The Survivors

by Kate Furnivall

  ALICJA

  Alicja’s eyes were huge. Snatching at every wisp of moonlight. Her heartbeat was steady, not racing. Not yet. Ears sharp for the faintest sound. She smiled in the darkness. She was good at this. They entered the village and she could smell its breath, smoky and stale like an old man’s.

  She moved on silent feet over the cobbles and the houses leaped out of the night at her, right on the street, no front gardens. Good. No kennels to pass. No lights, no sound. Just the wind stirring the last of the leaves. Her fear was always dogs. Every village had dogs.

  ‘Rafal,’ she whispered and pointed to the opposite side of the shabby street.

  He nodded, grinned at her and slunk off into the shadows, Izak at his heels. Alicja and Alzbeta would take this side. Each pair carried a small torch and a sack. They all knew what to do. The two girls crept around the corner of the first house, Alzbeta so close that their shadows bumped each other. Even in the darkness Alicja could see that the house was small and humble, a worker’s cottage, so nothing fancy. But there would be tools. Tools were good. Everyone wanted tools.

  A shed. There would be a shed.

  There were rules. Mama’s rules. Mama always had rules. These were about sheds.

  Rule 1: Only take two items from each.

  Rule 2: No garden spades, no garden forks.

  ‘How else,’ Mama insisted, ‘can they grow the food they need to survive? You hear me, sweetheart?’

  Alicja didn’t care whether they survived or not, as long as she and Mama survived. And Rafal and Izak, and Alzbeta, of course. And Rafal’s mother, Hanna. That’s all. The rest of the world could go hang itself.

  She switched on her torch. No more than two seconds. Then off. She’d seen enough. The dim shape of a lean-to shed at the back of the house. No padlock, just a bolt. Why did they make it so easy for her? She spat on the bolt to help it slide, but as she eased it back, it still squealed into the quiet night.

  Alicja froze. Alzbeta was on lookout, tucked against a wall where the shadow swallowed her so completely, she didn’t exist. Alicja felt suddenly alone. Exposed to the night. Somewhere a fox barked, as if aware of her. Hairs rose on her arms in the chill air and she was up on her toes ready to flee, but there was nothing out there except her fear. No shout, no light. No dog.

  She slipped inside the shed and for a moment risked the torch. Its small hoop of yellow light picked out the tools that hung in neat rows from nails on the walls. She reached out a hand. There was a billhook. Spanners, pliers, hammers, rolls of wire. A box of nails. Chisels and screwdrivers. A row of saws. She was tempted, really tempted to throw everything into the sack and run away with the lot. Mama would never know they had all belonged to one person.

  Her hand darted out.

  But then her sack would be full and she’d have to return to the camp.

  So her fingers closed on only a hammer and one of the small handsaws. Her tongue flicked over her dry lips and she scuttled out of the shed. She didn’t want to go back to camp.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Am I a monster? I ask myself that.

  What kind of mother sends her child out to thieve for her?

  I was prowling back and forth. Back and forth at the mouth of the drain, my fingers raking the skin on the back of my hands to tear it off. It fitted too tight. The blood underneath pumped too fast. Too hot. Too out of control. If I could dismantle my limbs and slide myself down the filthy outlet pipe piece by piece, I would.

  No one will harm my young team of thieves. This was what I told myself again and again. Children are protected by being children. If they were caught, it could mean a beating, a blow from a peasant’s callused hand, even the bite of a belt buckle, but nothing more. They would be returned to the camp, returned to me, and I would bathe their bruises, kiss their proud little cheeks, bind their war wounds.

  This is my justification.

  If it were me out there and I was caught, it would be the end. I would be thrown into a German prison and left to rot. Then what?

  Who would care for Alicja?

  Or for Alzbeta and Izak, and even for Rafal with his slingshot and his childish swagger. Yes, he had a mother in Hanna, but she was a strange detached kind of mother. She loved her laundry more than her child, it seemed to me. She slaved over her sheets all day, took an evening nap, then battled in the laundry again alongside her night-shift crew. She would clean the filth out of these thousands of sheets if it killed her. Sometimes I wondered what the dirt was that she was so obsessed with scrubbing away.

