A Boy in Winter

by Rachel Seiffert

  “You can choose more. Choose more, man.” He directs this to Brodnik, turning away from Pohl’s signal.

  The foreman says nothing, he looks neither to Pohl nor to Arnold, he only continues through the crowd.

  Did Brodnik do this in his home town too? Pohl thinks he must have done it somewhere before, this selecting. He cannot read his foreman’s expression, but the man knows the form, that much is clear: he is talking to more now, going back to men he passed over; men without their arms raised, even. All with the Sturmbannführer watching.

  Brodnik must choose more, and there are scores of men here, it is true. But for all this looking, Pohl still doesn’t see workers among them. Not labourers. So many in this crowd are old too; Pohl looks once more for the frock coat, the white head, and sees too many white heads before him.

  Pohl steps forward.

  “No one older than forty.”

  He feels the pulse, beating hard at his throat at speaking out like this; a sharp prickle of sweat across his scalp. But he wants no one chosen who is unfit for labouring; no one unwilling either. So Pohl repeats himself, and louder, to ensure that Brodnik hears him: “Only young workers; strong workers who know what they are doing.”

  He doesn’t look at Arnold, Pohl keeps his eyes on the crowd, on those whom Brodnik is choosing, still half looking for the old man, not wanting to believe him in here; or the old woman herded with him.

  Would Brodnik select women? The thought gives him pause.

  “No women either,” Pohl calls, just to be certain.

  He has heard of female labourers used on other roads; female POWs; perhaps they are used in Poland. But Pohl will not have that on any stretch of road he works on.

  “No women of any age,” he says, just to have it asserted.

  Pohl sees how Brodnik hesitates, looking to Arnold this time for confirmation. But the officer assents: “No women, then.”

  And so Pohl nods, a terse acknowledgement of his words being heeded.

  He feels bolder now, for having asserted something, for all that he is sweating, and he keeps his eyes on the selection in progress. Ten more men are standing at the wall now; none of them grey-haired, not one of them, and this is something. But the latest to be chosen is objecting, refusing to step forward, pointing to his family around him. And in the crowd, Pohl hears there is crying.

  It is women. They look like mothers; perhaps their sons or husbands have been selected. One or two push their way through the crowd to grasp at Brodnik’s shoulders. They might be pleading. Appealing for their men back; or to be chosen as well—not to be separated from their menfolk.

  He did not think before he spoke, he did not think; Pohl berates himself. But neither do the women know the kind of work they would have to do if they were chosen.

  “It is not women’s work,” he calls out. “It is road work—far too hard work.”

  But he sees that his raised voice only confuses. The women duck and turn at the noise he makes; they do not understand him. He can see from their faces that his shouting makes them fearful. What is the German saying? So he calls to Brodnik: “You tell them. You translate, man!”

  Pohl wants it made clear to them.

  “They are not strong enough; you make sure they know this. It is not cooks or laundry maids we are recruiting, it is not right to choose them: they will be breaking stones and hauling.”

  But the fear and the pleading continue, and so Pohl falters. He has never seen labour teams selected before: Is it always like this?

  He has long felt uneasy about the work they do; more and more so, as his weeks here have passed and the demands on the labourers have multiplied. The work details break their backs now for so many hours to keep the road to some kind of schedule; they live in barrack bunks for months, eating meagre barracks rations. And now Pohl thinks: Are they always taken unwilling from their families? Who would come and toil willingly on this German road of his?

  Pohl calls out, across the crowd: “It is not work fit for women. You understand me? Only the young and strong can do this.”

  But even as he is speaking, even as Brodnik is translating, he sees some of the men selected will hardly be strong enough either; not for long, in any case. They will never last out a quarry winter.

  So what will happen then, when they are spent? Will they be sent on to rejoin their families? All these young men, taken from their homes and houses; pressed in here together, only to be separated?

  “No,” he says then. “No more of this.”

  Although Pohl hardly knows what he is saying.

  “Enough,” he says; he has seen enough now to know how wrong this is.

  Pohl turns to Arnold, and to the police guards: they are all stopped and staring, but he cannot help himself.

  “I will not take them.” He points, refusing the labourers, refusing the Sturmbannführer. A man can only go so far, no further.

  “This is not road work,” Pohl tells him, hoarse. “It is SS work. Yours only.” He will have no part in it, not any longer.

  “We are going.” He turns to his foreman. “This is over.”

  Pohl calls a halt.

  —

  He takes himself outside. Striding the passageways they were led down, passing the doorways, the smoking soldiers, and then across the factory yard, and along the high wall.

  Pohl walks onwards—to avoid Arnold, to avoid thinking, to clear his ears of the crying and the pleading. He does not wish to contemplate it further: what he has just seen, what he just been a party to inside the factory. So Pohl walks until he finds himself in the open, out on the cleared ground where they parked the vehicles. He sees mud under his boots and the factory wall behind him, and there, in the cold air, he stops and takes off his glasses.

  Bastards.

  He curses Arnold; and then the guards and the smoking soldiers. But Pohl knows what must come next, surely.

  Insubordination, refusal: the SS will not take kindly.

