The Winter Guest

by Pam Jenoff

  The policeman handed the paper back to her. “We are looking for some people traveling through the region. Outsiders. Have you seen anyone unfamiliar?”

  Ruth hesitated. Was he talking about the Jewish woman? Surely if she pointed him in the direction that the woman had gone, he would leave to follow after her.

  “Strangers,” Sergeant Wojski pressed when she did not answer. “Men who aren’t from these parts, in uniform perhaps. Have you seen anyone like that?”

  “No, of course not.” The surprise in her voice was genuine. A lone Jewish woman passing through was odd enough. But foreign soldiers... She had heard the rumors like everyone else of a military plane crashing. No one had ever found the plane, though, and something like that couldn’t just disappear into thin air.

  “If you see anything...” He dropped a card on the table so hastily it fluttered to the ground. “Do widzenia.” Until we meet again. Though he used the customary parting, it felt more like a threat.

  Ruth remained motionless as he turned and walked to the gate. She picked up the card and, when the man had disappeared from sight, closed the door behind her. “It’s all right,” she called. There was no response, but a moment later she heard the scuffling of the children, playing in the rafters above. It really was fine, she told herself as Karolina’s giggle rang out. She picked up the now-cold coffee with shaking hands. Two disconcerting visits in a day were merely a coincidence. That they were ordinary Poles with nothing of interest to anyone was their one saving grace. None of this, not the Jewish woman or the soldiers the policeman was looking for, had anything to do with them. Still, she wished Helena was here to help her make sense of it all.

  As she raised the fresh cup of coffee she had just poured, a thudding sound came from the loft followed by a cry. With a sigh, she set down the cup once more, then went to check on the children.

  7

  “Dzie´n dobry.” Helena was surprised to find Sam standing outside the chapel, leaning against a tree. Though he had grown increasingly mobile over the past two weeks, this was the first time she had seen him venture beyond the chapel walls. Warmth rose in her as she took in the full length of his thinning frame, set against the lush pine forest.

  Several emotions seemed to wash over his face at once as he saw her—concern that she had risked her safety to come yet again, but relief and happiness, too. At last he smiled widely. “Lena! I’m glad you’re here.” He reached out and placed his hand on her shoulder, then paused. She held her breath, wondering as she did each time she arrived if he might kiss her cheek in greeting. But his expression clouded over once more.

  “Let’s eat,” she said, hoping to forestall any argument about her coming.

  She followed Sam into the chapel. There was a fire lit in the woodstove. He kept it burning as low as possible, generating just enough warmth to survive without sending too much smoke up the chimney and attracting attention. Helena spread the cloth on the ground before her, producing the usual bread plus the extra cheese and potato she’d been able to save, and setting them out as though preparing a great feast. She did not take food from the children, of course, but rather slipped a bit of her own dinner into her pocket each night and nabbed every uneaten morsel she could find around the house without being noticed. It wasn’t enough; she could see that Sam’s clothes hung more loosely on him than they had when she first found him. But it was the best she could do.

  “Here.” She pulled out the two cracked teacups. Dorie had been using them to play with her doll and Helena hoped the child would not miss them. Sam had used a tin bowl she’d brought previously as a pot to heat some water and now he steeped a few of the tea leaves she had given him in it.

  She poured the tea into the cups and handed one to him. Their fingers brushed and she shivered involuntarily, then hoped he had not noticed. He wrapped his hands around the cup. “Thank you. This is almost civilized.”

  Helena picked up a morsel of bread and pretended to eat it for Sam’s benefit as he devoured the rest of the food. They sat without speaking for several minutes, the silence comfortable between them. She studied his profile as he chewed, the strong, angular jaw and full lips now as familiar as her own face. Though only two weeks had passed since she’d found Sam, it felt to her as though she had known him all her life. She’d stopped faithfully at the chapel on her way back from visiting her mother last week, and slipped away a few other times to see him, pretending that she had gone to check the traps in the woods. It was all she could do to resist the urge to come every day. In these moments she and Sam shared, sitting on the damp floor of the dilapidated church, she could forget about the dreariness and worry of the outside world.

