The Winter Guest

  “Not that story. Our Christmas story.” Dorie was asking about their Christmases past, the happy days that she could not quite remember and the spaces that Ruth and Helena could not quite fill.

  “Once upon a time, there was a mother and a father, with five little children,” she began. “Each Christmas, they had a great feast of carp and mushroom soup.” As the children’s eyes grew heavy, she tried to weave a tale of happier times that would not remind the children of too many things they now lacked.

  When they were asleep, Ruth returned to the main room where Helena sat in the rocking chair before the fire. She considered raising the issue of the soldier again, then stopped, realizing it was futile. She hesitated, thinking of the man she had seen hanging from the rope, and Father Dominik’s refusal to help. Maybe Helena was right about the dangers here. She wanted to tell Helena that she was ready to go, and that they needed to leave now.

  “Helena, about leaving...” She stopped midsentence and looked over. Helena’s eyes were closed and her mouth open, snoring slightly. Ruth took the extra blanket from the cedar trunk and covered her sister gently, straightening her head so it didn’t press against the wood. Then she blew out the candles and went back into the bedroom.

  18

  The children were gone.

  Ruth had put them to bed earlier, as she did every night. Then she had returned to the kitchen to wash the dishes and sweep. Not waiting for Helena to return from the city, Ruth changed into her nightgown and made her way to the bedroom. But when she pulled back the duvet, the bed was empty, the imprints of their tiny bodies still warm. She choked on the scream that seemed to rush forth from her bowels.

  She sat bolt upright in the darkness, reaching wildly for the children that lay on either side of her. Feeling their warm skin, her body went slack with relief. It had been a dream, the same one she’d had each night since Helena had broken the news about their mother. Thankfully her scream had been imaginary, too, and had not woken them.

  Ruth lay back down, trembling. The children were safe, but everything was far from all right. Mama was dead. There was always a moment each morning as she opened her eyes when she did not remember the truth. Then it quickly faded and the awful realization rushed over her anew like cold water.

  Were they any worse off with Mama gone? Ruth drew the faintly musty blanket closer around her. Mama had been in the hospital for so long that the children had grown accustomed to functioning without her. As long as she had been in the hospital, though, there had been the thinnest sliver of hope she’d get well. There was some part of Ruth that had known, even as she’d kept her mother’s dresses freshly hanging in the armoire, that she would never return. But she’d clung desperately to the vision of Mama walking through the door, putting her arms around Ruth and letting her be the child again. Now it was clear that it would always be this way, all of the responsibility their parents would have borne now eternally hers and Helena’s.

  Ruth lay awake in the darkness, still shaken from the dream. Helena slept on the other side of the children like a bookend, her breathing even and uninterrupted. She smiled and mumbled, then laughed faintly. Ruth bristled. There was so little to be happy about these days, even in one’s sleep. She must be dreaming of her soldier. Ruth considered the man she had never seen with a twinge of envy, a shadowy image of a tall, handsome soldier forming in her mind. Why Helena? It might have been Ruth who had stumbled upon the chapel if she had been the adventurous one, instead of shut up in the house taking care of the children. But it was Helena who was always out and finding things, even when they were little. No, he hadn’t chosen Helena at all. She had simply been at the right place at the right time.

  Karolina stirred beside her, pushing her small feet against Ruth’s stomach with surprising strength, as though she was trying to work her way inside. Pressed by the need for the toilet, Ruth sat up again reluctantly. She put one foot on the icy floor, feeling for her shoes. Then she froze. Someone was there, standing in the doorway to the bedroom. Ruth stood up with a start, wondering if Michal had gone to check the fire, but he snored undisturbed beside her.

  It was someone else, Ruth realized. Her breath caught. Had the policeman come again? She hesitated, wanting to make a break for the gun on the mantelpiece but not daring to step away from the children. “Hello?” she called softly into the darkness, fighting the urge to scream, lest she wake the others. There was no response.

