A Boy in Winter

by Rachel Seiffert

  “You will forgive my enquiring.”

  Pohl does not work under him, and Arnold is mindful of this nicety. They are the same age too, so Pohl thinks he cannot pull that rank, either. They probably went to the same kind of school, even; Arnold is familiar, a little too much so. A fellow provincial grammar-school boy grown older, softer about the middle, receding; more suited to desk work than life in uniform.

  “How long now before your labour teams can start on the surfacing?”

  Arnold has ambitions for the district, and he always manages to remind Pohl, even if not in so many words, that the road is to serve the Reich and its expansion: delays to its construction will delay all the SS plans to improve the new territories.

  But he listens, Arnold. He does listen—and always with interest that seems genuine—to Pohl’s elaborations of the building stages, and the construction company’s projections. The man has shown himself receptive to Pohl’s suggestions; even in their earliest meetings, Pohl quickly got the feeling that Arnold wanted to build the road just as well as he did—albeit for different reasons.

  Already they’ve built the road higher than planned for: the terrain demanded this, and Arnold acceded, allowing Pohl to add layers for drainage, and more layers to lift the surface further above the flood plain. They’d had to divert from the intended route there, too, north of the town boundary, widening the curve it took to avoid the start of the marshland—and to avoid the partisans there. All this meant losing at least three of their early weeks to the rerouting, but Arnold had seen the sense in this.

  Pohl got the feeling that Arnold saw this road differently from his superiors—differently enough, in any case, to talk a little more openly. If not about how to make this road beautiful, or admirable, as Pohl still felt it could be—a true feat of engineering acumen—then at least to be attentive when Pohl asked—quite bluntly—for a little more forbearance.

  “You must understand, Sturmbannführer,” Pohl told him, in one of their frankest exchanges, only a fortnight ago now, walking back to the jeeps after one of Arnold’s checking visits. “The Reichsführer SS must understand too, surely. He hasn’t chosen the best terrain to build a road through.”

  Arnold looked up at hearing Himmler’s rank invoked, Himmler’s judgement brought into question. But he did not slow, or show any shock or disapproval; he gave no sign that this idea was news to him. Arnold took Pohl’s elbow instead, a friendly gesture, almost paternal, leading him to one side, away from the SS drivers, and Pohl thought he might be advised—one grammar-school alumnus to another—to keep his counsel. Keep such thoughts to yourself; don’t be a fool, man. Don’t lay yourself open. But Arnold simply nodded for him to continue.

  “The Reichsführer SS; you were saying?”

  Pohl was hesitant at first.

  “We are behind, Sturmbannführer, but for good reason. We all wish to see the road completed. But out here, you see, such work cannot be hurried.”

  “You think we hurry you unduly?”

  “At the expense of quality. Yes, I do.”

  Pohl’s answer came quickly, and it came out more sharply than he had intended, out of nervousness. But Arnold smiled then. And he nodded again: was that agreement?

  Pohl had never gone this far before in venturing his opinions, but now he’d dared, and he was meeting no resistance. So why not go further? If he didn’t, then surely no one else here would. Pohl had Arnold’s attention. More: he had the feeling of having Arnold’s ear, then.

  “Go on, Pohl,” the Sturmbannführer told him.

  So he did.

  “A road is there for such a long time,” Pohl started, still careful. “A good road, in any case.” One that doesn’t flood in the winter, or crack and sag for want of groundwork. “And without a proper route through here, this district will remain impossible to trade with. Stuck in the Middle Ages.”

  Arnold wished for something more than a rough-shod thoroughfare for peasants and petty traders, Pohl knew this. The man wanted the district to be prosperous—and to prosper with it, no doubt. And since this damned Reich of theirs was to endure for such a long time—a millennium, interminable—Pohl told Arnold: “It takes time and men to build well.”

  It really was that simple. They needed either more time or more labourers.

  “Hurry alone isn’t good enough. Hurry is a false economy.”

  Once he’d put it like that, Arnold waved away his driver, urging Pohl to walk on with him.

