The Second Winter (29 page)

Polina’s breasts touched his back, and he could feel her heart beating. Slow and steady. His own was fluttering.

“I’m not sure what my father will think.” And it occurred to Oskar how strange it was that Polina hadn’t said a thing — she hadn’t asked him anything, not a single question about his
village or his house or his family. She had no idea where they were going, yet she followed him blindly. “About you, I mean. I’m not sure what my father will think when I bring you home.”

“Shhh.” And then her hand was on his hip, and her fingers were cold, and then her fingers were on his thigh. Oskar froze. Her fingertips traced a line to the waist of his underpants, then just as swiftly slipped beneath the elastic. Oskar’s heart was suddenly pounding. When she felt him, he choked on his own breath. “Don’t you like me?”

Oskar didn’t respond. He was paralyzed. When her hand found his thigh again, he was relieved. He wished that he could explain. This wasn’t what he imagined, and it wasn’t what he wanted — not like this. He was still a virgin. He had never even touched a girl, not really. In school, before the war, he had seen a girl naked once, changing into her uniform in a classroom when she thought that she was alone. And one time when he had come for his father in Aalborg, he had found him passed out in the brothel, and there he had seen a woman’s breasts. But when he finally figured out what he wanted to say —
You don’t have to do this, Polina, not to make me happy, because I’m already happy right now, just like this
— by then she was already asleep, he could feel it in the weight of her fingers.

Oskar closed his eyes. He inhaled her smell, the sweet scent of her sweat, the fragrance of her hair, the pungent, lingering odors from the world she had inhabited in Copenhagen. And in two minutes more, he was asleep himself. When the church bells rang again sometime after midnight, neither one of them moved, not a single muscle. The silvery light of dawn captured them still together. Their hair was made of pearl and agate. Their faces were cast in china.

Jutland. December 27, 1941
.

When Oskar and Polina reached the farm, Fredrik was in the barn, cleaning the pigsty. Denmark wasn’t used to this much snow in December. The last two days had brought well over a foot to Jutland, and the wind was still blowing, the sky was still dark with heavy clouds. For the moment, the blizzard had stopped. But the temperature had dropped precipitously, and the wind was so strong that the landscape, blanketed in snow, was shifting like the floor of a desert in a sandstorm. The east side of the barn was nearly buried in a frozen bank. The livestock hadn’t been aired for a week, and now Fredrik’s work had disturbed the pigs’ shit. The barn reeked. He paused long enough to cover his nose and mouth with the old undershirt he was using as a makeshift scarf, then continued shoveling. When Oskar returned, he would have him wash the pigs down. With this weather, even inside the barn it was too cold — the smaller animals would freeze. The crunch of footsteps in the
snow interrupted him. He planted the shovel into the dirt. Glimpsing Oskar’s face at the barn door, his eyes lit before his anger got the better of him. “You need to take better care of these pigs,” he said to his son, yanking the rag from his face. “They’re more important to me than you are.”

They had eaten bread along the way, but only a little, and Oskar was so hungry that he felt faint. The walk from Aalborg through the snow had fatigued them both. It was already three o’clock, and he and Polina had been awake since five. All he wanted was to go inside and make a pot of tea. He met his father’s gaze. “I’ll change into my other clothes,” he said. “These shoes are pinching my feet.”

“Yeah — make it quick —” Fredrik mopped the sweat from his brow with a sleeve. “Because I’m done here, this is your job, and you’ve made a mess of it. I’ve got other things to do.”

Oskar felt Polina’s hand on his arm. His chest constricted. He had taken a risk bringing the girl here.

“Well, get a move on,” Fredrik said, misreading his son’s hesitation. Polina had remained hidden behind the door, and he still hadn’t seen her. “There’ll be time enough to tell me about your adventure when you’ve finished with this.”

A slender, ivory hand touched Oskar’s shoulder. The diamond ring sent shards of light into the dark barn. Next to Oskar, the shadows shifted. And then Polina appeared. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your father?”

Fredrik had been about to retrieve his gloves from the floor. Instead, he took a step toward the door, wiped his hands on his work shirt, squinted at the pale-eyed whore whom his son had brought home to their house in the middle of the day. Two or three seconds passed before he finally stooped to pick up the gloves. He beat the dust off them against his thigh. “It’s my own fault,” he muttered.

“I am Polina,” the whore said into the silence. The rank smell was making her nauseous, but she didn’t show it. Her voice startled the animals, and one of the male pigs bleated and jockeyed against the smaller ones.

Fredrik ignored her and faced Oskar instead. “You dare to bring a foreigner into our house?”

“She was in trouble,” Oskar said.

“She’s a stranger.”

“I can explain, Father.”

“No, you can’t.” Fredrik tightened his grip on his gloves, shoved them into his pocket. “No, you can’t,” he repeated, more softly. “I already know your explanation. I already know who this is.”

Polina’s eyes flattened. Her fingers found Oskar’s sleeve. As incidental as her touch was, as gentle, he felt the tug sharply. “I won’t stay,” she said to Oskar, loudly enough for Fredrik to hear.

“It’s my house, too,” Oskar said, taking a step between his father and the girl. But Fredrik hardly heard him.

“I know a place in Aalborg,” Fredrik barked, “where they’re looking for girls like this one.” Isabella had complained to him just the day before that they needed more women to keep up with the demand the occupation was placing on their business. The soldiers had an appetite for whores, and unlike farmers they had the means to satisfy it.

“You haven’t even met her yet,” Oskar said.

“Go inside,” Fredrik said. “Change your shoes. The pigs are waiting.”

“You haven’t even talked to her.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Fredrik snapped. He grabbed the shovel again, hoisted it as if he intended to take it outside and find a use for it there. “I’ve met her before.”

