Like a River from Its Course

by Kelli Stuart

  I’m stunned silent, until I see the mischievous twinkle in his eye. I grin and snatch the apple back from him.

  “I love you, too,” I say, and suddenly I am laughing hysterically. Hans leans forward and stops my noisy laughter with another kiss. “Say it in German,” he says. I comply. “Ich liebe dich,” I say quietly.

  Every time we meet, Hans teaches me to communicate in his native tongue so that I can better understand what’s going on around me. He is my sweet, dear protector.

  I sit back again and look at him, his lopsided grin filling me with such joy that I’m momentarily lost. I don’t hear her footsteps until it’s too late.

  “Luda!”

  I gasp and drop my apple. It rolls and stops at her feet. Hans and I jump up, me smoothing out my skirt and him leaning back into the shadows.

  “Baba Mysa!” I cry. Her face is full of pain and fear. I’ve hurt her deeply—the only woman who has ever shown me unconditional love. My chin trembles, and I feel the familiar lump form.

  “Stop,” she says holding up her hand. “I don’t want to see your tears, so do not let them fall in my presence.”

  I swallow hard and blink twice. “I’m sorry, Baba,” I say quietly. “I didn’t want to lie to you. I didn’t know how I could possibly tell you.”

  “How you could possibly tell me that you are meeting a German man in the shadows?” she asks. Her eyes dart to Hans, who hasn’t moved. I reach out to him and take his hand in mine. He takes a halting step forward into the light. I want her to see him, to see his kind eyes and gentle features—to see the good in him so unlike his countrymen.

  “Yes, Baba. I didn’t know how to tell you that I’ve fallen in love with a good man. A German man.”

  “After what they have done to you?” Baba Mysa hisses, her eyes falling on my stomach. I wince and feel Hans shrink back. He doesn’t want to make things hard for me.

  “Baba, he’s not like the men that hurt me. He’s a German, but he’s not a Nazi.” I look up at Hans, whose face has softened. He looks down at me with a small smile.

  “He’s dressed like a Nazi,” Baba Mysa replies. Then she sighs and shakes her head. “I knew I should never have let you go out of the house alone, Luda. It was too dangerous. I have failed you.”

  Dropping Hans’s hand, I rush to Baba Mysa and hug her fiercely. She doesn’t move as I squeeze her. “Please, Baba,” I beg. “Please understand I didn’t do this to hurt you. You’ve been so good to me, and I love you so dearly. Please forgive me for lying to you. Please, Baba.”

  Despite my efforts to stop the tears, they now fall freely. Baba Mysa still stands motionless, and after a moment I pull away from her. “I’m sorry,” I mumble.

  Hans steps to my side and puts his arm around my shoulders protectively. “Luda has spoken of you very much, Baba Mysa,” he says gently in his richly accented Russian. “She’s told me of the love you’ve shown her and how she didn’t know if she would be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

  Baba Mysa looks up at Hans, her eyes narrowed and lips pursed together. “I don’t want to cause any friction between Luda and the family that’s taken her in and given her so much to live for,” Hans continues. “I love her. I want nothing more than to see her happy and to hear her laugh. I don’t want to destroy any piece of goodness in her life. I’m sorry if I’ve done that.”

  Baba Mysa looks hard at Hans, then at me. I lean back in the crook of Hans’s arm as I wait for her to speak.

  Sighing, Baba Mysa shakes her head. “This isn’t safe, Luda,” she says. “It’s not safe for either of you.” She shifts her eyes to Hans. “How will you make this work in the long term?” she asks him. “You cannot marry her, or live with her—you would both be in terrible trouble for such an act. You cannot build a relationship on one hour a day in a dark alley. How do you expect this to last?”

  Hans and I shift nervously. We’ve never discussed the details. I had thought briefly of the impossibility of our situation but had never wanted to dwell on it. I just wanted to live in the love that had finally given me some light.

  “I could take her away,” Hans says softly. I look up in surprise.

  “What?” I breathe.

  “We could escape, you and I,” he says. “We could go to America and build a life there.”

