The Children's War (13 page)

“Yeah, they’ll assign me to work on-site. If I don’t want to, I never have to leave here again.”

“Great!” Zosia enthused. Maybe it was the relief of having the birth over with, but for some reason she was feeling munificent toward the entire world, and though, like Adam, she could not understand Julia’s gnawing fears, she did recognize that they were real.

“So why are you looking so glum?” Tadek asked Julia.

“It’s Olek. I asked them to remove him from active duty as well, but they say that I don’t have the right to make that sort of decision for him. They want him to keep patrolling.”

“Well, everyone does. Why shouldn’t he?” Adam asked.

“I don’t want him to take that risk. I don’t want him involved in all this.” Julia waved her hand expansively. “Why can’t he have a normal youth?”

“Big question,” Zosia said.“How does Olek feel about it?”

“Oh, he wants to do it all. He wants to be like . . .” Julia threw an angry look at her brother. “You know, always out there, right in their face, killing the enemy. Our angel of vengeance.”

“It’s not vengeance,” Adam retorted. “Each and every one is a judicial execution, ordered by our courts.”

“Julia, you know better than that,” Zosia chided gently.

Julia shrugged. “Whatever they are, it involves being out there among
them.
That’s what Olek wants. Nothing subtle like propaganda work or organization. No, he admires his uncle!”

“And his mother, I would guess,” Tadek said. “I know you’ve grown weary, but you are one of our best and your son knows that.”

“Was,” Julia corrected. “I’ve lost my nerve. Not only for me, but for him. He means too much to me.” She handed the baby back to Zosia.

Zosia beheld her infant for a few moments thinking about what Julia had said. “I have plans for my child,” she said at last, though she did not reveal what they were.

“So did I,” Julia said with a wan smile. She stretched and shook her head and with it her mood. “But that’s neither here nor there. Now I have different plans. All I have to do is train my replacement and that’s it, I’ll be free!”

Tadek knocked discreetly on the wooden arm of Julia’s chair as Julia emphatically repeated, “I will be free!”

15

I
WILL BE FREE,
Peter thought as he wandered the grounds of the housing estate contemplating yet again the possibility of escape. Rather than go through tedious and useless planning, he gave in to his urge to daydream and imagined what it would be like to live as a free man again. Since he was daydreaming, he allowed himself to cobble together a fantastic scenario where Allison was still alive as well. She had not, after all, been dead when they brought her out of her flat, or better yet, it had been a double agent who had been in her apartment that night. Allison had not even been there; she had gone into hiding and had waited these four and a half years for him to return so they could start their life together.

He shook his head in faint disgust. In that direction lay madness. Better to base his plans on reality, and the reality was, it was not as easy as he had thought
it would be. After his release into Herr Reusch’s hands, he had wisely given himself several months to let his injuries heal, to rebuild his strength and regain lost weight. The time had passed quickly, and though he felt better, he did not feel as well or as strong as he had hoped.

His initial, straightforward plan to simply leave at the first opportunity was complicated by two things. The first was that he knew if he was recaptured, he would be sent back to torture, and he did not feel he was ready to stomach that risk. The second complication was the Reusches’ trust in him. Logically, of course, it should not have had any effect; yet, strangely, he felt a loyalty to this couple who had, in effect, rescued him from hell. He did not know if they would be held responsible if he escaped, but he feared their leniency toward him might well cause them to be suspect.

He had also learned a number of things over the months that he had been with them. Most did not bode well for his chances. For one thing, patrols were frequent and intrusive. Those that recognized him usually left him alone, but the several times he had wandered more than a few hundred meters along the highway had unnerved him. Each time he quickly drew the attention of a passing patrol, his papers were checked, and he was sent back to his home base with a stern warning not to wander too far without an appropriate pass.

He also ascertained that as long as he wore his uniform, a pass that took him more than a few kilometers from his home would immediately be suspect. So, he would need to wear civilian clothes, but that would require a completely different set of papers, and then there were his permanent identifications. How could he hope to hide the metal wristband and the tattoo on his arm? Perhaps he could remove the band somehow, but with the slightest suspicion, his arm could be inspected and he would be caught.

He scratched absentmindedly at the number as he leaned against the side of a building and thought about his options. In the distance, he saw two young boys walking along, playing with a toy bow and arrow. They shot the arrow into the air, chased it, reloaded, and then repeated the exercise. Suddenly they stopped their game—one boy shoved the arrow up his sleeve, the other hid the bow under his shirt. Peter repositioned himself to look around the corner of the building to see what they were watching and was surprised to see that it was only a normal patrol. The guards strutted past the boys, who watched them solemnly as they passed, and then, only when the patrol was well past them, did the boys resume their play. He was struck by how odd the scene was: there was nothing wrong with the toy, the patrol would never even have noticed it, yet the boys, out of habit, assumed that if they were having fun, then they should be careful not to show it when the police were around. And the boys were Germans!

Such observations of civic stress, he felt certain, would be useful to the Underground, if only he could report them. But such observations also brought home just how daunting a challenge escape was: when even the citizenry, the
beneficiaries of the system, were afraid of their police, what hope did he have of avoiding their scrutiny long enough to reach and cross a safe border?

He wandered farther, to the edge of the complex near the bakery. He had noticed about a month ago that a new worker—a
Zwangsarbeiterin
—had arrived, and he was hoping to get a chance to meet her. Since Frau Reusch usually did all the shopping, he had no reason, and therefore no permission, to visit the bakery, so he simply made a point of regularly strolling past whenever he had a chance. Every time he had walked past since his initial sighting, she had either been busy or nowhere in sight, but this evening he was in luck for she was sitting outside on the ground, shelling peas.

She watched suspiciously as he approached but did not make a move to leave.

“May I help you?” he asked.

