The Children's War (101 page)

A soft moan from Peter penetrated her thoughts: the lieutenant was resting his hand, rubbing it to relieve the pain; the captain was collecting his thoughts for his next question. Peter looked up and their eyes met. His face was covered in blood, his hair was damp with sweat, he was trembling violently, yet there was an intensity in his gaze, something there she could not read. He looked as though he were going to say something, but then, without prompting, the lieutenant hit him again.

The captain looked at the lieutenant, somewhat surprised, a little disdainful, but he did not say anything. Peter did not move from where the lieutenant’s fist had left him; he had to be pulled back into a straight sitting position. He was rasping, his breaths coming in short gasps. His eyes were half-closed, and though Zosia longed for him to look at her again, he did not.

Zosia turned her attention to the captain. Should she feign telephoning someone? It would be an easy bluff for them to call. When dare she make her move? Too soon, and she could be forced to make a decision she did not want to face, but if she waited much longer . . . Again her eyes were drawn to Peter and her heart ached.

The captain studied his prisoner. He glanced at Zosia and scowled a rejection of her eager, questioning smile. He wandered over to the drinks cabinet, pulled out a bottle of whiskey, and poured two drinks. He walked over to the prisoner, ignoring the lieutenant as he reached expectantly for the second drink. The captain put the drink to Peter’s mouth. Peter took a sip; some of it dribbled down the sides of his mouth as the captain miscalculated how far to tilt the glass. The captain offered more and Peter drank it. The captain continued to hold the glass for him, and he drank the rest of its contents.

The captain stepped back and drank his whiskey pensively. He stood tapping his fingers and his eyes darted from Peter to Zosia and back again. The captain bit his lips, then sighing his frustration, he moved toward Peter again.

Zosia stood and walked toward the captain. Smiling courteously, almost seductively, she gently touched his arm. The captain jumped nervously at her touch. “Captain, if I may have a word in private with you?” She nodded toward the corridor.

The captain stared at her, obviously confused, somewhat worried. He then nodded and led the way out. He sent the guard by the door to stand farther down the hall and then impatiently asked, “Frau Móller?”

Zosia fingered her pendant.
“Herr Hauptmann,
I think that the investigation has run into a cul-de-sac. You are clearly an excellent interrogator and no real criminal could have withstood your efforts; therefore, I think we should assume that the boy really is innocent. Certainly he would not dare to deceive an investigator of your caliber for this length of time. So, perhaps the best option at this point would be to release the prisoner into my custody. I will personally guarantee that he will be kept under close guard. Then, he can be picked up whenever there is new evidence or whenever the investigation is to be continued. I’m sure
mein Herr
has our home address. We will be there, at your convenience.”

The captain stared at her silently for a moment. His lips twitched, he glanced nervously back toward the room and his prize.

“And I will be sure to mention your wonderful professionalism to my uncle when I am back in Berlin,” Zosia added winningly.

The captain sighed heavily. “Fine. I’ll release him into your custody.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Zosia crooned in reply. “I am in your debt.” Later that day the captain would nearly choke upon learning that Herr Móller’s wife was a nobody. He decided the best course of action to cover his humiliation was to never mention the incident and never pursue the matter further.

30

A
FTER THE POLICE
had left, Zosia got Peter some water to drink, and then tenderly she washed his face. They said little, still aware of their surroundings. When the major returned, he suggested that they be provided with a car and driver to take them back to their home, but Zosia insisted that that would be far too much trouble. No, a ride to the train station and a military pass to get them intercity tickets without the usual delays would suffice.

A car and driver were provided for their trip into Hamburg. Zosia sat in the back of the car, Peter in front, with the driver. He rode unconstrained—even the military did not follow the rules about transit with the same zealousness as Karl. They rode in complete silence through a cold, driving rain. Peter’s thoughts returned to the interrogation. He had not allowed himself to analyze his feelings at the time, but now, he found himself wondering at his reactions.

Always before when he had been in a dangerous situation, his entire being had been intent on survival. This time, though, his thoughts about what might happen to himself had been almost marginal. Instead he had found himself thinking about Zosia. He had wanted her to leave with Tadek, or instead of Tadek. He had been desperate to get her out of danger—enough so that he had wanted to provoke them, had even considered confessing to the alleged crime,
just so they would take him away and leave her alone. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with her, for he did. And it wasn’t that he no longer cared about his own life; it just suddenly was not as important as knowing that Zosia was safe. He had never felt so strongly about anyone—not even Allie. How could that be? The intensity of his feelings terrified him.

