“Only three?” Gretel was impressed. They would have killed everyone in the building if it was in the ghetto.
“They only had three in the jail. It’s getting harder to make grand gestures. Fucking Shkopy.” The man blew his nose again onto the ground. “I can read snow like the Bible, and I tell you, it’s going to be a blizzard, Magda. Go home.”
He turned and stalked off.
“Who’s he?” Hansel wanted to know everything.
“That’s Feliks. He’s been angry since they made his Jew run away.”
Gretel stared at Magda, who sighed and told the story.
“He had a friend. A Jew. Jacobe was the only man in the village who could play chess with Feliks and make the game last longer than ten minutes. They played every week, sometimes all night. When they weren’t playing chess, they sat and talked for hours. People said that when the end of the world came, Feliks and Jacobe wouldn’t stop talking for it. Everything was quiet. We were waiting for the Germans. When we woke up, that first morning after the Russians had gone, Jacobe had run for it. Telek, the water carrier, saw him creeping into the woods at dawn. Jacobe was afraid of the Germans.”
“He’s in the woods?” Hansel asked.
“In Russia if he’s lucky. Or dead. But Feliks has no one to play chess with now. He hardly speaks. He hates them for chasing off his Jew, his friend. Feliks had a brother, but his brother is gone. Feliks’s real brother, the brother of his mind and spirit, was Jacobe, and Jacobe ran away.”
“Where did Feliks’s real brother go?” Gretel asked.
“Killed.” Magda said no more, but the boy wouldn’t leave it alone.
“Why?”
“Because Feliks’s brother wasn’t perfect. So they killed him.”
“What was wrong with him?”
“He was crazy. Not crazy exactly, just simple. Foolish. His mind didn’t work right. The Germans talked to him, and saw he was simple, so they shot him. They shot all the crazy people.”
“There was a crazy man—” Hansel stopped. He couldn’t talk about the cantor who sung under the window. The three of them walked on in silence, Magda thinking of Feliks, and the children thinking of Feliks’s brother.
The store was only a wooden hut with barrels behind the counter. Magda handed over the cards and waited. She hoped there were beans this week. A lump of fat. Her hands already had chilblains and so did the children, but there would be no fat for their hands this winter. The children had to eat all the fat. Bleeding fingers wouldn’t kill them, but they were still growing and couldn’t get too thin.
Gretel stood looking at the barrels. Magda, watching her, shook her head. The boy wouldn’t grow so much, but the girl was at the age to sprout up. She would die if she didn’t get enough food. Probably already stunted. She looked younger than she should, and her body would keep growing whether there was food or not. All the children in the village looked younger. And all the adults looked like old men and women.
“He said that the girl should hand out the sugar,” Magda told the clerk. She didn’t like it.
“Truly, Magda? Don’t get me killed.” He touched his neck nervously where an ulcer suppurated and rubbed his collar.
“Truly.”
“Come on, girl.”
He took a small jar and a spoon.
“Go with him, Gretel.” Magda had to let her do it. The Major might ask.
Gretel followed the clerk outside, where there were children milling around the steps.
“No sugar until you’re lined up.”
The village children fell into a long line. Magda counted them. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty-one. Only thirty-one left and almost no babies now. Women didn’t get pregnant if they could help it, or if their men were in Siberia or dead or hiding in the woods.
Or the babies were dead. Most of them died from lack of milk. Polish women’s tits were wrinkled sacks, empty like the cupboards in the houses. All the good food had been stolen away into Russia and was stolen now for the German soldiers at the Russian front.
The clerk stood Gretel on the top step and handed her the jar and spoon.
“One level spoonful for each child. In their mouth. Not in their hands. Put it in their hands and the little cockroaches sell it.”
Gretel nodded. She scooped up one small spoonful of sugar, tapped it carefully against the inside of the jar to shake off the rounded top, and looked up.
“Begin,” said the clerk. Magda didn’t know his name. He was a Pole brought in to manage the food by the Germans. He had no ties to the village, so he had no one to be kind to, no one to save. He was called the Clerk. His name had disappeared with the war.
