The Children's War (71 page)

1

“A
RE YOU ALL RIGHT?”
The words emerged from the din with increasing clarity, and by the third time or so, he understood and looked up to see the speaker. Marysia looked down at him. By her side were Zosia and Konrad.

“I guess so.” Tears streamed down his face. “I think I just need to get some sleep. Can I do that?” The voices still beset him, but they were quieter, like the sound of a waterfall in the distance. He tried to focus on Zosia’s face, but her image was hazy; he squinted, blinked, and tried to get the film off his eyes. Eventually it occurred to him that Marysia had answered him. He looked up at her questioningly.

“Of course,” she repeated slowly as though aware that she did not have his full attention. “You’re a free man, you can come and go as you please.”

Peter nodded. Yes, free. They said so. So go away! he yelled to his voices. He looked at his arm: the markings were still there and the band still clung to his wrist. Free. They said so. Just like that. Like magic. He climbed to his feet and wordlessly stumbled to the tent. Throwing himself down on the cot, he fell into a deep sleep.

It was dark when he awoke. He rolled into a sitting position, sat for a moment trying to recall where he was. A lantern was burning with a low light. Somebody had removed his shoes and set some food on a tray near the bed. He ate the food, climbed under the blankets, and fell back asleep.

He awoke in broad daylight feeling oddly detached from himself and his surroundings. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed to get up, but before he could stand, the realization hit him: he was free! He had done it, he had survived! Ever since the night of his arrest all those years ago . . . How long had it been? God Almighty, eight years! For eight years, he had focused his entire being, all his hopes, everything, on this one moment. And now it was here. He had survived!

He felt an incredible surge of happiness at the realization that all his dreams had come true. Free! And a home! The Council had agreed he could stay! He was safe, he was free, he had left behind all that horror. He could live a normal life, he
would return to the living, he would start afresh! What more could any man want from life? What more? He felt tears running down his cheeks, and he wiped at them in confusion. What were they doing here? He was free, he was elated, he was thankful. . . . What more could one want? All the rest of it, all the ugliness and the murders and the years and years and years of wasted life—it was all in the past. He had been purged of all of it! The escape, the trial, defending his life—that was sufficient to cleanse him. He was free, he was free, he was free! What more could one want?

He stood and a momentary dizziness overcame him. He sat back down. His parents. They were indeed dead. That’s what that man, Tadek, had said. Peter had known it all along, but somehow it still hurt, and now, after all these years, he could mourn them. But what was there to mourn? People he hardly knew; a life he had never lived. And Geoff. Executed. His friend’s ever-present grin, the silly scenarios he would invent, the way the two of them would do a double act that kept the young boys in stitches, laughing at their oppressors, joking their way through years of meaningless labor. Hanged. And Allison. Nothing left but bones by now. The fantasies he had invented, where she survived to greet him upon his return home . . . Home? He couldn’t go home. They would kill him.

He shook his head, trying to dispel the thoughts. He was free, he had a chance here at a new life. None of the past would matter. He would start afresh, make a home for himself here. He would be free and that was all that mattered. He would be free of them. Forever!

He stepped out of the tent and looked around—there was no guard in sight. Clearly, they had honored their decision that he was to be trusted, but it left him feeling strangely alone and at a loss for what to do. What did a free man do? Where should he go? He realized with a sudden pang how much of his life had been structured by constraints, and after all this time, without directions, orders, or threats, he was adrift.

His eyes were drawn to the forest around. The pines were tinted with the somber green of autumn, the air was alive with the singing of birds. Insects swarmed here and there, and he saw the movements of a squirrel as it dashed up a trunk. Sunlight glinted through the canopy, warming him as he stood there. It is a beautiful world, he thought. And if he was to begin life anew somewhere, then he could think of no better place.

He cleaned himself up, found a change of clothes and breakfast among the things that had been thoughtfully left for him in the tent, and then went out and tried to find someone. It didn’t take long. A camp sentry emerged from the trees after he had wandered a few meters and pointed him in the right direction.

As he walked among the trees, he noted, not for the first time, that there were far fewer tents than the number of people seemed to merit. He took a mental tally: ten Council members, six or seven different guards, Zosia’s child . . . Even without assuming that the Council represented a much larger number, that was still more people than the three tents implied. One entire tent for himself, one
for the latrine; the third and largest was where he was heading now. Where the hell did everyone else go? Perhaps if he had been less preoccupied earlier he would have noticed, but now, as he looked around, he saw no sign of where they all resided.

The large tent was a sort of kitchen. There was coffee and tea and some food on a long table along one wall, and opposite that were some chairs. Four other people were in the tent, only two of whom looked familiar. One was the old assassin, the other was Wojciech—the man who had grumbled that he had been outvoted. They stared at Peter with undisguised curiosity. He felt daunted that there was no one he considered a friend.

“So you’ve finally got up?” the old woman asked in a tone that was either sneering or jesting.

He nodded.

“Help yourself to the food. My name is Katerina. Do you want anything?” He wanted to find Zosia or Marysia, but his newly earned independence made him determined to make his way on his own. “I want this off,” he said, indicating the band on his wrist.

