“We cannot just leave her here,” I said.
“I agree,” said Martina. “But we must be fast.”
I took the skirt from Margarete out of my knapsack and wrapped it around the girl. Martina held my knapsack while I gathered the corpse into my arms. I felt so utterly sad for this poor girl who had barely lived, and now was dead. I thought of the people who would have loved her when she was alive, and who wouldn’t even know how or where she had died. And of course it made me wonder about Lida. What was happening to her? Was she safe? Was she still in the camp, or had she escaped by now? I could only hope.
“This way,” said Martina, walking away from the pathway and into the deepest part of the brush. Small twigs scratched at my face and the ground was so uneven I was afraid of falling, but I held onto the girl and kept on walking.
“Place her there,” said Martina, pointing to a clearing under a low tree. I set her down, then Martina and I covered her with dry leaves and rocks. It wasn’t a proper burial, but it was all that we could do. It was better than leaving her on the pathway for all to see.
Chapter Fourteen
Not Seeing
We had travelled for ten days or more. The closer we got to the mountains, the colder it became. I had my jacket and the poncho, and Martina and I traded them back and forth, but one of us was always cold. The poncho was good for rain, but it was just a thin layer of fabric. Martina’s handmade shoes had been useful for creeping soundlessly through the forest in the fall, but now that it was so cold out she risked frostbite, or being injured on icy rocks.
We ran out of ration boxes just as the mountains loomed large and the temperatures plunged.
After a night of walking through bitter wind and ice pellets, the morning was no better. We were plunged into a blizzard. “If we fall asleep in this,” I said, “we’ll freeze to death.”
Martina’s lips were blue and her face was gaunt with hunger, but she smiled. “The good thing about this snowstorm is that it’s hard to see through.”
“A good thing?”
“Maybe the bandit hunters will stay inside. Maybe we can get to a village and beg for supplies.”
“It’s worth a try,” I said. “There’s not much else we can do anyway.”
The snow was heavy enough to cover our footprints, but when we got to the edge of the forest, Martina suddenly pulled me behind a tree.
A single soldier in white camouflage walked past, a mere metre in front of us. I held my breath and willed myself to be absolutely still.
He kept on walking.
Martina followed behind him, and I followed her. Each of us stepped carefully into the footprints that he had already made.
The man approached a military truck that was idling on the roadway. We hid behind a tree and listened.
“This area is clear,” he said to the soldier at the steering wheel.
“Get in then,” said the driver.
We watched as they drove down the road. I was hoping they would keep going, but I heard the truck idle once again and the smack of doors opening and closing. They hadn’t gone far at all. They were methodically checking the entire area.
Martina grabbed onto my hand and pulled me out from behind the tree. She darted across the road, not paying any attention at all to the footsteps she was making. I felt like shouting at her, telling her to stop, but the soldiers would hear me. I had no choice. I had to follow her.
When we got across the road, I could barely see a thing through the blinding white of the storm, except for the silhouette of a small building up ahead. Once we got right up to it, I saw that it was a peasant cottage similar to the one my grandfather had lived in. The wooden door hung uselessly on broken hinges, and drifts of snow had formed on the threshold.
Martina paused at the doorway for just a moment, then stepped over the snowdrift and inside. I followed.
A wooden kitchen table was overturned. Shards of pottery lay scattered over the floor. Something that looked like it had been meat stew was frozen in solid splats around an upended copper pot by the hearth.
I opened up a wooden storage box. Clothing for a young child, a Bible, hand-carved wooden toys. “There’s nothing here for us,” I said.
Martina took a wooden ladle from the hearth for herself and handed me a set of tongs.
I watched her tap various places on the walls and floor, and then I understood. She was listening for a hollow sound.
I followed her lead, tapping and listening. Suddenly she got down on her knees and ran her fingers along the edge of a row of tiles. Her fingers slipped into an opening and she tried to pull, but it wouldn’t give. I got down beside her and together we dug our fingers under the narrow lip and tugged. All at once, a trap door yawned open.
An injured woman holding a sleeping boy stared up at us with pleading eyes. “Please don’t hurt us.”
The woman refused to come up, so we went down, closing the door behind us. The hiding place was lit with a couple of candles and it was much warmer than the woods, but a cold draft of air blew in from somewhere.
In the dim interior stood a bucket of water and an opened sack of dried bread, and wooden shelves holding a few jars. Another wall was covered with cloth. From the rafters hung bundles of onions, garlic, beets. The woman had a bruise on her cheek and blood crusted on her brow.
“Is the child sick?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “I gave him a paste made from poppy pods to keep him quiet. I was afraid the soldiers would hear him.”
I rooted around in my knapsack and brought out the first-aid kit. “Can I take a look at your scalp?”
She lowered her head and held the candle close to it. There was a ragged gash just above her eye, but it was no longer bleeding. I gently cleaned the dried blood with a damp rag, being careful not to disturb the scab that had formed on the wound itself. “The soldiers did this?” I asked.
“They took my husband and older son,” she said. “They left me for dead.”
“And the boy?”
“He was down here, sleeping. They didn’t know about him.”
“You can’t be giving him poppy pods every day. He’ll die.”
