The Children's War (7 page)

“Okay.” Zosia handed her apprentice a nasty-looking knife. “Make a mess of it—we don’t want them to notice those pretty little neck wounds.”

Stefi nodded. For a moment she hesitated, then she felt his hands pulling at her breast, felt his fingers groping between her legs, and with a sudden resolve she raised the knife and brought it down with a brutal strength into his back. She repeated the motion over and over, in a frenzied surge of anger.

Suddenly Zosia reached out and grasped her wrist. “That’s enough, dear,” she said quietly. “Just get the neck now.”

Stefi brushed the rain from her face, then carefully placed the knife on her
victim’s neck. She plunged the blade in and dragged downward, cutting across his shoulder, tearing the skin and obscuring the tiny punctures.

“Well done,” Zosia congratulated her. She gently removed the knife from Stefi’s shaking hands, dropped the blade into its scabbard, and buried the thing in her basket. “Let’s go. You carry the potatoes, and I’ll haul the basket of cabbages.”

Stefi nodded mechanically.

Zosia smiled at her apprentice and said sympathetically, “Relax, sweetie. You’ve done really well. Two or three more times and your technique will be perfect.”

“I feel sick,” Stefi said, her body beginning to tremble violently.

“See if you can’t hold it until we get home,” Zosia advised as she surveyed the sky. “This rain is only going to get worse.”

9

I
T WAS ONLY GOING
to get worse, he thought as he stood in the doorway and looked up. A cold drizzle emanated from the leaden skies, falling lightly into the courtyard. The faint gray stretch of clouds on the horizon was the first daylight he had seen in weeks, and he shook like a leaf as he finally allowed himself a moment to think about what had just happened. Only an hour or so ago, he had been doused with water, had awakened in such bizarre circumstances that he could not credit their reality. He had been interviewed, or interrogated, or at least threatened. And he had capitulated entirely. Uncertain what his words had meant, he had accepted life at their behest over death.

Immediately afterward he had been taken out of his cell and, along with others, ranted at. He had responded to the prompts, had denounced himself as worthless, had agreed that obedience was the only option. He had been warned, in screeching tones, that the price of disobedience was death. And now, he was obeying the first direct command. Still naked, with nothing but a number on his arm, a manacle on his wrist, and a tattered rag in his hand, he had been sent outside, told to cross the courtyard and enter the barracks on the far side so that he could scrub the latrines there.

He shuddered with cold and a relentless fear. He was so hungry he kept convulsively trying to chew something. He gathered his courage and took a few tentative steps across the slippery stones toward his destination, but again he hesitated. They had taken everything from him! His clothes, his hair, his name! He was so utterly alone and so completely at their mercy that terror was the only rational response. How, in God’s name, could he possibly continue? He looked up at the sky as if begging for a sign, something that would tell him how to proceed in this grotesque nightmare. A snowflake landed by his nose, melted, and
ran down his cheek. He brought his gaze back down to the ground and the pockets of frost that nestled between the cobblestones. He was nearly frozen, but still he could not bring himself to move. He was a prisoner, a nameless, faceless prisoner, and he had given his life to them in the hopes of preserving it for a few more months. Oh, God, what had he done? He looked down at the number on his arm and recited it mentally. It was, for now, his only name.

With a monumental effort of will, he forced himself forward, crossed the courtyard, and grasped the door handle. A quiet sob escaped his lips as he rotated his head to view where he had come from, then, determined to face whatever awaited him before he completely lost his composure, he opened the door. He was surprised to find the barracks relatively empty. A few soldiers lounged about, and one or two were changing clothes or organizing their kit, but most of the cots were empty. As he proceeded down the aisle between the cots, somebody nudged his friend and muttered, “Look, another poor, dumb shit sent over by those loonies.” He got a few incurious glances, and someone tossed a towel at him, possibly to be helpful, but he did not know what was permitted, so he ignored it as it dropped to the floor.

