leon and connections in the town. For your own family’s sake you don’t go near her.’
‘You sound just like my father.’
‘Well in this I am your father.’
‘How old is she?’
‘I’ve never seen her so how the hell should I know?’ Benjamin had retorted, becoming more frustrated.
‘I think about fourteen.’
‘Well too young for you.’
‘And what about when you wanted a kiss off my sister?’
‘That was different.’
Leon had smiled then, holding up his hand in front of Benjamin’s face, ‘I see nobody.’
‘You want to see too much.’
‘She’s the most beautiful thing ever.’
‘So I gather.’
It was the next evening when he waited at the end of Vrina Street. Its houses built of dark wood with low doors opened straight onto a rutted road. Most of them were leaning into each other, as though the whole street was being squeezed from either end. Smoke from the houses was spreading across the street so Leon could only see halfway along. He was already feeling nervous, with that dryness in his throat and his heart pumping hard. He had never been in this area of Volnus before. The Jewish districts were over the other side of the town.
All he wanted was to see her again, to see Polyna in her summer dress that emphasised her thinness and small breasts, to see her long brown hair and the sad, doleful expression on her face. That was what he had noticed the first time. She had looked unsure, tentative, letting the other girls she had been with do all the talking. Her silence had been intriguing. He was glad that Polyna had seemed so quiet.
He had found a spot at the end of the street where he hoped nobody would notice him. He knew what he was doing was dangerous. In the last weeks there had been several attacks on Jews in the town. What was happening across the border in Germany seemed to be affecting everybody.
He promised himself he would wait no longer than half an hour. The smell of wood smoke filled the air. There were no street lights here so the only light came from the few houses that had their lamps lit.
After an hour he was becoming anxious. All that had come along Vrina street was a horse and cart full of logs. He knew he should leave, but the hope that Polyna might appear kept him where he was, in the shadows between two buildings. The sounds of the Catholic Church bells periodically sounded out. The sky was darkening fast.
It was then he finally saw a figure coming towards him. To begin with he thought it impossible that it would be her, but as the person approached out of the smoke filled darkness his heart began to race as he suddenly realised it could be Polyna. She was wearing a long kind of cardigan and was walking quite slowly. Momentarily he could see the girl’s features as she passed a lighted window. It was her. She had a scarf tied round her head, but he had seen the full mouth and her curved cheekbones. It was Polyna and she was coming straight towards him. In a panic he stepped out onto the road making her suddenly stop and then start walking again, quicker this time as with head down she hurried past him, her body only a few feet from his as she went by. He turned to watch her disappear round the corner at the end of the street wondering whether he should follow her. It was then he realised he had already put himself in too much danger, that he had waited too long. To go after her would have been risking more. At least he had seen her, closer than the last time and she had been just as he remembered, even more, everything about her somehow secret, silent and already precious to him.
Back in his room he started immediately trying to sketch his last image of her, Polyna with her scarf and long woollen jacket. One drawing was of just her face, another of her shrouded figure coming along the street. The most challenging was to try and capture the image of her after she had passed him and was about to turn the corner into the next street. For hours he worked at these drawings. None of them were enough. He still felt he had not captured what he was looking for, especially the sad expression Polyna made with her mouth, the way the lips drew down giving her a look of suffering, of never being sure. It was that he wanted to draw and he could not.
By the time he was exhausted the floor was strewn with his sketches, each one ripped out of his pad and thrown onto the pile. Polyna was in none of them. He had failed. He had to see her again, and again, had to become familiar with all her expressions and movements until he could be confident enough to make her come alive under the lines of his pencil.
Some days he would try to casually walk past the bakery where she worked. On others he would wait at the end of her street. Benjamin had found out that she sometimes visited the house of a relative who lived over the other side of the river. This meant that on certain evenings Leon would be standing on the bridge looking down onto the fast flowing water waiting to see if she might appear.
After a few weeks he had seen Polyna on at least a dozen occasions, sometimes with the same group of girls or by herself and once coming down the steps of the church near the market square with an older lady who Leon guessed was her mother.
Now the drawings were beginning to improve. He worked at them more carefully, the lines becoming darker with more emphasis. He was getting closer to representing her face and eyes, her mouth, the way her hair sometimes curved across her forehead.
