But Pohl is just as caught, and he shakes his head at the children, motioning for silence, for their compliance. He holds up a warning palm, and they flinch at his gesture, but Pohl reaches into the car, turning off the headlights.
The lane and the children are swallowed again by darkness.
The seconds pass then.
Pohl stands in the black, breath caught in his throat, listening for the unit still approaching.
All is so quiet, so still in the lane before him; the children are silent, and the walls so close and dark around them, he finds himself pleading: Let it be a patrol; let it be a patrol, not Gestapo. Because if it is a patrol, they may just pass him. In the dark there, this seems almost possible.
Pohl sees the torch beams.
“Khto tam?”
He hears the voice come.
“Vidpovidayte!”
And the voice is Ukrainian.
The tone is blunt, but they are policemen. They are not Germans, Pohl is sure now, and this is something at least.
“Nehayno!”
But still the voice comes curt, demanding an answer, and Pohl feels the children shrinking, anxious, beyond him. If they run now, they will draw the patrol; these men will come after them, and who knows how peasant children will be treated?
When the policemen shout again, Pohl answers: “Engineer.”
He calls to them, over his shoulder: “Reich engineer.” And then he turns to them.
The policemen mutter at the sound of German. They silence one another as he steps forward, and they shine their torches into the lane mouth, searching.
“Here!” Pohl tells them: he has to stop the beams lighting on the children. “Over here,” he calls again, still advancing towards the policemen.
He waves his arms to draw their torches, and finds himself blinded; Pohl lifts his arm higher, half to shield his eyes, half to show his armband, but he keeps on walking.
“Reich engineer, I told you. So you can drop your torches. Drop your torch beams,” he orders, sharp and squinting in their harsh glare. “I am in charge of the roadworks here.”
The policemen hear his tone, and they see his uniform as well now, so they lower the beams, lowering their voices.
“Mein Herr. My apologies.”
One of them speaks German; the man takes a step back as Pohl draws closer.
“We did not know,” the policeman tells him. “We only saw the light here.”
“You saw my headlamps, that is all.”
Pohl doesn’t get too near, stopping just close enough that they can see him by the town square street lamps. The glow these cast is misted, but Pohl can make out the men too, now that their beams are down: their hunched shoulders, tired glances, collars pulled up against the damp night falling. It is getting colder again after so much wet, and there will be a frost soon, Pohl can feel it. The men look at him, weary, faces worn by long hours of patrolling.
“Apologies.” The German-speaker repeats himself; and then the man collects himself, remembering his patrolling duties: “You are coming back to the town, mein Herr? Or just leaving?”
“Leaving.” Pohl is short. He wants no conversation. “Who is in charge here?”
“Me,” the German-speaker tells him.
His voice is flat, as though he feels little enough at this distinction. Pohl thinks: they are country policemen, who carry no revolvers; perhaps they were not part of this morning. Even so.
“I have a car here,” he tells them, gesturing into the dark lane behind him. “I had the headlights on, as I told you. Nothing more.”
“Yes, mein Herr.”
Pohl thinks these policemen may be the only ones left to patrol here. They have been left to keep order, he decides, where there is none. But he smells drink on their breath. And he does not want them asking his name, lest he is already on a Gestapo list.
“Do you need my papers?” he asks, already half turning. “Or may I go now?” Pohl tries cutting this encounter as short as he is able.
“No, no. You can go, mein Herr,” the policeman tells him. “Good evening.”
Pohl can feel the men making ready to retreat again, relieved to have this over with; they begin to turn away, even as he nods to dismiss them.
“Good evening.”
Almost at the car again, Pohl looks one last time—a half-glance over his shoulder—just to be sure the patrol is walking on now. As soon as he sees they are gone, he finds his hands are trembling.
—
Pohl stops by the open car door. He has to let himself stand a while: his breathing difficult, his wrists weak, his eyes adjusting again to the darkness.
When he looks up into the lane, he finds the children are still there.
He can just make them out: the girl holding the horse, the older boy behind her, silent and guarded. Pohl sees the way they look at him, the way these peasant children take him in: ashen, unshaven, he is a German. He sent the police away. But they don’t trust him.
Why should they? Pohl steadies his breathing, telling himself they have no reason. But he does not like the way they keep watch on him after so much confusion; he finds himself provoked by their staring, especially the older boy.
“Why are you out here?” he whispers, half turning to address him.
No one should be out at such a time; even these children know this, else why would they be hiding?
“Curfew,” Pohl tells them, addressing the girl as well now. “Curfew, remember?”
He speaks more sharply than he intended, but the children blink at him, so distrustful.
“It is madness to be out here,” he tells them, and it comes out with such harshness—but it was such a risk he took for them, diverting the policemen.
“Should I have let them take you?”
They don’t understand the words, but they hear how ugly they are, and they watch his gestures, apprehensive, as he lifts his arms from the car door to the surrounding houses: they should be inside, not wandering the lanes here.
Pohl holds his palms out, angry now, like a question. “What on earth are you doing?” he demands. “Where on earth do you think you are going?”
“Bolota.”
Marshes. It is the boy who says this.
He ventures that one word, squinting. Just one, but Pohl knows it.
