Pastel Orphans (13 page)

C
HAPTER
20

Rebekah is naked from the waist up and we are lying on a bed. She is on top of me, pressing her breasts against me, and her mouth is covering mine.

“Riki!”

I wake suddenly to morning light, which pierces the gap in the pale lime-green curtains, and Kaleb standing over me.

“What are you doing?”

Under the sheet my penis is leaking and the fluid has seeped into the fabric that lies across the top of me, leaving a small, dark, sticky stain.

“What’s this? Up to no good.”

“Quiet,” I say, coming fully awake now. “Please get out of here.”

Rebekah walks in and asks what we are talking about, and I grab the area of sheet to hide the results of my dream.

Kaleb looks at me and I want to throw something at him. He winks to say that the secret between us is safe.

“Go away,” says Kaleb to Rebekah, still smiling. “This is not your business.”

Rebekah throws her hands in the air.

“Boys are such idiots.”

When she is gone, Kaleb laughs and jumps on me, punching me.

I tell him to go away and turn to the wall so I can imagine Rebekah again. If he knew I had been dreaming of his sister, he would probably hit me harder.

But he stays.

“When do you think you will go?”

“Soon.”

“You know if you wait, the other partisans will have maps of the roads and German bases so that you can get to Cracow more safely.”

It makes sense to stay, but I am feeling that time is slipping through my fingers. Kaleb is constantly finding ways to keep me with them, though what he says is logical. I need direction.

“I am sorry about Tobin,” says Kaleb, changing the subject. “He will be better today.”

I do not tell him about the conversation with the German. I think I must keep that information close. Perhaps I can’t trust Kaleb either.

“What is wrong with Tobin?” I ask carefully, testing their friendship.

“Lots.”

This causes me to laugh.

I go downstairs sometime later. I am always thinking of something new to draw and I have run out of pages in my book. I look for paper in what was once an office and find loose sheets in a desk drawer. I take the sheets and tuck them between the other pages of my drawing book. On the desk there is a square patch that has less dust than the rest of the surface, perhaps where a typewriter once sat.

Rebekah is sitting outside at a small, round table on the terrace. The pavers are cracked and weeds grow through. The air is crisp and the sun is weak.

She holds her hands together in a ball. When she opens them, a butterfly rises and flutters away over some low bushes towards the sun. Rebekah’s face is radiant, as bright and white as if she is feeding light to the sun, instead of the reverse. She turns to look at me. Her mouth is open so that her teeth are just showing. She is not smiling but neither is she scowling at my intrusion on her moment. I am suddenly guilty as I remember the dream from this morning.

“It is a perfect morning,” she says.

“Yes, but aren’t you cold?” The weather is turning and there is iciness to the air when we stand in the shadows. Rebekah has no coat and wears only sandals. I remember that in the cupboard there are warm clothes that would fit her too.

She doesn’t respond. She is somewhere else in her head perhaps. I sit on one of the white iron chairs and imagine we are at this country manor on holiday.

I am disappointed when the boys join us. I am enjoying the time with Rebekah, even just her silence.

“We are going out hunting. You should come and learn some things.”

I don’t want to go. I want to stay close to Rebekah. I want to speak to the German.

“What is it that we hunt?”

“There are boars here and perhaps some elk. If we don’t shoot anything, we will walk to another village and steal.”

“But the nearest village is miles away.” I am wondering why anyone would build a house so far away from everything.

“Do you have something better to do?” asks Kaleb. Yes, I want to say, but can’t. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. After all, Kaleb has been kind.

The gun I stole has been taken by Tobin. He carries it in the back of his pants, as if it is his prize, not mine. But he also carries a rifle and a sharp hunter’s knife.

“What do I use to hunt?”

Tobin goes inside and comes out again with a kitchen knife.

“Don’t I get a gun?”

“No, we won’t be using guns . . . only to protect ourselves should we come across Germans,” says Kaleb as he shoulders his rifle.

We wander the forest for an hour, marking trees so that we don’t get lost. Tobin begins to whistle loudly behind us. Kaleb turns around angrily.

“What are you doing? Have you lost your mind? Do you want the Germans to find us again?”

Tobin begins to laugh and I wonder at his inability to care.

I see a slight movement between the trees. “Look,” I say and Kaleb has seen it too.

A wild boar stands a short distance away. He has seen us before we have seen him and he takes cover behind a low thicket.

“Be still,” says Kaleb.

“How do we catch him?” I whisper.

“I don’t know.”

I have the urge to laugh because neither of us are experienced hunters.

“We have to surround it,” says Tobin. “Or I can shoot it.”

