The Children's War (116 page)

He had nodded, reddening with irrational shame as he did so.

“Sleep here a bit,” she had said as she climbed out of bed. “You look like you could use some rest. I’ll get you up in plenty of time.” And with that she had left him alone to sleep.

Was it collaboration?

Did it matter what name it was given? Was it enough to cost him everything he had now?

He realized he was shaking his head. He could not do it; he would not lose it all again—not by his own actions. He unpacked the clothes while thinking about what he should say. By the time he had finished, nothing had come to mind, but
he decided to step out of the bedroom anyway. Zosia was still there, sitting on the sofa. She looked directly at him but did not say anything.

“I’m not going,” he said.

She nodded, then her eyes strayed to their wedding photo on the wall, the one they had placed next to the picture of her and Adam. He wondered briefly which photo she was looking at as he sat down next to her and reached for her hand. She put her hand in his, and they sat next to each other in silence for a long, long time.

Eventually Zosia broke the silence. “Why?”

“I was scared,” he answered simply. “I knew how badly I could be hurt, and I didn’t want it to happen again.”

“So she threatened you?” Zosia had lowered her head to look at her belly, continued to stare downward as she rubbed her hand over where she knew their child was developing.

Peter watched her actions as he answered, “Not really. She didn’t need to.”

“No threats? What, just a suggestion? Sort of a ‘Hey, sailor’?” Zosia imitated a leering prostitute’s voice.

“Please don’t mock me.” He explained the circumstances of Elspeth’s first approach, explained what they had both known at the time: that she did not need to say anything at all about the consequences if he did not accept her proposal. Her anger and resentment would have been sufficient to make his life miserable, whether it was her intention or not.

“Realistically,” Zosia argued, “what’s the worst she could have done?”

“Oh, she might have told Karl I had propositioned her. I know that whatever else he might have done at that point, he would have been certain to beat me to a pulp.”

“But you could have told him the truth! That she propositioned you!”

He grunted his derision at that suggestion. “Then he would have beaten me for propositioning her and again for lying about it and again for impugning his wife’s honor. No, my word was meaningless and what she said was, by definition, the truth.”

“But couldn’t you have—”

“Face it, Zosiu, she owned me,” he interrupted bitterly. “That’s what it means to be owned: you do as you’re told if you want to survive. You don’t get to pick and choose which commands you’ll obey. Millions of people have learned that lesson over the centuries, and I learned it, too.”

Zosia kept her head down and did not say anything. She was avoiding looking at him again, as if she could not bear the sight of him.

His heart ached at this sign of her rejection.“Zosiu, I told you what I was! You knew how I spent those years. Did you think it was just a party game? Something I did so I could go on American TV and talk about the Nasties?”

She shook her head slightly but still neither looked up nor said anything.

“This society condones slavery! That’s one of the reasons we fight them, one
of the reasons we claim they are immoral. It’s not an abstract concept either—it’s done to real people. Real people with real feelings and”—his voice grew increasingly unsteady—“your husband was one of those people and he did everything they required of him. Everything. From slopping out Uwe’s bedpans to polishing the car to servicing the wife. It was
all
degrading, it was
all
humiliating, and it was
all
unavoidable as long as I wanted to live.”

He paused to steady himself. “That was the only real choice I had: to live or to die. I chose to live and perhaps that was wrong, perhaps that was collaboration, but it was a choice that you knew about long before this. A choice that you accepted as reasonable that first night that we met. This thing with Elspeth changes nothing.”

“Yes, it does! It is different.”

“It’s no different than”—he bit his lip, turning his head away to finish—“than the
Kommandant.
You knew about that, and you accepted it.”

“But it
is
different from that! When you made that baby, you proved that you had gone from victimization to active participation. To collaboration!”

Peter shook his head violently but could say nothing.

