The Children's War (203 page)

“Oh, grow up!” he snapped. “Listen to your mother! Listen to your conscience! You’ve tied yourself in with a bunch of murderous thugs. What’s one five-year-old to them?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Ask him”—he nodded toward Karl—“he knows.”

“What? How would he know?”

“Just ask. It doesn’t matter what he hears since I’m going to kill him anyway.”

Elspeth stared at Karl for a moment, utterly terrified at the thought of him waking up.

Peter decided to assist her and poked the gun into Karl’s ribs.“Hey, you, wake up, sleepy.”

“Hunh?” Karl tried to turn over. Elspeth waved her hands frantically for Peter to stop.

Peter jabbed Karl again. That didn’t work, so he smacked him across the face. “I said, wake up, you fat moron!”

Karl jumped up onto his elbows. “What? What?” He turned to see Peter staringat him and his mouth dropped open. Despite his confusion, he had obviously noticed the gun.

“So you still recognize me? Even with brown hair? Even without my uniform?”

“You again! What are you doing here? Elspeth?” he snarled, looking to his wife for an explanation.

“Did you kill his daughter?” Elspeth asked immediately.

“Me? His daughter? No. No, I had nothing to do with it.” Karl turned back toward Peter.“Honest, it wasn’t my doing. I had nothing to do with that.”

“So you knew about it,” Elspeth concluded.

“Well, yes, but I didn’t do it.”

“I know,” Peter assured him quietly.

“How did you know about it?” Elspeth insisted. “There was a videotape,” Karl explained, wondering why Peter was being more understanding than his wife. His situation was beginning to sink in.

“They taped the murder of a child?” Elspeth asked, aghast.

“No, no, no. Just his reaction,” Karl tried to reassure her. Somehow though she seemed even more appalled. “And you watched it?”

“Yeah, it was good for a la—” Karl realized his mistake. He looked at the gun Peter held and pleaded, “I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me!”

“I know,” Peter repeated with such calm disinterest that it was not reassuring.

Karl stared trembling and sweating at the gun Peter held so indifferently. Elspeth’s face was like a stone. She looked at her husband as if judging all their years together: the uncontrolled rages, the way he had pummeled his sons, the brutal punishments he had meted out to the servants, the unending tension he had caused. “For laughs” he had watched a videotape of a child being murdered, he had reveled in the torture and deaths of prisoners in his charge, he had chosen to follow in his father’s footsteps, knowing exactly what it meant.

“I’ll tell them what you said,” she told Peter.

Peter smiled enigmatically. He had never intended to get Elspeth’s permission, and her consent was irrelevant to his intentions, but still it amused him.

Karl looked from one to the other in confused terror and growing anger.

Were they conspiring against him? His automatic mode of dealing with either of them was to issue commands, and without that option he was left helpless. Rage began to well up inside him, but then his eyes were drawn again to that gun sitting there. He was the master here! He was an
Übermensch!
The one was his wife, the other his chattel, but still he could not take his eyes off that gun. The natural order was disturbed, but he could not find the courage to demand the obedience and respect that was his due.

While Karl stared entranced at the gun, Peter reached into his jacket and removed his stiletto. He held it discreetly out of sight and whispered into Karl’s ear, “By the way, do you remember Julia Hoffmeier? Her son sends his greetings.”

Karl snapped his head away from the gun to look in horror at Peter. Karl was whiter than his sheets.“How, how . . . ?”

“Don’t worry, old boy, I won’t give your secret away.” Peter casually swung his left arm around as if in a friendly gesture to give Karl a hug. The stiletto disappeared into Karl’s fleshy neck even as he began to wonder at Peter’s chumminess. He burbled incoherently and collapsed forward.

“Oh, dear,” Elspeth muttered, looking at her dead husband.

Peter’s hand was still on the knife and it was still deep in Karl’s brain. He spent a moment in quiet admiration of the neat job he had done, then twisted the knife and sliced downward to make the opening bigger, more jagged, and less expert. Although it did not really matter given Elspeth’s future testimony, there was no point in letting them see he was professionally trained. A coroner who really cared might work it out anyway, but he doubted the coroner would care or would be allowed to care.

He removed the knife, wiped the blade, and put it back into its scabbard inside his jacket. He grabbed a bit of Karl’s hair and pulled him back until he was lying flat again. He looked sort of peaceful there albeit a bit surprised. Peter closed Karl’s eyes and held them in place; then to be sure, he felt for a pulse at the neck. There was none, Karl was dead. It was that bloody simple. All those years and here the bastard was, a tiny stain of blood on his silk pajamas, dead. Peter missed the opportunity to have pummeled him a bit, to have inflicted just a taste of his own medicine, but Peter had promised himself he would do it professionally and as dispassionately as possible, and he congratulated himself on his success.

Other than that, though, he felt nothing: no thrill, no pleasure. The skies did not open up for him, his soul was not suddenly calmed. There was no great release from the burden of his past. As he looked at the body, Katerina’s words of long ago returned to him:
Unjustly condemned, you are innocent of any blood in a time when innocence is in itself guilt. You will know no peace until you accept the guilt of war. You cannot stand idly by.
She was right, he thought, he could not stand idly by any longer, but she was also wrong, for even accepting the guilt of killing had provided him no solace. There was no peace in his land, and until there was, there was no peace to be had.

“Oh, dear,” Elspeth repeated. “What should I do?”

“Wait about an hour, then call the police. Tell them it happened some indeterminate time ago, perhaps half an hour, and that you were too stunned and afraid to move. Say that I threatened that I would kill you if you moved.”

“You’d never do that!” Elspeth admonished.