  Ruth steeled herself, then took a step forward, still barefoot. A shape filled the doorway to the bedroom, familiar and unmistakable. Her heart soared. “Tata...” She waited for him to speak. He stood silently staring, as if exhorting her to do something. She stepped toward him. “Tata,” she said again, closing her eyes and reaching out. Her arms closed around cold air. When she looked up again, the shadowy image had disappeared.

  Ruth sunk to the chair by the door, weeping now. The image was gone, but it lingered in her mind with a certainty that chilled her. Was she going mad? She wanted to believe that Tata had come. Ruth had desperately wished that Mama would visit her in a dream, to tell her what to do or even just sit with her for a bit. But it was as if that part of her was blocked.

  Ruth wiped her eyes and bent to put on her shoes. She walked from the bedroom, the smell of the pine boughs that still sat on the mantel two days after Christmas filling her nostrils. She put on her cape and walked outside to the toilet. As she returned to the house, Sergeant Wojski popped unbidden into her mind. The encounter with him, his awful hands drawing closer, replayed nightly in her dreams. Ruth had told Helena that he had been to the house, but she could not bring herself to share the rest of the story. Would Helena think that she allowed the attention, even invited it? She had done what was needed and distracted him so he would not notice the children—but that didn’t make her feel any less shameful.

  She returned to the house and splashed water on her face at the basin. As she neared the bed, Ruth studied the sleeping figures in the predawn light. Her eyes rested on Helena. Something had shifted between them since Helena had told her about the soldier, a distrust, silent and persistent. Helena had kept a secret. Or maybe more than one: where had she really been the night she said she was trapped in the hospital? Though they had always been different, she and Helena had always been united by their common goal of keeping the family whole. Ruth would do anything to see them survive and stay together—but would her sister? Once she thought she knew the answer. Now she was not so sure.

  Ruth climbed back into bed and drew her knees to her chest for warmth. Would Helena simply decide one day to keep going and not come back? Her sister was not demonstrative, spare with her hugs and affection. But there was a caring in the way she tirelessly made sure they had enough wood and food. And she was always thinking three steps ahead, anticipating the worst, looking around the corner for anything that might be a menace to their safety and well-being.

  No, Helena loved them. But did she now love the soldier more? Helena had never been interested in boys—until now. There was something about this man that made her sister willing to risk everything else in order to help him. And she wanted them all to leave, an idea which was undoubtedly influenced by the soldier. Go to America, become a teacher, Helena had said. Become. Ruth had never considered in her life the notion of becoming anything, other than perhaps a wife and a mother, dreams which seemed out of the question now. It was always Helena who had been going and doing.

  Here at least they had the house and one another. Why couldn’t Helena see that? Because she’d always been restless, wanted bigger and more. Even before the soldier, she had liked going to the city each week, not just to see Mama, Ruth suspected, but for the excitement. And she would not give up, surely, on the notion of getting the children out. Helena was tenacious. When she got ahold of an idea, she clung to it stubbornly, a dog with a piece of meat i
n its clenched jaws. Ruth could continue to resist, but Helena would wear her down, or simply go around her. She might take the children herself and go with the soldier, leaving Ruth all alone.

  Ruth climbed from bed again, all hope of sleeping gone. It was not yet dawn, but the sky behind the hills had begun to fade. Suddenly restless, she dressed and went outside. She paused uncertainly, surveying the trees silhouetted black against the sky. Fresh snow coated the ground. It was too early, in fact, for market, even if she had not used their ration coupons for the week. Impulsively, she started toward the hill. The fresh air was brisk and heady. Her hands grew light because there was no one clinging to them. Ahead the silence of the forest beckoned.

  Ruth started into the trees. At the knoll the path split—the wider fork to the left, she recalled, joined the main road to the city. Overhead, a wind she could not feel tossed the tops of the pine trees, causing them to dance wildly with one another.

  She walked down the narrower path, navigating between the fallen branches and stones. She had not understood until that moment how arduous the journey Helena took each week really was. Dawn had broken, but the trees clung to the darkness, holding on to the night for a bit longer. Ruth’s ankle twisted and she caught herself to keep from falling down into the snow. Moisture seeped into the cracks in her boots. This was not her world, and for a moment she considered turning around and going back before anyone realized she was gone.