“That was the one thing she could not force from you, Peter! That’s the one thing I don’t understand. How could you do that? How could you be her
lover!”
Zosia pounded her fist against her thigh to emphasize her last sentence.

He sighed. “It’s complicated. Human beings are complicated. No matter how many rules and regulations there are for how
Übermensch
and
Untermensch
are supposed to interact, when you put two people that close together for that long, there are going to be complications. She couldn’t live by her strict philosophy, and I certainly had no desire to reenforce her prejudices!”

Zosia did not react, so he decided to emphasize his point. “I lived day in and day out with her for two and a half years. We interacted every single day, and sometimes she treated me decently, sometimes like dirt. But however she acted toward me, she was virtually the only person I saw; if I ceased to react to her as a human, then I ceased to be human. I simply couldn’t spend every moment hating her or being bitter about her treatment of me—that would have destroyed me faster than anything!”

Zosia made a dismissive noise.

“In any case, there was nothing else in my life. With Uwe there, I couldn’t leave the house, I was trapped and alone. When I was obliged to lie with her, there was just one choice left to me: I could hate her and fail miserably or I could try and enjoy it and get some physical pleasure. I chose the latter. I’d summon up some of her better moods, I’d think about Maria or just fantasize like crazy . . .” He hesitated, then added, somewhat embarrassed,“Mostly about you.”

“Me? You didn’t even . . .”

“You were in Berlin that winter, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I saw you. You were kind to me. I spent maybe two minutes in your presence, and I’m sure you don’t remember it at all, but it was two minutes I savored
for months afterwards. You see, that’s what my life had been reduced to. A stranger winks at me and . . .” With an effort he regained the thread of his explanation. “Anyway, as time went on, she started talking to me, we’d actually converse a bit—never freely, but we exchanged some ideas. It was like during that time I was human to her. I sort of hoped that I could extend that time beyond the bedroom and that maybe I could get her to see me as human all the time.” He stopped, aware he was making no real impression. He sighed. “The whole thing was bizarre, it was grotesque, but it was my life—it was all that I had.”

Zosia continued to stare at the floor; he could see she was chewing her lip. “I really do have to get to work,” she said in a low voice. “We should probably talk about this later.”

Though she would not look up to see him, he nodded his agreement.

44

N
ATURALLY, THEY DID
not discuss it later. It was too sensitive for either of them to dare bring up. It was, nevertheless, clearly on both their minds, and as Zosia yet again tossed and turned in her sleep, Peter felt a strange combination of guilt and pity that he had caused such distress. He got out of bed and came around to kneel by her side so he could reach her without disturbing Joanna. Zosia was mumbling something in her sleep, and he wanted to hear what she had to say in the hopes of gauging how she felt about him and his actions. He listened as she repeated a word over and over, and slowly he realized that she was saying, “Adam, Adam, Adam.”

He ground his teeth and decided to return to bed, but Zosia stirred and looked up at him. “Adam?” she asked in a confused whisper.

“No, it’s only me,” he replied, his heart aching.

“Peter,” she said as if clearing away cobwebs of confusion.

He reached out and touched her hand and held it in silence. He wanted to ask her a question, but he hesitated. If only he didn’t love her so much, then she wouldn’t be able to hurt him so badly! He felt a sick apprehension in his gut, a worried fear of what she would answer when he finally asked. He clung to the silence, to the hope that it offered, then at last he asked quietly, almost hoping she was asleep, “Do you still think I’m a collaborator for what I did?”

She moved slightly, so he knew she was awake, but she said nothing and his heart sank. He waited an eternity, feeling hope slip away, before she finally said, “You know, without having lived it, I just don’t have the experience to say.”

“You were willing to say before.”

“That was an argument. It was foolish of me to . . . I was angry.”

“And now you’re not, so tell me what you think.”

“All right,” she sighed. “I’m sorry, Peter, I still don’t understand what you did. I don’t condemn you for it, but I . . .”

He rubbed his forehead, patiently prompted, “Yes?”