A few day
s later he finished up in bed exhausted.
‘So, they say you are poorly. You look alright to me,’ was David’s first words when he came to see him one late afternoon.
His uncle leant over to place his hand on his forehead.
‘ Maybe you’re going at things too hard. This is an important time in your life Leon, what with your school exams coming up and then having to decide what you’re going to do in the future.’
‘I know what I’m going to do.’
‘And does anybody else?’
‘No. Only my sister and she doesn’t count.’
‘Well what about sharing it with me and I won’t tell a soul.’
Leon pulled himself further up in the bed and said slowly, ‘I want to be an artist, a proper artist, one who can live from the work he does and manages to sell. I want to go to Paris and learn as much as I can. That’s what I want.’
For a few moments there was no response. His uncle closed his eyes and his chin sank down on his chest as though he were about to go to sleep.
Then he was alert again, ‘And what do you think your mother and father would say to that?’
‘I want to know what you say uncle.’
‘I say good for you. I say go for it. I say you have one life and you have to make the most of it, the most of your talents if you’re lucky enough to have any. And you obviously have.’
‘You think so?’
‘Absolutely, if you can capture my ugly mug and put it on paper then you must be good.’
‘I want to be good.’
His uncle had taken hold of his hand, ‘My little Leon, the artistic Jew. Are you going to make Volnus famous? The only suggestion I would make is that you have to broach the subject very carefully with your father because he believes you’re going to become a lawyer. Your mother, well she’ll be more amenable, but your father, I’m not so sure. If I say anything it will only make things worse. It’s up to you to tell him.’
‘He’ll hate the idea, absolutely hate it and everything depends on him.’
‘That’s not necessarily the case,’ David said.
Leon looked at him with a puzzled expression, ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean your uncle is one of the richest men in Volnus. I mean you have an uncle who is getting on and has not yet decided what he’s going to do with all his hard earned savings, investments and the rest of it. All I’m saying is that you might not have to ask your father for anything.’
‘And...and you would do that uncle? You would do that for me?’
‘So long as you promise to become successful and make me a huge return on my investment, it’s definitely an idea. So stop moping in bed and get on with your school work and your drawings and paintings. You need the school work just...just I’m saying...just in case your artistic talents come to nothing.’
Leon did not know what to do or say then.
‘Uncle you....’
‘No need to say anymore. No need at all. Your uncle loves you and wants the best for you. You and Hella are all I have. I’m hoping to do the same for her, but she doesn’t know it yet and I don’t want you telling her.’
CHAPTER 11
In the night the moisture from melting snow soaked his clothes. He wrapped the sacking round all of his face leaving only a slit for his eyes and nostrils. All he could hear was the constant wind rushing through the trees. His stomach was a huge, open mouth gnawing away at him. His mind played its tricks as he imagined bread swelling golden crusted in his mother’s kitchen sunlight or steam rising from a pot of stew that bubbled up chunks of meat, carrots, dumplings and potatoes.
Kas only made it worse.
‘My mother used to make big biscuits with raisins. I used to dip them in father’s coffee and then try and catch the biscuit in my mouth before it melted.’
After another afternoon snow storm their area became frosted over, the ground rutted and silvered, the trees covered in ice. It felt to Leon that there was little left except for this mad need to survive. The hunger was unbearable, the waiting just the drip of time with nothing happening. Even Kas was losing all his energy. He had become quieter, moodier, constantly complaining. Leon knew they were all on the edge and that soon others would start to die. Next day one of the men came back saying that he had seen smoke in the distance. Within minutes Radek and big Paul had the rest of the men ready.
‘We’ve lost one and I don’t want us to lose the other. He stays here Radek. He stays here,’ Kas’s mother tried before the group was about to leave, kneading her hands in her long coat whilst she spoke.
The other women were standing with her.
‘Leave him here. You don’t need him. Take the Jew instead,’ she continued.
‘They both go,’ was Radek’s harsh answer, ‘Both of them. We need both of them.’
Kas ran over to tell Leon that he was going with them.
‘You’ll have him killed! You will!’ his mother was shouting as she ran after the men.
