A Boy in Winter

by Rachel Seiffert

  Better him than me.

  Myko sees his appalled face, his shock at this treatment, and how he and his bruised friend are harried into the passage between the vehicles. Mykola turns away rather than watch this.

  He reaches for the last of the bundles, grabbing at cases, keeping his head low to collect himself. But barely has the asking Jew gone before the shouting starts again.

  “Lass sie liegen!”

  “Lass sie liegen!”

  Myko sees a mass of shawls and skirts arriving: the second group is run at the truck ramp beside him. More calling, more guards, more German; this time all of the Jews are women, and there are too many bags, too many reaching arms and fingers.

  “Drop your things and leave them!”

  “Leave them!” Myko finds himself shouting along with the other auxiliaries.

  “Get yourselves in order!” The policemen on both trucks call from above. “Move on!”

  “Keep moving!”

  After each shout, Myko swallows down the burning feeling, but he can’t swallow it all, and the women surround him now. He sees how they lift their palms, taken aback as he throws their cases, but he looks into none of their faces; he wants none of them stopping, and none staring at him like the asking Jew. And although they murmur and mill in their confusion, the women give over their bags as ordered: they’ve seen the first lot do this and move on.

  “Here now? We go through here?” They point, anxious, between the truck sides.

  No one told them either, but they don’t want to anger, they only want to find the right trucks to climb inside, so when the soldiers shout them on, impatient, Mykola sees this new group obey them, disappearing quickly between the vehicles.

  “This is how it’s done, see?”

  The sergeant echoes his words at him, dry, seeing his surprise as the women move on and the SS fall away again. Crouching on the ramp to catch his breath, the man passes down his bottle for Myko to drink from.

  “Here, boy.”

  But although Myko drinks, although he swallows, it still doesn’t help him: his throat only stings with the burning drink, and there is so much noise around him. The shouting from the next trucks, the other Jews being hounded, the thuds of the bundles thrown into the truck mouths—and under it all is the roar of the engines.

  “Best you drink again,” the sergeant tells him, pointing at the bottle. “Sturmbannführer’s issue. Sturmbannführer’s orders.”

  Has he done this before? Have the others as well?

  Mykola turns to look at the other policemen in this first row, and he sees all his barrack mates are flinging bundles. There are Jews at all the trucks in the line now, apart from his one—and a further group is being run across the mud too. Is there no end to this?

  The SS are bringing more; they are bringing them faster, and it is women again, only this time with children. Mykola hears them crying, thin and high, even above the engine noise, while the sergeant leans down to ask him:

  “You think this lot will be swift too? Like the Sturmbannführer wanted.” The man gives a thin smile. “Did you think this would be orderly?”

  Myko doesn’t answer.

  He doesn’t know what he thought it would be.

  He takes another mouthful, even if he can’t swallow down the stinging or swallow away the roaring. And then he is being ordered.

  “You there!”

  The policeman on his own truck is shouting; legs broad on the ramp, he points Myko and Taras to the gap between the vehicles.

  “You deal with that now!”

  Some of the women they just sent running are returning: Myko sees them pouring back out onto the mud between the truck ramps—just as the next lot of women are coming at them from the factory.

  “Stop them!”

  He has to drop the bottle and run forward, because those first women come flying at him and Taras, appealing, holding their arms out to them and pleading. Myko flings up his own arms, roaring. “Back! Move back there.”

  If he is to keep order, he has to keep them apart from the next lot.

  “Back now!”

  He and Taras try to head them off, and to contain them—but Myko can’t shout loud enough for them to understand him. He has to call above the next set of Jews and their children; above the high noise of their crying as well as above the engines. And he can’t get the first women back again between the truck sides: they only shake their heads, vehement, holding out their palms, and they will not pass back again into the gap between the ramps.

  “Those are not the trucks. Not the right trucks,” they cry out.

  They’ve seen the vehicles behind this first row, and so they know now: those trucks aren’t for them either. The engines are turning over, but their ramps are up and bolted, and no one said this is how it would be.