  “But … what about Baba Mysa and Katya and Alexei and Oleg?” I ask.

  Hans shakes his head. “I don’t know, Luda,” he says with sadness, and I realize that he, too, has ignored the impossibility of our situation in order to live in a moment of bliss.

  Baba Mysa steps forward and grabs my hand. “Come, Luda,” she says, her voice sad and tired. “We’ll go home. I won’t speak of this to anyone else.” She shifts her gaze to Hans. “I believe that you love her,” she says with a little more gentleness, “and I see goodness in your eyes, but this … relationship cannot work. There is no future in it.” Baba Mysa looks from Hans to me. “You need to end it.”

  Pulling my hand from hers I shake my head. “No, Baba.” I look into her eyes, searching, longing for her to see the depth of love that I feel and the only happiness I know. “I can’t end it.”

  Hans steps forward and places his hands on my shoulders, turning me toward him. His brow is furrowed, and a deep crease has settled in the space between his eyes, like a chasm of grief that threatens to open up.

  “Perhaps we should just slow down, take a break and figure things out,” he says, and I hear it in his voice. He’s torn, filled with a depth of pain that I know too well.

  “No, Hans,” I whisper, my voice quaking. “I can’t take a break. I can’t walk away. I can’t be without you. I can’t—”

  Hans stops my protest by pulling me into a tight embrace. I press my cheek against his chest and let the tears fall freely, my heart tearing in two. His hands circle the back of my head as he pulls away, pressing his forehead to mine and looking at me closely. His heart is tearing, too.

  “I’m not leaving,” he whispers. “I’ll be here every day at two o’clock, waiting and trying to find a way to make this work. I won’t go anywhere without you.”

  “I love you,” I cry.

  Hans kisses the end of my nose, then steps back. He nods at Baba Mysa, who has watched with a stony expression. I reach up and run my hand down Hans’s face and smile, then step back and turn around. Baba Mysa tucks her arm inside my elbow, and together we trudge out of the dark alley. We step out into the bright street, the afternoon sun offering a stark contrast to the dark pain that settles on my chest.

  Turning the corner toward our flat, Baba Mysa stops and turns to me. “I am disappointed and hurt, Luda,” she says. I nod.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Baba Mysa grabs my chin and turns my face down to hers. “Look in my eyes, child,” she commands. “He’s a German, and though he may be a good man, he is still the enemy. You cannot fall in love with the enemy.”

  I’m silent as we turn and make our way to the entrance of the building. As the door squeaks open and Baba Mysa begins the slow journey up the stairs, I wait for the door to slam shut behind me. In the echoing boom, I whisper my reply.

  “It’s too late.”

  MARIA IVANOVNA

  March 6, 1942

  It’s been three days since I last saw my family. Three days of horror, of fear, of fatigue and heartache and panic. Sitting now on my bunk in the barracks, I try to wrap my mind around all that has happened and how quickly my life has changed.

  For three full days, we rocked slowly along the tracks, all of us stuffed tight into the train car and wrapped in heat and terror. We were a car full of teenage girls ripped from the ones we loved. The tears fell freely, and emotions ran hot. By the afternoon of our second day on the train, girls were screaming and wailing. Panic set in, and several girls beat on the sides of the train until their fists were raw and bloody.

  Others tried to shut out the wailing. Polina and I wrapped our arms around one another and slid to the floor, each a lifeline to the
other. After a while, fatigue set in, and most of the screaming faded into pitiful wails.

  If the sounds of our enclosure didn’t send me over the edge, the smells threatened to. We all forfeited every bit of dignity as time went forward. With no other options, girls defecated publicly and vomited repeatedly from stress and heartache. Even I had to finally give in to the demands of nature, and with the deepest of sorrow in my eyes I released the pressure on the floor right where I sat.

  Never have I felt such a sense of shame.

  Polina did all she could to allow me some sense of dignity. She didn’t mention it and gently turned her eyes away from me when I could resist no more. And she did not complain when together we had to sit in the mess.

  By the third day, everyone had made a human pile on the floor. In an unspoken agreement, we all allowed the smaller girls to lie on top of the larger ones, making a long patchwork of grief and fatigue.