  But then she stood and kept walking, the trees seeming to pull her in and hurl her forward. Suddenly she was not timid, but walked lightly among the roots and brush as she had when she was a girl, playing with her sister, before she had become ladylike and afraid. So this was what it was like for Helena—despite the harshness of the path and weather, she felt almost free.

  It was not until she spied the chapel that she realized her plan: if Helena could not part from the soldier, then Ruth would do it for her. She would tell this man to leave them alone. If he truly loved Helena, he would not want to endanger her further.

  Ruth reached the clearing, then stopped, imagining what it must have been like for her sister, coming to the chapel for the first time. The ground was covered by a fine, loose coating of snow and, looking at the unbroken white, Ruth knew that Helena had not been here in the past day. Ruth hesitated, ready to turn back for home, but a silent hand inside seemed to push her forward, stiffening her resolve.

  Ruth knocked on the door of the chapel, and when there was no response she pushed it open. The soldier sleeping lay in the corner. He did not look intimidating as she expected, curled on one side, his forearm under his head for a pillow. He was handsome, beautiful, really, in a boyish way, with dark curly hair and a faint smile even as he slept. A dog nestled by his feet dark with a lone white paw, as if dipped in flour. As she took in the man’s mouth and jawline, she was swept off her feet with a desire that she had not known since Piotr, or maybe ever. Her breath caught.

  The man wore a familiar brown scarf around his neck, she noticed then. It was the one she had knitted for Piotr. Anger rose in her. How dare Helena give her scarf to this stranger? Her sister would not stop, it seemed, until she had taken everything.

  The man stirred in his sleep. As he did, the dog leaped to its feet. It eyed her warily and she wondered if it might try to bite her. But it scurried past her and out the door.

  As Ruth stepped backward to avoid the animal, her foot brushed against a familiar teacup that had been left on the ground. The sound reverberated throughout the chapel.

  “Lena?” The soldier opened his eyes suddenly. Alarmed, he reached toward his waist. A gun, she realized.

  “Shh. It’s okay,” she soothed, and at the sight of her he seemed to relax slightly. She felt as if she knew the soldier already; it had not occurred to her that coming here to confront this stranger unexpectedly might be dangerous. “I’m...”

  He was staring at her, puzzled. The cape, she realized. The bright blue was such a sharp contrast from Helena’s crude brown wool coat. Not wanting to alarm him, she slipped the cape from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. His face relaxed.

  “Lena, come here,” he said, and her sister’s ordinarily plain name was so full and sensuous on his sleepy tongue that it almost made Ruth blush. Ruth stepped forward and opened her mouth to tell the soldier who she really was, and demand that he stop seeing her sister.

  Then she faltered. There was something about the broad contour of his shoulders that reminded her of Piotr. All of her anger dissolved and another wave of longing rose up inside her. She moved closer. This, or something like it, should have been hers. She desperately wanted to hold him just for a moment and feel what it was like to be inside a man’s arms again, to feel a touch that was not about threat or shame.

  She sat down on the cold ground beside him, not daring to breathe.

  “Helena, are you all right?” he managed.

  “Yes.” The lie was out before she could stop it. But she did not want to lose the softness of his voice that came with his thinking that she was her sister. She reached out and, almost involuntarily, stroked his shoulder. Her hand jerked back, as if on its own. Then she reached out and touched him again.

  At her touch, his eyes widened. It was her hands; they had always been so much improbably stronger than her sister’s and the intensity of her touch was unexpected to him. She softened her caress to match Helena’s, and his face softened. She had forgotten how it felt to have this power over a man. Suddenly she was light-headed.

  The soldier smiled sleepily. He was handsome with a kind of gentleness that she had not seen in Piotr. He looked at her with a light in his eyes that made her heart flutter. But Ruth knew that it was for her sister. She was seized with the impulse to lie down beside him. As she did, his hand ran over her back and it was as if his touch was wiping her clean, erasing the horrible stain of all that had happened with the policeman and Piotr, and making her anew.