He found his way to the latrines and surveyed them with resigned despair. They were filthy. He began with the cleaner parts—the sinks and benches, but inevitably he was forced to undertake the cleaning of the showers and toilets. Hunger aggravated the nausea inspired by the filth, and he retched repeatedly, but did not vomit. With only the now sodden cloth to aid him, he was forced to scratch at the filth with his fingers; nevertheless, he persevered, hoping that this first test of his resolve would be the worst and that if he did well, he would be moved up to the next stage, which would be less repugnant.

After a time he became inured to the smell and the dirt and was able to scrape mold, matted hair, and other detritus out of the shower sewers with equanimity. Several times soldiers entered and used the latrine, but they generally avoided him and left him to his work. One or two felt the need to kick him out of the way as he scrubbed near the door, but then he learned to scuttle quickly away whenever he heard anyone coming in.

Later in the morning, when his job was nearing completion, he heard a squad return to the main room of the barracks. Within moments several of them had entered the latrine and, upon spotting him, decided to have some fun. He continued to scrape away some rust-colored mold from the tiling near a sewer even as they began to surround him.

Some of them were preparing to shower and were naked or clad only in towels;others still wore their full uniforms, and one of these nudged him with the toe of his boot and asked, “Hey, boy, whatcha doing? Hmm?”

Before he could even conceive of answering, this question was followed by others.

“Getting on with your work, boy?”

“Hey there, what happened to all your hair?”

“Whatcha doing there?”

“Hey! Look at your betters when they address you!”

He looked at the speaker. He was a young, smiling boy of no more than seventeen. “How come you ain’t doing useful work?”

“How come you here, boy?”

“Hey, check his wrist, see what it says!”

Someone grabbed at his right arm, hauled it upward and twisted it around so they could read his identification band. “A criminal! Tell us, what did you do bad, huh?”

“You touch any of our women?” The speaker was a powerfully built, brownhaired young man clad only in a towel.

“No, I didn’t. No . . .”

“What did you do, huh? Come on, you can trust us.”

“Leave him alone. Come on.”

“Bet he laid his filthy hands on one of our women.”

“No, I didn’t . . .”

“Come on, guys, leave him alone,” someone suggested, tugging on an arm.

“What then, you filthy pig!” the brown-haired speaker persisted.

“I . . . ,” he stammered.

“You what?”

“Hey, I got an idea!”

“You all crave our women, you shit dog! He’s raped one of our women!”

“No, no . . . ,” he almost begged.

“Shut up, you’re all liars.”

“Calm down, Georg, you don’t know what he’s done.”

“Let’s teach him a lesson anyway!” the smiling boy suggested. A few of the group followed his inspired lead and dragged him to one of the sinks, filling it with water. His head was forced into the water, and even as he struggled to squirm free of his captors and come up for air, someone pounded on him mercilessly.

Suddenly he was released. He flung his head upward, gasping, prepared to be resubmerged, but no one forced him back down. He sank to the floor and it took a moment for the pounding of his heart in his ears to subside enough for him to hear the now rather subdued background conversation.

“. . . wasn’t hurting him, Sergeant.”

“Honest, Sergeant, we was just having some fun.”

“Enough. Go about your business.”

Mumbled “yes, sir’s” indicated that the small crowd was dispersing rather sheepishly. After a moment he heard the approach of the sergeant. Cowering on the floor, dripping wet, shaven, naked, and beaten, he could hardly imagine less dignified circumstances, but he summoned his pride and looked the man directly in the eyes. The sergeant looked him up and down, decided he was sufficiently unharmed, and left without saying a word, rather as if he were a machine incapable of understanding speech.

He stared after the lumbering form, wanting to say something, but the words
I am human
stuck in his throat.

The job assigned to him for the afternoon was no less unpleasant, but he managed to complete it without incident. Afterward, he and the other recruits were provided with potatoes and some gristly gravy for dinner, and then they were marched to the latrine to empty their buckets and wash. In the evening they endured hours of indoctrination, and then, numb with weariness, they were marched back. As he entered his cell, he was handed a blanket: it was rough and worn and smelled, but it was beautiful to him and he felt a wave of gratitude to his captors for this unforeseen luxury.