  He presses the heels of his hands hard against his eyes, and he tries a good while to calm his breathing; when Pohl opens his eyes again, he sees it has grown dark while he was inside the factory.

  How long was he in there?

  Still shaken, and unsure now of his bearings, he sees only dim shapes of trucks and buildings, and then the dark and wide-open cleared ground beyond them.

  On the far side, a pool of what looks like lamplight spills across the soil; Pohl sees the yellow glow of this, but little more: a yellow-white blur, over towards the scrubland.

  Unsure what he is seeing, or that his eyes don’t deceive him—showing him lights where there are none, only a fast-darkening afternoon—Pohl runs a checking hand across his face first, before replacing his glasses, pushing away from the wall to right himself.

  His legs are weak as water, palms clammy and useless, but he straightens his collar and tunic: he will not be seen like this. And then Pohl takes another look about himself.

  With his glasses on again, he sees the peasant marks of pick and adze in the mud underfoot, where the earth has been cleared of undergrowth, ready for building. It is a wide area he stands before, wider even than he saw from the Sturmbannführer’s office, and Pohl’s mind turns to the men who must have toiled here to clear it; it would have taken dozens, up to a hundred. And then, turning to the yellow glow, he sees there are labourers over by the far scrub; the SS are unloading trucks there.

  They have left the headlamps on, and they are lining up the workers in the yellow-white beams they cast. Pohl watches them striding between the rows of men. Are they giving orders? The SS look like they’re readying them for working, though it must be getting on for evening.

  Pohl feels it, like a weight in his chest now: the SS must have their new barracks, new buildings; the territories they have taken must have all the new roads, new houses their vainglory orders. Their plans leave no room for sleep, for adequate meals, for even halfway adequate conditions to work under. Damn the cost to the people.

 
They do not think on a human scale. They do not think they deal with humans.

  These last thoughts are for Dorle; they come at Pohl sharp and fast: what he has just seen in the factory, and what he is seeing even now before him. The lines of labourers in the headlamp glow, and the SS men calling out the orders, pressing them to work, even at nightfall. He thinks, too, of the Jews pressed into the factory. Ready to be used. Deemed useful or removed. His disgust at this wells up again, only to hear that the SS officer has come out to join him.

  “Pohl. There you are,” he says, flat-voiced, behind him, from the other side of the yard. And then, when Pohl doesn’t turn: “I’ve been looking for you.”

  The man does not sound angry; his tone is too weary for that. Pohl isn’t sure what is coming now—a dressing-down before something worse; some kind of punishment, certainly. But Arnold says nothing further, he just comes to a stop, and he stands and waits there. So although Pohl does not want to, he has to turn then, away from the labourers in the headlamp glow, and look at the man for a moment.

  Arnold blinks a little; he squints at Pohl a little. He is disliked: Pohl thinks Arnold sees that much in any case. And then the officer lifts his shoulders and drops them: a small and sympathetic gesture, where Pohl had not expected one.

  But he cannot respond. Pohl can find no words, he is still too disgusted.

  “Where the light shines strongest, there is always shadow.”

  The Sturmbannführer says this quietly; it is offered like a question. “Don’t you think so?”

  “I don’t think anything at the moment.”

  Pohl doesn’t want a conversation. Not with Arnold. And certainly not in riddles about light and dark. What is the man thinking—what on earth does he mean by that? Pohl makes to turn away again, but then Arnold tells him: “Sorry, I am sorry. I see that doesn’t help you.”

  He lifts his hands to stay Pohl—not to order, Pohl doesn’t think so—just as if to ask him to stay a while. Arnold seems to want to explain himself.

  “It is something I tell myself, you see.” He nods, a little self-conscious. “I say to myself: where there is light, there will be shadow as well. There will always be darkness, and we must accept this.”

  But then he sees Pohl frowning.

  “Still. I know how it is,” he adds, a little hurriedly, before conceding: “Sometimes it helps me, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

  The officer shrugs—hesitant; diffident, even—and Pohl sees that sympathy again. So unexpected from this small man; from anyone in this uniform.

  “Listen.” Arnold pauses. Then he rephrases; he tries another time: “I can see what you think, Pohl. Truly.”

  Pohl looks at him, doubtful.

  “Even now, I can,” the man insists, surprisingly gently. “I think much the same myself, you see,” he continues. “I have much the same thoughts.” Arnold nods.

  Then he leans forward, lowering his voice further, as if to confide in Pohl.

  “I get my orders,” he says. “I read them over, and I find myself thinking: Is this necessary?” Arnold winces, just a little, before he continues. “Must we do this? I have to ask myself, almost daily: Must it be like this?”

  He points behind himself, to the factory building, to the crowd on the factory floor they have both just come from.

  “Must it really be like this?” Arnold repeats himself, this time with emphasis.

  The officer looks sincere as he does so; he looks troubled, even. But Pohl can do little more than frown at this revelation, unsure he has heard right, or if he can trust the man.

  “I do not like this,” Arnold tells him, insistent. “I do not like it any more than you do.”

  Pohl finds himself shaking his head.

  Those people have been herded together on this man’s orders; they have been taken from their homes and their livelihoods, to be divided from their families; to be sent who knows where.