  Then she stopped. This was madness.

  But the soldier reached for her hand. “Kochana,” he said in surprisingly good Polish. Darling. That one word told her everything she needed to know about what had transpired between this man and Helena. It belied the extent of the feelings he had for her sister, and it seemed to confirm everything that Ruth had suspected, her worst nightmare that her sister was indeed planning to leave without her.

  Ruth considered again telling him who she really was and confronting him. But he reached out and pulled her closer. His scent and the warmth of his touch overwhelmed her. “I...” she began, but his lips were on hers now with an intensity that indicated it was not the first time. She waited for him to realize the difference, that the kiss was not Helena’s. Instead, pushed forward by his desire, his hands traveled lower. He rolled on top of her now. The heat that rose in her as he lifted her skirt was reminiscent of the one time with Piotr in the barn. But Piotr’s crude touch was nothing like this. The soldier’s gentle fingers stroked her skin, inflaming her. She should stop the soldier, as she had Piotr, and tell him who she really was. She was too far gone now, though, wanting this to happen; his movements were frenetic, even as he tried to restrain himself and not hurt her. She found herself carried away by desire, a moment of wanting and being wanted, of feeling whole again in a way she hadn’t thought possible. To know hands on her once again that meant tenderness and not threat. There was a sharp pain as he entered her, then a dull ache that seemed to radiate outward to her stomach and legs. Passion swept over her, washing away her jealously, her grief. She buried her head in his neck and let herself be carried by it.

  When it was over, he lay motionless, his torso still pressed against hers. Then he rolled aside, still breathing heavily. “Darling,” he repeated. “I’m so sorry, I never should have...” The remorse in his voice told Ruth that he and Helena had never let things go this far. “Are you okay?”

  Ruth nodded, praying that he would m
istake her silence for passion, or being overwhelmed by the moment. She needed to get out of there, quickly. But he threw one arm over her neck, preventing her escape. Then he wrapped his fingers around her own. “I love you,” he said, and the intensity of his words broke her heart, for he meant them to her sister and not her.

  He closed his eyes as if drained by their coupling, returning to the sleep she’d interrupted. She watched him, imagining. There had been an instant connection between them, a magic to his touch and the way their bodies fit together, as if they had known each other for ages. Perhaps she might be the right woman for him, after all. She closed her eyes, lulled by the warmth of his arms.

  Ruth was awakened by a scream. She reached instinctively for the children, thinking that she was back home in Biekowice and that the Nazis had come. But her hand brushed the hard earth and she sat up, remembering lying with the soldier, their bodies pressed together. The clouds had shifted, freeing the early-morning sun, and the pale light now flooded the chapel.

  The soldier was sitting upright, staring at her neck. He had seen her clearly now, seen the butterfly birthmark, and knew she wasn’t Helena. His eyes widened. “You... Who are you?” he managed finally.

  Ruth covered herself. Surely after everything that had happened, the passion that had transpired between them, he could not be angry. But his face was a mask of horror, mouth contorted with revulsion. She stood, buttoning her dress with shaking hands. She wanted to make him understand why she had done it, but that was impossible for she did not know herself. Should she apologize? She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed at last, her voice barely a whisper.

  “Get out!” he roared with an anger she had never heard.

  Then she turned and ran.

  19

  Ruth raced from the chapel down the hill, stumbling over stones and fallen branches. After several minutes, she paused to catch her breath. She listened for footsteps, wondering if the soldier would come after her, imagining he might apologize for his outburst. But there was silence. How dare he? It was simply inconceivable that he would reject her, or like rough, tomboyish Helena better. For a moment, he had seemed different than other men. But once he had taken what he wanted he had pushed her away. He had been willing, even eager, yet he acted as if it had been her fault. No, he had used her, used both her and Helena, really. What other explanation could there possibly be?