Men of Snow (25 page)

‘I hope so,’ she sighed.

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It was the early morning when Radek came over to talk.

‘So this is your hole,’ was the first thing he said.

Leon struggled to stand up. He was always scared when any of the Poles sounded interested.

‘Kas helped me build it. He is better at it than me. He knows what he’s doing.’

‘Yes, my son seems to think that’s the best way to spend his time unless you’ve promised him something I don’t know about.’

‘I think Kas makes his own decisions.’

‘He’s a twelve year old boy.’

‘No. He’s somebody hiding with his family from the Germans.’

‘And what do you think you’re doing?’

‘I’m somebody hiding without any family.’

Radek looked at Leon’s long matted hair and filthy face that was drawn in with hunger. The Polish army coat hung off him like a long cloak. He was hunched forward as if even standing was an effort.

‘Nobody asked you to be here,’ he finally said.

‘Nobody wants to be here. I know I’m supposed to be lucky. It’s just that I don’t feel like that, lucky to have survived so far after what happened back in Volnus. I’m not certain it happened. I’m just told that the Jews were killed. I hope it isn’t true. I hope that my mother and father and sister are still alive. Nobody knows for sure.’

‘That Brucker, the German officer, that’s what he was there for, to round up all the Jews and anybody he thought might know about those who had gone off into the forest like us lot. As far as we know nobody said a thing. They couldn’t because none of them knew where we were.’

‘They could have lied to save themselves,’ Leon said.

‘I suppose that’s what a Jew would do.’

‘I hope they did.’

‘Not a chance. They were wiped out, the lot of them. That Brucker would have made sure of that. It seems he was chosen for a reason. The bastard never flinched I hear, not once. Any way I’m here to tell you that if you want food you’re going to have to find it yourself.’

‘I know that already.’

‘You know nothing,’ Radek muttered back, ‘If you don’t think you’re lucky you’re even more stupid than I thought,’ were his last words before he trudged off back to the others.

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  In the night memories were at their worst. He would repeatedly see Polyna, see her beautiful features with their sad eyes and mouth that curved slightly into her rounded cheeks. He had loved her from the beginning and yet had never once spoken to her. She had no idea about what he had felt for her. His feelings had been across a distance, a silence. It was the worst experience he had ever had, to love and yet never express it, to want to tell somebody and hope that they might in time feel the same. Now he would never know. Polyna had been butchered and he had seen it happen, the nightmare in all his thoughts, the one he tried so hard to block and always failed, especially at night when he was too uncomfortable to sleep, lying there with the wet earth almost touching his face.

‘She’s a gentile Leon, a gentile for hell’s sake.’

He could hear Benjamin after he had told him, his friend getting angry at the very idea of any Jew liking a Polish girl, knowing how dangerous such an idea was.

‘You’re mad, absolutely mad!’

‘I want to know her name. I want you to find out who she is.’

‘No.’

‘Benjamin, you have to.’

‘So where the hell did you see her?’

‘On Minski Street, she was with two other girls. I was coming home from school and they were walking over the other side of the street. I’ve never seen them before. And she....she was just....I just couldn’t stop watching her. I stopped, turned round and started following them. My heart started racing. I felt sick. My throat nearly closed up. Benjamin she is unbelievably beautiful. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, here, in Volnus, just walking down the street.’

‘But she must be a gentile, probably one of the new girls working in the bakery. They’ve taken on a load of new workers ever since they moved the bakery into its new building on Grison Street.’

‘I don’t care what she does, just find out who she is.’

‘And then what?’ was Benjamin’s troubled question.

‘I...I don’t know.’

‘This is Volnus Leon, remember. They would kill you if they ever found you with one of theirs. You know that. Us Jews just don’t even think about it. You’re supposed to be smart.’

‘Not about her.’

‘So it seems.’

‘Not ever about her.’

CHAPTER 10

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The first frost came in October. Every night got colder. The first to die in the group was one of the youngest children followed a week later by a woman who had been ill ever since they had left Volnus. In the mornings the fir branches were silvered and shining as gradually the earth drew the cold further into the shelters. Now all of the group were quieter. There was little energy to talk.

Every day was the search for food, men going off in different directions for days at a time. Sometimes it was discussed whether to try another village and take what they could. Leon could feel the group’s growing desperation.  Even Kas was succumbing to the general atmosphere. Now he was complaining all the time about one illness or another, sore throats, a fever, aching limbs, bad teeth. His usual rush of words when he came over to Leon’s shelter was now reduced to a dribble. The boy was suffering like all the rest. He still did all he could to help, bringing Leon food whenever he could, widening his shelter to make it more comfortable, finding bits of clothing to keep him warmer. And with all this Leon’s need of him had grown into a deepening friendship. Kas was always there. However much he might be suffering he would come over many times a day. He was fascinated by everything to do with the Jews. He had never talked to one before, had only seen some when his family had come into Volnus on market day.

‘You don’t look like them,’ he would say.

‘That’s because I’m not an orthodox Jew,’ Leon would explain.

‘And what might that be?’

‘Ones who read the Torah, which is our religious book. They go to the synagogue and are educated in a cheder, which is a school to teach Jewish boys all about their history and how to read the Torah.’