  But we all had our own dirt. We’d survived a war. You couldn’t do that by keeping your hands clean.

  I pushed my own hands under the blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I couldn’t bear to look at them. Even in the darkness of the cold night air they shamed me. The black bulk of the Laundry block shielded me from view but a guard’s footsteps sounded on the gravel and a flash of torchlight sneaked around the corner. I sank to the damp ground and flattened back against the barbed wire that lined the perimeter wall, its spikes sharp as knifepoints in my shoulder blades. The yellow beam danced towards me. Only two metres from my feet. Like the lick of a flame, I could feel its heat.

  Then it was gone as suddenly as it had come. I tried to move, to rise to my feet, but my limbs were shaking. Not just a shiver. I was gripped by the kind of bone-deep tremor that cracks the bedrock of you.

  ‘No.’ The word crept from my mouth in a harsh whisper.

  Because I could hear the rattle of a cage in my head bursting open, dragging me back to a Warsaw street and the last time I was pursued by the yellow beam of a torch.

  Warsaw, Summer 1942

  ‘We’re fucked, Klara.’

  ‘No. Keep running.’

  ‘They’ve got us cornered.’

  ‘We have to get to Krochmalna Street.’ I dragged in breath between rapid strides. ‘I know a bombed house there that has a cellar where we’ll be safe.’ My lungs were burning as we ran through the darkness.

  At my side Tomasz shook his head. ‘No, the bastards have got us this time.’

  Our soft soles were silent on Warsaw’s cobbles. The night air was warm as a peach on our skin, yet we wore our coats buttoned tight.

  I’d lied. We’d never be safe.

  The street was narrow. We raced down past the houses that were jagged from bomb damage. They had become unpredictable, leaning drunkenly as though about to fall over, some propped up by metal buttresses that glinted in the moonlight. The growl of a military vehicle sounded in the stillness somewhere close behind us and a sense of failure hit me, so acute it was a sharp pain. My feet flew faster, beating a path through the night.

  Abruptly lights flared ahead of us. More behind us. Trapping us. Headlamps stripped the street of shadows and blinded our eyes. My mouth was so dry, and my jaws so tight I bit through my tongue. A Kubelwagen slewed across the road in front of us with its spare tyre perched on its ugly blunt nose and torches pursued us, while shouts tore through the summer night.

  ‘Klara, hide,’ Tomasz hissed. ‘Szybko.’

  He tried to push me into a doorway but it was already too late. The German soldiers circled us like grey dogs, snarling and snapping. The rattle of their rifles threatened us and I could smell the stink that clung to their Wehrmacht uniforms. It was the stink of violence.

  ‘Halt!’

  That was the first word I ever heard Oskar Scholz utter. He possessed a powerful and decisive voice. A voice full of self, a commanding voice that filled the street. Moonlight slid down over tiled roofs, painting his grey eyes silver and turning his field-grey Waffen SS officer’s uniform into a suit of metallic armour. He looked untouchable.

  ‘Against the wall,’ he ordered.

  Rifle tips jabbed at our throats forcing us back.

  ‘We are only on our way home,’ Tomasz offered. Calm brave words. ‘Here, I have my papers to show—’

  ‘I know exactly who you are. You are Tomasz Chlebek, leader of the Resistance group that
blew up the troop train to Krakow last week. And you,’ he swung his flat silvery gaze on me, ‘are Klara Janowska, explosives expert for these filthy traitors.’

  ‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘You are mistaken, Sturmbannführer.’

  He laughed, a sour sound that I was to become familiar with. ‘Take their coats,’ he commanded.

  They stripped our coats from us and I felt a button tear off and heard it fall to the ground. As if it mattered now. The hand of death, cold and clammy, tightened around my heart. Terror is not something I can describe. It is like trying to describe fire. Both consume and destroy. Both reduce you to ash.