The car pulled up to the station, and he jumped out to open the door for Zosia. As she wrapped her coat more tightly around herself, he removed the bags from the back. They headed into the station without exchanging a word. The pass provided by the major allowed Zosia to requisition a one-way ticket to Berlin for travel that day. Peter waited with the luggage near the door as Zosia went into the ticket office with their documentation. When she returned, they passed through the gates and out onto the platform. It was cold out under the great roof of the station, and the next train to Berlin was not leaving for nearly an hour, so aside from a few patrols pacing back and forth, they were nearly alone. They stood a discreet distance apart, Zosia staring off into space so that he was only in her peripheral vision, Peter standing with an attitude of attentive deference, staring downward at the luggage as though guarding it.

He spoke softly, without looking up. “I want to thank you for what you did back there. You risked your life to save mine. I won’t forget that.”

“I’m sorry about all that,” Zosia replied equally quietly. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“All’s well that ends well,” he replied without conviction.

“How do you feel?”

“A bit stunned still; it’s sure to hurt more later.” After a moment he added, “I must look like hell.” He was suddenly aware he did not want her to be embarrassed to be seen with him. “Do I look all right?” he asked rather sadly.

She looked around to make sure nobody was near, then smiled at his battered face. “You look . . . you look fine.” She blinked back some tears, then repeated unconvincingly, “You look just fine.” She looked back out across the tracks into space, took a deep, unsteady breath of the cold air, then without turning to face him said, “They didn’t give me a ticket for you—just this pass with my name and travel information on it. It looks more like a baggage claim than a ticket.”

“You could say that.”

“But where do you sit?”

He found he could keep his eyes off her no longer. He looked around to be sure that they were essentially unobserved, then he looked directly at her beautiful form. She still faced the track, and all he could see of her face was the curve of her cheeks and the edges of her eyelashes. “If I’m lucky, they’ll have a boxcar with wood benches where I can go; the apprentices and indentured servants have first priority and we get the leftover seats. Everybody calls it the cattle car. If there isn’t one, I just get to stand around in the aisles and try to stay out of everyone else’s way. If the train is crowded, the best place to be, in that case, is between the
carriages—it’s cold and uncomfortable, so nobody wants to be there and they usually leave us alone.”

“Us?”

“Yeah, there’s always a few other
Zwangi
on the train. It’s a great place to pick up jokes and gossip.” He noticed she was shivering slightly. She was wearing a wool coat with a fur-trimmed collar and had a silk scarf underneath, but still the damp air carried a bitter chill. He wanted to put his arm around her to warm her, even though, with his thin jacket, he himself was cold.

After a few minutes passed in silence, he asked, “Your ticket only goes to Berlin—what do we do then?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t plan on this, you know.” She paused and pulled out a silver cigarette case. He came over to light the cigarette and had a chance then to look into her eyes. She smiled warmly at him. “We could, of course, return to the pension. Or maybe Frau Móller will be able to bully the ticketing office there into issuing a priority ticket on to Neu Sandez. We’ll figure out something.”

“Which station are we arriving at?”

“Friedrichstrasse.”

“Ah, that’s near Karl’s office.”

“Were you ever there? The Ministry, I mean.”

“Yes. A couple of times.” He decided he did not want to think about that other life anymore. He changed the subject. “I didn’t know you smoked.” Naturally, smoking was forbidden inside the bunker—the ventilation system would not have been able to cope. Outside, in the forest, it was the custom not to smoke because the guards were forbidden to do so for security reasons—they could be detected miles away by the smell, and conversely they could use the smell of approaching Reich soldiers to detect them well in advance of any sight or sound of them. This simple and efficient detection system was slowly being superseded by more advanced technologies, but the custom was still observed.

“Yeah, well, as you know, none of us really have the option back at camp.” Irritatingly, Zosia had turned back away from him, so he could not read her expression. “I only smoke when it’s appropriate to my character, and I think Frau Móller has had a difficult enough morning that right now she would light a cigarette.” She blew some smoke into the air, stared at it absently.

He looked down the platform. People were beginning to gather: they should probably not talk anymore.

Zosia seemed to come to the same conclusion. Without looking at him she said, “Check the board and see where we should be standing for my carriage. It’s”—she consulted her ticket—“sixty-one oh two.” Her voice had assumed an imperative tone, and although he understood she was reassuming her role, he nevertheless felt a chill. He responded appropriately and then walked over to the large board that displayed the carriage numbers and how they would line up on the platform.