  They discussed the depth of the excavations, the tonnage needed from the quarries to fill the trenches, and the work days left available now the winter was almost upon them.

  “The frosts here are hard and long,” Pohl reminded the Sturmbannführer. They would bring excavation to a standstill, and that would delay the surfacing, delay the completion further. They needed more labourers, to redouble their efforts, get the digging finished. “The ground will be solid; down to three metres, my foreman tells me.”

  No spade or pick would break through that, however much Himmler willed it.

  Pohl didn’t say that last part out loud; he left that moot, to hang in the air between them. But the Sturmbannführer gave a faint smile in response, as though conceding: he knew his leader was liable to hubris.

  Arnold said nothing out loud, though, until he’d thought it all over, so Pohl felt some of his nervousness returning as he strode beside him back to the jeeps in silence. Unnecessarily, as it turned out.

  “You do your job well, Pohl,” Arnold concluded the interview. “I will put your case. Be assured.”

  —

  Now Pohl looks at the clock: Brodnik still hasn’t called in to report, and he has to wonder again at his foreman’s tardiness, at the hours he kept the workers in the field today. Pohl has the sense of wrestling with this irregularity as he lies down on the cot, too tired to think about it properly.

  Tomorrow, Pohl tells himself as sleep comes to take him, he will talk to Brodnik. And he will talk to Arnold. The man already sees the need for more workers: he will listen to his concerns about the work hours, surely. Perhaps he will even put his case to the road authorities—speed his transfer, so he can leave this place behind him.

  But then Pohl thinks again of the schoolhouse: all the soldiers massed outside it, and the old couple shoved onto the paving.

  Did the Sturmbannführer order that as well?

  4

  “You’re a brave child. Or foolish.”

  In the mayor’s kitchens, the housekeeper takes Yasia’s apples, one by one, from her basket, looking them over, scolding her for knocking at the windows so early. But she buys all of Yasia’s fruit, and she asks for more too.

  “You bring them later, girl. When it’s properly light outside.”

  The woman lines Yasia’s basket, with eggs and bread and pancakes; she wraps them in a napkin to keep them warm for her, and she gives her coffee as well, a whole canister, before she sends her on her way again. Last night, Yasia promised Osip she would fetch some, to stop him grumbling about her being gone so long yesterday and slipping back only just before curfew—What would your father say? So she is glad to take it, and to be on her way back to his yard.

  The fog has gathered again overnight; the mouths of the alleyways are shrouded and the steps slippery underfoot as she leaves the mayor’s basement. But it is light enough—just—to be out and walking.

  Yasia cuts past the well and the dairy and the drinking trough—all deserted, all grey shapes in the fog. None of the shops on the market street look like they will be opening; few lamps are lit in the houses she passes. Yasia has seen nothing and no one yet this morning, save the mayor’s housekeeper—and the three German trucks that came at first light.

  They came roaring past Osip’s workshop, waking her among the straw bales; Yasia felt them through the floorboards, under her bare soles, as she got up, anxious, from her blankets; and then she just caught their dark forms through the glass, the red blur of their tail lights. Yasia stayed there at th
e window, until they were gone and even after. And now she thinks about them as she walks, because the trucks were heading north, perhaps to the factory, perhaps to the barrack block, and so she wonders: if they woke Myko when they got there. Or if he was up and dressed already, all set to hear the day’s orders.

  Yasia frowns a little at the thought. But she has orders of her own to follow this morning. The housekeeper has offered to buy a whole barrel load of apples—so Yasia will have butter and sausage, and three sacks of flour to take home. It will mean coring and slicing, stringing the fruit rings onto cords for drying, and so most of the day will have to be spent in working. But the woman has offered her a meal too, when the work is done with.

  “The soldiers will be gone by that time—please God,” the woman told her. “So if you bring a pot, you can take a hot meal back to whoever you’re staying with.”

  If she worked fast enough, Yasia decided, she could take that pot to Mykola.