“Na bolota.”
To the marshes; the boy risks it another time, pointing north, beyond the town, then pulling his arm back again, sharp, and watching for Pohl’s reaction.
But the girl is the one who moves first. She turns to her brothers, alarmed, glancing at Pohl, shaking her head, hissing something at the older boy—imploring—as though to stop him talking. As though Pohl should not be told this.
And then Pohl finds himself uncertain: Who is this boy before him? A marsh farmer’s son; are these marsh farmer’s children? Or is this a partisan brood, sent to bring back weapons and food? He could have been covering for anyone.
The way the girl entreats them is so vehement, it has Pohl blinking in his turn. It is as though she means to send both boys running away from him—but away from her as well, through these dark lanes. And what good would that do? Does she want them in the arms of that police patrol? The small one wrapped in blankets is too young for such dangers, surely. The cart the girl leads is all but empty, it stands listing on its axles, and when Pohl sees this, he thinks they are not outlaws; all he can see is their poverty, their rags and blankets, and then he has no time any more for their squabbling.
“Na bolota?” he demands, commanding their attention, taking a step towards them.
The older boy recoils then, instinctive, making to run from him—and then all the confusion spills out of Pohl as anger.
“No!” he barks. “Don’t! You listen to me!”
He wants an end to this, and swiftly. Pohl strides forward, reaching for the boy, taking hold of his bundle. He rips it from his arms, and he flings it inside the cart, pointing the child to climb inside there, hissing at the sister
to get them moving.
“Move now! Why don’t you get away from here?”
But the boy retreats further; Pohl has to lunge at him to stop him. His fingers close on jacket first, and then on arm and blanket, and the boy kicks against him, limbs flailing, but he is slight and Pohl is angry; he starts hauling him.
The child on the boy’s back cries against his grip, twisting inside his binding, but Pohl only grasps them tighter, dragging them back regardless. They shouldn’t run from their sister, they should go with her, and he wrenches them so hard across the cobbles, both children almost fall as they get to the cart side. There Pohl hoists them, rough and forceful, righting them first, then shoving them over the low rail onto the planks. He holds them down too, on the boards, until they stop their flailing.
But when he sees how they lie there, shocked and silenced—the young one’s face pressed into his brother’s neck, and the older one breathless—Pohl feels how hard he holds them. He sees too, how the older child looks at him, his eyes wide with fury.
Pohl has to let go then, breathless himself.
He glances at the sister, jarred at his own behaviour; then Pohl retreats to the car, pointing her along the lane, away from him once again.
Still unwilling, she eyes his gesture; all the more mistrustful after the way he dragged the boys, the way he held them down. It is as though she expects him to give chase now, or shout for the policemen. But she makes no appeal this time, she just obeys him.
The wheels creak as they start turning, and the cart tips on the cobbles, but the horse’s hooves barely make a sound, wrapped in their layers of sacking, and the girl’s boots are even quieter.
The small one turns his face away from Pohl, fearful, as they pass, lying curled against his brother in the cart. But the older boy keeps watch on him, his eyes fierce and dark, as the cart retreats ever faster, and Pohl has to turn away from that stark gaze even before they reach the corner.
8
They flee in the darkness. From the lane and the square and the German.
The jolting is terrible, and the noise they make, the cart wheels jarring; curled tight around Momik, Yankel hears the rattling thrown back at them by the house walls. He still feels the man’s grip on his arm; he feels the way the German hauled him. It is a bruising, between shoulder and elbow, and it is a twist inside him, fierce and furious, at being hauled about and ordered.
Yankel rages at that rough handling; at the clatter of the wheel rims against the cobbles, and the way the cart pitches under them: he is sure they must be heard, that they will bring patrols tearing after them. The cart is so thrown about, all through the town streets, Yankel has to brace his legs against the planking. It is even worse as they pass the last of the houses, the girl pulling the horse far too fast down the incline to the orchards, her rag-wrapped boots, the animal’s rag-wrapped hooves sliding under them.
The cart lunges across the bridge, and then at last Yankel sees it: the dark town falling behind them. But it can’t fall fast enough for him.
He searches for shapes in the black, shadows at the few small windows, narrow and lamp-yellow and receding; looking for watchers, for anyone following. His thoughts still full of the German with the glasses, he watches for headlights, for torches—and Yankel wants only to get to the marshes. The man in the workshop said no Germans go there; the schoolmaster told Yankel only the partisans have held out against the invaders. So Yankel can’t rest now, not until he and Momik are on partisan ground: he has to take his brother where no Germans can find them.
They pass under branches, hiding the scant lights from view; the next time Yankel sees the town lights they are already growing fainter. The night thickens around them, tree and scrub growing ever more densely at the track sides as they pass out into open country.
The girl drops her pace as the lights dim behind them, but just enough to stop the cart lurching; still she pulls the horse onwards—and still Yankel watches; even after there is nothing to see back there, only dark behind and dark ahead.
For hours it is like this.
Long after they have put the town behind themselves, the night stretches out seemingly endless around them, a cold mist rising from the verges, settling across the cart track they follow.
