The Children's War (86 page)

He sighed, looked back at the water down below. Zosia followed his gaze. It had grown quite dark, but still she could see that the ashes were a bit thicker now—the wind had picked up with the early evening. She slid closer to him, leaned into him, and he put his arm around her. He held her in silence and then quietly, almost under his breath, he added, “I know you don’t want me to say it, Zosia, but I love you.”

She did not say anything in response.

15

H
E OPENED HIS
eyes to utter darkness. He had known it was there all along, it was never far away. Curled, bound, gagged, and dying in his coffinlike crate, he had managed, in his mind, to find his freedom. The realization that it had all been nothing more than a protracted hallucination caused him to moan with despair. The desperate sound of his gasping echoed noisily in his ears as he struggled to fill his lungs with the useless air. He was so dizzy he could not tell which way was up. Each exhaled breath came back at him hot and fetid. He tried to move his fingers, to once again scrape at the ropes, but they were bloody and numb. Though he was racked by thirst, sweat streamed down his face. He brought his hand to his face and wiped some of it away. The gesture surprised him and he opened his eyes to the dim light of a bedroom and the soft whisper of Zosia’s peaceful breathing.

Peter lay there in the bed, his eyes open, staring at the patterns of shadows on the ceiling of the bedroom. If he closed his eyes again, it would return, he knew that. He calmed his breathing and tried to relax, but he was afraid of falling asleep, afraid of disrupting his dream of freedom. He slipped out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and quietly descended the steps to the main floor. In the hallway he pulled on his boots and jacket, checked that his papers were in order, and then turned the doorknob gently, so as not to awaken the household. The door was locked. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he was able to see that it was a deadbolt lock that required a key for indoors as well as out. That was not unusual. Nor was it particularly unusual that the key was missing, although he was terribly disappointed. He sighed with exasperation. Not wanting to wake his hosts, he decided to use the back door. It let out into the yard, but presumably there was an easy way to get outside the fence.

At the back door there was a simple bolt lock. It was thrown shut and he pulled it back to open it. The door did not give way. He looked up and noticed a second lock—a rather jury-rigged affair of two pieces of metal bolted to either side of the door and held together with a keyed padlock. Was crime really so awful in this region? What if there was a fire? He shrugged and supposed that the windows were always available in that case. What was it somebody had once said? Oh, yes, it was in a factory where he had, as group leader of the prisoner contingent, questioned the safety arrangements—in particular, padlocked emergency escape doors. The foreman had answered with flawless German logic that the emergency doors were locked because they were not used very often.

Putting aside his frustration, he considered his options. The padlock meant that he was effectively locked in along with the rest of them. He might be able to open it, but he decided that even trying might appear rather rude. As would
using a window. So he was stuck. The somewhat absurd thought occurred to him that the servants must either use the front door, or Kasia must get up early in the morning to let them in. Both situations would be unusual, but then, he reminded himself, they would want to always be aware of when the servants were in the house to avoid any possibility of speaking the wrong language at the wrong time. What a horribly complicated existence they must lead! He felt a surge of pity for the family and went back into the hallway to remove his boots and jacket.

He thought he heard a rustle by the stairs as he moved from one room to the other, but when he called out softly, no one answered. Probably one of the kids, he thought, and dismissed it from his mind. He went into the sitting room and sat in the darkness, looking out the window by holding the heavy draperies back. He was seized by an inchoate fear that left him trembling, and he nearly jumped when he turned and noticed Kasia watching him in the doorway.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said rather lamely.

“Are you all right?” she asked tiredly. “Yes, I’m okay. Did I wake you? I’m sorry, I tried to be quiet.” He said it in German; Kasia did not know English and he did not feel up to trying to converse in Polish.

“Oh, I’m a light sleeper—you know, the ever-vigilant mother.”

“Yes, I used to be a sound sleeper myself. But not anymore.” He turned back toward the window, gave a last glance out into the night, and let the drape drop back into place. Softly he added, “I would give a lot to have undisturbed sleep again.”

Kasia nodded. “It’s stressful times for many of us.”

Realizing that he had been rather selfish, he said, “Yes, I admire what you and your husband are doing. And I admire your bravery and endurance. I don’t think I could handle it.”

“No?”

“No.”

They were silent for several moments. Kasia made no move to sit down or to leave. She seemed to be undecided about what she wanted to do. Finally Peter broke the silence. “You lock the front door with a key?”

“Yes. That’s the sort of lock the house came with.”

“Why don’t you leave the key in the door?”

There was a silence, then she said rather hesitantly, “It’s not our custom. Is there a problem?”

“It’s just that I like to go out at night. I have good papers, a curfew pass and everything, so it should be no problem. Maybe you could leave the key accessible?”

Again there was a long hesitation. Finally Kasia said, “I don’t think it’s wise. It might raise questions. The curfew pass is probably not valid in this region. And it’s not safe out there—especially in a uniform like yours.”

Wondering at the plethora of reasons for his remaining indoors, he simply nodded his agreement.“How about if I just go into the back garden?”

“Please don’t,” Kasia said almost desperately.

