“It’s true Yael. Already…”
He paused and got up again, pacing back and forth.
“Bolsheviks are crossing the frontline, joining partisan groups, taking command, coordinating the efforts before the push made by the Red Army. I told you our group had joined up with another? I resisted… tried to… wanted us to remain neutral politically. I was given a choice: leave or be shot.”
He sighed a long and weary exhalation of his frustration and fear.
“But what will you do?”
Maksim was silent for some moments as if contemplating how he should answer, how frank he should be. He knelt at Yael’s feet.
“More and more,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about Palestine. Before the war I was against the Zionists, but now I think it’s the only option we have left as Jews. We can rely on no one. Out here in the woods, we have shown we can fight. And look at what happened in Warsaw. No longer will the Jews sit idly waiting for their neighbours to attack them, no longer will we put up with pogroms and hatred. We will build our own state.”
He paused. Yael noticed the brightness in his eyes, the colour that had risen in his cheeks as he spoke. She was moved by his enthusiasm.
“I want to go to Palestine.”
“But what kind of country could we build?” Yael said. “All we have left is hatred and fear. Is that any kind of foundation for a state?”
But she spoke only to hide the painful lifting of her heart. Hope. A future. Why did the ideas pierce her so sharply? Simultaneously she felt the child kick hard. She imagined travelling south with Maksim, pictured as a series of vivid vignettes a new life: sunshine, the sea glittering beneath the sun in Haifa. Then she thought of Aleksei. Of his child grown almost to full term in her womb. Thought of the quiet life they had enjoyed together. Of the intimacy she had shared with him. Of what that meant.
“Where else is there for us to go now?” Maksim argued passionately. “For over a thousand years we have wandered, chased and beaten, murdered, expelled. No more. We will build a country of our own and never more will we have to cower in our houses in fear of our neighbours.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, smiling and laying a hand on her arm. “I’m getting too excited. You look positively frightened.”
“No,” she whispered. “Not at all.” She looked away and longed to hear him say, Come with me. A tear pricked the corner of her eye, but she brushed it away surreptitiously and busied herself, turning away from Maksim who had lit one of his few remaining cigarettes.
Later, looking out across the fields, she saw movement in the long grass and imagined it was a stork, that harbinger of spring, but looking closely she saw it was only a trick of the light. She thought of the storks that had nested around Aleksei’s. She imagined them on their long route north now. Imagined herself to be one, making the journey south. Wintering in Jaffa, in the marshy plains of Palestine, along the reed beds of the Nile. Exotic, far-off worlds, beyond belief. She glanced round at Maksim. Felt a deep yearning. Tried to imagine such a world, such a possibility. Then banished the thoughts, afraid. Afraid that in fact life was possible. That there could be such a thing as a future without fear and war and death and hatred. That it was possible to build a new world, a new country where she may live and it not matter that she was a Jew.
“The father,” Maksim whispered late that night, faintly illumined by the pale moonlight. “Will you go back to find him, when the Germans have gone?”
For some moments Yael could not think how to answer. It was the question she had been asking herself for weeks, months now.
“It’s hard to imagine,” she stammered, finally. “It’s hard to imagine such a time.”
The contractions began that night. She had fallen asleep and woke late, when it was already dark. Maksim had gone out to find food. He had promised to be back by morning.
“At night you will be safe,” he assured her, “it’s the daytime when we need to be careful.”
At first she did not believe it. Could not trust it had actually started. For some minutes she lay still in the hay, her breaths coming rapidly and shallow, staring out into the darkness. Her muscles spasmed again. She did not have a watch to time them. They were far apart still. She knew the baby was not imminent. She tried to calm herself. Silently she prayed. She imagined what might happen if Maksim did not return. She had heard of girls who had delivered quickly, who had managed on their own, but she had heard too of girls who suffered endless hours of agonising labour. She remembered Leah Mishkovsky, a girl in her village who had died at the age of twenty-two in childbirth. She found herself imagining that now. What that meant. Her breathing had grown shallow again, fast and irregular. A sweat had broken out on her forehead. She tried to focus. She tried to calm herself.
