“Are you okay?” Maksim bent down beside Yael, and reached out and touched her forehead, which was damp with sweat, despite the cold. Mutely, Yael nodded. She opened her fist and gazed at the simple amulet stuck against her palm. A tiny leather box tied to two leather thongs. She recognised the kímpet-tsetl, the childbirth amulet many expectant mothers had worn in the shtetl, blessed if possible by some tsádik. On it was written the words of Psalm 121. Maksim stood and walked away.
“What did she mean, do you think?” Esther whispered to her later as they lay together on the narrow bunk, the little girl’s arm snaked around her large belly. “When she said there is madness?”
“I don’t know,” Yael said thinking of Aleksei. Their narrow, damp home seemed suddenly oppressive beyond bearing. She felt as if she had been buried alive. It was hard to breathe. She recalled Eva’s story of how she had been buried beneath the bodies of the dead and of how the soldiers had spread the earth over them. Sitting up she pressed her head against the crude wood panelling of the wall. Her heart thumped and she felt faint.
“Get Maksim,” she croaked to Esther. “I’m suffocating.”
29
The cold was startling. In the moonlight the snow glittered. A thick hard frost had crusted the top of it, so when Yael stepped forward the snow creaked and cracked under her feet. For the first ten minutes after rising from the sultry bowels of the earth, the cold was a relief. Yael stood for some moments, carefully opening herself to the sharp, brittle air. Her lungs stung.
“Wrap the scarf around your face,” Maksim told her, his own voice muffled beneath the thick collar of his jacket.
Yael did as he told her, wrapping it tightly so she had to breathe through the cheap cloth. The material was damp from her breath after only a few moments, and was frozen hard against her lips within five minutes. Maksim walked at her side, his arm looped beneath hers, supporting her.
“This is madness,” he muttered to himself. “But then leaving you there is madness too.”
“Where are we going?”
“You need the care of a doctor, just in case,” he said, squeezing her arm. “Just in case.”
“In case Lilith comes for me and the charm is not strong enough?” Yael laughed.
“In case you need medical attention when you give birth.” Maksim’s face was serious. Yael was finding it difficult to follow him. Her body was heavy and her feet unsure. The snow was thick enough to make walking difficult. Within two hundred metres she had grown tired and was breathing heavily. Maksim slowed down and took her hand.
“I’m not sure I am going to be able to make it that far,” Yael said.
“Don’t worry,” Maksim reassured her. “We’ll take it slowly.”
The moon was little more than the sliver of a fingernail, but the clarity of the air lent it a vivid luminosity. Across the velvet dark sky the stars were speckled thickly, and the Milky Way seemed, to Yael, to form a celestial road across the heavens. It was dry and the cold burned her skin. The snow crunched beneath her boots. Beside her she could hear Maksim’s heavy breathing. She was pleased to be out of the camp; its fetid, close air, the squabbles, the sharp stink of human waste, the coughing, the moaning, the crying in the night, the press of bodies, but she was not sure how long she could survive the cold of the night air. She felt vulnerable without the close proximity of the other partisans. She was also not sure she wanted to see a doctor. What she wanted, more than anything was just to retreat on her own to some silent place, where she could settle and wait for the child. She was not worried, not even at the thought of the pain, or the complications that might arise.
At the top of a rise, where the forest petered out leaving an isolated copse overlooking the surrounding countryside, they found a narrow shelter made from the branches of spruce. The young partisans had made it, Maksim explained, and used it when out scouting. At the back of the dark shelter they found evidence of nesting, and paw prints in the snow suggested a fox was using the shelter.
Yael curled up on the ground and Maksim covered her with a blanket he had been carrying. Despite this Yael trembled with cold. Her feet were icy. Her teeth chattered. After an hour, Maksim shook her. She had just dozed off for a few seconds and rose from sleep with shock. The cold overwhelmed her once more.
“I can’t,” she wept. “I can’t go on.”