She glanced at the door of the bakery, then shrugged. “I guess they won’t object.”

He sat down next to her, leaning against the rough concrete of the bakery wall. The midday heat had passed, but the heavy gray blocks still radiated warmth. The woman continued her work without bothering even to look at him. Peter studied her. She wore the woman’s equivalent of his uniform: a dark blue, sleeveless dress with a pale blue blouse underneath. She had long, curly, black hair that hung in an unruly mass and heavy eyebrows over small, dark eyes. She had full lips and a rounded face that made her look as though she had a double chin, even though she was not heavy enough to actually have one. She looked healthy enough, not emaciated or pale like some, and he guessed she was in her late twenties.

He grabbed a handful of the pods and began working on them, diverting his attention from her face and staring out across the expanse of sandy dirt that led right up to the ground-floor balconies of the nearest tower block. As he absently emptied the peas and discarded the husks, the woman gave him a curious glance. She laboriously worked on splitting a hull as he did several more in rapid succession. Finally she opened the hull and painstakingly extracted the peas one at a time. He cleaned a few more, looking now at the clouds as his hands worked mechanically.

“Where’d you get so good at that?” she asked almost accusingly.

It was, he thought, not so much a matter of his being good at shelling the peas, rather it was more a question of how she managed to be quite so incompetent, but he did not say that; instead he replied,“Don’t worry, it’s easy, you’ll soon get the hang of it.”

“Why should I?”

He brought his attention down from the clouds to look at her. It was a fair point and he replied somewhat apologetically, “No reason. No reason at all.”

They worked in silence for a few moments, then he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Maria.”

“That’s pretty.” He waited a moment, but she didn’t ask, so he offered, “I’m Peter.” He extended his hand but she ignored it.

Again they fell silent. He wondered at her unfriendliness but knew it could have many sources, so he decided to wait patiently, reasonably comfortable with the silence and her company. They were nearly at the bottom of the bowl when she suddenly broke her silence.

“Do you want to sleep with me?”

“What?”

As if a dam had broken, she suddenly became loquacious. “I’m about to explode! I haven’t had a good fuck since I got here!”

“How long have you been here?”

“Oh, I guess it’s been four or five weeks. I came from the city.” She jerked her head in the direction of the highway that led into Breslau. “I had a good setup there. Reasonable work, no beatings—at least not many—and a closet to myself.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, they suspected their stupid son was getting romantically involved with me. Hah!” she snorted. “I mean, I was fucking him, okay, but involved? Christ! He’s a kid! Fourteen!”

“Fourteen?”

“Yeah. The brat. Though I must admit, he wasn’t bad in bed once I taught him what to do.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” she announced proudly. “So, they cleared me out quietly before there could be any scandal, and here I am! Exiled to nowhere!”

“Where are you from?”

“Weren’t you listening?”

“No, I mean originally.”

“Oh, that . . . I was told Forino.” At his blank look, she explained without patience, “It’s supposed to be near Napoli.”

“Naples? You’re Italian? I thought you were allies. I thought they left you alone.”

She shrugged disinterestedly; the world was what it was. “So you wanna do it?”

“Maybe after I get to know you a bit first.”

She rolled her eyes in disgust, then scrunching her face up so she could see the details of his shoulder patch, she said suddenly, “English?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh! Do you prefer boys?”

“No!” he answered, too surprised to be anything other than amused.

“What’s the green mean?”

“Criminal,” he stated dryly.

“Oh.” She seemed refreshingly unperturbed.

“Maria!” a harsh voice bellowed from within.

“Got to go,” she said, getting to her feet. “If you want to see me, come back at midnight. I’ll meet you over there.” She pointed to the stand of glass cases that displayed the day’s newspaper and, grabbing her bowls, disappeared through the door.

Peter came at midnight, but she did not show up. He returned the following night. She appeared within ten minutes. When she did not say anything, he suggested they take a stroll. He was hoping to get her to talk. It was odd, but his intellectual needs, his hunger for friendship, quite overwhelmed any other desire. As they walked, he looked at her and tried to work up something like lust for her. It wasn’t easy: she was not particularly attractive to him.

“Sorry I couldn’t make it last night.”

He knew by her tone that she was lying: clearly she thought she needed to tease his interest. Perhaps she was right. If he had been fifteen or sixteen, well, at that time of his life, almost any human female was enough to provoke urgent physical needs. Later, as he matured, he began to enjoy having relationships, and then after that came genuine love. Once he had sex coupled with love, he was not so sure he could so easily drop back to mindless physical pleasure. Plus there was the other consideration—his enforced abstinence of the past years had left him doubting that he could simply jump into bed with the first woman who came along. Perhaps if he had felt that Maria would have shown any degree of patience, he might have been willing to try, but he knew instinctively that she would be merciless in humiliating him if things did not go as planned, so he hesitated.

“So, you want to have sex tonight? It’s a good night. I’m safe,” she broke into his thoughts.

By safe, he knew she meant that she was unlikely to get pregnant. It was the only form of birth control accessible to them: a mix of abstinence, rhythm, and withdrawal. Since
Zwangsarbeiter
were forbidden by law to have intercourse, they obviously had no need for contraceptives, and since Germans were supposed to produce as many children as possible, they obviously had no need for any either. The situation was quite different in England; there the government was all too happy to discourage births, but since the state could never organize efficient distribution of contraceptive pills or condoms, the populace had to rely on the freely provided sterilizations and abortions.

“Well?” she prompted.

“Not right now.”

In the dark it was hard to see, but he knew she had wrinkled her nose in a mixture of disbelief and exasperation. “Do you have any cigarettes?” she asked suddenly.

“No. But if you like, I’ll try and get you some.”

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

“It’ll cost you,” he warned.

“Huh? Look, just pick the place and I’m all yours!”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”