  “Why are they closed to us?”

  “Back now!”

  Taras grabs at the women to turn them; Myko takes hold of shoulders, handfuls of shawl, too, throwing himself forward. He has to shove at them, tugging and shouting; Myko forces the women back between the tailgates.

  Between the truck sides it is darker. But there is no respite, because the women only push back at them harder, blocking the passageway. They turn and cry and gesture; Mykola sees the women turn to each other with questions. Where are the trucks for us to climb inside?

  “Lauf!”

  “Get moving!”

  “Lauf, Saujuden!”

  More SS are there now. More have come from the factory. Running at Myko’s back, they shove into him and Taras, pushing them, bodily—Vorwärts! Vorwärts!—the force of their numbers crowding them further down the narrow space.

  Thrust up against the wheel arch in the crush, Myko is pressed in amongst the women he is herding, into their elbows and shoulder blades and frightened faces; too alarmed, too hard up against them. His arms are pinned, legs straining, then he is spilled out onto the mud on the far side—sent sprawling between the truck rows.

  He rights himself quickly. Myko feels that grip again, sharp and tight in his fists now: an instinct to lash out as he gets himself to his feet.

  But even as he rises, he sees the women are already beyond him. The SS are chasing them along the next line of vehicles, with Taras hard behind, herding them further along the rat run.

  “Schnell hier!”

  Over his shoulder, Myko hears another group coming behind him: it is the same calling, the same raw confusion. Where are the SS taking us? Myko has the rough taste of it in his throat now, the chafing feel of it in all his joints; it has him breaking into a run, away from them along the tailgates.

  The trucks in this next row are all packed tighter, and he doesn’t want to be caught up here by the next lot, caught in their confusion; he does not want to be alone like this either, between the truck lines without orders.

  Myko ducks between two vehicles rather than risk that: he has to catch up with Taras. But he cannot press himself fast enough between the high wheel arches; he has to drop to the mud under the truck bed, belly down, scrabbling with knees and elbows, to get to the other side.

  When he emerges, finally, the ground opens out around him. Mykola finds himself crawling into a wide space: into the centre, where the Jews are to be counted.

  There are still trucks here, but fewer of them, and the vehicles are parked singly, not in rows: they are dotted across the churned land. And the Jews Myko sees are not running any longer: they are huddled by the trucks in clusters. They are huddled, and the police have got their coshes out.

  They hold them in plain sight, calling out new orders.

  “You were told. One coat, one jacket. One suitcase of belongings only.”

  The Jews are instructed to unbutton their coats here.

  “One set of clothes. As you were instructed.”

  Those found wearing more must hand their jackets over; they must turn out their pockets, too, and untuck their shirt tails.

  “How many shirts did you think you could get
away with?”

  Such a strange sight, all these crowds undressing, cowed and hasty on the mud beside the truck wheels. The strangeness of it shows in their faces.

  Why this? Why this as well?

  Don’t ask, don’t ask. Just get it over with.

  Myko scrambles to his feet, stumbling forward, his hands and tunic muddied; still looking for Taras and for the women he was chasing, he sights a group of women and heads towards them.

  The police are taking their shawls and skirts, worn layer upon layer, and they are taking blouses; wherever Myko looks, the police take more and more from them. They must strip to the skin, they are told now, without giving a reason, and some women cry: no one told them they would have to do this either. But others hush them, tugging one another out of their coat sleeves, pulling off their shoes and boots and woollen stockings; their bare soles sliding under them, their bare arms reaching, the first of the rain spitting down on their naked torsos.

  Myko sees the jut of their shoulder blades, and he thinks the first Jews must already have been stripped of their clothing. The old men who came first; that townsman who asked him. It must be their clothes he sees piled up there, inside the idling vehicles: that heap of sleeves and coat tails that the policemen are sorting through. But he does not see the old and naked Jews.

  Where are they?

  Myko looks to the last trucks, all empty, and he feels that clench again—tight and angry, confusing. It has him moving faster, still looking for Taras and a way back: he should not have come this far.

