It was the third that had spoken. He was standing close to the door, peering at her, the rifle held loosely in his hands. He was younger even than the one holding her, his face was clean and his hair combed carefully to one side. He looked neat, despite the old and ragged clothes
“Who is she?” the older man said.
Behind them Aleksei stood in the doorway. The three partisans seemed to have forgotten him. He tried to push past the young man, but the rifle, which he was reluctant to touch, blocked his way.
“We were in the forest together for a while,” the young man said, and it was only then Yael recognised him, with a sudden leap of her heart. The young partisan paused and glanced at the older one. Yael tried to interpret the look on his face, but could not.
“With Rivka,” he said, then. “She was with Rivka.”
The older man nodded at this. He looked hard at Yael, glancing from head to foot in a long look of appraisal. Yael felt the blood rise in her cheeks. The blush embarrassed her and she set her jaw and whipped her arm suddenly from the hand of the partisan.
“Nu,” he held the expression, so that it escaped like a long sigh. “So you were with Rivka Plotink were you?”
Yael opened her mouth to speak, but before she got a chance, the young man spoke again.
“That’s it!” he said, as if something had been troubling him and he had just thought of it. “She is Josef’s sister. You know… Josef… The one…”
“Josef?” Yael cried, unable to hold back. “You know Josef? Have you seen him? Is he alive?”
The older partisan held up his hand, silencing her. He shook his head slowly, and began to turn away from her.
“Tell me please,” Yael begged, reaching out and grabbing his arm.
The partisan turned on her ferociously, so she let go and stumbled backwards, falling to the floor. Yael noticed Aleksei flinch. She worried he would launch himself at the men. Catching his eye, she shook her head. For a moment the man stood over her, his watery blue eyes glaring, but then he seemed to soften. He held out his hand and helped her to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” he said, magnanimously. “You must understand…” But he trailed off and did not tell her what it was she was to understand.
He turned to go back into the kitchen, pushing past the two younger partisans and Aleksei, who lingered in the doorway. By Aleksei’s shoulder he paused and turned back. His features struggled to remain calm.
“And Rivka?” he said finally. “You know what became of her?”
Yael met his cool eyes. She thought she saw the muscles tighten around them, barely perceptibly.
“She died,” Yael whispered. His eyes did not leave hers. She felt the full intensity of his gaze. Unexpectedly she felt a gush of sympathy for him. Of warmth.
“In the woods not far from here,” she continued, her voice little more than a whisper. “She was sick. Some kind of fever. I woke up in the morning and she had gone.”
But he had turned away and disappeared into the kitchen. The two younger partisans followed him. The boy paused a moment in the doorway, then stepped a pace closer to her.
“He is alive,” he whispered. “Your brother. I haven’t seen him, but I have heard of him. He commands a platoon of forest fighters.”
He was about to say more, but the older man called from outside. The young man nodded and hurried out through the kitchen. Yael sat back on the bed. Her hands were shaking. She placed them on her knees, but found they were shaking too. Her whole body juddered and suddenly she was crying. The tears flowed down her cheeks. Her nose began to run. She buried her face in her hands and wept. Josef was alive. She said the words to herself, over and over. She said them out loud, revelling in the sound of the phrase on her salty lips.
“He’s alive,” she cried. Then laughed. “He’s alive.”
16
Autumn dragged. The leaves turned crisp in the dry weather. There were days when summer reasserted itself, warm bright afternoons when it seemed it would linger forever. And then, suddenly, it was November and cold, a biting edge to the wind. They woke to frosts. The brittle, sharp expiration of winter. The first dry flakes of snow that danced in the wind and settled in corners, like scraps of paper on market day.
As the weather grew worse, the visits from the small bands of partisans grew more frequent. Often it was one of the three men who had first approached them. They were polite and always asked rather than demanding, or stealing, though it would have been easy enough for them to have opened the hencoop and help themselves, or to come in with their rifles slung over their shoulders and take the bread, the hung meat, the jar of milk, the slab of butter as they wished.
To begin with Aleksei dealt with them, briskly, giving them whatever they asked for. But Yael, hungry for news of her brother and anxious about their supplies for the winter, increasingly shooed him away and bargained with the young men herself. She found she was adept at dealing with them, flirting mildly, delighting in having somebody to talk to. She would promise meat if they were able to give her the slightest bit of information about Josef. But by the end of December she had learned little more than she had from that first conversation. Josef had deserted the Red Army and was leading a platoon of partisans in the deep woods in White Russia, or Suvalki. He had developed a reputation as a commander of daring raids and his men were said to be fiercely loyal to him.
“Is it possible to get a message through to him?” Yael begged the young partisan.
The boy shrugged. Sitting at the table in an overcoat at least three times too big for him and in boots he had stolen from a dead German soldier, he looked little more than a boy, his scarlet ears sticking out. He held a steaming cup of broth in his hands and was reluctant to draw his face from the warm steam. Yael noticed the moisture condensing on his chapped lips and caked nostrils.
“There is communication,” he said finally, “between different groups. Attempts to organise us into an army, but nobody can ever decide who is in control.” He shrugged again, as if it was all the same to him.