A child stepped forward and turned his face up to Gretel. He opened his mouth, and Gretel gently poured the sugar onto his tongue. She could see the saliva that had flowed as he waited, a pool in his mouth that caught the sugar. Another child stepped up, and Gretel poured a spoonful of sugar in his mouth. At the end, she held a jar with only a little sugar in it. She looked at the Clerk and he nodded. Gretel turned to Hansel and tipped half the sugar into his mouth. It was more than a spoonful. She watched his eyes grow round as the pure sweetness, so much fuller than the sweetness of saccharin with its metallic taste afterward, filled his mouth.
“More,” he said.
She nodded. It was only fair. She had had the candy. She tipped the jar and he crunched the rest between his teeth and licked the edge of the jar to take off any crystals that clung.
She turned to give the jar to the Clerk, and saw the Major watching from the road. He stood in the mud, smoking, and smiled at her.
“He prowls the streets,” the Clerk whispered to Magda. “He’s guilty about leaving his men at the front. He can’t sit by the stove and stay warm. He prowls.”
Gretel did not smile back at the Major this time. He walked forward, and the village children were suddenly gone. Moving quickly, the soft mud hiding the sound of their wooden shoes and patched boots, they were just gone.
“She is a good girl. She gives generously and isn’t greedy. So she gets a reward.”
His fingers, smelling of tobacco, rough on her lips, pushed another candy into Gretel’s mouth, and she nearly gagged.
“Danke,” she whispered, and in an hour the whole village knew that Magda had two brats staying with her and the Major was taking an interest in the girl, and the girl spoke German.
It was a mistake. All of it. But no one said it out loud. Magda had always been separate from the village. Perhaps any disaster would fall on her head alone, outside the circle of the houses. It was her mistake, and she could keep it out in the dark wetness of the forest with the wild ponies and the bison and the ancient hornbeam trees that blocked out the sun. It was hers and they didn’t want it.
The Car
“Like being hit in the chest with a board,” Magda muttered. Her feet, wrapped in layers of rags and socks inside her boots, were frozen stumps.
“Listen.” Hansel looked at Magda and took Gretel’s hand.
Magda finally heard it. Breaking the silence of the late afternoon was the mutter of a car.
“Hide.” Magda waved her hands at the children like she was shooing chickens.
Before she could get out of the ditch and into the trees herself, the children were flattened out, not a trace of them in sight. Magda felt her numb feet breaking through the crust of ice in the bottom of the ditch and the muddy water rushing into the cracked soles of her boots. She barely had time to step behind an oak tree before the car rounded a bend in the road.
It was going slowly, and she listened to the engine sound with dread, leaning her cheek against the cold bark of the tree. Cars meant that something would be done to someone. It was a black Grosser Mercedes. The roof of the car still held the shine of layers of wax, and the mud splashed halfway up the sides didn’t conceal all of the polished finish.
Two soldiers in front. Two in the backseat. The flash of black and silver. Worse and worse. An SS officer. And—Magda stared bu
t couldn’t see the other person clearly. Just a shape.
The car struggled slowly but steadily over the ruts. The motor never faltered. It went on down the road in a left-to-right motion, trying to avoid the deepest holes. Then it was gone and the sound turned into a low hum until the silence of the forest fell upon Magda and the children again.
“We have papers. Why do we hide, Magda?” Hansel knocked the snow off his chest.
“Cars mean people who cause trouble. If they don’t see us, then we have no trouble.”
“There was a woman.” Gretel stared after the car. “And an SS.” Gretel looked steadily at Magda. She didn’t want to frighten Hansel. “Not like the Major. Not army, Magda.”
The girl was sharp. But so was everyone else in Poland by now. SS. The skull worn proudly to show that they defied death and were not frightened by it. But to the Poles the SS were the Angels of Death, the winged skeleton who comes for your bones and drags them out of you while you squeal like a hog being butchered.
“The woman may be his wife. Perhaps it’s just a trip to see the country.” Magda looked at Gretel and saw the child was not fooled. Germans didn’t leave the comforts of the city in the winter to visit a muddy Polish village where they had to eat black bread with sawdust in it.