As dawn began to break the contractions seemed to ease off. Yael sat up and felt her belly. It was tight and hard. She tried to move, but felt too heavy. By the time Maksim returned she had managed to crawl over to the bucket of fresh water the doctor had left and was wiping herself down. Dabbing at her warm face with some cloth.
“My contractions started,” she told him, breathless.
A look of panic contorted Maksim’s normally calm features. He hesitated in the doorway. “I’ll get the doctor,” he said weakly.
As soon as he left, the contractions returned, doubling Yael up. Her whole belly squeezed hard and she felt a gentle pop and water pooled on the hard dirt floor of the barn. The contractions came strong and regular now, no more than a couple of minutes apart. In the moments when she was not paralysed, she shuffled over to the straw. Laying back she felt her body driving forward. She felt suddenly calm. There is nothing I can do, she thought, I am part of something bigger now. I just need to follow. She allowed her head to fall back against the straw, closed her eyes and gave herself to the next contraction, revelling in the power of her body.
“Come on,” she whispered, “come my little baby.” And the reality of it struck her with full force then, as it had not until that point; that she was about to bear a child. That another human being was about to be born into the world. A child. Her child. Tears streamed down her face.
“How are you feeling?” Maksim’s voice was soft in her ear.
She held out her hand and he took it and pressed it hard. “The doctor is coming,” he said. “It took me forever to raise him without waking his wife. I had to sneak into their room and shake him awake. Nearly gave him a heart attack.”
Yael opened her eyes as the doctor pushed through the door. He had dressed hurriedly and his grey hair stuck on end. He looked scarcely less calm than Maksim. He hurried over to the two of them and squatted down. Beneath his arm he carried his leather case and some towels. He glanced up at Yael and nodded.
“I had to tell my wife,” he said darkly. “There is no way we’re going to get through this in silence and her help won’t go amiss.”
Maksim stood up, agitated. He reached inside his worn jacket and pulled out the pistol. “If anything goes wrong…” he stuttered, his voice tight with fear and anger.
“Maksim!” said Yael, before a contraction took her breath away. “Put it away,” she breathed finally. “Things will be all right.”
Maksim didn’t look convinced. He glanced from Yael to the doctor, to the door of the barn, which stood ajar. Reluctantly, under Yael’s insistence, he slid the gun back into his jacket.
The doctor’s wife entered the barn just as Yael let out a deep groan. She looked around and her wrinkled face creased with anger. She carried in her hands a bucket of steaming water, but when she came over to them she shouted at her husband.
“And this is your hospital now?” she said, her head jerking back, indicating the dark, damp, cold barn. “Get this girl out of here now, while you are able. Are you mad to be delivering babies in this filth?”
Her husband looked up at her nervously. The woman bent down and lifted Yael’s skirt without hesitation. Maksim turned away. The old woman shook her head ang
rily.
“It’s too late,” she said, taking over. “The baby is already coming.” She stood and cast her eyes around, they settled on Maksim. “Go into the house and fetch some clean sheets and towels. Boil more water when you have done that and bring soap.” Maksim did not hesitate to follow her instructions.
Yael felt her body beginning to push. She let out a scream. The doctor winced but the old woman was oblivious. She knelt between her legs, laying the towels she had brought firmly beneath Yael.
“It burns!” Yael choked.
The old woman cackled. “It’ll do more than burn little girl.”
Yael could feel her body stretching. It felt like she was splitting apart, as though her flesh would rip open. The doctor seemed to have recovered now and took over from his wife while she arranged the sheets Maksim had brought from the house.
“It’s in a hurry to get out,” the doctor joked. “Look, the scalp!”
