“Then you should keep it.”
Magda handed it back to him. “I don’t know how to shoot. Besides, I don’t think I could. I’m the biggest idiot, the greatest coward this war has ever seen.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not true.”
“I watched them die.” She sobbed against his breast. “I just watched them die. I’m the reason they were hunting Eva at all. I’m the reason Samuel is dead. That Jana is dead!”
Karol’s hold tightened. “I don’t know all the history you have with these people,” he murmured, “but I imagine the Gestapo tortured the information out of someone. Or the reward was high enough for Eva, like for you, that someone betrayed her.”
“What is wrong with people?” Magda said angrily. “He’s only a child! Samuel is only a child! How can they—”
“We don’t know whether Samuel has been captured as well, but Magda…” Karol was eye level with her, his face so close in the small pool of light. “You have to believe that he’s still alive. Until otherwise proven. Promise me?”
A crack of a rifle. Magda jumped before she registered that it was in the far distance. “Good Christ,” she breathed. “They’re still looking for us?”
A flare lit up the forest’s edge. Then an explosion, also far away.
“Are those the mines?” Magda asked. She had not gone far then. Not far enough.
“Or they’ve found the bunker.” Karol spun her in the opposite direction. “Come on. We can’t stop.”
“Where should we go?” Magda did not know where they were; she did not know the terrain at all. What purpose had she ever had to wander this far away from Villa Liška or the bunkers? The world was as enormous as her uncertainty and still not big enough to hide either of them.
Karol pushed Magda forward. “Aleš and Renata showed me a safe house on the way to the meeting today. I know how to get there, but we have to move fast. And it’s on the mountain. But we can rest there.”
Magda stumbled and had to right herself. She was so tired. So tired. “I’m never going to make it.”
“You are. Move!” Karol snatched her hand and moved ahead of her, dragging her so that she had to run to keep up. Eventually they burst out of the woods. Before them, another field and then a steep wall of mountain.
She was breathless and soaked in sweat, but the exertion was freeing her mind. She thought about all that had happened to lead her to this very place, to this very moment.
The Germans rolling past her family’s farm. Her brothers conscripted to fight in Hitler’s war. Her grandparents forced to move from the one home they had ever had. The farmhouse occupied by a German family. Her great-aunt’s small home in Lidice, where they’d had to sleep on the floor or on top of the tiled oven. The squalor. The Germans marching through Litoměřice. Walter’s betrayal. The Taubers. Eliška. Samuel. Koenig. Karol’s descriptions of Theresienstadt. The cattle cars and the people in them—so desperate they would kill their own to survive.
And Koenig. The cigar. The creak of the black leather coat. The smoke in the air and his Heil Hitler!
By the time Karol pulled up to yet another wooden hut hardly fit to shelter a cat much less two people on the run, Magda had made her choice. If they survived the night, if they really managed to join a larger group of partisans, then she was going to be useful in some way, even if it cost her her life.
She stepped through the slanted door of the next safe house.
“Tomorrow we head northeast and see if we can regroup with the resistance.” Karol was rummaging through the dark with his flashlight and came back with an old lump of cloth. At the hearth, he brushed together a pile of splinters and shavings and built a nest, placing the piece of burlap on top. Then he slid open the magazine of the revolver and tapped out a bullet. It took some time before he managed to pull it apart and empty some of the gunpowder onto the tinder nest.
He looked up. “This will get things going.”
Next, he took the flashlight, undid the bottom, and tapped one of the batteries into his hand. Then he reached into his back pocket and withdrew something small. He held it between his forefinger and thumb toward her in the dark. “Dinner.”
She peered at it and could smell cocoa. “How did you get your hands on chocolate?”
“The commanders at the meeting today had them. Let’s just say they used them to sweeten the deal…except they didn’t. I stole them out of a candy dish.” He made a noise that Magda recognized was a part of his smile. If she were blind, she would know when he was smiling.
“You were at a house today?” It was as if he were telling her a fairy tale.
He chuckled. “Yeah, I was at a house today. Felt rather out of place after all this wilderness-survival stuff. Look, you get a bite and I get a bite.” She heard the rustle of foil as he unwrapped the praline and held it out to her. “Go on.”
She bit into it. It had a liquid center—rum—and she tried to not take it all, but it dripped on her chin, and it was so surprising that it made her laugh with embarrassment.
Karol popped the rest into his mouth and licked his fingers. He folded the tinfoil lengthwise and held the ends over the negative and positive charges of the battery. He hovered over the tinder nest. Nothing happened. At least Magda didn’t think it did, until Karol whistled between his teeth, said “Ouch,” and blew on the fingers holding the battery. “It’s hot.”
Then whoosh! And a pop! The gunpowder was alight. Magda sat back on her haunches with a little whoop. They had a fire!
Karol had gathered enough to feed the flames in the hearth. He sent Magda out to look for more wood. She found a stack of logs off to the side of the house, and she tapped them against the walls of the hut to get rid of the snow on the very ends before carrying an armload in to him.