“I don’t think I would have done it.”

He shut his eyes for a moment. There, on his knees, beside her, it looked as if he were praying.

She tried to explain. “It’s the voluntary nature of it all . . .”

“Okay, enough,” he said, dismayed.

She did not say anything, just spent a long moment looking at him. He wondered if she was comparing his actions to what Adam would have done. “I guess we should cancel my trip to America,” he said tiredly.

“What? Why?”

“I think it’s obvious,” he stated without rancor. “If even my wife considers me a traitor, I can hardly hope to gain a sympathetic hearing there.”

“You don’t have to talk about this stuff! You must go!”

“I don’t see how I can. The whole point of my going was that my story would be genuine. If I have to lie, it’ll all fall apart.”

“No, it won’t! You convinced me on that first night. You can do it again.”

“This whole messy business was one of the reasons I was so reluctant in the first place; now that it’s out in the open, I just don’t see how I can pretend it didn’t happen.”

“You can do it if you try. We’re depending on you! A few changes here and there to your story won’t take anything away from it. You
must
go! You
promised
you’d go!”

Something in her tone made him look at her for a long time, but the intensity of the love he felt for her left him unable to voice his misgivings. Instead he said, “We can discuss it tomorrow. I’m sure it will all be clearer then.” His voice assumed a hypnotic tone, and he gently passed his hand over her eyes so she would close them. “Just go back to sleep now. You need it, the baby needs it. Forget everything else, think about your beautiful daughter, and your wonderful child-to-be and a husband who loves you dearly. Sleep and dream about how good life can be. How sweet life is.”

He continued to kneel by her side and stroked her forehead as she drifted off. When he knew she was asleep, he kissed her tenderly and then returned to his side of the bed. He lay in the dark and listened to Zosia’s and Joanna’s peaceful breathing. He lay very still, stifling a sob of quiet fear at the demons that awaited him behind the veil of sleep.

The child was a girl: she was about three and looked remarkably like Joanna had at that age. They walked along hand in hand to the park. A patrolman scowled at them but decided their familiarity was for the child’s safety and so did not harass them. He felt grateful he could hold his daughter’s hand—soon she would be old enough that there would be no need and therefore no excuse to do so. She chattered amiably and he responded cautiously. He wanted to teach her
English, but he did not dare. He wanted to hug her, but the opportunities were rare. Still, the walk to the park was enjoyable, and since Elspeth frequently grew bored with the child, he often was able to care for her.

At the park she was surrounded by her friends; they whirled around him singing some song he could not recognize. She was among them, whirling around him as well.

“Who is that?” someone asked in English, pointing at him.

“My father,” she replied happily.

He spun around to see her, stunned by her response; so they repeated it for his benefit.

“Whose is that?” someone asked, pointing at him.

“My father’s,” she replied happily.

“No,” he whispered, and wanted to say, “I belong to me,” but he could not find his voice and he could not find her among the children. They all wore uniforms and she was completely indistinguishable from the others.

But now she was grown. He was waiting for her by the car—to chauffeur her. A beautiful young woman with bleached-blond hair. She hung on the arm of a young man in a military uniform. “Whose is that?” the young man asked, pointing at either him or the car.

“My father’s!” she answered gaily.

And this time, he did not object.

He awoke and lay quietly for a moment thinking of the dream, of the image of himself walking with his child to the park, holding her little hand. He could still feel how her delicate fingers clutched at his, could still see the bright sparkle in her eyes as she pointed out a squirrel. He felt a terrible longing for her, for that part of himself he had unknowingly left behind.

Again he drifted off to sleep and to dreams. Again the child. A boy this time, grown to a handsome and strong young man, wearing a crisp black uniform with high black boots. Yawning and stretching, the young man threw himself into a chair and, pointing at his boots, said, “These are dirty.”

“Do you wish to take them off,
mein Herr?”
he asked the young man.