  Even when she could not get to the church, she thought of Sam constantly. At home, she imagined him alone, wondering how he passed the hours, whether he was safe. The previous evening, as a heavy rain had fallen steadily on the roof of their house, she had lain awake shivering, as if she was cold and wet beside him. Was it really possible to feel so much so fast for a man she had met just days ago? She hated that this part of her life had to remain separate and hidden. She pictured Sam coming down from the chapel to their house. Michal, constantly surrounded by women, would be overjoyed. Mama would have approved of his manners, Tata his strength. But the picture was all jumbled, the pretense of normalcy impossible, for if her father hadn’t died and she hadn’t been going to visit her ailing mother in his stead, she never would have discovered Sam in the first place.

  He tilted his head back, looking at the chapel roof, gray sky visible through the crumbling rafters. “I wonder who built this place.”

  She considered the question. “I don’t know.” There were small cabins scattered throughout the hills, designed to offer shelter to hikers and hunters caught in bad weather or between towns for an evening. But this chapel was too big and ornate to have been built for that purpose. “A hundred years ago, this land was owned by a wealthy baron before it was partitioned. He might have put it here for himself, or those who worked for him.”

  “Churches made me so uncomfortable as a child,” Sam remarked. She cocked her head, not understanding. “I thought if I went inside lightning would strike. And if I passed by on the way home from school, kids would throw rocks at me and call me Jew.” She marveled that the same prejudices could exist halfway around the world, where things were meant to be better. “But here I am, staying in one.”

  “Why do you think people dislike Jews so much?” Helena cringed at the bluntness of her own question.

  He shrugged. “Some people hate Jews because they see us as successful,” he offered. She stifled a laugh. The Jews in the villages with their drab tattered clothes were even poorer than her own family. “But my folks are just plain working class.”

  “What about you? What kind of work did you do?”

  “Odd jobs mostly.” An uneasy look crossed his face. “I don’t know what I’m going to do after the war. I suppose I could stay in the army.”

  “Do you like it?” She found herself emboldened, asking more personal questions than on her previous visits. “The army, I mean.”

  “I do, actually,” he said, warming to the conversation. “Some parts of it, anyway. The army throws together some really different kinds of people.” He rubbed the back of his neck and she noticed for the first time how his once-close-cropped hair had grown a bit, the way it curled at the collar. His eyes were deep, his voice thoughtful. Something inside Helena stirred and she was seized with the need to stroke the smoothness of his cheek. She had never been interested in boys before; the ones she saw like Piotr seemed crude and silly, less good at all of the things she could do for herself. But with Sam she craved his company. It was like pulling back the paper from a present to find out what was inside.

  A feeling rose from deep inside her that for a moment she could not articulate. Happiness. She understood then why people yearned, why he
r sister wanted things. Helena simply had not understood that life was supposed to have these extra good bits, too. Or maybe because she was too afraid that this feeling might swallow her whole. Guilt surged through her. She had no right to be thinking of such things, not now, when survival was all that mattered.

  He continued. “These weren’t fellas I would have been close with back home. But in the army you gotta be able to count on the guy next to you. Sometimes you like your brother and sometimes he drives you crazy but he’s still your brother and you love him.” She nodded, recognizing the truth in what he’d said from her own family. “Now, I’d say we’re friends.”

  Friends. She considered the word. She had never had a friend outside the family. She and her siblings were insular, removed from the other children in town, especially once she and Ruth had stopped going to school. But even before then they had been separate, understanding somehow that they did not belong. Were she and Ruth friends? They worked together as a team to take care of the children and she loved her sister, but they were hardly companions or confidantes.