‘Sounds complicated to me,’ said Kas, pulling a face.

‘It is. But our family are not like that, so we don’t have the hair curls or wear all the black clothes. We don’t believe in any Jewish God, only that the Jews are a separate race who have to look after each other.’

Kas had thought about this, his thin, filthy features squeezed into a doubtful expression.

‘So why does everybody hate you?’

‘You don’t.’

At that Kas had become awkward.

‘It’s....it’s different with you.’

‘No it isn’t. I’m just like every other Jew, but you help me a lot. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t here. It doesn’t seem right. Maybe I should have been with the rest so whatever has happened to them would have happened to me as well.’

‘You talk such rubbish sometimes,’ Kas complained, ‘and you’re such an ugly sod,’ were his last words before he ran off back to the main camp.

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When the first snow came it only settled on the higher branches leaving the floor of the forest clear. But the first strong winds saw the snow whipped across the camp forcing everybody to remain in their shelters. Leon would lie there listening to the wind lash through the trees as the snow piled up at the entrance of his burrow. He was wearing two pairs of trousers, three pairs of socks, a vest, two shirts, a ripped sweater and the constant army coat. Around his head he had wrapped lengths of sacking on top of which he had an old fur hat pulled down to his eyes. His boots had been found by Kas, made of leather and many sizes too big.

It was the third day of the snow when big Paul came back with his hunting group. They had come across a Pole lost in the forest who had told them about his village being burnt to the ground and some of its inhabitants shot. The village was over twenty miles to the north. He had told them there was one German unit in the area that was doing all the killing and burning. The officer in charge was called Brucker. The man had watched him giving out the orders before running off into the forest.

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‘She’s called Polyna Wodski,’ Benjamin told him, ‘lives on Vrina Street, the one that’s almost falling down it’s so old. She has two brothers who are supposed to be proper thugs. They work in the tannery. Her father works on the estate and her mother mends clothes. Is that enough for you? They moved into town a few weeks back and seem to have done alright for themselves.’

They were in Leon’s front room pretending to be studying one late spring evening. Leon had never listened to somebody speaking with such intense interest. He wanted to grab hold of his friend and squeeze out every last drop of what he knew.

‘There must be more.’

Benjamin had looked disgusted, ‘What do you mean more? Isn’t that enough to tell you that this girl is totally forbidden territory? She has a family Leon and connections in the town. For your own family’s sake you don’t go near her.’

‘You sound just like my father.’

‘Well in this I am your father.’

‘How old is she?’

‘I’ve never seen her so how the hell should I know?’ Benjamin had retorted, becoming more frustrated.

‘I think about fourteen.’

‘Well too young for you.’

‘And what about when you wanted a kiss off my sister?’

‘That was different.’

Leon had smiled then, holding up his hand in front of Benjamin’s face, ‘I see nobody.’

‘You want to see too much.’

‘She’s the most beautiful thing ever.’

‘So I gather.’

It was the next evening when he waited at the end of Vrina Street. Its houses built of dark wood with low doors opened straight onto a rutted road. Most of them were leaning into each other, as though the whole street was being squeezed from either end. Smoke from the houses was spreading across the street so Leon could only see halfway along. He was already feeling nervous, with that dryness in his throat and his heart pumping hard. He had never been in this area of Volnus before. The Jewish districts were over the other side of the town.

All he wanted was to see her again, to see Polyna in her summer dress that emphasised her thinness and small breasts, to see her long brown hair and the sad, doleful expression on her face. That was what he had noticed the first time. She had looked unsure, tentative, letting the other girls she had been with do all the talking. Her silence had been intriguing. He was glad that Polyna had seemed so quiet.

He had found a spot at the end of the street where he hoped nobody would notice him. He knew what he was doing was dangerous. In the last weeks there had been several attacks on Jews in the town. What was happening across the border in Germany seemed to be affecting everybody.

He promised himself he would wait no longer than half an hour.                                                            The smell of wood smoke filled the air. There were no street lights here so the only light came from the few houses that had their lamps lit.

After an hour he was becoming anxious. All that had come along Vrina street was a horse and cart full of logs. He knew he should leave, but the hope that Polyna might appear kept him where he was, in the shadows between two buildings. The sounds of the Catholic Church bells periodically sounded out. The sky was darkening fast.

It was then he finally saw a figure coming towards him. To begin with he thought it impossible that it would be her, but as the person approached out of the smoke filled darkness his heart began to race as he suddenly realised it could be Polyna. She was wearing a long kind of cardigan and was walking quite slowly. Momentarily he could see the girl’s features as she passed a lighted window. It was her. She had a scarf tied round her head, but he had seen the full mouth and her curved cheekbones. It was Polyna and she was coming straight towards him. In a panic he stepped out onto the road making her suddenly stop and then start walking again, quicker this time as with head down she hurried past him, her body only a few feet from his as she went by. He turned to watch her disappear round the corner at the end of the street wondering whether he should follow her. It was then he realised he had already put himself in too much danger, that he had waited too long. To go after her would have been risking more. At least he had seen her, closer than the last time and she had been just as he remembered, even more, everything about her somehow secret, silent and already precious to him.