Maksim lifted her to her feet and guided her out of the shelter. She found it difficult even to stand, and Maksim was forced to loop his arm beneath her and half carry her down the slope into the woods on the far side. They slipped on the ice, and Yael could see Maksim was struggling. She prised herself free of him, and getting to her feet, walked on determined.
Dawn was imminent when Maksim grunted and, touching her arm, indicated a column of smoke that rose thinly above the ridge of a hill.
“The doctor’s house,” he said.
Doctor Sonenson in the Selo shtetl had been a well off and respected figure. Yael recalled his half-moon spectacles, the fine cut of his overcoat and the smell of the cigars he smoked. He lived in a large house on the edge of the village, neighboured by the houses of the Polish merchants and businessmen. His reputation was such that many of the goyim in Selo called upon him, even though there was a Polish doctor in the village.
The house of the doctor Maksim led Yael to was not so impressive. It was a low wooden building with a dark shingled roof on which the moss grew luxuriantly. The house had once been painted a shade of blue, but the weather had washed this away, leaving bleached grey wood that was beginning to splinter. On the apex of the roof a small, thin chimney stood at an angle, and from this smoke poured into the clear morning air. There were no other signs of life. The small windows were dark and the door, in the small ornate porch, was locked.
Maksim rapped gently on the glass pane of the door. The glass was dirty and behind it the net curtains were drawn tight so it was impossible to see through into the dark room. After waiting a minute, Maksim strode around the side of the house and knocked on one of the windows, calling out in a low voice.
“Doctor,” he said, his Polish accented heavily. “Doctor Wobel.”
Something stirred inside the house. A faint light glimmered in one of the windows and a moment later the door at the back of the house creaked open and an elderly man stepped out, holding a rifle.
The grey-haired man peered out into the dawn half-light, his hands shaking so the gun jumped in his hands and Yael was afraid it might go off accidentally.
“Who is that?” he called in a low voice.
Maksim stepped forward so he could see him. His hands were raised in the air, to show he was not armed.
“Doctor,” he said, “it’s okay, it’s me.”
The doctor recognised Maksim, but he did not lower his rifle. His eyebrows rose a little and he half glanced back over his shoulder at the open door of the house. Yael, standing behind Maksim, saw a movement in the darkness. A shadow passed in front of the dim lamp and a floorboard creaked.
“Tomaz?” a thin voice called from inside. “Who is it?”
The doctor waved the barrel of the gun at Maksim. “Go,” he said roughly, waving back towards the woods. “Go, quickly.”
Maksim opened his mouth to protest, but the old man raised the rifle. Yael cried out softly. Maksim turned and caught her arm. They stumbled back through the snow into the woods. Turning they saw the old man stood still in the doorway. A woman poked out her head beside him. They spoke briefly, before the woman’s head disappeared again. Once inside the woods, Maksim doubled back, turning west; he led Yael around the back of the doctor’s house to an isolated barn, the roof of which had half-collapsed.
“We can shelter here,” he said.
There were some missing panels at the back of the barn and they slipped inside. Daylight streamed through the half-open roof. In the corner, at the back of the barn, where the roof was more or less intact, a couple bales of hay had been spread on the floor. Yael dropped down on the pile and began to
cry. It was the cold and the exhaustion more than the disappointment over the doctor. Maksim knelt beside her and held her in his arms. She clung to him, the tears wetting the collar of his jacket.
The sound of footsteps startled them both. Maksim sat up and reached for the pistol in his belt. He had cocked it by the time the old barn door creaked open and the doctor appeared. His glanced around and noticed them in the corner. Closing the door carefully behind him, he hurried across to the hay bales.
“Sorry, sorry,” he was muttering as he drew close. He eyed the handgun nervously. Seeing he was not armed, Maksim lowered it. “My wife,” the doctor carried on, “I don’t trust her. If she knew you were Jews she would tell the Nazis.” He squatted down awkwardly and peered at Yael and Maksim. “Now,” he said, “how can I help?”