As the flames danced on the walls, she took a look around. Like all the other huts she had stayed in, this one also had one bed, some old, dusty, and musty covers, a couple of chairs, the fireplace, and a few odds and ends. She grabbed the covers and also the curtains that hung on the back window. She found an old towel, too, and brought those over to Karol’s ever-growing fire. She wrapped her hands in the smaller curtains, wrapped his lap with the larger ones, and threw the covers over their shoulders. They huddled together, Magda’s teeth chattering uncontrollably.
Karol turned his head toward her. “You’re in shock, you know. Not just cold, but shock.” He put a protective arm around her.
“I have nowhere else to go. Look at you—you can make a fire with the simplest of things. You know how to shoot. You’ve trained with the military. And I am absolutely certain that you will find the rest of the group by end of tomorrow.” She began to doubt her earlier resolve. “You should just leave me here. I’m utterly useless.”
“You’re not.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Besides, I didn’t know a lot of this before I went into the military. I had to learn it. And I can teach you.”
She stared into the flames, her body still shaking. “I want to find Samuel.”
“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, Magda.” Karol removed his arm. The sensation left a vacuum in her. He turned to her, his legs folded beneath him. “If we can turn this war around, then we can figure out how—and whether—we can find any of our loved ones. But this war…” He shook his head. “It’s dog eat dog.”
They were silent for a while, and he turned back to the fire.
Slowly her body relaxed, and the shivering and chattering grew less frequent. After a while, and not worrying what he might think, she said, “I just wanted to leave a mark, you know? On the child. Maybe I was getting back at the world. I know what it’s like to be judged by only my physical traits—I’ve known it all my life.”
Karol nodded beside her. “So it was vengeance.”
Magda sighed. “I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking that Robert—that’s the boy’s name, Robert—Robert should not become one of them.” She took in another deep breath and held it, one more shiver,
and then her body let go of everything and she was exceptionally sleepy. She closed her eyes. “Someone sees my face, and immediately they think something is wrong with me. Some have gone so far as to call me a witch! As if we live in medieval times.”
Karol huffed. “Yeah. I think we do.”
“Now my nose is crooked, and I have this hideous scar beneath my eye.” She laughed a little. “Now those people truly have a reason to call me a hag. All I need is a wart.”
Karol gave her a reassuring squeeze.
“A woman who has money will mark herself as rich by what she wears, by a fancy hairdo. I’m obviously a farm girl by the clothes I wear, and so anyone who sees me knows which class to put me into. Are these the things that define us really? Differentiate us from the good and the bad?”
Karol scratched his chin. “I don’t think that evil can be identified by appearances. Genuine ugliness is born of fear, and fear is orchestrated by circumstances. And when fear takes the soul over, occupies it, owns it, well, here we are.”
“All I ever wanted,” Magda whispered, “was to be able to go back and have things be as they were. I never wanted to change anything, not even with Robert, really.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I was afraid. And I got people killed because of it.”
Karol’s breath hitched, and Magda opened her eyes to him.
“I’m terrified of becoming a monster after this war,” he said.
Magda searched his face. “I am too.”
He reached for her. She went to him.
IV
April 1945–September 1945
14
April 1945
Magda balanced the penny onto the barrel as close to the muzzle as possible. She assumed a good stance, her feet spread apart approximately the same width as her shoulders. She aimed between the two aspen and at her target.
Karol narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Are you sure the chamber is empty?”
Magda directed her sight on him. “I think so.” She pulled the trigger. The penny fell. “Damn it!”
Karol gave her a gracious smile and walked over, picked up the penny, and took the gun out of her hand. “Dry firing is hard work. You were pushing into the gun. You’re anticipating recoil. Remember, we’re building muscle memory here. No recoil to worry about, and it’s not a rifle.”
Magda wiped her brow. Killing a man at close range. Karol had insisted they practice this, but targeting him—particularly him—was over the line.
He must have sensed her hesitation. “I told you, if you can do this aiming the gun at me, and I’d like to believe you still hold some affection in your heart for me, you’ll be able to do it to someone you’re really angry with.”
Magda rolled her eyes. “You seem so sure I’d never have any reason to shoot you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Cold and calculating. Did I create this? What did I do now?”
“I saw how your eyes bugged out when that Svetlana joined the force.” Magda cupped her hands before her breasts and puckered her lips.
Karol laughed. “I had no idea you were a jealous vixen, but I should have guessed with that red hair of yours.”
“It’s not red,” Magda said. “And I’m not jealous.” She took the gun and the penny back from him. One thing she had become good at was camouflaging her true feelings with jokes. Jokes filled the holes.
Karol took up his position once more. “Again.”
Magda aimed and squeezed the trigger a second time, working away at the pull until it broke. “Bang!” She broke her sight on target. The penny was still on the barrel.
“That’s it,” Karol said. “Steady hands. Perfect squeeze. Make sure to keep that finger in the optimal position. Again.”
Magda licked her lips. In her left periphery, Taras appeared on the edge of the woods. She aimed and squeezed again. The penny remained where it was.
“You see that, Lieutenant?” Karol whooped.
“You sure she doesn’t have bullets for that?” Taras asked.
“I taught her that.” Karol clapped the lieutenant on the shoulder.
