The Children's War (73 page)

“And there was not much coordination between allies.” Katerina was still answering his question. “You know how it is, what could have been done, what should have been done, what wasn’t done . . .”

“Do you think it would have helped?” he asked uncomfortably. For personal reasons he hoped Katerina’s opinion would be that it would not have helped. He was painfully aware that in his own family history there was no indication of any heroics. Would his grandparents have risked their lives for casual acquaintances? For strangers? And what about his parents? With them, indifference might have been the best he could have hoped for. He had a dreadful fear that they had collaborated, and a concomitant fear that he was wrong and damning them for things they had not done.

He also had nagging doubts about himself. Would an external observer have said he was indifferent, rather than terrified, when he had watched the woman gunned down in the plaza? Was knowing that he was helpless sufficient excuse for his inaction? Or was it that he had no reason to risk his life for her? Did he then expect of others a courage he had not shown himself?

Katerina was studying him, her lips pursed. “Probably not,” she answered at last. “There was very little opportunity for heroics. Now, in retrospect, it’s hard to realize how much of a shock the whole thing was. To have predicted the events of 1942 just ten years earlier would have been considered fanatically anti-German.” She paused, looking pensive. “Now, it is obvious what their intent was, but then, then we believed better of the world. We were naive.” She looked at him with sorrow. “You, you children of this war—you can’t ever understand. You’re scarred from birth and some part of you will always believe that what we have around us now is normal.”

Again that same accusation; he shook his head slightly but did not disagree. He was still too absorbed with wondering about his parents. Whatever they had done, he reassured himself, whatever their choices, they had not initiated the whole thing.

“And let’s not forget,” Katerina continued, “whatever heroics or indifference or collaboration the local populations showed, they were not the ones perpetrating the crime. Our conquerors were very determined in their efforts, and it is they who carried out the murders and it is they who bear the guilt. And,” she added, pausing to make sure she had his attention, “it is difficult to risk your life for a stranger. I guess you can appreciate that.”

“Yes, I do.” After an awkward silence, he finally said, “I want to thank you all for giving me this chance.”

She ignored his expression of gratitude. “There were some, though, who were too willing to capitulate, who volunteered assistance, who blackmailed people. Those bastards . . .” She stopped as though she had finished her thought sufficiently clearly.

“What happened to them?”

“Elsewhere? I don’t know. Perhaps in England they lived out their lives in peace. Perhaps they worked in the government and lived in a cozy flat with a wife and three children.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed with quiet helplessness.

“Here, the Resistance imposed the death penalty for such actions and publicized their executions and . . .”

“And?”

“And those who were not found immediately were tracked down later”—she smiled—“and killed.”

Zosia’s words about Katerina came back to him. He looked at her lined face, imagining a young girl whose entire family had been murdered. “Were you a part of that?”

“Oh, yes. In my youth, I was quite good with a knife. A secret liaison, get them into an embrace and come in from behind: they never knew what hit them. More’s the pity, they should have suffered.”

The room felt hot and stuffy and he wished they would leave, but Katerina seemed fixed to her place and her thoughts. To try to change the direction of the conversation, he asked, “Your people in the field—do they live as Germans all the time? Or do they switch roles, German one week, Polish the next?”

“It depends on how well established their position is. Most, if they can, switch; otherwise they’d go mad. But of course, not quite as fast as every week. When our Germans can’t stand strutting and saluting anymore, they come back for a break, and when our
Nichtdeutsch
get fed up with hunger and manhunts and risking continual arrest, then they return.”

“Manhunts?”

“Yes. I guess you don’t have them.”

“I don’t think so—not if I understand how you are using the term.”

“What I mean is, the master race needs slaves and they tend to use up the ones they have fairly quickly, so every now and then—rather frequently, in fact— they simply close a street or raid a building or invade a house or whatever, and they grab everybody there and take them away. It’s not really like an arrest since they don’t even pretend you’ve done something wrong; it’s just, well, a manhunt. They usually send the adults to factories, farms, mines, and so on. Tadek lost his wife that way.”

“Really?” Peter could not imagine that harsh, unyielding man ever having had a wife.

“Yes, newly married, living in Kraków. They closed a street she was on and simply took her and everyone else away. That was ten years ago.”

“What did he do?”

“Came here. He heard the mountains were off-limits, so he made his way to the nearest village and then simply walked in. For all we know, he may have been trying to commit suicide. But whatever the case, Zosia—she never follows the rules—Zosia spotted him and escorted him into camp.”

“And?”

“Oh, he was interrogated, his story was checked, and he’s been here ever since.”

“So, he went through the same process that I did.”