The next day, upon returning to his cell, he discovered he had been awarded clothing and footwear. The shoes were short, black lace-up boots with worn heels and cracks along the seams. He put them to one side and pensively fingered the roughly woven gray-blue material of the trousers. The material was rather worn, and he could not help but wonder what had become of the previous wearer. The longsleeved, collarless shirt he had been given was made of a similarly worn material but had brand-new identifying patches sewn with a careful hand onto the shoulders.

He dressed quickly, then glanced down at himself, trying to imagine what he looked like to the rest of the world. Pretty pathetic, he guessed. The cut and colors of his uniform betrayed his status to all; the shoulder patches summarized everything that was considered relevant: a white strip of cloth on which his identification number had been printed, a patch with the cross of Saint George to identify him as English, a black stripe with a green triangle to show he was a criminal, and finally a red strip of cloth with a yellow inset to indicate, if he remembered correctly, that he was a
Zwangsarbeiter,
a forced laborer, further categorized as
Untermensch,
that is, subhuman.

He grasped the material of his sleeve in his hand and stared at the insignia. Quite a load of shit to carry around, he thought, all the hierarchies and divisions, the ethnicities and classifications of his society, summarized there, on his sleeves. It was an appalling indictment of the entire culture that his worth could be summarized so cavalierly, that his identity was a number, that his legal rights had been reduced to nothing. An appalling indictment, yet he could feel no bitterness. He was simply too elated that he finally had clothes.

10

“T
HAT WAS THE NEWS
for this November evening. You have been listening to Julianna and the Voice of Freedom. Keep the faith.” Julia signed off the broadcast and poured herself a tumbler of vodka as the strains of the national anthem
filled the air. She did not have to hear it to broadcast it, but she liked to listen to the words anyway.

“Good job, as usual,” the technician assured her from the doorway.

“Any jamming today?”

“No, we’re doing a lot better with the multiple-source broadcasting. It will take them a while to work that one out.”

“Well, let’s get out of here while the going’s good,” Julia said, downing the vodka in a gulp.

“There’s no hurry,” the technician assured her, “they haven’t even found the relay stations yet.”

Julia shook her head. With each year she had grown more rather than less nervous, and any unnecessary delays or risks bothered her. “Fine. You stay and put up a welcome sign. I’m going.”

She packed her bag and walked out into the damp evening air. Maybe it’s time to quit, she thought. This was, after all, only a sideline, one of the less specialized of her assignments. It would be silly to be arrested or shot for doing something that almost any volunteer off the street could do. Collect impartial and foreign news reports and read them to the populace. Who couldn’t do that? Her specialization was in planting and maintaining a series of deterrent bombs throughout Nazi government buildings. That required skill and training that was, to say the least, rare. She should save herself for that, she should not expose herself to other unnecessary risks. That’s how she should present her case to the Council. She would not tell them of her growing anxiety, of her war weariness, of her need to drink more and more vodka to steady her nerves. It would be a simple case of protecting a valuable and rare resource: her bomb skills.

She thought about this as she glared impatiently out the window of her firstclass train compartment. The train seemed to move so slowly! The sooner she got to Berlin, the sooner she could implant the upgraded remote-control detonators they had just received from the North American Union into their deterrents, and the sooner she would be done!

She thought about the location of the devices that she maintained in that city and about the identities she would adopt to gain access to each. It was difficult for her, there were so few excuses available for the presence of a woman in an unusual location: cleaning lady, secretary, prostitute. That about covered the career options in the Reich. Of course, this wasn’t strictly true, but anything else drew notice, and that, when one was infiltrating, was bad. On the other hand, there were advantages as well: women were so typically unimportant that nobody took notice of them. As a secretary she could walk into an office, remove files, and walk off with them without anyone even being aware that she had been there, and prostitutes counted as virtual nonpersons and could attend social functions and conferences without drawing the slightest suspicion. She was also in much less danger of being denounced, for the usual path to information was through a man, and it never drew suspicion if an attractive woman tried to
become friendly with a powerful man—everyone knew her motives: money and power. In that way, she might or might not succeed, but she rarely put herself in any danger.