Maksim pointed to Yael. “I want you to check she is okay,” he said, his voice still tight with wariness. He had pocketed the gun, but his hand hovered close to it. “She is pregnant and the baby is due soon.”
The doctor nodded, his eyes taking in the large bulge beneath the thick layers of clothing Yael wore.
“How do you feel?” he asked Yael softly.
Light blue eyes shone out from a pale, kind face. His eyebrows were silver grey and bushy, while his hair was darker, flecked still, in places, with black. Yael nodded, unsure how to respond. Her body was frozen solid and she could not feel her toes or her fingers. Her legs ached badly.
“I’m fine,” she muttered.
He reached out and touched her gently. “Wait here, while I get my things.”
“Do you think we should trust him?” Yael asked when he had gone.
“He has treated our partisans before,” Maksim said. He lit a cigarette and sat down in the straw beside Yael. When he offered it to her, Yael noticed his hands were shaking. When, a few minutes later, there was sound outside the barn, he jumped up and pulled out the pistol. Doctor Wobel squeezed back into the barn carrying beneath his arm a small leather case. He placed it carefully on the floor before Yael and rubbed his hands together.
“I’m sorry about this, but you may find my hands a little cold,” he joked.
Yael tried not to yelp when he touched the stethoscope down against her skin. When she opened her eyes she saw Maksim standing behind the doctor peering at her. She found it hard to read the mixed emotions that seemed to cross his face. The handgun hung forgotten in his hand. The cigarette smouldered between his lips.
“Mother and baby seem fine,” the doctor said, eventually, pulling down Yael’s blouse and looping the stethoscope, packing it back inside his case. “The heartbeat is strong, the baby is moving around. It isn’t yet in position. I would calculate she has another few weeks before there is any chance of her giving birth.” He stood up putting the leather case beneath his arm. “She needs to rest and stay warm. She also needs to eat better than she has been doing, but then you could say that for us all. Beyond that, it is just a case of waiting.” He shrugged. “There is not much else I can offer at this moment in time.”
“She needs to stay here,” Maksim said.
The doctor shuffled his feet. He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “You know,” he said, “it is not safe here. My wife, she is bound to discover her, and what if the Germans come by? There are a lot of troop movements. No,” he said. “It is not safe.”
“Nowhere is safe, Doctor,” Maksim snapped. He bent forward and placed a hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “It is coming to an end, this war,” he said. “The Soviets are pushing forward fast now. The Nazis are in retreat. When the Russians come who is going to vouch that you did not support the Germans? Your wife? You think her word will save you from being sent off to the gulags?”
The doctor shook his head, but Maksim slapped his shoulder as though a deal had been agreed. “Nobody will know she is here,” he said, “not even your eagle-eyed wife.”
30
“Is it true?” Yael asked, “that the Soviets are winning? That the Nazis are in retreat?”
“They have been pushed back from Leningrad into Estonia,” Maksim said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“Can you be so optimistic?”
Maksim shook his head. “It’s not optimism,” he breathed unhappily. “It’s inevitable.”
Despite his nervousness, the doctor continued to care for Yael over the next few weeks. He brought blankets out to the barn and, when he was able, provided them with food, mainly leftovers, and things his wife had set aside for the dog. “He’s getting thinner,” the doctor joked of the dog, “and she can’t understand it. I tell her it’s worms.” The old doctor laughed.
Regularly, over the next month, Maksim made the journey back through the forest to see Yael. Each time he came, Yael felt he looked more drawn. Dark circles blackened his eyes. Sometimes, as he sat beside her in the hay, gazing out through the holes in the wooden wall, smoking a cigarette carefully, longingly, savouring every breath of what had become a rare treat, Yael noticed his hands continued to tremble.
“I’m fine,” he would state adamantly, if she asked what was worrying him.