“No,” says Kaleb. “We have already seen the result of that. No noise.”

“It is a stupid rule.” He thinks about it. “If at the end of the day we have no meat, then I don’t care what you say; I am shooting any animal that comes across our path.”

Kaleb watches him steadily.

“You,” says Tobin to me, “go around to the other side. Have your knife ready and go for the heart. When I whistle once, be ready to stop it.”

“Me?”

“If the rabbi here wants to do it the hard way, then so be it,” says Tobin, inclining his head towards Kaleb.

I spy the boar, which is not large but not small either. I have heard they can be fierce.

“We will be chasing him . . . right on his tail,” says Kaleb.

I wonder if I have the short end of the plan.

The boar seems to have lost his focus on us; perhaps he is blind, or perhaps we have been still long enough that he forgets we are here. Perhaps he knows we are not experienced hunters.

I creep around to the rear of the boar, only several yards away. His nose is switching and he grunts softly: a warning. Tobin has covered the other third of ground. While we wait for Tobin’s command, I watch the beast; his mangy charcoal coat and his long snout and teeth scrape in the soft earth of the forest floor. I would like to draw him. Perhaps I will have him wearing the uniform of a German general. Then Tobin’s whistle sounds and he and Kaleb rush forward. I have not really thought of how I will stop the boar; I have been thinking that somehow the others will arrive in time to help.

The creature bears down on me without seeing me, running without thought, mowing down the clump of trees that have been my disguise and everything else in his path, including me, throwing me backwards onto the ground. He does not stop to gore me, thankfully, because he has smelled the chase of others on his tail. I lie, winded, with my knife still poised.

Tobin has managed to jump on top of him. The boar lets out a squeal that seems louder than a rifle shot before he bites down on Tobin’s arm, breaking skin. Kaleb grabs him from behind while Tobin stabs at his snout with his free hand. His teeth are no match for the knife and he is forced to release his piercing hold on Tobin. The creature wriggles free from Kaleb’s arms and runs into the forest at full speed, snout bleeding.

“You imbecile!” screeches Tobin at me. “Why didn’t you catch it?”

“Don’t be a fool,” says Kaleb in my defense. “He did not stand a chance. In any case, Rebekah may not eat swine.”

“Will you?” I stand bent over, my hands resting on my thighs while I catch my breath. I am thinking about what Kaleb has just said. I am thinking about Papa.

“What?”

“Eat swine?”

“Yes. I think that God will forgive me this time, that he makes exceptions.”

“And what about the rest of us then?” I ask jokingly, without spite.

“Did you not know? The rest of us are doomed!” says Tobin.

“I did not mean it that way,” says Kaleb, embarrassed. “God watches over all of us.”

“Even the Führer?”

“Maybe not the Führer.”

Kaleb shares the joke this time.

Tobin looks away sourly, as if we are fools, and examines his wound. We head deeper into the forest to look for the beast. I have not quite recovered; my chest and ribs are sore. After another hour of walking, Tobin is seething.

“We should have shot the swine,” says Tobin. I am starting to wish we had also.

Kaleb confides to me that he is glad we did not catch the boar, which would have offended his sister. He makes light conversation quietly so as not to scare any more of the wildlife. He talks about the villages around the forest, and about the days when he and Rebekah would go on holidays to a lake where they would swim and bake in the sunshine. He says that Rebekah was afraid of the water and would stay in the shallows. He says that she was sick often with a bad chest, that she wasn’t allowed to stay in the water long or play outside much. He says that she had recurrent infections.

“What will you do after the war?”

“I will study to be a rabbi.”

“You’ll be a preacher then?”

“No, a teacher.”

“What do rabbis teach?”

“The ways of our faith: ‘Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.
’
”

Kaleb tells me that during his bar mitzvah he had a spiritual awakening, as if God was calling him for something. He was so moved that after this he would study the concepts of the Torah most nights.

“I’ve always enjoyed discussing ideals and ethics with my father and friends. And I especially like helping the young ones find their faith.”

I tell him that what he is doing now is far from his plans. But he does not think that it is very far from his original plan at all. “It is merely an intersection,” he says, “before a straight road presents itself that will lead to justice.”

It is then that I see movement just to my left. I think it might be a hare. I walk stealthily towards it and see that I am right. Its whiskers are twitching wildly; its eyes are fixed. It knows I am there. I inch closer and then it is off and I make chase, jumping high over thickets and weaving through trees until I am upon it, one hand and then the other catching its hind legs. It tries to wriggle free, its back legs churning the loose earth and dead leaves around it.