  Terror seared my gut now when I watched the Nazi officer remove radio parts from a secret pocket inside Tomasz’s coat and two tubes of carefully packed gelignite from inside mine. We had just collected them from our nervous supplier down on the banks of the Vistula. Someone had betrayed us. The officer regarded the courageous freedom fighter at my side with distaste for a long moment, dangling a pair of radio valves from his fingers before giving a brief nod.

  The rifle at Tomasz’s throat fired. The explosion roared in my ears and I screamed as Tomasz crashed to the ground. I fell to my knees beside him, cradling my friend’s bloodied head in my arms. His throat was a gory mess, as black and sticky as my hatred in the twisting torchlight.

  The terror vanished.

  Rage roared through me in its stead and I launched myself up at the German officer, craving to rip his face off. My fingernail sliced through his cheek, drawing blood, before a rifle butt slammed into the back of my skull. My brain whitened out. My last thought was of my daughter, seven years old and able to strip down a Mauser.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ALICJA

  ‘The sack is full,’ Alzbeta announced. ‘Time to go home.’

  ‘No. One more.’

  ‘It’s heavy, Alicja. It will take us ages to get all of this up through the drainage pipe into the camp. Let’s go home.’

  ‘How can you call that place home?’

  ‘Because it’s where we live.’

  ‘Not, it’s not where we live. It’s where we wait.’

  They were whispering in a fold of the pitch-black shadow of a tiny church with a stubby bell tower, but Alzbeta dropped her voice lower. She pressed her head tight against Alicja’s. ‘I don’t want you to leave to go to England.’

  But Alicja would not be sidetracked. She shouldered the sack.

  ‘One more.’

  Another of Mama’s rules: Don’t ever enter a house unless its door or window is unlocked. Never break in. Someone will hear you. The risk is too great.

  The last house in the village was the best. Set back from the road up a gravel drive, it was a large timbered and red brick building with a steep pitched roof and stone dogs squatting on each side of its front door. It scared Alicja. But drew her to it like a moth.

  ‘No,’ Alzbeta whispered. ‘It will have a dog.’

  But Alicja shook her head. ‘Wait here. Look after the sack.’

  She circled the house, one more black shadow in the darkness, a faint shift of night air. Nothing more. These walls smelled different from the other houses, they breathed out the scent of polish and paint and something that smelled sweet like peaches. She let her shoulder rub against the brickwork as she passed, tucked tight under its protection. The sky was black as a stagnant pond. Lifeless and unhelpful.

  There were outbuildings. But no dog.

  She ignored the outbuildings. She only had eyes for the beautiful house, as she carefully fingered each studded oak door and every window she could reach, but none opened.

  Never break in.

  She smacked the stone hard against a glass pane. The sound was muffled by the wool of her coat but still it sounded like a gunshot to Alicja. She felt the night crack open and she shivered, then grew still once more. She waited, as motionless as one of the stone dogs. When nothing moved and no light flared within, she slid a hand through the hole in the broken glass, flipped open the window latch and climbed inside.

  She meant to be fast. A split second skim with the torch, a couple of good pieces shoved under her arm and then back out and invisible in the night. Easy. A minute. Two at most. And she would be running, full of laughter, with Rafal and the others through the woods again. That was her plan.

  So what went wrong?

  The moment she set foot in the room on the soft silken carpet she could feel the house winding a thread around her, holding her there. She’d never been inside a house like this before.

  Her first seven years she’d lived in a Warsaw apartment that she could scarcely remember. Then the convent. Three long years of plain walls, cold floors and hours each day on her knees clutching a rosary. The smell of incense made her retch. Not that the nuns were unkind. They weren’t. Just indifferent. Their hearts belonged elsewhere.

  She flicked on the torch. Faces jumped at her out of the darkness, making her heartbeat hammer in her ears. The walls were covered with paintings, huge bold portraits. Men with moustaches like squirrels under their noses. Women with tiny waists and children at their knee. She touched them, she couldn’t help it, to feel their canvas rosy cheeks. A family held together for eternity.

  She looked around and saw that the room was a dining room. A large table stood in the middle with eight chairs. Silver candlesticks glittered in the torchlight and a bowl of fruit offered itself to her. She reached for an apple . . .

  Mama’s Rule: You don’t take food.

  People need food to survive.