Momik whimpers, unsettled by the darkness. Shaken and cold, he cries for his bed, and for their mother to carry him there, and Yankel pulls him close, but roughly, and only to keep him quiet. He cannot bear to listen to all he cries for, but he cannot soothe him either; his thoughts are still so full of fury, and of who might be setting out to find them. Yankel’s bones are jarred too, the planks shifting beneath his hips and shoulders. He hears the axles groaning, feels the wheels too loose and leaning, but he cannot bear to go slower: he is certain that they will be followed and found and hounded. That they won’t have got far enough before the dawn comes.
The girl throws the reins across the horse’s back, and clambers up onto the seat to drive him, hissing him onwards, reins gripped tightly. But Yankel cannot trust her. She never looks at him or Momik, despite Momik’s crying: she only sits there, silent, on the cart seat above them.
Yankel fears she will stop; that she will turn them out onto the ground here—run for the marshes without them. Yankel doesn’t know now: if she is a farm girl, if she is a marsh girl, or how far she will take them. He sees only that she doesn’t want to be found either, because she doesn’t let up, not even to rest the horse.
The animal tries refusing, digging in his hooves, stiff-necked, stiff-legged, but the girl will not allow it. Each time Yankel feels him halting, she drives him on further, and when the horse’s tread gets more laboured, she slips down to take his head again, tugging all the harder at the bit clamped between his teeth. Even when the rags come loose from her boots, from the horse’s hooves, the girl doesn’t stop and tie them.
But she has to stop when they reach the wide cut of the roadworks. The animal pulls up short and snorting on the mud before it, jolting even Momik into silence; and then the horse just stands there between the shafts, his old flanks heaving.
Yankel sees the rubble piled high before them. It is a long embankment that slopes sharply upward, and there is no way round it: the rocky bank stretches onwards in either direction, into the distance, where the night sky is already greying.
The girl sees it too, pulling at the reins again. But the horse throws up his head rather than crest the roadworks, and the girl flings her arms out, hurling the reins at him.
She tears the rags away from each of his hooves in turn, and from her own ankles too, flinging the clouts away from herself, and Yankel thinks she means to force the animal. But then she steps forward, without a word, without even a glance at Yankel, and unbuckles the horse from the shafts.
The cart sags without the animal to hold it upright; Yankel has to grab at Momik to stop him sliding, as the oilskins and blankets slip onto the mud below them. The food bundles fall too, landing in the wheel ruts, but the girl still keeps her back turned, all her attention on the horse.
Yankel scrambles to the ground, tugging Momik down after him, because the animal shies again, slipping and lunging, as the girl leads him from the cart-side. Yankel has to step in front of Momik to shield him, and to pull the bundles clear of the horse’s hooves.
He crouches down beside his brother, wrapping him in one of the blankets, telling him to be quiet now, to stop his shivering, not to start up again with his whimpering; but Yankel keeps his eyes on the girl, too, the way she cajoles the horse, impatient, walking him up and down between the cart-side and the roadworks. He can’t be certain: how long she means to rest the animal from the cart’s weight, or how long until dawn comes.
Is this it now? Yankel looks about himself at the greying night—is this where she will leave them?
The long rubble thoroughfare is deserted, but the mud beneath his feet is ploughed with spade marks and tyre prints. Yankel knows they have to be gone before daylight—because with the light will come wor
kers, and it must be Germans who watch over them. Perhaps it is even soldiers.
He takes Momik by the hand first, pulling him along the foot of the rubble sloping before hoisting him onto his back and tying the blanket firmly around them both. Yankel scans the roadworks, but he can see nowhere low enough for the cart to pass; he knows that nowhere this road leads will be safe enough—only the far side; only the fighters’ ground. But then he looks back to the girl again, still tugging at the horse’s head, and he can’t be sure that she will take them there.
The girl is hauling the horse back to the cart, but the animal kicks out rather than back into the shafts, hooves cracking hard against the planks. Momik cries out, pressing his face into Yankel’s neck, frightened by the horse and the noise and by the marsh girl’s anger; when she flings her arms wide again, Yankel flinches at the sight of her.
He stoops for the bundles. Yankel snatches as much as he can reach, as much as he can manage—a cloth-wrapped loaf, an oilskin, apples tied in a scrap of sacking. And then he turns and runs with this armful before the girl can see and stop him.
Lurching under Momik’s weight, the oilskin trailing, he clambers up the rubble, tripping and sliding. Yankel drags himself forward, heaving them upward, Momik grasping tight to his shoulders, all his small noises, small movements fearful.
“We have to climb over,” Yankel tells him, full of anger as he scrambles. “We have to go where no Germans are.”
His head is filled with thoughts of daybreak and of soldiers, and with those thoughts come so many others: of the German with the glasses, of the bruising grip that held him. They set off that same twist of fear and rage inside him—fiercer now—and Yankel thinks he will never be hauled again: he will not allow it. Yankel thinks all the thoughts he hasn’t been allowing himself: how the soldiers must have hauled his sister, his mother; his father. His father who lined up for the Germans. Yankel reaches behind himself for his brother, pulling at the blankets that bind them: no Germans must ever haul Momik.
A Boy in Winter Page 16