With one twist I break its neck, as I have seen Femke do to the hares she caught in traps set in the forest. The others have heard the commotion and followed me a short way; they wait as I approach with the kill, then examine it.

“It is too small,” says Tobin.

“It is better than nothing,” says Kaleb. He turns to me. “Where did you learn to run? You should be running for Poland.”

“Or running from Poland.”

Tobin is impassive. At least his former bad mood is gone now that he knows there will be meat to eat tonight.

Kaleb chuckles. “Riki, you can steal guns, run fast, and catch small animals. Do you have any other skills we should know about?”

We return with the hare and Tobin walks on ahead. I ask Kaleb about Tobin and how they became friends.

“We grew up in the same town but we hardly knew each other before the German invasion. Tobin’s father was killed by Nazis at the start of the war for refusing to give up his valuables in a raid on his home. Tobin had to leave school early to work in a factory to support himself. We have little in common other than we were forced together through circumstance.”

When Kaleb and Rebekah lost their parents and Tobin lost his job and then his home, they fled together. Many others were killed but the three of them escaped and found the partisans, by chance, in the forest house.

“You just have to give Tobin room. It is good to have him on our side.”

Anyone who needs excuses,
I think to myself,
is probably not a worthy friend.
I do not trust Tobin. There is something bad about him, something that cannot be tamed.

We come to the house in the forest, which seems to be off the Germans’ radar. It is not part of any village and is apparently located far enough into the forest to not attract attention.

It is then we hear the hum of aircraft high above us, heading east.

“What about aircraft that fly over? Can’t they see the house?”

“One house in a Polish forest is not the concern of the Luftwaffe,” says Kaleb. “I think they have their sights set elsewhere.”

C
HAPTER
21

It is early. I am keen to speak to the German. I pass Tobin’s room and notice that he is missing. I take the opportunity to unlock Otto’s door but see that he is sleeping heavily and decide to let him rest.

As I lock the door again, I hear sounds from within the supply room below me. I creep downstairs and watch secretly from behind the door to see who it is. Tobin takes out a key that is hidden in a book. The key unlocks a metal box that has been hidden under clothing, and he retrieves a small brown bottle from it and empties the contents into his hand. He takes out a bandage for the wound on his arm. He turns in my direction and I draw quickly back, closing my eyes and hoping that he has not seen me. I disappear into the next room and stay there until he is gone.

Later that morning I check to see that Tobin is outside before I open the secret, locked tin box. Inside are bottled painkillers, powders like I have seen used on Mama’s wound, and needles fixed to small tubes. These tubes contain morphine: something my papa once took for his pain. I take two of the sachets and two of the tubes and hope that Tobin does not notice them missing.

Upstairs, the German has not touched his food. When he sees the medicine, his eyes open more widely. Otto takes the tube of morphine from me eagerly, snaps off the cap, and inserts the needle into his arm. He does not wince from the piercing; it is nothing compared to the pain in his shoulder. After this, I apply some of the powder to his wound.

He is appreciative. Medicine is better than gold. I hear the sound of heavy steps downstairs. I cannot be caught with the German while Tobin is around. I return to my room.

It is late at night. There are murmurings in Rebekah’s room and shuffling noises. Something slides along the floor, then there is a crashing sound.

I go to her room and knock softly, and when there is no answer, I turn the door handle. Tobin is on top of Rebekah on the bed, pulling at her dress. I switch on the light and see that he has his hand clasped over her mouth. A lamp lies in pieces beside the bed.

When he sees me, he jumps up quickly.

“What are you doing?” I say.

“It is none of your business. Get out!”

“Rebekah?”

“He is forcing me to be with him.”

Tobin smiles. “I was only trying to kiss her.” He puts his arm around her. “See! We are good friends.”

She shrugs his arm away violently and turns to the wall so that I cannot see her face.

“I don’t think she wants you here,” I say. “You should get out.”

“No, you should get out!” He does not say this loudly but in a menacing whisper, and I realize that he does not want Kaleb woken.

“I think I will call Kaleb,” I say. “Maybe he would like to know about this.”

Tobin says nothing but stares at me through cold, glazed eyes that make my neck tingle. We stand close, facing one another.

He is the first to turn away, towards Rebekah. “Prick-teaser!” he says, under his breath. “You have led me on, you know you have!”

He pushes past me, butting my shoulder with his own. It is a short, sharp pain replaced quickly with relief that he is gone.

Rebekah sits facing the window, her hands in her lap. I go to stand beside her. When she looks up at me, I see that she is ashamed, that perhaps she is thinking she is somehow to blame. I tell her that she has done nothing wrong. That it is all in Tobin’s head.

“Do you want me to wake your brother?”