She pushed away my hand that held the bloodied rag and glared at me. “Do you think I don’t know that? But what else can I do? I can’t let them find us.”
I dabbed some iodine gently across the scab. “You’re right,” I said. “They would hear the child. They’ve gone for now, but they could be back.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what the answer is.”
The woman looked at me more closely, then at Martina. I’m sure we looked awful — dirty and thin and too young to be of help. But from her expression, I could see that she was beginning to relax. “What do you want?”
“Can you help us get some warm clothing, maybe some food?” asked Martina. “We want to get away from here.”
“Eat this now,” the woman said, giving each of us a piece of dried bread from her bag. “Find a place on the floor to sleep. I’ll see what else I can do for you.”
I took the poncho out of the knapsack and spread it on the floor. It was such a luxury to be indoors that Martina and I were asleep within minutes.
When I opened my eyes some hours later, the first thing I saw was a grey woollen coat draped over Martina as she slept. I sat up.
“That is all I could get,” said the woman. “No boots — I’m sorry. But here’s some food.”
She set a small burlap bag beside me on the floor. I opened it — dried salted fish and a chunk of smoked pork fat. Good travelling food. I knew better than to ask where she got these things. No need to make her feel bad about taking things from a nearby house where the people were already dead.
“Thank you,” I said.
Martina sat up, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. She noticed the coat draped over her. “Is this for me?” she asked. The woman nodded.
“We’ll be on our way,” I said. “You have been most generous.”
“
The snowstorm is over,” said the woman. “And it’s nighttime. But you can’t leave the way you came — your footsteps would show in the new snow. Come this way.”
She drew back the cloth that covered one wall to reveal a low tunnel dug into the earth. “If you go that way,” she said, pointing to the left, “it will take you under the path and into the woods.”
All at once, I understood. Not all of the villagers had been killed or had escaped to the woods. Some were still here, hidden.
Martina got into her new coat and I put the food into my knapsack. “Stay safe,” I said to the woman. “And thank you for helping us.” She nodded, then dropped the cloth back down.
We crawled the length of the tunnel in pitch darkness, our hands on the dirt walls to keep our balance. I thought about Pecherska Lavra in Kyiv and all the tunnels under it. How many connected tunnels were hidden under this small village and other villages too? I hoped the Nazis would never find them.
Chapter Fifteen
Mushrooms
Over the next week or so, snow alternated with winter rain and when we arrived at the foothills of the mountains, the terrain gradually became more dangerous. We no longer had a big river to follow, as it had split up into creeks and marshes and little lakes. The mountains loomed large before us.
We needed to make the dried fish and smoked pork fat last as long as possible, because who knew how we would find food once we were up in the mountains and winter had truly set in. We kept our eyes open for edible greens — a rare find. We would see late-fall mushrooms, but I knew from Tato that most of them had to be cooked to draw out the poison, and cooking was out of the question if we wanted to stay hidden.
One moonlit night, Martina stopped suddenly. “Look,” she said, crouching by a fallen tree. “Aren’t these oyster mushrooms?”
I knelt beside her and took one in my hand. This mushroom had a pale, smooth cap and curled-down edges like an oyster mushroom should. I flipped it over. The gills looked firm. “They are,” I said.
“Sometimes we ate these raw,” said Martina.
“Mama always cooked them,” I said. “But just slightly.”
We gathered up a dozen or so and wrapped them in a cloth, then Martina put them into her satchel and we continued on our way.
As dawn broke, we dug a hole and lined it with fir boughs as usual. Once we were nested in and thoroughly hidden, Martina brought out two mushrooms and our flask of water. I got out a piece of dried fish for each of us.
The mushroom was sweet and fresh and tasted so good along with the fish. I reached into Martina’s satchel and took out two more, then handed her one.
“Not right now,” she said, putting it back. She turned on her side and within minutes was fast asleep.
I ate my second mushroom, savouring the taste and the fact that it filled my stomach. I closed my eyes and was asleep before I knew it.
Some hours later, I woke up with my stomach roiling in pain. It must have been that second mushroom. I had to relieve myself or I would burst. I pushed up one fir branch and looked outside. Bright sunlight hit my eyes but there was no one around. It was probably midday — the worst time to be out — but I had no choice. If I stayed where I was, I would foul all our gear. If I was lucky, I could get out, relieve myself and get back into our hiding place without Martina waking up. She would be furious if she caught me out in the middle of the day.
I slipped out of our hideaway and crept to a wooded gully a few metres away. I had just finished my business and was zipping up my trousers when the ground shook. I scrambled behind a thick tree and held my breath. The ground trembled again.
Moments later a woman passed, barefoot and wild-eyed, carrying a coat and boots. What had made the earth shake? What had she run from? I had to find out if we were in immediate danger before I went back to our hideout.
I darted from one tree to the next, keeping hidden all the way. Finally I came to an opening in the woods where I could see down to a scattering of cottages along a country road. Along the near side of the road rolled a long line of dull grey Soviet tanks, their guns aimed towards the houses. It seemed odd that the Soviets would aim tanks at remote cottages.