* * *

The train arrived at the station fifteen minutes late, and the anxious passengers boarded hastily. Peter helped Zosia on board and then returned to wait with the luggage until the last of the Germans had boarded; after them the few
Nichtdeutsch
boarded, followed by the apprentices and indentured servants with their baggage. Then, and only then, did he and the several other
Zwangsarbeiter
climb the steps with their loads of luggage. As was usual, the conductors chided them for taking too long and blew the whistle to shut the doors before the last of them had stepped completely inside.

He carried the luggage to Zosia’s compartment and loaded it on the overhead racks. He casually reorganized the bags of the other passengers to make room for Zosia’s. He knew they would not object—given his presence, she was obviously their social superior. The other passengers in the compartment stared at him with a long-practiced mixture of contempt and envy but indeed did not object as he carelessly shoved their bags together. They had been obliged to carry and store their own luggage and resented that. They were also annoyed that arriving in the compartment first had not sufficed to reserve them extra luggage space. Their only revenge was to let him see how superior they felt to him—even if they were somewhat in awe of his mistress. She, obviously, had to be someone rather important.

Peter smiled to himself—he had seen exactly the same reaction hundreds of times before when he had gone shopping or traveled with Frau or Herr Vogel. They had always reveled in other people’s reactions, whereas Zosia seemed somewhat embarrassed by the vignette and stared determinedly out the window.

When he had finished, he had to draw her attention. “Frau Móller?”

She looked up at him, perplexed.

“Is there anything I can get for you?”

“Uh, no. No.”

“In that case,
gnädige Frau,
I’ll find a space. I’ll be back in a bit to see if you need anything.”

It turned out there was no place on the train for him to sit. He was in no mood to talk to anyone, so he meandered the aisles, looking for a comfortable, unoccupied spot. Between the last passenger carriage and the baggage car, he found it. Wind whistled through the gaping holes and the metal ramp swayed wildly to and fro with each bump and curve on the poorly maintained tracks. The frigid isolation suited his mood, and he huddled against the flexible sides and peered through a crack in the fabric at the passing countryside, carefully trying to ignore how much his face hurt, trying hard not to reach up and touch the damage.

He checked on Zosia several times throughout the journey. Her carriage companions changed—the seats were now unoccupied except for two old ladies who sat demurely opposite her. He suppressed a sigh as he looked at the comfortable empty seat next to Zosia. He was tired and he ached from all his injuries. He would have loved to sit next to her, place his head on her shoulder, and fall
into a deep, peaceful sleep, but that was impossible. They had only one train ticket, and even if he could discreetly change into different clothes, he had no identification papers and no ticket to match. Zosia caught his glance at the empty seat and gave him a commiserating look.

He returned to his isolated post. He had had a bad feeling about this mission, about his role in it, from the beginning. He was not superstitious, nor did he believe that he had unusual intuition, but it was hard to shake the feeling that he had known things were going to go badly. Not only that, but they still were not home safe, and the nagging fear that had plagued him throughout the mission had not left him. He wondered idly what else could possibly go wrong as he stared at the beginnings of the Berlin suburbs. They were still far from the center, but the housing estates already stretched endlessly as the city of 12 million sprawled like a concrete cancer into the surrounding countryside.

As he checked one last time on Zosia, the train made a final stop in the suburbs before heading into the city center. It was a popular stop—the last in a residential region and also a connecting station for journeys continuing east. Consequently, there were fewer people now, and he could relax in the warmth without being in anybody’s way. He paced the aisle of Zosia’s carriage and finally settled on a position near the door, leaning against the window opposite an empty compartment not far from hers. The anonymous gray housing estates of huge concrete towers had given way to smaller buildings of brick and plaster and then to small houses on little plots. Eventually apartment buildings reappeared, and then the landscape gave way to the commercial and urban center of Berlin. The train slowed so as not to make too much noise or jar the foundations of the buildings as it began to rumble past vast government ministries of marble and sculpted concrete. Their immense faÁades dwarfed the pedestrians outside their walls, reducing them to tiny cogs of the state. He rested his face against the cool glass to try to relieve the pounding headache he had endured since his interrogation. He wondered about the lives of the people he saw through the glass. What did God see in their lives? In their fates? Was there such a thing? And if so, was he fated to always return to subjugation? The thought struck him as irrational, inspired by pain and fatigue, yet he could not drive it from his mind.

“Hey, boy!”