“No,” she says quickly. “It will be too ugly. It is best to say nothing. I can handle it.”

I do not want to say anything further but it is clear that she is no match for someone like Tobin. He might be small but he is a powerful ball of muscle. There is also something that tells me he would fight to the death, even without a cause. What is to become of her in the company of such a madman?

“You must tell Kaleb once I am gone,” I say.

“You’re going?” she says, as if she has forgotten.

“Yes, I must find my sister.”

She looks down. “Yes, you must.”

We have each been sent in different directions to steal some food. It has been a long day; I have been travelling for hours and I am exhausted. I have taken a sack of grain and milked a cow, returning carefully with the bucket so as not to spill a precious drop.

I am allowed to take the German some food, but only small portions. He must eat with his hands. He is not allowed a fork for eating or a pencil for writing; these could be used as weapons. Otto says he is feeling a little better but he needs a doctor to tend the wound if he is to fully recover. I see that the area around the bullet hole is still inflamed and his skin is hot to the touch. The powder can’t cure something this serious.

Tobin has been pacing angrily. He is anxious for the partisans to return so that he can fight with them: “Fight with real men,” he says.

The reason I have not yet left is that I am planning to take the German with me when I go, and I am waiting for Otto to improve. He has promised that if I help him get to Cracow, he will help me. He shows me a picture of his girlfriend in Cracow, who is the daughter of a German officer. She is standing beside her father, who wears the Nazi uniform. Otto has reminded me that he is the enemy. He sees the change in my expression at the sight of the officer and quickly puts the photo away. He explains that the girl, Emelie, is his Polish girlfriend: one of the new Germans. He shows me letters from Emelie which are very personal and explicit, recounting the nights they were together. My cheeks are reddening and I have to stop reading. But, he admits, Emelie is not his real love. There is another girl in Germany who he has been in love with for a very long time and hopes to marry.

Otto believes that he can find out the location of an orphanage and the addresses of officers from Emelie, who might have learned these from her father. I show him the lighter again and he examines it. He still does not recognize the initials and I believe him this time.

I do not need the maps from the partisans. I need Otto. I am scared now that should the partisans return before Otto is well enough to travel, he might be executed. Do I take Otto now and risk him dying, or do I wait a few days for him to get better, and hope the partisans do not return?

Rebekah and I talk more freely now and sometimes she will even talk about her family, but only about the good times. She talks about Hanukkah, which is due to happen soon, and how normally they would light candles and have lots of family visiting and there would be children everywhere. She says that it is a weeklong celebration of rich food, where plates of food constantly replace the empty ones. There is singing and her grandfather plays the violin. She says that although he can play well, his mind is going and he does not always remember her name. She says she misses the busy house.

Then a gray cloud passes across her face and she no longer wants to talk.

I help clean up after dinner and Tobin doesn’t like this. He does not like that I spend so much time in the kitchen with Rebekah. I wonder if I can trust her about the German. I think that I might miss her when I am gone.

But my plans to leave are dashed when the partisans return. They appear out of the forest in the middle of the day, their faces muddied, their clothes dark with sweat and blood. There are eight of them and they are solemn and tired and do not speak.

Tobin greets them excitedly. He is very familiar with them. These were the first ones to help him and Kaleb and Rebekah when they escaped into the forest.

Tobin follows them inside, on their heels like a puppy, barking orders at Rebekah to boil water for washing, and to boil the vegetables and slice some bread.

“Is there no meat?” asks one of them. These are the first words spoken to us.

“Not today, but later we will hunt,” says Tobin.

They go out to the rear of the house to use the water basin. They strip down to their underwear. There are six men and two women. I am too embarrassed to stay and too embarrassed to walk away, but the women do not seem to care that anyone else is present.

Tobin asks them questions. A couple of them respond that they have killed many, but generally he is ignored.

Rebekah pours boiling water into the outdoor basin. The partisans wash themselves with the soap that she has brought them. They do not look at her, nor do they thank her. Exhaustion is etched in their faces: their eyes sag, their expressions are dull. Most disappear upstairs and I remember the wardrobes with clothing, and wonder if I have taken one of their rooms—if we all have.

Several reappear wearing clean shirts. Kaleb and I take buckets down to the river to refill the water tanks.

When we return, Tobin is showing the partisans his German prize. Otto has been brought downstairs and he sits in a chair, his arms tied behind him. I know he is aware that I am in the room, but I can also tell that he is resisting the urge to look at me directly.