  Sam cleared his throat. “So I like the guys, and I’ve gotten to see a bit of the world I surely never would have otherwise. And I’ve met you.” He looked away shyly. Helena’s heart skipped a beat. Over the past two weeks, her own feelings for Sam had become impossible to ignore, the way she waited for each visiting day so eagerly. He seemed to like her coming, as well, but she had told herself he was just grateful for the food and other assistance she provided. But now a tiny flame of hope tickled at her insides. Was it possible that he liked her, as well?

  “But I’ve seen terrible things,” he said. “The fighting, that’s not for me.” There was a helplessness to his voice that made Helena want to draw him close, comfort him as Ruth did the little ones. “So I’ll get out and as for what I’ll do after, maybe I’ll go to school to learn a trade and open my own shop for woodworking or furniture. I’m good with my hands. What do you think?” he asked.

  Helena hesitated, caught off guard by the question. No one ever asked her opinion, not her parents when she was little and certainly not Ruth now, since their talk seldom ventured beyond practical matters. She straightened, enjoying the unfamiliar sensation that her views mattered.

  “It sounds like a fine idea,” she said, not sure if it was the answer he was looking for. “Christmas is coming in a few days,” she added, changing the subject.

  “Jews don’t celebrate Christmas,” he replied.

  “Of course, how stupid of me.” She brought her hand to her mouth, embarrassed by the mistake.

  But his face showed no sign of offense. “We celebrate Hanukkah. It’s not a major holiday but it celebrates the retaking of the temple in ancient times, and the miracle of a bit of oil that burned for eight nights.”

  “I had no idea.” There was so much about his religion she did not know and she bit her lips, trying to formulate a question. But before she could speak, there was a sudden thudding noise outside, once, then again and again, growing louder. Footsteps. Her eyes darted desperately from corner to corner, searching for a hiding place in the bare, exposed chapel and finding none. Sam grabbed her and pulled her to the ground beside him, as though trying to make them disappear into the earth. He half lay on top of her, not breathing. It was not necessarily the Germans, she told herself. But a passerby discovering them here would be nearly as bad.

  Sam’s heart pounded through his shirt, racing alongside her own. The sound came again, closer to the outer wall. They lay motionless for several seconds, his cheek warm against hers. A minute later, the sound faded and was gone.

  “Just an animal,” she said. “Raccoon, probably.”

  “Sorry.” As if noticing for the first time how intimately he was holding her, he straightened and moved away.

  “That’s all right,” she replied quickly, the air growing cold around her. Despite her relief that the danger had passed, she wished he might have stayed close for just a moment longer. The situation was too serious for such silliness, she admonished herself silently. Sam’s expression was grave and his skin nearly as pale as the day she had found him. She saw anew the fear he lived with every minute and the danger that worsened the longer he was here. It was easy when she was with Sam to forget everything and talk as though they were safe. But this was not a game—if someone found them, they would be arrested, or even killed.

  “I watched the trains again yesterday,” she said to relieve the awkward tension. The previous day, Helena had been able to slip away to the barn. She had climbed into the loft, the hay scratchy and familiar beneath her skirt.

  His eyebrows lifted. “And?”

  Helena wasn’t sure what Sam was looking for, or what she was supposed to tell him about it. “They seem to be going east and they have a lot of freight cars, though what are in them I can’t say. But when they come back they’re always empty.”

  “They must be moving munitions to the front, preparing for a possible break with the Soviets. This is helpful—or would be, if I could get word to my unit.” His face locked with frustration. As his strength returned, Sam seemed to grow more restless with each of her visits.

  “There was something else...” She hesitated. “I think I saw where your plane crashed.” She had deliberated whether to tell him at all. The first few times she had come to the chapel, the plane was the first thing he had asked as to whether it had been found. But she had heard nothing. The state-controlled radio broadcasts would not have mentioned it, though surely if Ruth had heard it discussed in the gossip at market, she would have said. Then in the loft yesterday morning, she had noticed something out of the corner of her eye. “There are some trees sheared off at the tops about two kilometers east of here.”