  She withdrew her hand and followed the yellow path of her torch to the door, opening it a crack. She listened hard. No sound. On tiptoe she crept across a large dark hall and held her breath as she slowly turned the handle of the door opposite.

  The room welcomed her with the scent of pine logs and lavender polish. She let it seep into her nostrils. Is this what happiness smelled like? She could just make out the looming presence of a piano, as her torch beam flashed off the face of a glass cabinet and a snowy white marble mantelpiece. She jumped and cursed under her breath when an arc of torchlight flared at her off a mirror.

  But it was the armchair by the fireplace that drew her. It looked loved. It looked well used, the green velvet worn as smooth as moss on a stone. She longed to sit in it, to be part of this house. But a book lay abandoned on the seat cushion and, curious, she bent closer to inspect it. It was a volume called, Listen, Germany! by Thomas Mann.

  As she stared at it she felt her throat close with excitement. Sweat trickled, but it wasn’t the book that caused it, it was what lay on top of the book inside the tight circle of torchlight.

  A ring.

  A ring that burned and danced with a life of its own. Alicja touched the tip of her finger to it. She knew a diamond when she saw one. Hadn’t she handed two of them over to her mother’s attackers in the forest? It had the power to steal your soul. She had seen it happen. Mama would be in England now, not rotting in a stinking DP camp if only Alicja had not given away the diamonds. They’d have bought passports. Fake identity papers. Travel permits. Train tickets. Lodgings in London. A life of—

  She snatched up the ring.

  ‘Put it down.’

  Alicja jumped violently. The sound of the German words behind her made her crash into a small side table, sending a pair of spectacles flying. She whirled around. Her torch beam leaped into the shadows.

  Where?

  The door?

  The window seat?

  The sofa?

  ‘Put down the ring.’

  The voice was liquid. Like warm water. Female but firm. It came from somewhere in the corner, where a large velvet armchair rested deep in the shadows.

  Run! Get out of here!

  The words screamed inside Alicja’s head, but she didn’t listen and instead her feet carried her across the room closer to the woman with the kind voice. She swung the torch’s glare full on the chair. It revealed abundant folds of a scarlet dressing gown, waves of long dark
hair and a full mouth that was curved into the beginning of a smile. A woman no older than her own mother. But the woman wore a large black eyepatch, which gave the beautiful face a lopsided strangeness. It made her look dangerous.

  ‘Give me the ring.’

  The woman held out her hand. She didn’t rise from the chair but now Alicja could see why: an infant was curled up fast asleep on her lap. Her arm curled around its boneless young body protectively.

  Alicja didn’t move.

  ‘What’s your name?’ The question was gentle.

  ‘Alicja.’

  ‘Are you from Graufeld Camp, Alicja?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know it’s bad to steal.’

  ‘I know it’s bad to starve.’

  ‘You won’t starve in the camp, child. We hear that you are well looked after by the British Army there. It is the people of Germany who are starving to death in our towns and villages.’ A sigh drifted through the shadows. ‘For the last time, I’m asking you to give me the ring, please.’

  The woman’s pale hand reached out, removed the diamond ring from Alicja’s palm and slipped it on her own finger.

  ‘I need it,’ Alicja whispered.

  ‘So do I.’

  Her fingers placed something bulky in Alicja’s hand. She flicked the torch on it. It was a doll, her daughter’s doll.

  ‘Now go,’ the woman said, the eyepatch suddenly leaning closer. ‘Go and play with dolls instead of causing pain to people who have enough pain already.’

  Still the voice was soft and silky, and it made Alicja feel warm somewhere deep inside, though she didn’t know why. But the words hurt, like tiny nicks in her skin.

  ‘I owe my mother two diamonds.’

  ‘No, Mädchen, your mother wouldn’t want you to be out stealing.’

  ‘You don’t know my mother.’

  A silence stretched between them in which neither spoke, neither moved. When the door banged open with a crash they both recoiled.

  ‘No!’

  Alicja dodged away from the man’s muscular hand that tried to grasp her arm. He had charged into the room, his anger brighter than the oil lamp raised in front of him.