Yael began to weep. It was not the pain, nor fear any more. It was wonder. Wonder at her own body, something she had barely paid attention to before. Something she had always felt to be inadequate, unworthy. Now her body surged with power. It was bigger than she. She felt suddenly huge. Her whole body pushed again, and she allowed the energy to surge through her, welcomed the excruciating pain. She opened her throat and bellowed like a cow she had heard in labour as a young girl on a farm in Selo. She gloried in the sound, in its animal ferocity. No more the still small voice, she thought fleetingly, between the contractions. Now, in this moment, I am the thunder.
“His head is out,” the doctor said, his voice tight with concentration.
Like the rapid rise and fall of surf, Yael felt her body collect itself for the next push. She worked with its rhythm. Pushed, breathed, squeezed and screamed with the cycle of parturition.
“It’s stuck.”
“The shoulders are caught.”
“Hook your finger inside. Push harder girl, push harder now.”
Yael caught the inflection of panic in the old woman’s voice and felt the first quiver of panic herself. She pushed so that she felt the veins would burst on her forehead, that her teeth would snap one against the other, that the muscles of her jaw would cramp. She felt the fingers scraping up inside her, felt the tug as she pushed.
While the doctor tried to hook the shoulder of the baby, his wife pressed down hard with the heels of her fists above her pubic bone, attempting to squeeze the baby forward. The baby kicked hard inside her belly, thrashed about. Yael cried, her voice echoing from the broken rafters of the barn, startling the crows which rose with frightened screeching.
She felt the sudden release. Felt the slide of the baby’s shoulders suddenly loosened, its arms, hips and legs trailing, kicking even as it slid from the womb.
“It’s coming!”
Yael’s head fell back against the hay. Her chest rose fighting for breath. Her body screamed with pain, ached at every joint and in every muscle. She closed her eyes a moment. Gasped. Breathed. Opened her eyes and looked up at the doctor swaddling the baby.
“Is it okay?” Yael said, her voice trembling. “Is the baby breathing?”
The doctor placed a bundle of material gently on her chest. Maksim, who had been watching from the shadows with a fearful look on his face, bent down beside her and eased Yael up. She opened up the towels to reveal the face of her child. Its hair was slick with blood and fluid. Its skin was grey and blue and red. Its tiny mouth opened and closed feebly. She opened the towel further, took in the little body. A girl.
“A girl!” she cried. “A girl!”
The doctor laughed, wiping his hands. His wife stood grinning beside him, her pale flower-print blouse spattered with blood, hair hanging loose from the tight bun on the back of her head.
“Let the father have a look at his daughter,” she said.
Yael glanced up at Maksim. He flushed deeply, his neck turning dark above his collar. He said nothing though. He bent down and stroked away the hairs that stuck to Yael’s forehead. He kissed her, and, reaching down, opened up the towels to look at the child.
31
“What will you call her?”
Maksim held the baby carefully in his arms, looking as though he feared he might break her.
“Chasidah,” Yael said quietly. “Kindness.”
“A stork!” Maksim laughed, referring to the Hebrew word.
“A reminder,” Yael said.
“Well, little stork,” Maksim whispered to the baby, “one day you will take wings and fly south, down to the Holy Land.”
Yael looked up. They were sitting in the trees behind the barn. It was mid-March and the snow had begun to melt. Buds were swelling on the trees and shoots had begun to thrust up from the dark earth. She said nothing. In the days following the birth, Maksim had disappeared into the forest. When he returned, he explained he had made contact with a Zionist group who were willing to help him make the journey to Israel.
“We can’t stay at the barn long,” he said to Yael. “I don’t know how far we can trust the doctor’s wife.”
The wife had been candid with Yael as she cared for her.
“He thinks he can’t trust me, his own wife,” she grumbled. “And, truth be told, if he had said you were here in our barn before, then perhaps I would have gone and told the Germans. You think that’s terrible?” She glanced at Yael frankly. “You want that I die for you? That the Germans should kill an old woman like me for looking after you? The law is the law and I do as I am told,” she carried on, pouring warm water in a large bowl to wash the baby. The steam rose, condensing on her wrinkled skin. “If the law says I am to report Jews, then who am I to start arguing with the powers that be? What have the Jews done that I should stick out my neck for them? Did they ever stick out their necks for me? Or did the Jewish doctors take away our business? Ei?”