Katerina turned to her colleagues and said something in Polish that made them laugh. He bristled but did not say anything. She turned back to him and looked as though she was going to tease him but, upon seeing his face, changed her mind and said in a tone that was kinder than he had expected, “We’ll get to that, don’t worry. Now sit, have some tea with us, then I’ll give you a tour.”

“This is amazing,” he found himself saying yet again.

Katerina turned a corner and pointed out a chapel. “We have expanded our underground home over the years,” she explained. “It is called Szaflary.”

“Szaflary,” he repeated. “Is absolutely everything kept here?”

“That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?” She gestured down a hallway. “Now here are some passages that lead to stuff you shouldn’t see for a while. Later maybe. I mean”—here she sidled up next to him as if telling him a secret—“we said we trust you, but you know . . .”

“Frankly, I’m amazed that you have shown me this much. What about security? Why are there so many of you? Why aren’t you organized in isolated cells? It’s so much safer.”

“Yes, it is. We did that early on, but we were dying. I mean, we live here. Some of us were born here. This is where what’s left of our freedom, our culture, is carried on. That’s more important than safety.” She looked around sadly. “This, and other places like it, this is all that is left of us. Out there”—she gestured broadly—“out there, we play roles, but we are not ourselves.”

“But if you’re discovered here . . .”

“Oh, they know we’re here. They’re not exactly sure of us, where we are, how many, but they know.”

“What?”

“The soldiers. They know. We don’t let any of them emerge alive from these mountains. They stay away, and they get to stay alive. They lie, they say they patrol these areas, but they know that they better not set one foot inside our borders.”

“But if the government finds out, won’t they bomb you out of existence?” he asked, confused by the implications.

“They can’t,” Katerina answered as if unconcerned.

“Why not?”

“Deterrents,” she answered, deadpan.

“What do you mean? You have nuclear weapons?” he almost scoffed. “No thanks to our useless allies. Anyway, our deterrents are strategically based in various German cities. It’s another one of those standoff situations. Only thing is, we reached the balance after they had grabbed our country and slaughtered millions of our people. It was too late to set the clock back, but we have at least stopped most of the mayhem.”

“You negotiate with them?”

“Nowadays, yes. There was a time . . .” Katerina neglected to continue and he did not ask anything more.

When they had finished the tour, she led him back to the library.

“You said some of your people infiltrate into the general population. What’s the point? Aren’t they powerless there?” he asked while absently scanning the computer screen visible on a desk. The library was not en route to the room she had said he could use, so apparently Katerina had a reason for bringing him back, but she had not as yet told him.

“Oh, they serve a number of purposes. They keep the morale of the population up, set up schools, disseminate information, teach, organize small partisan groups, help equalize food distribution, recruit into our ranks, and perhaps most importantly, they keep any local or wildcat groups from assassinating our own operatives.”

“Are assassinations common?”

“A lot commoner than the Germans would like to have known.”

“Isn’t there retribution? Murders of hostages and so on?”

“Yes, but we decided early on, we can’t be held hostage for what
they
do. Besides, they are so uncontrolled, they defeat their own purposes. For example, in September 1939, just after the invasion, they hanged twenty thousand civilians in Bydgoszcz as a retaliation for military action.”

“Twenty thousand? Civilians? Hanged?”

“Yes. You see my point. If they are willing to kill like that, as retaliation for defensive military action during an invasion, then we can hardly take seriously any hope that our so-called ‘good behavior’ would be rewarded with civility.”

“No, I guess they freed your hands. It was never so wildly uncontrolled in England.”

“Oh, yes, it was,” Katerina corrected. “There was a firestorm of arrests and executions after the invasion. They were rather secretive about it; nevertheless,
they wiped out anyone they termed an enemy of the state. Including your entire Jewish population.”

She seemed to think he was ignorant of his country’s history, and that annoyed him. “Yes, but England didn’t have that many Jews in the first place.”

“No, you dealt with them early on in your history, didn’t you?” she countered condescendingly.

“Didn’t you?” he responded, automatically assuming history that he did not know.

“England expelled the Jews in 1290, dear boy, whereas in our kingdom they were granted autonomy and guaranteed their liberties under the Statute of Kalisz in 1264, and in the fourteenth century, during the reign of Casimir the Great, those fleeing persecution in other lands were welcomed here. With the Reformation, tolerance was extended to all religions via the Confederation of Warsaw in 1573. I think you will find that is not only early, but unusual. While the rest of Europe tore itself to pieces with religious wars, here we maintained our diversity and let each keep his own conscience.”

She closed her eyes as if recalling something, then said, “We who differ in matters of religion will keep the peace amongst ourselves and neither shed blood on account of differences of faith, or kinds of church, nor punish one another—” She stopped suddenly. “It is a loose translation and I don’t remember it all. Anyway, many, many Jews found refuge in the old republic and remained throughout the period of partitions and into the new republic. That is one reason why there were so many of them here for the Nazi invaders to persecute. That is why the Germans based their extermination camps here—this is where most of their victims lived.”