  “It is cruel, yes?” Arnold interjects. “Is that what you are thinking?”

  “Worse than that,” Pohl tells him.

  He is angry now, emphatic. Pohl does not want his thoughts second-guessed; he only wants the man to know how angry he is about this. Pohl wants something done about it.

  “How much longer, Arnold? How long are you proposing to keep them pressed in there like animals? The way you treat them. What you SS do here is intolerable.”

  Pohl berates him, sore and hoarse. But still Arnold only stands and nods.

  “I think that too,” he says. “I think that also. Just like you.”

  And then: “I feel that it is cruel. Surely any feeling person would?”

  He looks into Pohl’s face as he speaks, and Pohl thinks he does see pain there. So is the man pained at what he does here?

  Arnold is waiting, he wants a response, but Pohl is still so uncertain of what the officer is saying, of where this conversation is leading. He was expecting a punishment for refusing the labourers, not a conversation about the rights and wrongs of misusing the Jews here; and now Pohl doesn’t know how to reply, or what the officer is waiting for. The SS man is standing there, shoulder to shoulder with him at the factory wall: a stiff and a dry man—and now a feeling person? Pohl can’t be certain of his meaning, but he can feel the officer wants something from him. Is it understanding?

  He cannot give Arnold that.

  Pohl baulks at the thought.

  He shakes his head. He will say nothing; he will do nothing to give any comfort to this man.

  So they stand there, wordless, at cross purposes; the factory on one side, the wide and churned ground on the other; and nothing to break the silence between them, save the distant orders still being called out to the labourers in the dark there.

  Pohl turns to look at them in their dim circle; the faint glow of the headlamps that falls over their weariness. Where is the bright force Arnold conjures to console himself? Pohl sees nothing of the kind here. Nothing worth the shadows they are casting.

  What on earth sort of light does this man imagine is shining?

  Arnold shifts a little beside him. He makes a gesture; a strange one, palms open. Hesitant, or perhaps even rueful.

  “I don’t claim to understand it, Pohl. I only try to endure. I don’t know the answer. Perhaps we must all find our own way.”

  And then he is dismissing him; he is turning away, ending the conversation. There will be no punishment, it seems; Arnold simply tells him: “You go now, Pohl. Go on back to your roadworks. You are right about this much: we should not prolong this any further.”

  But just as he is turning, he adds: “There will be a time, you know, when all this is over. This war, I mean. And all these cruelties.”

  The Sturmbannführer gestures around himself.

  “It is what helps me most, this thought: that there will be a time after. When all of the fighting—when all of this—is done with.”

  Arnold holds Pohl’s eye, in sympathy, in sincerity, and then he tells him, in parting: “Perhaps that might help you. To know that all this is passing. For them too.”

  He points to the factory, to all the people pressed in there and waiting.

  “For them too,” he affirms.

  And then Arnold asserts, as though offering Pohl his word, “This will soon be over.”

  —

  Pohl stays well ahead of Arnold on the walk back to the police station. He keeps his back towards him, his face turned away from the SS man, even as they rejoin Brodnik and the rest, and the small company takes leave of one another.

  Brodnik is assigned a driver to take him back to the encampment, but Pohl waves away the idea when he is offered the same to deliver him to the boarding house.

  He lets the man drive his car, telling him to leave the keys inside when he parks it outside his quarters, and then he walks on alone into the town streets, preferring the cold and the movement, the outside air.

  At the boarding house, all the rooms are dark and quiet. Pohl calls for the housemaid and is relieved to b
e met with silence.

  He finds a lamp in one of the low rooms on the ground floor, fumbling for matches in his tunic pockets, and he takes it with him up the narrow staircase. In his room, with the door shut and locked behind him, he places it on the small table, throwing its small light on his pens and writing paper. And then, even before he takes off his coat, Pohl sits himself down to write to Dorle.

  He covers pages. All that he has seen and experienced these past days.

  You see why I can no longer stand it here? Finally, finally, I have stood some ground now.

  It is only because he did this that he can write with such honesty.

  Pohl writes the Sturmbannführer’s words too, the ones he spoke afterwards, outside on the cleared ground, and he looks at it a good while on the paper: odd, unforeseen, faithfully recorded. Pohl feels again the strangeness of that conversation.

  I will put in for a transfer, he tells Dorle. And then: Arnold can hardly be surprised now, when he gets word.

  Pohl does not know if the Sturmbannführer’s office has any say over whether he can leave the territory, or if the man will object; it occurs to Pohl that Arnold may understand his reasons, perhaps.

  But he doesn’t let himself think too long about this: Pohl wants to think about Arnold as little as possible; what the man might say to his superiors, if he will discuss today’s selection with them. The engineer refused them all, meine Herren; this engineer can no longer be considered reliable. Pohl cannot mull over such a prospect: it is too frightening.

  He sits for an hour, two hours, thinking and working on without interruption, and he keeps going until he is finished, until it is all there on paper, and his fingers are stiff, wrists aching with all the writing.

  Inside, there is calm, though. There is a quiet, a strange kind of peace of mind, as though something fundamental has been put in order, finally, for all that he is fearful.