She shook her head and took the baby tenderly from Yael. She grinned as she gently lapped water over the child’s legs.
“Nu, but you needn’t worry child,” she said. “I won’t tell the Germans.”
Yael did not know whether to be moved or angered by the old woman. She watched as the doctor’s wife deftly bathed the baby and swaddled her tightly in towels. Yael’s body was still sore after the birth and it hurt when she moved around; she was grateful for the help. The old woman had given her herbs and teas to take away some of the pain.
After a week, the doctor told them it was no longer safe for them to stay on the farm. He told them he knew of another place where they could hide and early one morning harnessed up his pony to his trap and, spreading straw and blankets out on the back, drove them south, deeper into the woods along a rutted track to the hut of a woodcutter. The woodcutter was a middle-aged man, with thick arms and a face blunted by alcohol. He agreed to look after them for a while, and with that, the doctor quickly got back up into his trap and drove away, back through the forest.
They had been at the woodcutter’s for only a couple of days when Maksim returned from one of his excursions excited. He pulled Yael aside.
“There was a raid on a village close to here,” he explained breathlessly. “The partisans are camped not more than five miles away. Yael, I heard it was Volk, the Wolf.”
“You mean it could be Josef? My brother?” Yael’s heart thudded. She felt suddenly faint as her knees went weak. She sat down on a crooked stool. “We must go,” she breathed. “Quickly, we must move.”
“You can’t go with the baby,” Maksim protested. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Maksim, I need to see if it is Josef!”
He held out his hand to calm her. Kneeling down close he stroked her hair. “I know how much this means to you,” he whispered. “I will go. I will speak to him. If it’s your brother, I will bring him back here.”
“But Maksim…”
“Hush now, think of the child,” he said. “Think of Chasidah.”
The woodcutter said very little. When he was not working, he was drinking vod
ka which he distilled in a shed behind the house. Often late at night he would stumble about the small shack, knocking over the chairs and table, and Yael was forced to pick up the oil lamp, for fear he would overset that too and set fire to the building. She was afraid to sleep until finally he had drunk himself into a stupor and collapsed on his narrow bunk.
Chasidah was a quiet baby. She fed healthily from Yael’s breast and was growing rapidly. Yael knew it would have been dangerous taking her on foot through the forest, but regretted letting Maksim leave her behind. She woke early the next morning and rose immediately, going out to see if there was any sign of him returning. The morning was warm. The air smelled of spring. The sky was clear blue and the sun, which had just risen, was so brilliant it stung the eyes.
All day Yael hung around the door, her eyes searching the woods, latching onto any movement, her heart rising, but by evening Maksim still had not returned. Yael began to worry. A five-mile walk would not take more than a few hours, even considering the difficult terrain. She tried to imagine scenarios that might explain why he had been delayed, but when she settled down for the night, a gloom had settled over her.
They were woken early the next morning by the heavy thrum of engines. The woodcutter struggled off his bunk and opened the door. He muttered an obscenity and turned to Yael.
“You awake?”
“What is it?”
The woodcutter did not answer. He stepped out into the dawn light. Yael followed him to the door, Chasidah in her arms. It felt as though her heart stopped when she looked out and a low cry rose to her lips. There were a number of German tanks squatted like ugly toads in the clearing at the foot of the hill. A group of four soldiers had hiked up the path and stood talking with the woodcutter. Yael withdrew quickly, but it was too late, as one of the soldiers indicated over the woodcutter’s shoulder, pointing straight at her. The woodcutter turned and levelled his gaze at her. He motioned for her to come down to him. Trembling she stepped out of the doorway and approached the soldiers.
“Who is she?” one of the Germans barked, his Polish poor.
The Song of the Stork Page 15