  So now she hurries back to Osip’s, thinking to lay out his breakfast and then get back to the mayor’s kitchens; she can haul the apples there in Osip’s hand cart, she won’t even have to wake him.

  It is getting lighter, but the lanes are still deserted, and the coffee pot clanks now and again at her thigh as she keeps up her stride, loud in the quiet. Wary of more trucks arriving, she takes a winding path through the side streets; Yasia cuts down one shuttered lane and then another, all empty and echoing, before she sees she is not alone out here.

  At the next turning, she sees two sets of narrow shoulders: two figures in the mist ahead.

  One taller, one far smaller, they look to her like children. Winter caps pulled low about their ears, they have their backs to her, walking swiftly, almost at a trot, almost the full length of the lane between them. Yasia glimpses them just before they turn the corner: an older boy, a step ahead, and a younger one holding tight to his jerkin, pulled along behind him. Then they are gone again.

  They are only boys, not soldiers, so Yasia is not frightened. But who puts their children out at such a time?

  Yasia picks up her pace, unwilling to be outside too long herself, and she holds the canister tighter to stop its clanking, to feel its warmth between her fingers. Her thoughts on the working day ahead of her, Yasia’s strides grow longer; she makes the turning—and there are the boys again.

  The older one must have left the other standing in the shadows by a cellar entrance; Yasia is just in time to see him climbing the steps again. He takes the younger one by the elbow, pressing onwards, moving faster now, and furtive. Did he try the cellar door? Are they stealing? What a thing to risk in a town full of soldiers.

  The older one knows she is behind them. Yasia can see from the tilt of his head that he is listening for her step, or for the canister’s clanking. He seems keen to keep ahead of her, because he doesn’t try another doorway, he keeps on moving, and when his young brother stumbles, he hoists him onto his back, a practised movement.

  This boy is slender, his stride a little gangling, but he is fleet like a farm boy, like her brothers, even with the younger one to carry. So Yasia thinks they might not be stealing, they might just be farm children, caught off guard by the empty town streets, just like she was yesterday morning.

  She has gained on them, but the fleet boy does not turn to look, and neither does the young one gripped to his shoulders. Yasia thinks the older one must have told him not to: both have that stiff and listening look about them.

  Then the older boy steps out abruptly—into the road, across the flagstones, making for the next available turning—and Yasia sees his profile as he crosses: the distrust in his young features. How he turns his face just far enough to see she is no German, and then a little further, catching hold of her eye just long enough to let her know he’s seen her.

  Yasia drops back enough for them to notice. Farm children or not, she doesn’t want them worrying.

  But they take the same route as she does, all the same turnings, and she has to stay behind them: she knows no other way. Soon they will be at the town square.

  Yasia thinks of the trucks that passed by Osip’s workshop just this morning. How they must have driven across the town square on their way north, and she does not like the thought of the boys being anywhere near them. No children should be out here, she tells herself; no town should have to sweat like this under curfew. Yasia mutters inward curses at the soldiers, wishing them gone again, as soon as possible. She finds herself looking out for the boys too, as she reaches the side of the town-hall building.

  It doesn’t take long before she sees them. They keep to the shadowed edges, the thickest of the fog, but Yasia can just make them out: how the older boy slides the younger one down from his shoulders, taking him by the hand and pulling him further. They don’t look her way again, too intent on their purpose, and Yasia cannot decide yet: if they are trying to hide, or what they are doing here. But she sees that they only slow when they get to the schoolhouse.

  Is that where they were heading?

  The older one could be a schoolboy, but the other is far too young for books and learning.

  And then she sees the mess around the schoolhouse entrance. The broken chairs, splintered doorway; is that broken glass across the threshold?

  “No!” she hisses. “Don’t!”

  Yasia calls out to both of them—too loud in the silence—and the boys pull together, startled, among the splintered school desks.

  “You have to stay away from there.” Yasia gestures; she can’t help herself ducking along the wall to stop the boys.

  The younger one hides behind his brother as she comes to a halt; she is still a pace or two away, but she feels how the older one glares at her, frightened.