  It was this day that I thought we would die. I envisioned the Nazis pulling open the door to find us all rotting in our own stench, and somehow I took comfort in this vision.

  But it was not to be so.

  Instead, we pulled into a station, and the door opened. The light that streamed into the cabin assaulted my eyes and left me blind. We were all so weak by this point that the Germans charged with herding us out the door had to physically lift and set us on our feet. Polina and I did not let go of one another’s hands. We clung tight as they set us upright and both of us, stiff legged and squinting, followed the line of females into the unknown.

  We were soiled, dirty, and smelled of human feces and vomit. We didn’t look like young girls but old women. What a difference three days made.

  Four girls didn’t make it. I watched as their lifeless bodies were pulled from the train car and tossed onto a waiting truck with such indifference that I wondered if our captors were, indeed, even human. How can one witness death with no expression at all?

  I still do not understand it.

  We walked in a straight line, stumbling and falling every few seconds. My tongue was swollen and tight, my longing for water so strong that the second time I stumbled to my knees and fell I couldn’t stop myself from leaning forward and licking the dirty grime from the ground. Polina pulled me to my feet, her head shaking violently.

  “You can’t do that,” she whispered.

  On we trudged, Polina’s arms firmly around me. Despite her frail nature, Polina was surprisingly strong.

  “How are you so calm?” I whispered as she guided me along the path.

  “I’ve been doing this for a while,” she answered. “You learn to do what they say. It’s the only way to stay alive.”

  “Is that how you survived?” I asked.

  Polina nodded her head. “They took me from the woods where your father and I tried to escape. They beat me and threw me into the ditch, assuming I was dead. I just let them assume. I crawled out days later when the shooting finally waned. I made my way out of the woods to a small village where an older woman took me in. She gave me food and clothes … then gave me back to the Germans.” Polina’s voice trailed off.

  “She … she gave you back?” I asked, horrified. “Why?”

  Polina shrugged. “Everyone is afraid these days, Masha,” she replied. “Yours is the only family I’ve met who thinks of others above themselves.”

  I let this sink in as we walked along silently. The road next to us changed, the streets disappearing as we headed down a thinly worn path toward … nothing. We were in the German countryside, the early spring air cool, but not cold. The flowers in the field burst with spring color, their buds small but open. Birds chirped happily in the distance. The entire countryside screamed against the reality of our situation, of where we were and to whom we belonged.

  If I closed my eyes, I could imagine that I walked down the path to the dacha, Sergei by my side, headed for the peace that only summer could bring. Mama would be in the garden, tending to the potatoes and dill. Papa would be whistling softly as he headed to the lake to fish. Anna would be rummaging in the kitchen, preparing the fresh bread for our dinner. Sergei and I would leap through the high grasses, laughing and chasing one another with the reckless abandon of youth without cares.

  But I couldn’t close my eyes. If I had closed my eyes, I would have fallen, and weakness is not an option in the place where I now exist. So that day, in the warm German sunshine, I kept my eyes open wide, I pushed out the memories of Sergei and the dacha, and I clung to Polina, a forsaken Jewess without hope for tomorrow.

  We both knew she didn’t have long.

  “You have no identification papers,” I whispered, desperate for her and she nodded.

  “Why’d they let you on the train?”

  “They’ll make a sport of me,” she answered. I marveled at her strength. She didn’t sound afraid, but then she also knew death to be a welcome experience in this life we were being forced to live.

  We rounded a corner and immediately noticed the long, barbed fence that stretched before us. It was high, and the sharp spikes gave the beautiful landscape a dark and ominous feel.

  “We’re almost home,” Polina whispered to me, and I felt such a measure of fear overtake me that I dug my nails into her arm. We walked another four hundred meters to the entrance where a tall, crudely built structure welcomed us in. We walked under the sign, the German letters painted in crooked fashion: Jedem das Seine.

  “‘Everyone gets what he deserves.’” Polina whispered the translation of this sign, and I blinked back hot tears. The cruelty of it all was too much.