  “That would be it.” His jaw set grimly. “I need to get to the crash site.”

  She touched his arm. “Surely you can’t think that anyone else might have survived.” He did not answer.

  They sat in silence beside one another. Helena’s thoughts turned to her visit with her mother earlier that day. The bed beside hers where the elderly woman had long lay was empty. She wondered sadly if the older woman had finally passed but when she’d asked Wanda about it, she shook her head. “Relocated,” she mouthed before moving on.

  Helena had been puzzled by the response; the woman would not have chosen to be moved. She noticed then around the ward a handful of now-empty beds. There were all kinds of restrictions for the Jews, she knew from the signs around town, prohibiting them from going to restaurants and riding on trolleys. But this was a hospital, and a Jewish one at that. Surely the Germans would not bother with a few old people.

  “What is it?” Sam asked, noticing her quiet.

  “Nothing.” She saw then the dead leaves piled thick on the ground by the stove where he slept, a futile attempt to keep dry in the previous night’s storm.

  “What is it? You can tell me.”

  Helena hesitated, feeling foolish. She did not want to burden him with her concerns when he was stranded up here behind enemy lines, just trying to survive each day. “My mother is in the city and I’m worried.”

  “The Germans won’t bother the hospital,” he assured her. “They have other concerns. Anyway, there’s always the chance that the Soviets may break from the Germans and invade,” he added, a note of hopefulness to his voice.

  Helena shivered. “You say that as if it would be a good thing.”

  “Wouldn’t it?”

  She shook her head emphatically. The Russians were rumored to be so barbaric as to make the Germans look kind. “I can understand why the Jews might find this helpful, with so many being communist.”

  He flushed. “We aren’t communist.” Suddenly, the conversation had taken an awkward turn. “That’s a rumor the Germans propagated to raise hatred of the Jews. But the Russians, they can’t be any worse than the Germans, can they? Th
e atrocities the Nazis are committing...” He slammed his fist against the wall. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said, his voice more intense than she’d ever heard.

  A noise at the door to the church made Helena jump. Her eyes darted across the room and she braced herself to hide once more. This time, though, Sam did not seem alarmed. It was not footsteps, but an animal scratching. “Look!” He whistled and a second later a medium-size, scraggly dog pushed through the door and bounded over to where Sam sat on the ground. Sam laughed as it nuzzled him, throaty and deep, and the sound seemed to lift her above all of the worry and despair. His face was animated like Michal’s had been on Christmas morning in better times.

  Helena opened her mouth to warn him—the dog was a stray, one she had seen roaming the outskirts of town in a pack that she had admonished the children to avoid. Lately there were rumors that the dogs, unable to find the usual scraps of food in the garbage, had gone feral and attacked a child, that they might have rabies. Then, watching Sam stroke the dog’s fur, she sighed inwardly. There were so many things to worry about these days; strays hardly seemed to be one of them.

  “You like dogs?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess so.” She’d never had a dog. The children would have loved one. Pets were a luxury, though, another mouth to feed when there already wasn’t enough to go around.

  “Here.” Sam gestured toward the dog. Helena hesitated fearfully. But the animal lay tamely in Sam’s lap. “He won’t bite.” Sam had brushed the dog, she noticed, perhaps even washed it somehow. She lowered her hand to pet the animal, and as she did, her fingers met Sam’s beneath the fur.

  “I have a Labrador at home,” he said, smiling as a faraway look crept into his eyes. His hand rested lightly on hers and lingered, too firmly to be accidental. Her heartbeat quickened. “A yellow pup, just over three years old. He would love this place, with the trees and hills and so much room to run.” Helena had not really considered his life beyond the walls of the chapel before today. But now a picture emerged of pets and day trips to the countryside. Was there a girl who might go along with him?