  Grabbing at handfuls of clothing as he passes, snatching them from the mud, Myko flings them onto the piles as he stumbles, knowing he should have stayed where he was posted, at the first trucks only: he did not want to see this. These policemen with their coshes raised, and the Jews bent under them. All the people here are ugly in their cowering and in their raging; he hates their fear most of all, and he wants only to get away from them.

  Fists still full of rags, he casts about himself for Taras—but then Myko sees there are SS watching over all of this.

  Great lines of them are forming: many more than have run from the factory.

  Soldiers come on foot from between the far trucks, kicking at the loose shoes and discarded blouses, and they make a wide and watching cordon between the undressing Jews and the last line of vehicles.

  They come on jeeps too, and in SS cars, overladen with soldiers, radios blaring. Marches and soldiers’ songs ring out across the churned ground as they come driving in from the scrubland beyond the last trucks; men swaying on the running boards, tumbling from the jeep-backs, spilling the bottles they drink from.

  Myko sees revolvers held skyward. Shots are fired.

  He falls back, instinctive, arms about his head, retreating; these soldiers must have been beyond the trucks the whole time, waiting there and drinking.

  Myko falls back further, as the jeeps swerve at the Jews first, and then begin to circle them. He hears the stall and stutter of the engines, and the disordered noise of the men doing the driving; men are still firing. Pistol shots sound out above the music, and the veering sends the discord first one way, then another, echoes reverberating back again from the truck sides, distorted; even the music sounds slurred to Mykola. Men in the cordon are laughing, and he backs away faster from the noise of them and the gunfire; Myko wants no guns pointed near him.

  The Jews want no guns near them either: Myko sees them flinching, stripped to the waist and filthy, their faces fearful, turning with the vehicles as they turn their circles. And even if no one told them, the Jews know that this is all wrong, all wrong—but all they want is for this to be over. Myko can see it in their wretched glances, in the way they look all the while to the next trucks, the next trucks—that last row behind the cordon of watching soldiers. He knows that this is their last hope: that when they get to those final trucks, naked and cold, they will surely be allowed to climb inside.

  A jeep swerves towards him.

  The soldiers in the back are pointing, and Myko picks up his pace, but the driver has seen him, and he veers now to overtake him, as if to round him up.

  “Dein Posten!”

  An SS man drops from the back to stop him. Swaying and grey, the soldier lands on the mud with his arms out while the radios keep on with their wailing, and then he grabs at the clothes Myko is holding, like he is asking, demanding: Well, boy?

  “Wo ist dein Posten?”

  Myko isn’t where he was posted; he shouldn’t be here, and now this soldier stands drunk before him, taking a fistful of his tunic.

  “Komm Jung.”

  The man starts pulling him across the muddied clothing, and Myko twists against his grip, but the soldier is too strong for him. Too drunk to be listening.

  “Komm nun.”

  He tells Myko to get a move on as they pass the huddled Jews and the line of SS bastards; Myko has to break into a run, almost, to keep up with his striding. And he doesn’t know if he’s being taken out now or back to his posting; if he’s being pulled out for not following orders. The radios blare and the man doesn’t turn or explain, he just tugs him further and faster, into shadow between the vehicle sides. Hauling him along the narrow gap between the wheel arches, fast enough to have Myko stumbling—and then out from the truck lines entirely.

  There the soldier drops him.

  Mykola lands, hard, and out in the light again: he finds himself cheek down and wincing at the feet of the SS man.

  “Kein schlafen.”

  The soldier leans over him. But it doesn’t sound like he is ordering.

  “Augen auf und trinken.” He dangles a bottle in Mykola’s eyeline, like he is offering. “Es ist bald vorbei, Jung.”

  He tells him it will soon be over; this is all Myko understands. But he is not being ordered. So he just lies where he was dropped, because he thinks this is safest.