  “You shouldn’t be out here in the first place,” Yasia tells him, frightened as well now, startled at her own noise. “Not until the soldiers go.” And then she presses herself back against the stonework.

  The schoolhouse porch is dark, and the doorway strangely gaping; Yasia doesn’t like to look at it, or to get any closer—it must have been the Germans who did this. The older boy’s face is pale, watching her; it stands out sharply against the school wall, and Yasia glances up at the windows, all around the town square. All she sees are shutters and curtains, but people could still be looking through them, and she doesn’t want anyone catching sight of her.

  “It is not safe here,” she warns, but a little softer: Yasia doesn’t want to be overheard either, giving out warnings.

  The older boy blinks at her, no longer glaring—not now he sees that she is frightened just like him—and then they both stand a short while, watching each other, guarded: getting the measure of one another.

  Yasia sees his eyes are quick, just like his movements, and he is just as young and thin as she’d thought he was from a distance. But it is shoes he and his brother wear, not work boots—and no farm boy wears shoes like that, or breeches either.

  These boys are her betters, they must be: Yasia feels this. They are rumpled—not long awake, perhaps—but still neat and clean for all that, the way her brothers are on church days, and never otherwise.

  She has caught these two out at something—that much is certain. Yasia sees how the tall one has a hand on the younger boy, keeping him hidden behind him. He may be a town child, but he knows he’s in the wrong here; and he is thirteen, fourteen at most, and narrow with it, so he is no match for her.

  “You shouldn’t be out,” Yasia repeats, in a whisper, but meeting his eye now, to be sure that he heeds her. She thinks they must have broken the curfew overnight, sleeping rough somewhere they shouldn’t have.

  “You should be more careful,” Yasia tells him. No one should stand around like this, even in daylight.

  But it seems the older one doesn’t want to be told off by a farm girl, because he turns his face away, glancing to the schoolhouse doorway, as if readying to pull his brother inside, away from any police patrols—away from her too. So Yasia shakes her head in warnin
g.

  “They will come back, the soldiers.” He has to find a better place to hide in.

  And then she finds the younger one is watching her.

  Dark curls, fine features, small face peering from behind his brother’s back; his eyes are just as quick, but without his older brother’s sharpness. Yasia sees, too, how his gaze shifts from her face to the bread in her basket.

  Their clothes are good, but they are slept in, and how long since the pair of them have eaten?

  They haven’t moved since she mentioned the soldiers, and Yasia thinks they must be waiting. For her to speak again, maybe, offer them a heel of bread. Or show them the way somewhere.

  But she knows of no hiding place. And she has to go too now: Yasia has wasted too much working time, and she doesn’t like being in sight of all these windows.

  “You need to go where no soldiers are. That’s all,” she tells the older boy bluntly. “I can’t help you.”

  His face closes over as soon as he hears this; as though he already knew she’d say that—or he should have guessed as much. He turns away from her, and Yasia lets out her breath: at least she’s got them moving.

  Then the older boy lifts the younger one, he swings him onto his back again, and when Yasia sees his smallness, she finds herself asking: “Your house?”

  Because the town is small and their home can’t be far away. But neither of them answers. They stand before her, and Yasia thinks of Osip’s workshop, just along the lane there; the low room above it, under the rafters. How there is room enough for two more among the straw bales; food enough in her basket.

  “Hurry now,” she hears herself usher them. “Just until the soldiers go. No longer.”

  Yasia sends them ahead of her along the side of the town square, and she still doesn’t like it. But then she doesn’t have to, and the boys can move on again, as soon as the soldiers do.

  —

  It is late on in the morning when Pohl sees a jeep drive into the encampment.

  Mud-spattered and mud-smeared, even the windscreen, the sight of it puzzles him: there are no site visits scheduled, he had been expecting no interruptions. But as he steps out of his office doorway, and the jeep draws up to park by the barrack building, Pohl sees it is an SS man doing the driving, and that Brodnik is in the passenger seat.