Eri is the leader and speaks some German but Machail, another partisan, is fluent in the language and does most of the questioning, relating Otto’s answers back to the rest of us. It seems Otto has lied to the German army about his age; he is seventeen, not nineteen. Eri punches him in the stomach and the boy retches, but he can’t lean forward because his torso is bound to the chair. I turn away and Rebekah sees me do this and looks down at her feet.

All of us watch the questioning. Spittle sits on Otto’s chin and his eyes keep closing involuntarily. I am tense with fear. I want to say something but Rebekah touches my hand, then draws away again. Did she mean to do that? Is she afraid that I will attempt to stop the interrogation? I am unsure. I notice that from across the room Tobin is looking at our hands—at our point of contact.

It is revealed that Otto is part of a reconnaissance group that scouts the towns after Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, has been through, to clean them up and to place any villagers left behind on trucks to a camp in the west. They are little more than scavengers, says Eri. After an hour, the questioning stops.

“He is just a child, barely off his mama’s breast,” says Machail, who looks too frail to be a fighter himself. “He knows nothing that can help us.”

Eri instructs one of the other men, a former medical student, to get rid of the bullet in Otto’s shoulder and stitch him up. It seems they will treat him as a prisoner of war and perhaps offer him up to his unit as part of a negotiation. Though, after some discussion, they conclude that it is unlikely the Germans will negotiate; Otto may be more useful on one of their missions instead. Tobin looks disappointed. I think he was hoping for an execution.

Otto is taken to another room and I follow; the partisans take no notice that I am there. In their eyes I am just a child. A man and a woman are to perform the procedure. They instruct Otto to remove his clothes and lie on a table. The room was once a formal sitting room like the one we had in Germany, where grown-ups would sip their brandy and wine. Today it is an operating theater. The partisans have their own supplies of medicine in their bags.

“He is doing well, considering the wound,” says the woman.

I do not volunteer that he has already received some treatment. The man, known as Danii, swabs the wound, which is inflamed around the edges, then begins to cut with a small scalpel. The woman puts a wad of cloth in Otto’s mouth for him to bite down on.

“Shouldn’t he have morphine?” I ask.

I am about to tell them that Tobin has a tin with medicine.

“We don’t waste such medicine on a German. Why are you still here?” asks the woman called Ailsa. Both are now interested in my presence.

“Get out!” says Ailsa. She is stocky, with a square-shaped face.

“Wait!” says Danii. “He can watch. It is a good thing for others to learn, in case we are blown up and someone else needs a surgeon.”

It is a joke, in part, but Ailsa does not smile.

“Fetch the morphine,” instructs Danii.

“We shouldn’t waste it,” says the woman.

“We have enough for now,” he says.

She begrudgingly retrieves some morphine from her own bag, not the supply room. I wonder if Tobin has stolen his secret stash from the partisans. She roughly pierces the skin on Otto’s shoulder and pumps the needle with less-than-gentle hands. Danii cuts the bullet out. It is deep and nestled in bone. Otto whimpers slightly but his body is steady. I am not squeamish; rather, I am fascinated. They patch the wound, then sit him up.

I offer to take him upstairs and he leans on me heavily.

Ailsa eyes me curiously. “Children! They can’t tell good from bad,” she says humorlessly.

I lay Otto back on some blankets in the tiny storeroom.

“Thank you,” he whispers and then he is asleep.

Eri is not content with vegetables. He has come from the forest with a dead deer. Rebekah and I must cut it up. I have never taken apart an animal this large before and neither has Rebekah. The same woman who helped with the surgery seems to know about this also. She instructs us to gut the torso while she watches. Rebekah rubs her nose with the back of her hand and accidentally smears blood across her face. She has gone pale. She does not like the sight of blood.

“Can you get the stove ready?” I ask her so that she doesn’t have to do this.

Ailsa chops the limbs with her axe while I skin the pieces. When we have finished, I carry the pieces in sacks into the kitchen, where Rebekah is waiting. My hands are sore.

We boil only a portion of the meat in spices with potatoes. We make a feast and take plates of food to each of the partisans, who are now talking in the sitting room, draped across chairs and couches. There is only a faint smell of sweat now that they are washed.

Rebekah, Kaleb, and I do not take large portions. It is clear that the partisans have that privilege now. Tobin, however, takes the same as the newcomers.

Now that they are clean, I can examine their faces as new subjects to draw. The men wear beards and the women have cut their hair short. Their faces and lower arms are browned from their work; their necks and upper arms are white.

Tobin is transfixed by the men and the accounts of their attacks. They tell us that they have lost ten of the partisans during recent skirmishes, and were lucky to escape the blasting of a metal factory, which has been turned into a German munitions factory. They say they had to sacrifice some of the local Poles who had been working there.