She offered no reason why it was unwise, but he decided that her request was sufficient. “Okay. I’ll stay in. I don’t want to trouble you or your family. God knows, you have enough to worry about.”

“Yes, that we do.”

“Especially with your pregnancy now,” he added perhaps unwisely.

“How did you know?” she asked, stunned. “I haven’t told anyone but Ryszard!”

“Just guessed. You look tired and distracted, and, well, pregnant.”

She gave him a critical look. “Well, you guessed right. Please don’t mention it to anyone else. Especially not the children.”

“Won’t they be happy to have another sibling?”

“Oh, I think they think five kids is quite enough. But the real problem is that a toddler in the house again will mean everybody has to be extra careful— they don’t understand enough not to repeat anything they hear. So we’ll have to speak only German in the child’s presence, especially when we move to Berlin.”

“Berlin?”

Kasia sighed at her error. “Zosia didn’t mention it.”

“No. Is Ryszard going to be promoted?”

She hesitated, then decided it was pointless trying to deny it. “Yes, it looks like he will. It’s more of a sideways move, but that’s always the case when one is relocated to Berlin. Just being called to the city is considered a step up.”

“He’s at about Vogel’s level I guess.”

“Who’s he?”

“My onetime owner.” Peter had long ago grown tired of circumlocution and had settled on this phrase as the shortest explicit explanation of who Karl was.

“No bitterness?” Kasia asked, referring to Peter’s unemotional tone.

He shrugged. “What would be the point?”

“None, but that doesn’t stop most of us.” She contemplated him a moment, then seemed to make some sort of decision, for she came into the sitting room and sat on the sofa near him. “Would you like a drink?”

“Yes, I’ll get it. What would you like?”

She smiled with delight. “Just your offer of help was enough! I shouldn’t drink, you know.”

“How about tea? I’ll make you some.”

“I’d like that.” She settled into her seat, ostentatiously enjoying the unusual break from her duties as hostess.

Peter put the kettle on and poured himself a generous whiskey, then rejoined Kasia on the couch. They chatted for a while longer with Kasia asking a lot of questions about his experiences, but he managed time and again to turn the subject
away from that. Then, quite timidly, she touched his wrist. “What are those scars from?”

“I don’t know. Handcuffs, probably.”

“And your hands—do you know what caused that?” She held his hand in hers as she said that. Her touch felt gentle and he felt a strange thrill along his arm.

“You can tell?”

“Not in this light, but I noticed in daylight, the skin looked”—she paused tryingto find the word for it—“different.”

“Chemicals, I think. I don’t know what sort. I think they’re what messed my lungs up as well. I had so many illnesses and beatings, though, it’s hard to know when my breathing became difficult. I only really noticed most of these things after I left.”

“Do they hurt?” she asked, stroking the skin of his hand gently.

“Not usually.” He looked down at his hands, added softly, “I guess they made a tidy little profit for Vogel.” He had, though, never learned how much the Vogels had received for his labor, nor had he ever found out how much he had cost Karl in the first place. The complete lack of knowledge always annoyed him, and he had scoured the house for information, but Karl must have kept the receipts—if there were any—at the Ministry. It was quite irrational, but not knowing how much money had changed hands either for his life or his labor made him feel even more dehumanized.

She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. “There, maybe that will make it feel better.”

“Yes, it does.” He had a sudden memory from long ago of a desperate need for one word of kindness, and he smiled at her gesture. She had not released his hand, and he felt he should remove it from hers, but something prevented him.

“I notice you wear sunglasses, even on cloudy days. Why’s that?”

“You must know that veterans of Africa wear them all the time.”

“Yes, of course, I guess it’s their way of bragging. But I didn’t think Adam’s papers—I mean, your papers—said anything about Africa.”

“They do now,” he laughed. “I had them amended so that I have an excuse for such an affectation.”

“But why?”

“The light hurts my eyes. I don’t know why. Sometimes my vision gets so bad, I think I’m going blind.”

“And are you?”

“I don’t know.”

The kettle shrieked and he started as if hit. She looked at him, but he did not explain, he just removed his hand from hers and went to make her a cup of tea. She rewarded him with a tired smile and a “Thank you” when he brought it back.

“I can’t help noticing, you don’t get much help around here.”

“Well, there are the servants. But frankly I spend more time avoiding letting
them know what’s going on than the work that they save me is worth. I’m always shuffling someone or something out of the way.”

“I meant from your family.”

“Oh, that’s just Ryszard’s way. He has a lot on his mind—it’s not easy for him. And the kids—well, they have so much to keep track of—friend and foe, languages, school subjects, illegal knowledge. They do double studies—learning what they have to in order to pass the exams, and then learning what we want them to know.” She shook her head. “It’s a lot to ask of kids. More even than Ryszard went through—after all, he had the safety of the bunker.”

“I guess your children at least have each other.”

“Yes, that’s one reason I keep getting pregnant—it gives them comradesinarms. Of course, as a German hausfrau and Party wife, it’s politically advisable to have a lot of kids in any case. But I think this will be the last. I’m just too old to keep up with them.”