There was, Julia thought, only one group in society that drew even less attention to themselves and that was the nameless, faceless multitude of forced laborers who scurried around with their heads bowed and their shoulders slumped as they carried out the commands of their bosses and obeyed the whims of their masters. With the right uniform and papers, a person could go anywhere— walking mindlessly into the middle of a firing range or into the core of a reactor— and nobody would raise an eyebrow for, after all, what would be the point in having a brutalized and submissive pool of workers if one could not give out insane orders now and then? Still, despite the perfect cover such anonymity might afford, she had never chosen that route and was unaware of anyone else who had; doubtless the fear of being trapped in that caste was just too great.

The train’s whistle sounded lonely and cold through the dark night. A leaden rain began slapping at the windows, drawing slanted streaks that glinted with reflected light. Berlin was hours away, it was dark and she was tired, yet she had no desire to sleep. Julia lit a cigarette and watched as the smoke clouded the window. In the patterns she saw a map of her future, and everywhere she looked she saw only one answer: America. She needed to get herself and Olek out of the Reich and to that strange land overseas. America. She could stop looking over her shoulders there. America. Olek wouldn’t have to carry a rifle. In America she could enroll him in a decent school and he could live a normal life. America, the train’s wheels chanted to her. America, the whistle screamed. No Gestapo in America, no fear of torture, no nightly tremors as she woke up from a dream of being shot. She had to leave this madness, she had to get there, with her son. She needed a way out, she needed a plan. America, she thought. It would solve the fears, ease the worries, soothe the anxieties. In America she would sleep through the night. In America her hands would stop trembling. Go to the Council, she thought, resign, get out, leave. Then go to America. That’s what she would do.

Julia reached into her bag and pulled out the bottle of vodka. Only one other person was in the compartment, a sleeping young man, so she had no need to be discreet. She removed the cap, put the bottle to her lips, and drank. It was unflavored; the sweetness of the flavored vodkas made her sick if she drank too much, so she drank the unflavored variety, the stuff they called clean water.

Only one more job, she thought. Complete this mission in Berlin, it would be the last, and then she would take Olek and they would leave. Abandon the madness and the madmen to their guns and their bombs and their bombs and their guns. Leave the murderers with their corpses, leave the torturers and the tortured behind. Leave the prisons and the camps, the conscription and the forced labor. Leave behind the identity cards and bloodline proofs, the documents and the endless mounds of paper. She would go to America and be free. As she heard the
word repeated over and over in the clacking of the wheels, she drifted off to sleep.

By late morning, she arrived at the pension that was one of their safe houses in Berlin and greeted with profuse kisses the old couple who ran the inn. They showed her to her room and handed over the extra items that she had requested. She sorted through the papers and clothes, prepared herself for that evening’s task, then stressed by the travel and worry, drank some more vodka and collapsed exhausted into bed.

Hours later, a soft knock at the door woke her. The old woman came into the room bearing a tray of food. “I thought you would need something to eat,” she explained sheepishly. “We worry about you, Julia.”

Julia shook her head. “There’s no need to worry, I’m fine.” She looked at the tray and smiled. “Thanks for the soup; nobody makes better soup than you!”

The old woman blushed at the compliment. “And how is your family? How is your son? And how is my favorite nephew, Cyprian?”

“Olek is well, growing fast. I’m very proud of him. My father is also well, he sends his love.”

“And Marysia?”

“My mother is busy, as usual. Have you heard that Zosia Król and Adam have married? She’s pregnant, too.”

“Ah, Adam and my goddaughter! They will make a fine pair!”

“I suppose,” Julia replied noncommittally. “At least now Adam will have some competition from somebody as arrogant and self-obsessed as himself.”

The old woman wagged her head gently and clucked softly. “Do not be so hard on them, they are fine children and both are very selfless when it comes to the important things.”

Julia shrugged. “If you say so.”

“Is Adam still teaching?”

