The Children's War (70 page)

“Why not? You want to decide my fate in my absence—then you don’t have to see the consequences. What would you do, have me marched off into the woods and cleanly shot by one of your subordinates? You want to make me faceless! If that’s what you want, then pick up a gun and shoot me, now, in the face! Take responsibility for your decision.” Peter realized his sudden anger had probably destroyed whatever goodwill he had managed to establish. He saw Marysia wince at his words, but it was too late now, he had to stand by them.

The woman surprised him; she laughed and nodded to herself. Then, once her cackling had ceased, she pointed a bony finger at him and addressed her colleagues. “And Alex told me the English were unflappable!” She turned her gaze back to Peter, but still addressed the other Council members. “I was wrong. He’ll do fine. Let him live.”

Peter felt an incredible weight slip from his shoulders. Relief surged through his body, and he dropped his head so that he could close his eyes and sigh without being too obvious. So the vote was now at least six to four in his favor. Still, his work was not done. That sort of margin was dangerously thin, and if they had changed their minds once . . .

He looked up, caught the look of relief in Zosia’s eyes, saw Marysia nod encouragingly at him. He addressed the next Council member: a rotund, balding fellow of about sixty.“How do you vote?”

The man shrugged. “I guess you’ve made your point.”

“And you?” Peter asked the woman next to the man. Her name was Wanda and her vote was extremely important for she was responsible for internal security. Once trusting and outgoing, she was, according to Zosia, now increasingly bitter and withdrawn after having lost two sons to an unauthorized sniper who had mistaken them, while they were in town, for genuine German officers. If anyone understood the bitterness of dying for nothing, she would.

Wanda nodded but looked somewhat disapprovingly at him. “All right, you can live. But I hope you understand what you have asked of us.”

“I do,” he replied gently.

There were two left. Tadek looked at Peter with something close to loathing. The other man seemed barely more approachable. He was large and his features had a rough look as though he had been carved from a piece of wood but the sculptor had never bothered to refine the work. Zosia had described him well; his name was Wojciech. Peter met the gaze of this man with a questioning look. Would he be accepted?

Wojciech answered before Peter could even phrase the question. “Whatever I say doesn’t matter, I’m outvoted.”

Peter hesitated for a moment. He desperately wanted to accept the vote was in his favor and stop while he was ahead, but he knew he could not. His vision had grown blurry again, and he found it aggravating not being able to make out the expressions on the Council members’ faces. His thoughts were momentarily sidetracked as he wondered if his vision had really been this unstable before he had fled. Probably—it just hadn’t mattered much before. He turned away from the group and with his back to them closed his eyes and rested for a moment. The rotting bones that would now be his mother and father leapt into view, and he was forced to open his eyes. The pines looked cool and inviting. Why couldn’t he believe in soaring spirits?

He turned back and faced the group. “All right. By my count, it looks like I can live—that is, if it doesn’t have to be unanimous. But I also know something about how you must exist in order to survive here. You all have to trust each other, you need to be able to rely on each other. There’s no way that I can survive if even two or three of you want me dead, and whatever new decisions are taken later, or accidents happen down the line, it will destroy your esprit de corps, and that will be dangerous for all of you, not just me.”

Peter directed his attention to the huge man. His size made him look slow and stupid, and Peter had to fight an urge to speak simply to him. “If you really feel that I cannot be permitted to live—there’s the gun.” Peter nodded toward the pistol sitting in front of the old woman.

Wojciech followed his gesture, stared at the gun for a moment, and then shook his head.“No, I won’t do that. No.”

Peter let his breath out quietly. It wasn’t an affirmation, but it was enough.

“I will,” Tadek spoke at last.

Everyone looked at him in surprise. Zosia leapt up. “You can’t! There’s been a vote.”

“What vote? He asked for opinions and now he asks for unanimity! Since when do we take orders from a stranger?”

“Tadziu!”
Tadek picked up a gun and walked calmly to where Peter stood. As Tadek faced Peter wordlessly, he felt his heart pounding in his chest. He raised his hand to stop any of the Council from interrupting and returned Tadek’s steely gaze. Finally Peter broke the silence, said as calmly as he could, “I know if you want me dead, I’ll inevitably end up dead sooner or later. So do it now, if that’s what you really want. If you really want to kill an innocent man in cold blood, then do it now, in front of all your friends.”

Tadek raised the gun to point it at his face and grated, “You talk about friends, but where are all your friends?” Still pointing the gun at his face, Tadek turned to address the others. “Don’t you find it just a bit too convenient that they are all dead? That there is no one to confirm or deny his story? Huh?” Tadek turned back toward him and added, “Even your accomplice in the prison camp didn’t last very long, did he? How
convenient!”

“What are you saying?”

“Oh, but of course, you don’t know about that, do you?” Tadek sneered.

“About what?
Who?”
Peter glanced at Zosia, had a sudden, terrible premonition. “Geoff?” he asked so quietly they could hardly hear the name.

Zosia nodded slightly.