“You can say I said it,” he assured her as he stood up. He had already disconnected the phone to slow Elspeth down a bit, but he saw no reason to tell her that. “Make it simple: you woke up, saw me, wanted to scream, but I threatened you. I killed your husband, told you ‘an eye for an eye, a daughter for a daughter,’ and then after telling you not to move, I left. Got that?”

She nodded.

“Repeat it to me. Everything that happened.” She did and, at his orders, repeated it several times and answered his questions.

From his point of view, it really did not matter what she said as long as it was clear he was driven by personal motives, but for the children, it was necessary that she not betray her collusion. Once he was satisfied that she knew what to do, he went over to her side of the bed and sat down by her. “Don’t worry,” he assured her, stroking back her loose hairs, “you’ll do fine.” He held her chin gently cupped in his hands and, turning her face upward, kissed her full on the lips.

As he walked toward the door, she stared after him in bewilderment.

At the door he stopped to say, “Remember, Elspeth, I’m already wanted. There’s absolutely nothing more they can do to me so don’t try to protect me, it will only get you arrested.”

She shook her head. “I won’t. I’ll do exactly as you said.”

“Exactly?”

She nodded.

He blew her a kiss and turned to leave. “Peter?” Her voice quaked with emotion.

He turned back to look at her and smiled at the image—not a proper, subservient smile but rather a self-confident, almost happy grin. It was the smile of a man who, though perhaps not at peace, at least knew he was free.
“Gnädige Frau?”
he asked with good-humored sarcasm.

Elspeth hesitated, her expression intense, as a confession seemed poised on her lips. Then she apparently changed her mind and relaxed. As if only to fill the silence, she said, “Your behavior is totally inappropriate.”

Peter laughed quietly. “Ah, yes,
gnä’ Frau,
but you wouldn’t have it any other way.” And with that he went to collect his wife and his daughter.

Guide to Approximate Pronunciation

There is a slight rolling of the letter
r
in both Polish and German. The
ch
in German has variable (regional) pronunciations all the way from “sh” to “h” to “k.” The accent on Polish words is on the penultimate syllable. The accent on German words varies.

Andrzej:
Ahn
-jay
Elspeth:
Els
-pet
Firlej:
Feer
-lay
Genia:
Gen
-yah
Gisela:
Gee
-zel-lah
Irena:
Ee-
reh
-na
Jan:
Yahn
Joanna, Johanna—
Yo-
an
-na, Yo-
han-
na
Julia:
Yu
-lia
Kasia, Kasiu:
Kah
-sha,
Kah
-shu
Król:
Kruhl
Marysia:
Mah-
ree
-sha
Pawel:
Pah
-vel
Piotr:
Pyoh
-ter
Przewalewski:
P’sheh-vah-
lev
-skee
Richard:
Rik
-hart
Ryszard:
Rih
-shart
Stefi:
Shteh
-fee (German),
Steh
-fee (Polish)
Tadek, Tadziu:
Tah
-dek,
Tah
-ju
Uwe:
U
-veh
Wanda:
Vahn
-da
Wojciech:
Voy
-cheh
Zosia, Zosiu:
Zoh
-sha,
Zoh
-shu

Other Words

Armia Krajowa:
Ahr
-mya Krai-
yo
-vah, the Home Army; the Polish
Underground Resistance against the Nazi German occupation organized into an army of the people

Babcia/Babciu, Busia, Babusia/Babusiu: various endearing words for
Grandmother and the vocative forms Drang nach Ordnung: a drive/urge for order; a pun on

Drang nach Osten,
the
(Germanic) pressure to expand eastward

Du: informal version of “you”
gemischt: (racially) mixed
Hakenkreuz: swastika
kochana, kochany:
ko-
han
-na, ko-
han
-nee, beloved (f/m)
Kraków, Krakau:
Kra
-koof,
Kra
-kow, the city of Cracow (Pol./Ger.)
moja kochana:
moy
-ah ko-
han
-na, my beloved (f)

München: the city of Munich
Nichtdeutsch: literally, not German; legal classification given to non-Jewish, non-Germans
nur für Deutsche: literally, only for Germans; used for parks, shops, etc.
Ordnung: order, control, organization
Polska walczy:
Pol
-ska
Vahl
-chee, Poland fights—motto and insignia of the
Home Army
Rassenmischung: race-mixing, of which German/non-German, Aryan/non-Aryan, Aryan/mixed-race were some of the myriad and continuously varying possibilities
Reichsdeutsch: German born within the Reich’s pre-1939 boundaries or direct descendent of same
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA): the Reich’s security service headquarters
Reinheitsgebot: purity law requiring that beer contain only the four basic ingredients
Sekt:
Zekt,
sparkling wine
Sie:
Zee,
formal version of “you”

Spree:
Shpray,
the river through Berlin
SS Lebensborn: division of the SS which abducted children and gave them to
German families for adoption
Szlachta:
shlak
-ta, the Polish nobility and, during the period of the republic, electors of the king
Übermensch: super-human or superior being
Untermensch: sub-human or inferior being
Verräter:
Fehr-
ray
-ter, traitor
Volksverräter:
Folks-fehr-
ray
-ter, traitor of the Folk; term used against the
English as betrayers of their Anglo-Saxon heritage

Volksdeutsch: of the German race; used for those who did not originally hold
German citizenship but could claim some blood relation (often quite remote)

Warszawa, Warschau:
Vahr-
sha
-vah,
Vahr
-shau, the city of Warsaw (Pol./Ger.)
Zwangsarbeiter/in:
Tsvangs
-ahr-bai-ter/in, forced laborer (m/f)