Yael pushed an envelope across the table. Josef’s name was written neatly on the front of it. The boy looked at it nervously.
“Look-”
“Please.” Yael reached across the table and placed a hand on his sleeve. “It’s important to me.”
Seeing the boy was unconvinced, she got up and crossed to the larder.
“It’s not that I don’t want to help,” the boy mumbled, from inside the cup. “It’s just I don’t see it getting through.”
She placed the smoked sausage in front of him. It was four inches long and two inches in diameter. Its surface crenulated and dark. She took a knife and sliced it thinly. The scent of the meat saturated the air. The boy put down the cup. Wiped at his lips carelessly as the saliva pooled in his mouth. He glanced across at Yael, who nodded.
“Have a taste,” she said.
He picked up the slice of sausage delicately between his finger and thumb and lay it on his tongue. His eyes closed and a look akin to ecstasy spread across his face. It was the kind of look on Aleksei’s face, occasionally, when they made love. For a whole minute, he willed himself not to chew. Dribble spilt from between his lips. Then his jaw moved. Slowly, carefully, he crushed the sausage between his teeth, grinding the flavour from it.
“I haven’t eaten meat for about six months,” he said, when he had finished. “And that was only scraps I peeled from some bones we found discarded.”
“Take it,” she said.
He nodded his thanks, and carefully wrapped the sausage into a filthy handkerchief, putting it in an inside pocket of his coat, as if it were a holy relic entrusted to his care. He picked up the envelope too and folded it neatly and slipped it into the pocket of his shirt, not far from the sausage.
“Thank you,” Yael said.
“There’s little chance…”
For some weeks after the young partisan left, Yael woke each morning hopeful. Often she would linger by the window, gazin
g out at the thickening clouds, at the slow falling snow, across the deepening drifts towards the woods. The temperature had dropped and the partisans seemed to have moved on, or dug in, because for weeks there were no more visitors to the farm.
Yael pictured her letter passing through hands, one partisan to another, travelling north, through the snow-bound woods, tucked in men’s pockets as they trekked by night, until at last it would reach Josef. She imagined him waking one morning to a shout and stumbling out from the small woodcutter’s cottage where his division of resistance fighters had taken shelter for the winter, to find a cold and exhausted partisan stopped by the watch. He would salute and the young man would take the envelope from his pocket, dog-eared now and pass it over to Josef.
‘A letter?’ Josef would mumble, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, as he always did at the breakfast table when he emerged from bed late, so caked with sleep that Yael wondered sometimes how he made it to the kitchen. And then he would see the writing. He would look up startled.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘It was passed on by a partisan.’
‘What is it Comrade?’ the watch would ask, noting the look on his face.
She could picture Josef turning the letter over, examining it like it was some miracle that had fallen into his hands.
‘It’s from Yael,’ he would whisper. ‘From my sister.’
Aleksei came up and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her, and she leaned her head against his chest and together they gazed across the field and waited for the partisans who no longer came.
It was late February when Yael heard a soft scrape against the kitchen door. Aleksei had trekked into Selo, attempting to exchange some farming equipment for sugar and butter and bread. They had only a couple of chickens since the confiscation of the pigs. Yael knew he would not be back for a few days.
At first she thought it was an animal scratching around at the door, and fearing it was a wolf, she ensured it was tightly bolted. Standing close behind the door, she listened to the sounds of movement in the snow on the low step outside. Her heart lurched. She was always nervous when Aleksei was away. When she heard the soft knock, she almost cried out.
At first she tried to convince herself the animal had knocked something against the wood, but a few moments later the knock was repeated, a little stronger, a tight rhythmic beat, unmistakably human, almost domestic.
Yael stumbled back to the table and slumped on a stool, her eyes fixed upon the door, her pulse racing. Around the sides of the door, it was possible in places to see the light glinting where it did not fit tightly. Here, now, she saw the flicker of a shadow.
“Please,” a voice said in Polish. Hollow, desperate, like a whisper from beyond the grave.
Yael shrank to her knees and continued to stare at the door. She had almost convinced herself her ears had deceived her, when the unmistakable voice whispered its plea again. Getting up, she shot back the bolts and pulled open the door, her hands trembling as she hurried.
17
The figure curled in the doorway was almost unrecognisable, her hair lank and greasy, pulled severely off her face. A large coat was wrapped around her, hiding most of her face, but the sores were clearly visible.
Yael sank to her knees. Her heart thudded. She reached out a hand, but almost immediately drew it back again.
“Eva?” she whispered.
The girl in the doorway looked back at her. She was too weak to answer. Stretching out a thin hand, she attempted to grasp Yael’s dress. Instinctively Yael drew back. Her mind baulked at Eva’s prone body, skeletal, pale, her skin almost translucent, the veins running dark beneath the tissue-thin surface, yet she was breathing.
“I thought…” Yael stammered.
The image of Eva with the others, with her parents in the forests by the pits, flashed across her mind. She gasped and felt the darkness opening up beneath her. Staggering, she put her hand out to balance herself.