“More or less.”

“And you let him live.”

“Obviously.”

“But he wanted me to die,” Peter stated bitterly.

Katerina shrugged. “Anyway, they still go on.”

“What?”

“The manhunts.”

“Oh.”

“They take children, too.”

“Children?”

“Yes. Some get adopted, most get taken for domestic labor, although I’ve heard that there are such shortages of children that they use adults now for that as well.” She looked at him, cocking her head to the side thoughtfully. “I guess you’re further proof that that’s the case.”

Peter met her look, but did not match the small smile she gave him. Somehow all that he had endured did not feel like “further proof” of anything. He was no more a bit of economic data than he was somebody to be bought or sold.

“Of course,” she continued, “I have a theory about that.”

“Oh?” He wasn’t sure what she was referring to and suspected that he would prefer it remain that way, but he could not think of any sensible way of preventing her from proceeding.

“Yes. I think you—and others like you—were simply used to test their retraining programs. They like refining their psychological techniques, and they have come a long way! I think they found an intelligent, well-educated, independent-minded, physically fit adult quite a challenge. Time was, someone like you would simply scare them into chaining you to some machine and working you to death in a few weeks. Don’t you think it’s interesting that they took so much time and effort to train you and then threw you into the very midst of their society? Hmm?”

“Interesting
isn’t the word I would have used for it at the time,” he answered dryly.

“Nevertheless, it’s an intriguing commitment of their resources.”

“Only four months,” he said, aware that this vague defense was quite damning.

“But that’s a lot of time to spend on someone who could be put to work in a factory immediately!”

“They’ve never been known for not wasting time on cruel diversions. Or for efficiency, despite their much vaunted reputation to the contrary. And, in any case,” he added, despite that it contradicted what he had just asserted, “I worked every day of those months in some capacity.”

“Yes, yes, yes, but that’s neither here nor there—the point is, why train an adult to do a job that a child is so much better suited for? Other than shortages, of course.”

“They used to use adults all the time.”

“But they changed that policy in the sixties!”

“Well, maybe they’re changing it back!” He felt more and more irritated without knowing exactly why. He just felt sure that somehow his character was under attack.

“That’s exactly my point!”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just too tired, but I’m just not following you on this.”

“What I’m trying to say is, they decided children are the most malleable and therefore the most trustworthy once they’ve been properly trained. Now for decades they use kids—nearly every adult working among them, in their households, I mean, has never known any other life. But suddenly they use adults again. Maybe it’s hard to get enough kids. But then, if there are shortages, why train someone as obviously problematic as you must have been? Someone with your background!”

“I don’t know.” He worked to keep the anger out of his voice with little success.

“Oh, just think of it! If they could break somebody like you without physically, or even mentally, destroying you, then what a coup that is! What wonderful proof of their superiority! Somebody as confident as you willing to work obediently among them, not threatening their families, not disrupting their society, not indulging in violent acts!”

Peter felt his face grow hot with shame: her words provoked a sharp memory of his humiliation in Karl’s study. Why had he given in so easily? But what alternative was there? He looked down at the table, waiting helplessly for her to finish.

Suddenly a thought occurred to her. “You didn’t, did you?”

“What?”

“Commit any violent acts?”

For a moment he felt like lying, but he was too tired to construct a careful, consistent story, so he finally answered truthfully, “No.”

“No bullet through your friend’s brain when you left?” Katerina suggested with unappreciated humor.

“He’s not my friend.”

“No . . . ?” She drew her finger across her neck and made a noise like a knife slicing through flesh.

“No.”

“Whyever not?”

Why not? More time to escape? Less risk? A commitment to nonviolence? The children? He settled on that.“He was a father.”

Katerina snorted her disbelief. “That’s just an excuse.”

Peter looked up at her, but he could not match the intensity of her stare. He looked back down at the table. Could he admit that it had just not occurred to him?

“What about sabotage?”

“No.”

“Vandalism?”

A smile flitted across his face as he thought of the useless acts of his youth. In all his years with the Reusches and Vogels he had not even defaced one poster! “No,” he admitted quietly, then summoning whatever dignity remained to him, he looked up at Katerina and added, “not unless you count the times I carelessly splattered my blood around.”

Katerina took the mild reproof as humorous and nodded her approval of his morbid sense of humor. “But seriously, I bet your progress was tracked, from a distance, and every month you functioned as desired, someone congratulated themselves on their methods.”

“Hurrah for them,” he responded bitterly. It wasn’t enough what he had endured, now Katerina was making him feel as though he had failed to disprove their theories and techniques. But it made some sense. Why hadn’t it occurred to him at any point?