“Yes, he goes into Kraków and stays for several weeks at a time so that he can cover a course. When he’s there, I guess he sometimes works with Zosia’s brother. He’s stationed there, you know—”

The old woman nodded.

“—and carries out some other assignments, so I guess it’s forgivable, the extra risk he takes.”

“Adam loves teaching, he loves passing on our culture. He doesn’t need excuses to do it.”

Julia shrugged again. “It’s an unnecessary risk. He should confine himself to his specialization.”

“I think his field of work is depressing if there is no counterpoint,” the old woman suggested.“We all live under stress, dear child. Don’t begrudge your brother the right to do something positive like teaching our poor benighted people.”

“It’s not like he’s teaching children how to read! These are university-level subjects. Obscure shit.”

“We need to maintain our culture. They closed the universities, shot the professors, arrested the students—all for a reason! They know how important education is to a free people, and so do we. You should know that.”

“I guess so.”

“Oh, Julia, my beloved Julia. You have always been my favorite and I know you well. What is wrong, child?” The old woman had switched to Polish, whispering to avoid being overheard. She spoke German stiffly, with an excruciatingly formal propriety, but when she spoke her native language, she did so with a singsong accent that sounded as if she hailed from much farther east.

“I need to quit,” Julia sighed. “I need to take Olek away from all this and just go somewhere safe.”

The old woman tilted her head and contemplated Julia. “Have you asked about this?”

“Not yet. I’m afraid of what the answer might be. But after I finish this assignment, I’m. . . That’s it, I’m finished. I can’t handle it anymore.”

The old woman nodded her sympathy. “You’ve done good work, Julia. Don’t worry, they’ll help you retire to the countryside, if that’s what you want.”

Julia shook her head. “No. I want out. Completely. Out of here. I want to go to America. I want money to start a new life. I need money, dollars, American dollars.”

The old woman didn’t say anything to that. She blinked slowly, then pointed at the soup. “It’s getting cold, you should eat. If you want to nap, I’ll wake you up in plenty of time.” She left without waiting for an answer and closed the door quietly after herself, as if leaving the room of a very sick person.

Several hours later, Julia rose from her nap and began to don her first persona. She dressed as a cleaning woman, fixed her hair and makeup, checked her papers, and packed her equipment into a handbag that had a separate bottom compartment discreetly hidden inside. Assuming an appropriate accent, she practiced a few typical sentences, and when she was satisfied with herself, she drank a glass of vodka, rinsed her mouth, and made her way out into the early evening.

The department store was already closed, it being well past the time shops could legally stay open. It was ten minutes before the normal cleaning staff was supposed to arrive when Julia reached the side door and presented her papers to the security guard who stood there.

“New?” he asked as he scanned the papers.

“Yes, sir.” Julia felt herself trembling, so to steady herself, she studied the customers still inside the shop. Almost exclusively men, they were allowed in after hours as a “personal favor” by the store management. Of course, the prices of the merchandise might be a bit higher in the evening, but the convenience of being able to shop after work was more than worth the expense. Gifts for the wife, gifts for the mistress, they were men who could afford the added cost of tapping on the closed shop window with a handful of marks but could not afford to disappear
from work for hours on end during the middle of the day, as so many of the truly influential did.

“Figures,” the guard replied. “Nobody else shows up on time!” He directed her toward the cleaning cupboard and suggested she make a cup of tea before starting, since “the others will make sure you do more than your fair share, once they get here.”

Julia nodded her appreciation of his advice and disappeared into the store. She went straight down the stairs into the bowels of the building and proceeded knowledgeably along a corridor that led to a boiler room. She unlocked the door with a passkey and went inside. She scanned around for the attendant, but he was nowhere in sight. Once she was sure the room was empty, she ducked behind one of the massive furnaces and crawled along a narrow space between a huge duct and the wall. As the duct bent upward, she scrabbled underneath it and came to a sewer grate in the floor. Julia pulled a wrench out of her bag and undid the bolts, then carefully moving the heavy grate to the side, she slipped down and out of sight.