“I’m cold.” Hansel shivered and clung to Gretel.
“Come on. Feliks was right. Snow’s coming. A lot of it. I can smell it.” Magda sniffed deeply and breathed in the almost metallic scent that had been growing stronger all day. Snow was good. It slowed them all down. Things were postponed during the hard snow. The war almost stopped.
And that was too bad in a way. The Russians had been killing the Germans, and now they would have to stop. Magda smiled when she thought of the springtime and the way that the Russians would rise up like animals shaking the snow off, killing again when the armies moved.
“The Russians,” she said. “They’re bastards and can’t be trusted, but the Germans have made a mistake with the Russians.”
“What do you mean?” Gretel carried the basket and the flour and tried to hold Hansel’s hand too so he would walk faster and not fall behind.
“It’s like a woodcutter who meets a wolf in the forest, and the man’s too proud to run, so he grabs the wolf by the ears.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing for a while. There they stand. The wolf waits and the woodcutter doesn’t dare turn loose of his ears. But sooner or later the woodcutter tires and his hands slip. Then the wolf eats him up.” Magda laughed. “Come on. I can’t get sick. I want to live long enough to see the Germans turn loose of the Russians’ ears.” The first flurry of snow was covering their heads when they saw the hut ahead of them.
Major Frankel was sweating. He wiped his forehead with a gloved hand and cursed. There was a streak on the whiteness of the glove now. The SS cared about these things. It had been a miracle that he had found a pair of white gloves. Who the hell cared about white gloves?
“Wiktor. You Polish piece of shit!”
“Major!” Wiktor stood at attention behind the desk. He looked terrible.
“You Polish monkey! Straighten your desk.” The Major always screamed at Wiktor in German. Wiktor’s German was better than the Major’s Polish, and Wiktor always responded in German. Sometimes Frankel wondered where a jailbird like Wiktor had learned such good German.
There was nothing on the desk except for two metal trays and two pens lined up neatly beside them. Not a piece of paper in sight. Wiktor moved the trays an inch or two and lined them up perfectly with the edge of the desk. He moved the pens an inch toward the trays.
“You asshole of the world.”
The two men stared at each other until they heard the sound of a car engine.
Major Frankel forced himself to move down the hall to the outside door. Should he open it? Should he send Wiktor and remain in the office? Would the SS officer think he had nothing to do if he stood outside and greeted him? Should he be busy inside? “This fucking country.”
Maybe it wouldn’t go badly. This SS officer might be a comrade, a brother. He might even wear a ribbon worth having in his second buttonhole.
Major Frankel glanced down. It wasn’t regulation. But the medal had been sent home after the winter of 1941-1942. There wasn’t much use keeping the medal to get wrecked at the front, so he had sent it home to be framed and put on the wall. But he kept the ribbon. They all had. It was tied through his buttonhole where it always was. Dirty now and limp.
But noble, Frankel thought. Noble, goddamnit. Winter of ’41—’42 at the eastern front had been so terrible, so huge, that only a token would do. It wasn’t fitting to wear some hunk of metal with eagles and swastikas. Just a dirty piece of cloth to show you had been there for the dirtiest war ever survived, but every soldier knew what that ribbon meant. It meant you had fought the Russians through the worst winter of the century, and you were still standing. Wearing the ribbon tied through the buttonhole wasn’t regulation, but it was the only decoration he’d ever wear.
Wiktor opened the outside door, and Major Frankel saluted. “Heil Hitler,” he shouted.
The man was too high ranking. SS Oberführer. Almost a general. What was he doing here? With only a car and two soldiers?
“Heil Hitler.” The Oberführer returned his salute.
“I am honored, Oberführer, that you—” the major stopped.
“Let me present Sister Rosa.”
Frankel felt the sweat roll down his back under his shirt. Who the hell was she? Not a nun. But the brown cape and brown dress were odd. The Brown Sisters. He couldn’t remember exactly what they were for, not nursing, something to do with the SS. He didn’t know how to greet her, and his right leg began to tremble like a horse’s leg when it sees a piece of paper fly across the riding ring and is getting ready to bolt.