I was trying to puzzle it out when, all at once, a row of green German tanks crested the hill behind the houses. As if on cue, they lowered their guns, aimed at the Soviet tanks and fired with a deafening roar. The Soviet tanks fired back and the ground shook again. The thatched roof of one cottage flew off, flaming. The door burst open and a man ran out, a toddler in his arms. He headed towards me.
I realized what I was witnessing: The War Zone. The Front. It was right here.
I ran back to our hiding place and threw back the boughs. Martina had bolted up to a sitting position, her eyes wild. Just then the ground shook again.
“We have to get out of here!” I shouted. “Tanks! Down that way!” I grabbed my knapsack, Martina slung on her satchel and we ran towards the mountains — and, we hoped, away from the Front.
* * *
I had lost track of the dates, but by the time we got to the mountains, it had to be mid-December. The days were more often snowy than wet. Sheer ice, rocky hills and deep crevasses made travelling so difficult. The entire mountainside was criss-crossed with paths, some surely made by escaped slave labourers who were lost, and others made by people from the area who knew where they were going. But how could we tell which was which? As we hid in the trees or dug our way into holes with branches to cover us, we prayed for luck.
Beyond the canopy of firs, we could hear airplanes. More than once, we ducked for cover as a fighter plane strafed the treetops, shooting blindly as it barrelled overhead.
We were increasingly hungry as our food ran out, as well as cold and frightened. I began to doubt the wisdom of trying to escape to the mountains. Maybe we should have stayed in that village with the woman and her son. But staying there would have felt like giving up. Even though the war seemed to be following in our footsteps, I had to get back to Kyiv to find my father.
We were so close to the battle areas that we’d see escaped Red Army soldiers, with disintegrating boots and frostbitten cheeks, limping past us as we hid. From time to time we would also see German soldiers who had given up, and escapees from the camps. Young people wearing homespun clothing would pass by too. It was as if the entire world had decided to escape to the mountains.
Once, in the blackest part of night, our way was completely blocked by a raging creek. We walked along it, hoping to find a spot without treacherous rocks jutting upward. We were both shivering by the time we found a spot that looked narrow enough to cross.
I grabbed a long branch from the ground and plunged it into the water to see how deep it was. Close to the bank, it was just a few centimetres, but it dropped off steeply after that.
“How can we cross?” I asked Martina. “We’ll be soaked, and once we’re soaked, we’ll freeze.”
“Keep those precious boots of yours dry,” said Martina. “We’ve got to go in barefoot.”
She was right. I took off my boots and socks and stuck them into my knapsack. I rolled my pants up while Martina took off her ragged postoly. Holding each other’s hands for balance and courage, we stepped into the creek together.
The shock of cold pierced through to my bones. At the halfway point, my foot plunged down a hole and I smacked hard into the icy water. My knapsack filled up and its weight pulled me down. I flailed in panic, until all at once both my feet touched ground. I tried to stand, but the current was too strong, and the knapsack pulled me down again.
Then the weight of it disappeared.
“I’ve got the knapsack,” said Martina.
I managed to get my balance. Martina struggled to hold the knapsack as the current fought her for it. I reached out and grabbed one strap. Together we heaved it onto a jagged stone on the other side of the creek and it stayed there.
We groped our way towards the other side, slipping dangerously with each step. I fell several times, as did
Martina, but finally I pushed her onto the shore. I could barely claw my own way out of the water.
We pulled our sopping shoes back on and stumbled to our feet. Martina gripped me by the elbow and we trudged forward, exhausted, but happy to be across the river.
As we stumbled into the woods, a firm voice said, “Stop.”
Chapter Sixteen
Vera and Abraham
The soldier’s military overcoat was an unfamiliar design. I watched, shocked, as he unbuttoned it and wrapped it around Martina, completely enveloping her. A second soldier looked like the perfect Nazi, with his ice-blue eyes and short blond hair, but he took his coat off and wrapped me in it.
What kind of Nazi would do that for a person like me? The heat from his coat felt uncommonly hot.
“Sorry about this,” he said, taking a piece of cloth from his pocket and blindfolding me with it. Then I felt one strong arm gripping underneath my knees and the other under my back. He clutched me close to his chest and walked through the woods on sure feet.
I blacked out.
* * *
In my half-awake state, I tried to get my bearings. I was tucked into a narrow bed. Water trickled somewhere close by. The air smelled stale and moist, and my head throbbed. I opened one eye. I was in a dim room with walls of whitewashed wooden planks, cramped with three cots in addition to mine. The only light came from narrow slits in the ceiling high above. The rest of the ceiling was branches.
Across from me lay Martina. A train track of fresh stitches, glistening with blood, ran across her cheek. Her feet, which poked out from under a rough blanket, were wrapped in gauze.
“Martina,” I whispered, sitting up woozily. “Wake up.” Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open.
The third cot was empty, but in the fourth, below Martina’s feet, lay a sleeping Wehrmacht soldier who looked to be in his teens. One arm was in a cast and his face was much cleaner than his muddy uniform. A thick square of gauze covered much of his neck. Blood seeped through the gauze, slowly making a wet circle.
Underground Soldier Page 8