The weather had begun to grow a little warmer. One morning, Yael woke to the sound of dripping. The next day it had frozen again, but the first scent of spring was in the air. That night Yael imagined her contractions had started. She panicked in the darkness. Hands clasped across her belly, face bathed with sweat, she imagined giving birth alone. The pains in her stomach eased off after a while, and when she awoke in the morning she could not say with any certainty she had felt anything at all, or whether it had not just been a vivid dream.
“Don’t leave me,” she begged Maksim when he visited her the next day.
He stroked her face affectionately. “When I come to see you here, it makes me feel almost normal.” He laughed. “Pregnant and hiding in a broken down barn; this is our normality now. This is our paradise.” He laughed again, but this time he sounded sorrowful.
“I have to return to the group,” he explained. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin had begun to pale. Yael felt a pang of pity for him, for his concern, his quiet care. She reached out and touched the thick stubble on his cheek.
“We have joined up with another partisan group. We have more fighters now, and that makes some things easier. However…”
“Yes?”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing. I will be back soon. Take care. Do not give birth before I come back.”
“Absolutely not,” she smiled.
The days were long in his absence. Yael would struggle to her feet and pace around the barn. At dawn and dusk she would slip clumsily out of the back of the barn and wander slowly through the woods. The doctor visited her at least once a day to keep check on her. She tried to engage him conversation, but he was jumpy and would not be drawn in. Often, while feeling her pulse, he would hear a noise behind him and leap up, startled, his eyes flashing in the direction of the doors.
In the empty hours, she would lie hidden in the straw, her mind freewheeling.
Maksim did not return the following few days. Yael watched the melting snow dripping from the broken roof tiles. The sky was huddled with heavy clouds and late one night it rained thunderously, and the water gathered in pools on the uneven beaten-earth floor. Yael was forced to retreat to a corner, where there was enough dry straw to lie on. It was cold and however she turned or buried herself, she could not get warm or sleep.
In the morning, as it began to grow light and the rain eased off a little, she heard a scuffling at the door. Sitting up, she saw a shadow pass through the entrance.
“Maksim?” she whispered fearfully.
The figure staggered across the barn and collapsed close to her.
“Maksim,” she breathed, crawling to him. He was sodden. His clothes clung to his almost skeletal frame. His eyes were dark and expressionless. His breathing came in short, shallow, spasms. “Maksim,” she breathed again, her voice full of concern, “what has happened to you?”
F
or the whole of that day Maksim slept in the dry straw in the corner of the barn. He shivered uncontrollably. Thinking of Rivka, Yael felt her heart lurching with fear. She could not lose Maksim as well. She undid the wettest of his clothes and then wrapped herself around him, allowing the heat of her large body to melt into his limbs, feeling the cold from him chilling the blood that ran through the engorged veins just beneath the surface of her skin.
When the doctor came in to check on her, his eyes widened seeing Maksim. Neglecting Yael he probed Maksim, felt his temperature, muttering bad-temperedly under his breath.
“I think he was worried you would die on his watch,” she said to Maksim the next morning. He had woken looking much better, declaring himself perfectly fine.
Maksim chuckled. “A Jewish birth and death to look after! I can just imagine how he was feeling!”
Later he stood up and walked across to the barn door. He peered out, as if checking whether anybody was about, before returning to where Yael was hidden in the straw. He hesitated a moment before he spoke.
“I’m not going back, Yael.”
“You’re not?”
“Things are changing,” he said. “The Germans are being pressed hard. The Russians are on the advance.”
“But that’s good surely?”
“Yes,” he said, squatting down and looking at his hands. “This is good. However they will not be bringing a land flowing with milk and honey, Yael, Stalin is not the Messiah. I told you I was in trouble with the Communists before the war. If they catch me I will be sent to one of Stalin’s gulags or shot. Many of our partisan groups will receive little sympathy from the Red Army. Once they have beaten back the Germans they will pick off their enemies, anybody Stalin can’t trust. The partisan leaders will be carted off to some camp in Siberia.” He saw the look on Yael’s face and nodded sadly.
The Song of the Stork Page 14