“No, I’m going right back out.”

So, the father knelt at his son’s feet and cleaned his boots. As he wiped away the dried mud, then used a brush to clean the crevices, he contemplated telling his son of his true parentage. The boy, however, preempted him. “I have a story to tell you. A fairy tale.”

He spread the polish on the smooth leather.
“Mein Herr?”

The boy smiled. “The story is from India. You know where that is, don’t you?”

“Yes,
mein Herr.”

“Good. Anyway, you see there was this Brahman woman—you know what that means, don’t you?”

“Yes,
mein Herr.
She was of the priestly caste.”

“Exactly. Noble blood. Well, she married a wealthy and wise man and spent
her days strolling through the gardens of his estates, but then one day she grew restless and secretly wandered into the village. There she saw a man who fascinated her. She had never seen one like him—almost half-devil, you might say. He smiled an evil, enticing smile and seduced her then and there. Are you listening?”

“Yes,
mein Herr.”

“The poor woman became pregnant and was beside herself with shame. She gave birth to a healthy child, but because of the miscegenation, she had to keep the parentage of the child a secret, and she raised him as if he were her husband’s son.”

He ran the cloth back and forth over the leather.

“The child was happy and successful and had a promise of a good life. The pure blood of his mother won out over the polluted blood of his father, and it was clear no one would ever need know the shame of his parentage. However, the outcaste father contrived to visit his child and tell him the truth of his birth. The boy turned the beggar away at the door, but still the evil man was insistent: he would do anything to reveal himself. He thought in this way he might gain some advantage for himself. He did not care if it destroyed the boy’s life; he did not understand that truth is not such a simple thing. He did not realize that the boy’s true father was the man he had looked up to and admired all his life, the man who had provided for him and who offered him a world of opportunities.”

He changed cloths and worked on the final shine to the luxurious black boots.

“Do you know what the boy finally had to do to let the poor worm know that he and his miserable stories were not wanted? Do you?”

“No,
mein Herr,”
he answered quietly. He looked up from his work to confront his son’s cold, cold stare.

“He spit on him, like this.” The boy collected a mouthful of saliva and spit at him.

Peter started. He stared at the ceiling; his heart felt like a stone in his chest. He ran his hand over his face, convinced that it would come away covered in spittle, but it was dry. Would it have been like that?

Afraid of what his next dream might invent, he decided to go for a walk instead of sleep. A few minutes later, he emerged from the bunker into the cool night air. Heavy clouds made the darkness complete. He stood a moment to get his bearings and then headed into the woods. He thought not of his dreams, nor of Elspeth’s child, rather he thought of his father. In a fit of helpless anger, he had spit at his father once. Now, it was far too late to apologize.

A few hundred meters into the trees a familiar voice asked softly, “Captain Halifax?”

“Good evening, Barbara. Why are you out now?”

“I’m just heading back from duty near the perimeter. You know I run a group of partisans.”

“Oh, yeah. Everything go well tonight?”

“Yes. All quiet on the western front.”

He smiled at her literary allusion. On an impulse he asked, “Are you tired? I’d like to talk if you have some time.”

“I’d love to, Peter.” She swung into step beside him.

They walked to the escarpment that he usually retreated to, and he pulled out the bottle of grain spirits he had brought from the apartment. After they had exchanged a few pleasantries and shared a few swigs, he told her what was on his mind. He told her about Elspeth and what he had done with her. Then he asked, “Was that collaboration?”

“Why would it be?” She seemed stunned by his question. “You weren’t exactly helping their war effort!”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just wondered what you thought.” He accepted the bottle as she handed it back to him. He took a swig. “It seems there’s a child now; I have every reason to believe it’s mine.”

“Oh! Good for you!” Barbara took the bottle from him to toast his fatherhood.
“Na zdrowie!
That’s one less kid with her husband’s genes! And one more for us.” She drank another large gulp and then handed him the bottle.