  Face down, Myko smells the wet soil, newly dug over; the damp of rain on the way, not just exhaust fumes. He can still hear the truck engines and the radios blaring, but both are somehow distant. Around him it is brighter, it is quieter, and Myko thinks if he turns his face away now, then maybe the soldier will leave him. The Germans, the bastards, they can press the Jews between the truck sides without him.

  But when Myko turns his head, he sees only uniforms. Such a crowd of them.

  Myko sees police and soldiers, and a long trench in front of them. A long pit, shoulder-deep, freshly dug into the soil here.

  Four policemen stand with handguns inside the pit; a row of SS on the lip with their revolvers drawn. And at the furthest end? At the furthest end, Mykola sees a tangle of limbs, naked against the mud walls; a heap of thighs and wrists and torsos, of pale skin streaked with mud smears. All the Jews will be gone soon.

  He lashes out, thrashing about himself.

  But the drunk man still stands over him, his dark legs unmoving, telling him to drink more. “Trink doch.” Telling him it will soon be over.

  “Ist doch bald vorbei.”

  Myko cannot hear the remaining Jews, but he knows they are there: penned in by the trucks, that great wall of them, still roaring; they don’t see what awaits them. Not yet, not yet. It will be done swiftly.

  “Augen auf und trinken.” The soldier has hold of him, leaning over him, grey and worn and drunken. “Trink, Jung.”

  Myko pushes the bottle away, but he cannot push it far enough. And for all that he kicks, for all that his throat is raw and burning, he cannot fight against him; he can’t even turn his face away. The SS man holds him, and so do the earth walls, the earth floor, all the men he sees in the pit before him.

  Myko watches, he cannot stop himself, as another soldier takes up his position, another policeman swings himself onto the trench floor. The row of men down there is growing longer, and they pass a bottle too, hand to hand; Myko sees policemen he knows, townsmen he recognises.

  And then, near the end of the row, Myko sees Taras.

  His friend has his arm out,
reaching, and a handgun is pressed to his palm by the policeman beside him.

  Myko stops his flailing.

  He feels the SS man leaning over him, searching his face, but Myko does not kick against him.

  “Ja, du wirst bleiben.”

  The man issues no order, he only watches and waits as Mykola falls still; as though he knows how this works, he’s seen all this before.

  “Erst trinken. Dann auf die Füsse.”

  He says Myko is to drink first, then get to his feet again, and that it will soon be over.

  “Bald vorbei, Jung.”

  Mykola hears the man’s voice, and the trucks still roaring; he feels the bottle being pressed against his cheekbone. This time, he takes it.

  And then, behind him, Myko hears the Jews driven into the open.

  6

  Afterwards, there is only quiet.

  A grey silence, that hangs over the town roofs, shrouding the lanes and the alleyways.

  Osip hears it from where he huddles in his stove corner, how it clings to the house walls and the windows. All around him crouch his neighbours, bent and anxious, come to hide themselves beneath his shutters. They came here seeking refuge, and now they listen as well, breath held. Even the girl is still beside him, although it took such a long while to calm her.

  Osip had to pull her in from the yard; he thinks Yasia must have been out there when it started. She was ducked at the yard pump when he first saw her—when the first of his neighbours came pounding at his yard gate—and she had her arms up to shield herself from hearing, but it was as though she meant to shield herself from everyone. Yasia threw their hands off, and she would listen to no one, even once she was inside, shut away from the gunfire, from all those echoes scattering through the town streets, appalling. The girl would let no one hold her. Even Osip could not put an arm about her.

  Now she lies curled over—motionless, almost. For hours she has been like this. But Osip stays where he is beside her, and he thinks that she must hear the silence, even so; that it is over. She must know that the soldiers are done here, surely.

  It comes over them like a numbness. Like a deadening, come to cover them. Osip shuts his eyes and feels the weight of it, stone cold and quiet, falling across the town, the wide and flat lands around it. Sinking into the cart ruts, the ditches at the waysides, into all the cuts and the trenches. It presses down on everything around him. The beams and the lintels; settling into the gutters, even, and the runnels between the yard bricks.