Within a short time Leon was exhausted. To put one foot in front of the other was a huge conscious effort. Blindly he followed the Pole in front of him. Weakly he stumbled under the low branches, watching Kas up ahead with his father.
It was when Paul thought he could smell smoke that they stopped and waited while Kas climbed one of the higher trees, the snow from its branches spraying down. He was so small and lithe that it seemed incredible to Leon that he had the energy to clamber up the tall fir as quickly as he did. Momentarily he was years in the past up there with him watching a man lift his axe and then swing it down hard to slice into the neck of the one on his knees.
‘It’s in that direction,’ Kas said breathlessly after he had come back down, pointing into the trees,’ Smoke, just one fire it looks like.’
‘Well whoever it is they don’t seem that bothered,’ was from Paul.
Radek got them to check their weapons again before they started.
Finally Leon understood why they had brought him when they next stopped and Radek told him to see what there was further ahead.
‘And make sure you get yourself back here, understood,’ he muttered quietly, ‘and don’t take too long or we’ll be leaving you.’
Terrors of the forest filled his mind the moment he set off. Instinctively he went into a crouch, low branches scratching his face. He had no idea where he was supposed to be going until he smelt the smoke. Ahead there was a break in the trees.
‘There are two men. They’re cutting down trees,’ he reported back,’ in a large clearing. They’re burning branches. There’s a whole stack of logs.’
Radek looked at him then.
Leon could hardly stand.
‘Is that it?’
‘That’s....that’s what I saw.’
Carefully they all moved to the edge of the clearing. It was exactly how Leon had described it. The two men were crouched by the fire smoking cigarettes. The snow had been churned up around them. There was a horse tethered to a tree.
Radek made the decision to go and talk to the two men. The rest stayed in the shadows of the trees watching as he walked unarmed across the clearing. When the men saw him approaching they grabbed their rifles. Radek lifted up his hands as he slowed his steps. He left a few paces between them as he started to talk.
The group waited, those with rifles intent on any wrong move from the two woodsmen.
Finally Radek started coming back, walking over the churned up ground, his head lowered while the two behind him watched before he disappeared from sight.
‘They say there are more of them but that the rest have gone off to start clearing another part.’
‘The Germans are building roads into the forest, roads of logs,’ said big Paul.
‘These two must be pretty sure of themselves,’ added Radek, ‘So we wait. We’ll go two at a time. The rest of us will settle down here. We’ve enough food for a couple of days. Then if nothing happens we’ll go back.’
‘It’s about time we killed some fucking G
ermans,’ was from Paul.
‘Or bastards who cut logs for them,’ another added.
Leon sat back against a tree. All he wanted to do was sleep.
‘You did well,’ was from Kas as he suddenly crouched in front of him.
‘For a Jew, you mean.’
‘Yeh, for a Jew.’
‘So what do you think is going to happen?’
‘My father thinks the Germans will come for the logs.’
‘And then what?’
‘Depends how many there are.’
The tension was there right through the night. It was too cold to sleep. Most of the men kept getting up to walk around to get the blood circulating again.
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‘What’s happened to Uncle David’s place?’ Leon asked his mother.
The question set her face into a worried expression as she told him that there had been a fire two nights ago.
‘It was at the back. It started in a store shed and spread to some of the main building. Uncle David did not think the damage was as bad as he first thought. The place was full of smoke so it had to close. He said it would be open again by the end of the week.’
Leon noticed how she gripped her hands together while she spoke.
‘We heard from Hella. She says the Ronstein’s house is grand and she has a big room that looks out onto one of the main streets in Warsaw.’
Leon knew that his mother had opposed the idea of Hella going anywhere, even if it meant postponing her teacher training course. It was father who had pushed for the decision that Hella should go.
‘I thought we’d agreed that we carry on everything as normally as we can, and that includes Hella starting her course,’ he had said and then added, ‘Life can’t stop just because Hitler makes a speech. Some of our friends have decided to take their families abroad, but for us that is not possible so we have to make do with the situation as it is. Nobody is saying that it’s easy. It’s just what we have to do or we’ll just sit here waiting for something to happen. That’s not the way to go on. It can’t be.’