  When we first arrived at the camp earlier today, we walked to a long, narrow building where our identification papers were taken from us. When Polina could not produce papers, the Germans murmured softly to one another and made notes on their boards. We were sent to the bathhouse, where they stripped us naked and sprayed us with such force that I thought the skin would fall from my body. As I faced the stream of frigid water, I opened my mouth wide and sucked down as much of it as I could before being ordered to turn. Water was the only redemption of my day. We were issued drab clothing, thin and scratchy with a large patch over the left breast that read OST.

  Ostarbeiter. That is my new label. No longer Untermensch, I am now an “eastern worker” who has a purpose: to serve the German. To work on their behalf. A slave laborer. I am OST.

  Our heads were shaven, and we were each given a dry, crusty roll and a small tin cup of warm, brown water. It did nothing to satiate the deep hunger I felt, but it was enough to get me through the evening. We got another piece of bread before bed and were sent to the barracks, where a long line of hard benches hung from the wall. A bit of straw covers each bench. One by one, we wearily climbed into the bunks where I now lie, wide awake, staring at the ceiling as I try to comprehend my new reality.

  FREDERICK HERRMANN

  April 6, 1942

  I was ten years old the first time my father took us all to Berlin. It was 1934, and the sights and sounds of the bustling city as we exited our train at Berlin’s Lehrter Bahnhof left me wide-eyed and awed. We rushed directly from the train to the Nazi-provided car as Father urged us to waste no time. He had a big party to attend that night, and he planned to take us with him. The SS officer appointed as our transport stood rigidly next to the black car, and I felt his dark eyes fall on me in disdain as I slid into the back seat and shrunk in intimidation.

  That trip to Berlin was the first time that I felt truly awed by my father’s status. He was so important that, as we exited the car, hotel staff hurried to us, picking up bags and rushing to our room in a fashion worthy only of someone important.

  We stood in our expansive room on the top floor of the Hotel Esplanade and looked out over the beautiful city bustling below us. Talia and I pressed our noses to the cool glass and pointed out the cars and people walking below.

  “The cars look like small toys,” I cooed just before my father stepped up behind us.

  “Stand up chi
ldren,” he snapped. Talia and I stood and faced our father, my heart beating like a drum.

  “Good. Now, who can tell me what we worked on earlier this week?”

  Because I was always so frightened of my father, it seemed to take me a long time to register any question he asked. Panic left me mute so Talia picked up the slack, thrusting her hand in the air.

  “Talia?”

  “We learned to remain quiet and calm and to not speak unless asked a direct question,” she said with a smile, her bright red hair cascading over slender shoulders. Father smiled and ran his hand down her cheek.

  “Very good, my darling,” he said. “Now, Frederick,” he said turning to me. “How are you to greet any official that walks your way?”

  My heart raced as I searched for the words to answer my father. I couldn’t find them, so I merely thrust my arm straight up in the air. Father sighed and shook his head.

  “Yes, Frederick,” he said with a heaping portion of annoyance, “but what do you say when you greet them?”

  My hand, still high above my head, shook as I searched for the greeting that I knew but couldn’t seem to voice. Why did I always feel so incompetent in his presence?

  Talia snapped her heels together and threw her arm up next to me. “Heil Hitler!” she said, tossing me a sideways glance.

  “Heil Hitler!” I repeated after her, and Father nodded.

  “Very good, Talia,” he said, looking away from me in obvious disgust. “Now go prepare yourselves for dinner.”

  Lying back on my bunk in the barracks, I think of that visit to Berlin. The memory dances through my mind in moving pictures, every emotion joined together in one fluid movement. It would be the first of several trips my father took us on. We went to parties in the grand city attended by the finest in the Nazi Party. We strolled the beautiful walkways of the Tiergarten in the spring, when the blooms sent brilliant petals of color dancing to the ground as though it were a parade. Father would walk stoically alongside Rudolph Diels, chief of the Gestapo, talking through the early afternoons. In the evenings, he spent his time in the company of Goring, Goebbels, and when time permitted, with the Great Führer himself.