Peter felt suddenly quite ill. Tadek studied him as if interpreting his reactions, but he ignored Tadek, wanted to ignore the gun pointing at him. He had a violent urge to knock it out of Tadek’s hand, but he knew that would be pointless. “What happened? I didn’t name him,” he said to no one in particular. He felt he was losing his balance as the earth kept shifting beneath him.

Katerina answered in a dispassionate voice, “It seems he murdered your
Kommandant
—beat him with a candlestick over the head in his private quarters. Claimed it was an accident and self-defense according to the court report. Of course, they hanged him for that, the very next day.”

It was obvious what had happened: with Peter’s absence, the insane
Kommandant
had decided to move to his next victim despite the documents they held against him. And poor Geoff had been down to counting the days until he was free!

With a voice like a twisting knife, Tadek added, “So, no friends, no family.”

It was completely irrelevant to the argument, but he felt the need to correct Tadek’s assertion. “I have a brother,” he said distractedly. Though Erich, no doubt, assumed he was dead, he had checked on his brother’s progress now and then and knew he was alive and well. But, he realized, the last time he had checked was ten years ago.

No family,
Tadek had said.

He looked up past the gun at Tadek and waited for the inevitable. Tadek said nothing, just held the gun steadily pointing at his face.

“I do have a brother, don’t I?” Peter finally asked plaintively.

“Oh, yes. The best sort.” Tadek fixed him in his sights. “Just your sort.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s a Party member. A good Nazi.”

Peter felt himself flush. He noticed how intently Tadek watched him, and embarrassed, Peter dropped his gaze as he thought how both his father and his brother had betrayed everything he believed in.

Zosia called out something in Polish, which Tadek answered angrily. Then Marysia said something. Tadek snarled a reply to that as well. As a debate erupted around Peter in words he could not understand, he kept thinking of his father and his brother. Collaborators. Stinking collaborators.

Suddenly Tadek turned back to him and, switching to German so that Peter could understand, said, “Those idiots will believe any ridiculous sob story, but you and I know better, don’t we? We both know, you’d be the death of all of us.”

Peter felt too dismayed to answer.

“But since you got a majority vote, you know what I’m going to do?” Tadek asked, then without waiting for an answer, said, “I’m going to grant your last request. I’ll shoot you in the face, in front of my friends, and I’ll even clean up the fucking mess it’ll leave.”

Peter stared at the cold metal of the barrel. “Fine,” he agreed tiredly. After all that he had endured, was this really all there was? He fought back an image of what his face would look like when Tadek pulled the trigger, fought away memories of Allison’s face, and wondered suddenly about life after death, about soaring spirits. Would he finally find out?

“Tadziu.” It was Zosia. She had quietly joined them and they both looked at her, surprised by her sudden presence. “Put the gun down.” Under her breath, so that none but Tadek and Peter could hear it, she added, “That’s an order.”

Without saying a word, Tadek lowered the gun and turned disgustedly to walk away. The rest of the Council, still in a sort of shock, watched as he walked back up the slope. He climbed to where he had been sitting, walked a few meters farther, then turned again. Waving his gun to indicate the entire group, he snarled, “You’re all fools! Don’t you see! He’ll be the death of all of us! Anyone he’s ever had anything to do with is dead!” Anger and frustration nearly choking him, he spat out, “You’re fools to trust him! Idiots!” Spinning on his heel, he stormed off, still hurling incomprehensible imprecations as he went.

Peter watched him leave, continued to stare into the sun long after he was gone. Though Tadek had left, his words hung in the air:
Anyone he’s ever had anything to do with is dead!
It was no worse than what he himself had thought on many occasions, yet the words stung. He knew the Council was watching him, wondering what he would do, but he did not care to notice them.
Your father died within days of being arrested . . .
Within days. All those years of searching, of wondering.
Within days.
The sun blinded him, turned everything around him into dark, looming shadows. He began to tremble, as if from cold.
Your mother died after about seven months. . . .
How she must have suffered!
Seven months
—and for what? For nothing. All those years he was looking for her, she was dead.
It’s all right, it will be all right, everything will be okay, trust me,
she had said. But she was dead. The sunlight caused tears to stream down his face, but he did not care anymore. He did not care what the Council saw or did not see. He could no longer make out even their shadows; they were irrelevant.

He saw nothing, felt nothing, heard no one, only the darkness surrounding and the voices of his past.
Arrested! Killed! What for?
Like a cascade of water, they washed over him.
Do you want them to take you too?
He shook his head, but voices hissed in his ear:
You like games, see how you like this one. . . .
He squeezed his eyes shut.
I’m afraid you’ve been sold. . . .
He put his hands to his temples to try to still them.
Are you so stupid you don’t even understand self-preservation?
He pleaded for silence, but a thunder roared in his head.
The price of disobedience is
death. . . .
His heartbeat pounded a rhythm into the cacophony.
Dona eis requiem. . . .
A sickening dizziness caused him to stumble.
Don’t let them kill you. . . .
Waves of grief and loneliness and death washed over him, suffocating him—he was drowning.
Were you tortured?
He could not stand them anymore.
Were you tortured?
Slowly, he turned and lowered himself to a sitting position, put his face in his hands, and wept.