An icy wind skimmed across the crust of snow and buffeted the house. Eva winced, her delicate features screwing up as though the cold was no longer bearable. In the distance a wolf howled. Yael took Eva’s hands and pulled her to her feet. So icy were her fingers, Yael shivered.
Eva seemed barely able to walk. Yael led her stumbling across the kitchen and into the bedroom. She laid her on the bed and covered her with a blanket. Immediately Eva closed her eyes, sinking into the softness. Sitting beside her, Yael could feel the cold creeping through the blanket. She found another cover and laid it over the first. On top of that she laid Aleksei’s coat. Eva did not stir. Her eyes remained closed. Yael might have believed she was dead, except that, plucking up the courage, she lowered herself level with Eva’s face and brought herself close enough to her lips to feel the gentle stir of breath upon her cheek.
Yael got up and went to boil some water and made a thin broth from some leftover bones. Eva was sleeping so deeply, so calmly, Yael did not want to wake her. She put the cup on the floor and cleared her throat. The steam rose in the cool evening air. Yael hoped the scent of the broth would rouse her, but she didn’t stir.
When Yael woke in the morning she found Eva’s eyes were open, coolly regarding her.
“You’re awake!” she said stupidly.
Eva did not respond. Yael sat up and reached out and touched Eva’s forehead. Her temperature was still cool, but more normal than it had been the night before.
“How are you feeling?” Yael asked.
“Better,” Eva whispered.
Her voice was hoarse as though it was painful to talk. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. Yael marvelled at how beautiful Eva’s eyes were. Even now. They were light, hazel, flecked with gold, framed thickly with dark lashes. Despite being visibly malnourished and dirty, her face was still attractive, and her lips, though colourless, were full and moist.
Eva had sat in front of Yael in the small schoolroom. They had not been friends, though Yael would have liked that. Many afternoons she had sat gazing at Eva’s long hair, enraptured with the amount of colours in it as the sun fell heavily through dusty windows. She had day-dreamed that Josef would fall in love with her and then Eva would notice her and they would be like sisters.
“You must be hungry?”
Eva nodded, her eyes widening slightly at the thought of eating. Getting up, Yael took the cup of broth she had left by the bed and poured it back into the pan that rested on the edge of the stove. She opened the cast-iron door and rekindled the fire, pushing fresh log chips into it. When it was hot enough, she latched the door and moved the pan across to the ring, from which she removed the metal covering, so the flames licked the bottom of the thick black pot. While it was heating up, she took a couple of buckets and collected snow to melt for water, and pulled the tin tub out into the middle of the kitchen.
Eva was sitting up in bed when Yael came in with the steaming cup and a crust of bread. She took the broth and drank it greedily, wincing at its heat.
“Eat slowly,” Yael counselled her, quietly. “It will make you sick if you haven’t eaten for a while.”
Eva flashed her a look that quietened her. She laughed a low, guttural, ironic chuckle. The heat of the broth had flushed her cheeks, and she looked immediately stronger, invigorated.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Eva said. “I’ve managed.”
“You look thin.”
“I’m not the fat one,” Eva said, eyeing her. “Never have been! Got-tse-dánken!” She reached out and placed the tips of her fingers on Yael’s sleeve, removing them almost instantly.
Yael looked down at the floor. In the time she had spent in Aleksei’s house, she had grown. She had put on some weight, despite, or perhaps because of the limited diet she and Aleksei lived on. The weight had not gone exactly where she would have preferred, so that her breasts remained quite small, whilst her hips and thighs were thicker. Looking in the mirror, she had been pleased to see that her body was becoming womanly, but now she f
elt suddenly self-conscious under Eva’s gaze.
She stood up and straightened her clothes. She was wearing a collarless shirt and a pair of Aleksei’s trousers, which she held up with an old pair of his braces, and a belt, in which she had had to punch new holes. She took the cup from Eva.
“Is there more?” Eva asked.
“Of course,” Yael whispered.
In the kitchen she regarded herself in the sliver of mirror. Her face was plain besides Eva’s, her eyes dully dark, lips less full. Despite Eva’s emaciated state, the dirt under her broken fingernails, her greasy, matted hair, she still bore about her an air of glamour.
“I’m heating up some water,” Yael said, when she took through the cup of broth. “You can have a wash.”
Eva nodded. She took the cup and sipped the broth more slowly, savouring it, dipping the crust of bread and allowing it to dissolve on her tongue. For some time they sat in silence. Eva examined Yael frankly, taking in the clothes, the changes in her body, her hair, which was clean and tied back loosely with a scarf.
“I didn’t expect to find you here,” she said finally.
“I thought you were dead,” Yael blurted.
Eva simply shook her head. Her eyes did not leave Yael’s. She did not seem to want to talk about what had happened. Yael did not either; the very thought of what had happened in the woods filled her with horror. Nevertheless, she felt an uncontrollable urge to know. Just to know.
“This house,” Eva said, interrupting Yael’s thoughts, “I was lost, but when I came out on the road up there and looked down at the house, I thought I recognised it.”
“We’re not far from Selo,” Yael agreed. “It’s about ten kilometres away.”
The Song of the Stork Page 7