“So you’re going on a mission.” Taras winked at Magda. “Sure is a shame we lost you as a nurse.”
Magda turned away.
“Shame she decided I’m not good for her,” Karol said plaintively.
Taras nudged Karol and laughed. “What she want with a Jew anyway? We should all stick to our own kind.”
Magda glanced at him sideways. Karol’s smile was quick and ungenuine. Always with the spurns, the digs disguised as jokes. Jokes covered up the fear or the pain, and it could also disguise hate. She had never been more aware of the rampant antisemitism than when she began fighting in the Underground. She had had the naïve idea that they were all united in a single cause. It had become quite clear early on that each group that had gelled into this one division had its own agenda for when the war was over. She sensed that if they were victorious against the Axis powers, these very same people would find reason to turn on one another.
It hurt her that Karol was merely tolerated within the unit. They were a mixed group of Czechoslovaks, Russians, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, and Jews. In fact one group of Jews had abandoned them on principle. They had gone off on their own but had begged Karol to join them. But Karol had chosen her. And shortly after, she had rebuffed him.
“I’m going back,” Magda said to the men. She packed the gun into her holster. “I’ll see you two later.”
Taras jerked his chin at her. “I hear you’re going into the hornet’s nest? Pretty yourself up and get us some information. Karol, you’ve got a briefing at 0100 hours. I’d get some rest if I were you. We’re moving out tonight.”
“Where to?” Karol asked. He was trying to be casual, Magda could tell. She knew he wanted to talk to her about her mission again, to talk her out of it before the morning came.
Taras shrugged. “Trouble with some partisans. Apparently the Ukrainians want us to police some village, get rid of the pests. They’ve been doing things that—well, let’s put it this way—you as a Jew, you’re probably familiar with.”
Karol was also walking into danger then. Magda threw him a look. Courage. And ignore the bastard.
She walked away, heart hardened to the need to say goodbye. It was nothing new, this danger. She and Karol had a history together now, a long list of adventures. Some had ended in tragedy, a few in victory.
After they had rested in the safe house, Karol led Magda to the partisan group he’d met the day before. The men in the group were former soldiers in the Czechoslovakian army. All knew Aleš, but none had heard from either him or Renata. Davide was also still missing. Magda and Karol were left to wonder whether they had been captured or killed in the raids.
Because Magda and Karol only had one weapon between the two of them, Karol had to convince the leaders to take Magda along. She was assigned to “kitchen detail”—with no kitchen—after she described how she had hidden out for months, had learned to fend for herself by pilfering and sneaking about. Her quick ability to assess a situation and act was soon proven, and the group eventually admitted she had good instincts. Not an unuseful thing to have.
They headed east and grazed the Carpathians. Magda kept a lookout for a boy. She always looked out for a boy regardless where they were. At first for a two-year-old, then two-and-a-half, and now Samuel would be three. In between raids and hiding, she and Karol had engaged in skirmishes, eventually picking up other resistance fighters along the way that replaced the ones lost to wounds, captures, disease, or simply because they had deserted. Magda stopped counting all the people she met.
The partisans’ focus was sabotage. They blew up train tracks, intercepted codes and messages, informed Allied troops—mostly the Soviets—of positions. They managed to finally get around the front lines. By that time, Magda had a rifle, one that had been picked off a dead comrade. But there was no way to teach her how to shoot properly. She also had a dagger. A
nd she had learned to extract bullets and clean and bandage wounds, and she’d even helped one poor soul put his guts back in before he died. She had slept in burrows, in dugouts, in dead people’s houses, with families that were barely hanging on, in barns, in hollows, in the rain, in the snow—and nearly died. In desperate times, she had eaten grass, clover, insects, rose hips, and rose leaves—and gotten very ill. Magda stopped counting the people she knew, and she stopped counting the hours she did not sleep, and she stopped counting the days she did not eat.
The winters left them with holes in their roll calls. Magda had lost not just one or two comrades to the freezing temperatures. She had woken up several times in her dugout next to a stiff corpse, herself fighting through the numbing fog in her brain, the voice that called Sleep, sleep. But it was Karol who came by, woke her up on a regular basis, tried to warm her, and she often marveled how he managed to have enough strength to rescue both of them.
They made love, sometimes while others slept around them. Sometimes isolated and then wildly, like animals, weeping in each other’s arms afterwards. Sometimes so tenderly, she was left numb from the pain of knowing she could lose him.
At the very beginning, Magda made friends with the women. One had schooled Magda in some basic nursing. When their group began suffering numerous casualties, Magda began distancing herself from anyone new. She learned to remain cool and collected, and several times she briefly marveled at how hardened she had become, how very adaptable she was to new environs, to new situations.
Things changed again when they joined a Soviet division. Things became more organized, more compartmentalized. Magda welcomed a regimen that was predictable. She felt safer. Her rifle was requisitioned, and she was sent far behind the line to join the nurses. It was only then that she finally risked making friends once more. Natalia, a Ukrainian blonde, had run off to become a nurse so that she could be near her boyfriend. He had been killed. Ula was a no-nonsense Pollack who taught Magda how to drink and smoke. She reminded Magda of Renata.
The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII Page 45