Oskar felt his resentment rise in his throat. He wanted to confront his father, but Fredrik had already turned away, and he lacked the resolve to chase him. Polina’s fingers sought his. Rather than take her hand, he grabbed her by the elbow and led her out of the barn. Their feet sank into the slush as they crossed the field toward the cottage.

Upstairs, Amalia was standing in front of the sink in the narrow bathroom. Her blouse was undone, and her uncovered breasts hung slack from her chest when she leaned over the basin to look at her reflection in the mirror. The door was closed. When she heard footsteps downstairs, she assumed that they belonged to her father. It had been another long day, and she was exhausted. With the New Year approaching, there was yet another party for which she had to prepare — the Nielsens’ friends and family would come to the house on the thirty-first to kick 1941 in the teeth. Amalia had spent the day polishing the silver. Her fingers were still black from the chemicals. The footsteps on the stairs barely registered. When the door swung open behind her, she quickly covered her chest. She was startled to catch sight of Polina in the mirror. “Who are you?” A current of colder air had followed the girl in, and Amalia felt her nipples harden in her hands.

“I’m sorry,” Polina said. But she remained where she was.

Oskar’s footsteps creaked on the floorboards. When he leaned his head into the bathroom, Amalia protested. “What are you doing, Oskar? Get out.”

Oskar retreated to the bedroom, sat down on his bed to take off his shoes.

“I met Oskar in Copenhagen,” Polina said.

Flustered, Amalia waited for the girl finally to leave the bathroom before she fastened her blouse.

Polina found Oskar in the bedroom, bent over his shoes. “Your sister is beautiful,” she said, and this surprised him. Not because he disagreed — he had always thought that Amalia was beautiful, whether or not she was his sister — but because he had expected something else from Polina. She didn’t seem to care if Fredrik sent her away to become a whore again in Aalborg, and she wasn’t aware of how Amalia would perceive her. It had been a mistake to bring her back here. Now that he was home, he wondered what had moved him to steal her away from the German in the first place. Wrestling with these thoughts himself, Oskar had expected Polina, too, to show some concern for their predicament.

He looked up from his shoes. “Give me the ring,” he said.

Polina faced him, not quite comprehending.

“The ring,” Oskar repeated, nodding toward her hand. “Give it to me.”

She studied the diamond, then pulled the ring off her finger, weighed it in her hand as if she might keep it, finally tossed it to him as if he was mugging her. “It’s yours anyway. I don’t own anything here that you don’t want me to.”

Oskar pulled a dirty shoelace from one of the shoes, slid it through the band, tied the ends into a knot. Then he stood from the bed and placed the necklace around her neck. When their eyes met, she looked away from him quickly. “It’s better like this,” he said.

Polina gathered the lace, slipped the ring under the collar of her shirt. Oskar noticed the curve of her neck and how smooth her skin was. Wisps of loose hair glistened above her shoulders.

“You can sleep in Amalia’s bed,” he said.

“Hmmm?”

“That’s Amalia’s bed, there.” Oskar gestured toward his sister’s side of the room. “You can sleep with her until we figure something else out.”

Outside, the afternoon was becoming darker, the clouds were growing heavier. The sun was beginning to fall somewhere beyond the horizon. Oskar noticed the way the light collected in the girl’s eyes. The same way the sun’s rays sometimes become trapped inside a brook, he thought. “I had better hurry up,” he said, realizing the time. He slipped out of his trousers, grabbed another pair, searched under the bed for his work boots.

Polina remarked how skinny his legs were. The muscles were sinewy and strong, but his knees protruded over his calves. The dim light gilded his skin, severing his silhouette from the shadows. She watched him dress, then sat down on Amalia’s bed after he was gone. The sheet separating Oskar’s half of the room from Amalia’s rippled in an invisible current. She peered past it, to the corner of Oskar’s unmade bed peeking beyond its edge, then swiveled around to assess the simple arrangements. It was so cold inside that her breath turned to steam. She passed a hand over Amalia’s pillow, then, remembering the ring, pulled it from beneath her shirt to examine it again. After testing the strength of Oskar’s shoelace, to make certain that it was secure, she dropped the ring back between her breasts. Then she reached into her pocket. Her hand remained hidden there for a minute, before she finally drew out the small, smooth piece of amethyst that Julian had given her years before.

The violet stone retained the heat of her body. She balanced it on her fingertips, ran a fingernail over a few glassy ridges where the semiprecious mineral darkened into obsidian.
I
was going to give you something. Now I don’t want to anymore
. Downstairs, the front door slammed, and Oskar’s footsteps beat a path across the porch and into the yard. The house, Polina noticed, felt empty without him.

It was after seven by the time Oskar finished shoveling the pigsty. Once again, the work had chafed his hands. The shovel’s wooden handle had opened up old blisters and created a few new ones as well. Oskar hardly noticed. He returned the shovel and rake to the utility closet, then carted the last wheelbarrow of waste out of the barn. The ground was too icy to roll it to the usual heap around back, so he brought it as far as he could, then emptied it on top of the previous loads he had already carried outside. When the snow thawed, he would have to scoop it back onto the flat barrow and bring it the rest of the way to the dump. Until then, the cold would keep it frozen. He tilted the barrow up against the wall, then emptied a bucket of slop into the pigs’ trough. One of the smaller pigs — a runt that hadn’t made it beyond its first year — had died the week before, and Fredrik had ground it up in the feed grinder. Everything except the intestines. Blended with barley, the soup would last the pigs a few more days. As Oskar headed back to the cottage, except for a few contented grunts, the pigs were quiet behind him.