“Heil Hitler,” the woman screamed.
“Heil Hitler,” he screamed back. Major Frankel stared at the Oberführer’s chest and had to stop himself from smiling. Oak wreathes, swords on top of oak leaves, swastikas, glittering lines of medals. Everyone a piece of crap. A bunch of damn medals for physical fitness. Athletic medals.
The SS man walked up the steps in front of the woman and felt a moment of disgust. It was obvious why the Major was in this dung heap of a village. He was a cripple. Hideous looking with that scarred face. And sweating like a pig, of course. The Major jumped for the office door too late. The SS man opened it and swept inside.
The Oberführer smiled again and turned to let the Major, who was almost walking on his heels, see the smile. Now the Major would sweat even more. And the insolence of it. Wearing his greasy little rag in his buttonhole like he was someone. After the war all these butchers and postal workers would leave the army, and it would be run by professionals.
I should have gotten the door, thought the Major. He was so hot he felt his eyeballs throbbing. I should have opened it. Maybe not. Maybe it was the soldierly thing to do. Men in the field. Everyone paying less attention to things like that. Comrades in arms. He looked around the office. Wiktor, ragged and almost green with fear, his nails black and the desktop scarred and unpolished. Some lint in the corner.
“I’m sorry for this office, Oberführer. It’s impossible to keep clean.”
“The world tells us that everything about our Reich is impossible, but the new German finds only possibility. Only possibility.”
The Oberführer looked at Wiktor and waved his hand. “Go get three women. Quickly.”
Wiktor ran from the room, and Frankel winced. By God, the bastard had jumped.
“I’m sure you’re right, Oberführer. Any correction would be appreciated.”
“You saw, of course, that the man did not salute and respond to my order. We’ll take care of that. Just a detail, but details are the bricks that build success.”
He’s like a fucking training film, the Major thought. No one’s talked that way since last winter.
The woman was still stand
ing. Frankel didn’t think that his grandmother would have worn such an ugly bonnet. He smiled at her, and she did not smile back.
“Sister Rosa will need accommodations. She’s helping me with my efforts.”
“Of course, Oberführer.” Sucking his cock every night, Frankel thought. Sucking his ass if he wants. Ugly cunt. Won’t smile at anybody but the SS.
“If you don’t need me, Oberführer, I will take a walk and look at the village.”
“Of course, Sister. Your eagerness to work is always commendable.”
The woman left the room, her brown cape sweeping around her. Face like a mule’s bottom, Frankel thought. It was starting to snow. Walking around. What the hell for? What sort of work?
A gabbling sound came from the hall, and three women were shoved into the office by Wiktor. One of them kept trying to put her body between the Major and the youngest woman.
“Ladies.” The Oberführer smiled, and Major Frankel saw the fear in their eyes.
First it was stark fear, fear from the black and silver that the Poles must see in their nightmares now. But then Frankel saw another thing in their eyes. It was—
Almost a softening. Frankel glanced at the Oberführer and noticed for the first time how handsome he was. With his hat off, his wavy hair sprang up, dark and thick. Pale skin and dark eyes. If his hair had been blond he would have been a recruitment poster for the German army. Handsome cocksucker. Well, a lot of the SS were good-looking. They didn’t take pimply humpbacks. Stalingrad was good enough for the ugly Germans.
The women stared and the Oberführer smiled.
“Ladies.” He went closer and lifted his hand as if he would take theirs. The first woman seemed to think he was going to take her hand and kiss it. She flushed.
Instead his hand went to the woman’s breast and he pinched her nipple between his thumb and middle finger. The woman gasped but did not move.
“Ladies. There has been some sort of mistake. And you will correct it. Yes?”
The Oberführer spoke in German, and Wiktor looked at Frankel.
“Do you wish Wiktor to translate, sir? I doubt these women know German.” The Major prayed to God that Wiktor would translate precisely with no clever additions. The Oberführer might speak Polish himself, and Wiktor could be shot on the spot for incorrect translation. That would be damned inconvenient for getting all the paperwork done in the next months.