The Winter Guest

  Once Ruth had loved the snowfalls, the way a heavy silence blanketed the house, muffling the outside world. Under other circumstances, the notion of being snowed in their cozy home would have been an attractive one. But now she hated it, for it seemed a constant reminder of just how trapped they really were. It was late January, the new year having slipped in weeks ago without notice on a night like any other. They should have left a month ago when the weather was better, Ruth reflected, and they were not as weak from lack of food. Now they would never survive the journey.

  “That was good of you,” she said to Michal, noticing how his lips were blue around the edges and his teeth chattered. The wood was not damp or green. How far into the forest had he gone to get the best pieces, and how had he managed to carry them all home? Michal had been trying in quiet ways to take over Tata’s role, an effort that had become more pronounced now that Helena had become a ghost of herself. Ruth led him into the house and he let her pull off his coat and move him closer to the fire.

  She poured him some warm beetroot tea and slid him a few of the nuts that they had been savoring since Christmas, then surveyed the room. Dorie and Karolina sat on the floor close to the stove, playing with the two threadbare dolls that had once been her and Helena’s most prized possession. But their movements, too, were slow. Was it Helena’s malaise rubbing off on them, or was all of the hunger and hardship wearing them down, squelching their youthful energy? Looking at their drawn faces, her heart broke.

  Helena had returned from that last trip to the city with a small unexpected satchel of groceries, which she handed to Ruth without speaking.

  “Where did you get those?” Ruth asked.

  Helena had shaken her head. “The black market.” Her answer explained only the food, and not how Helena had gotten the money. But her sister was in such a state over Sam, Ruth did not press. At the time, it had seemed like a feast. They had eaten bread first, before it grew moldy, and then the cheese. Only a handful of potatoes remained.

  “They closed the border,” Helena said grimly now. She was staring out the window at the endless blanket of white, speaking blankly into the air before her. Whether she had heard the news recently in the village or weeks ago was unclear. So what? Ruth wanted to reply. It was not as if they had any prospect of escape without passes.

  Ruth saw the searching in her sister’s face, knowing Helena was wondering what she had done wrong. It was a haunted feeling Ruth recognized all too well from the days following Piotr’s departure, the nagging question of whether he might have stayed if she had somehow been different. Did Helena wish she had gone with Sam when she’d had the chance? She might have reached safety now, perhaps even sent for the others. Or she might have lost them forever.

  It was her fault, Ruth knew. Helena would not say it, but Ruth could see the constant recrimination in her eyes. If she hadn’t so stubbornly fought Helena’s idea of leaving Biekowice, they might have reached safety by now. She looked over at pale, thin Dorie sitting by the fire and the full despair of the children washed over her. They would not see out the winter under such circumstances.

  Ruth went to Helena’s side and put her hand on her shoulder. “I can’t feel him anymore,” Helena said quietly, her voice hollow. “He really is gone, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Ruth replied firmly. She searched Helena’s face, desperate for some way to undo all of the pain she had caused. She put her arms around Helena. There was no good to come from keeping Helena’s hopes alive falsely. Better she should accept the hard truth and move on to the next chapter of their lives.

  Ruth considered again telling her sister everything, ripping to shreds what she had shared with Sam. Wouldn’t it make things easier? “Helena...” Confession was in Ruth’s nature. Even as a child, she was always tattling to Mama when they did something wrong, even before they’d gotten caught. Then she stopped. The truth would ease her pain but it would only hurt her sister. She was stuck with her secret guilt, alone.

  Finally, she could stand it no longer. “Come,” she said briskly, eager to break the heaviness that seemed to suffocate the entire room. “Let’s walk to the pond.”

  The children looked up at her with surprise. It had always been Helena, at least in better days, who had urged them to go outside, Ruth preferring to remain home snug by the fire. And she hesitated to suggest it now, especially when Michal had barely gotten warm. She did not want them to overexert themselves and burn extra calories they could ill afford to replace, aggravating their hunger. But she desperately wanted to do something to lift some of the sadness and return the color to their cheeks.

  Outside Michal and Dorie ran ahead, dragging the sled Tata had fashioned years ago out of some spare wood. Dorie stumbled. Michal held out his hand and helped her navigate down the steep path, his pace slow and patient. When she climbed onto the sled, he began to pull it.

  Ruth walked more slowly alongside Helena, who carried Karolina on her shoulders. She looked out across the hills, beyond the cloud of chimney smoke that hovered above the village to the smooth gray sky beyond. Gazing up at the tree line, she imagined the same stillness up by the chapel. Not that the soldier was there anymore. A flush of heat, equal parts desire and shame, ran through her, as it always did when she could not stop her thoughts of him.

  But was it truly her fault that Sam was gone? Ruth considered the question now for the hundredth time. He could have been planning to leave all along. But even as she thought this, she suspected that his departure was somehow related to her. Either he had felt so guilty at what had happened he had chosen not to face Helena again or... She could not finish the thought. His kind face appeared before her, his devastation at betraying Helena so apparent. Ruth had been angry and had spoken impetuously that day at market, regretting the words as soon as they had come out. Had he been arrested as a result of her foolishness? She had heard no such rumors. Under normal circumstances, news of the discovery of an American soldier by the Germans would have spread like wildfire through the town. But she seldom ventured out anymore and had scarcely been back to market since that day for fear of further questions. So it was possible she simply hadn’t heard.

  No, he had left on his own, Ruth insisted silently, as if convincing herself would somehow make it true. Maybe he had recovered well enough and knew he had to flee before the weather worsened. But deep down she knew the timing was too close to be a coincidence.

  The snows had come just days after Helena discovered him gone. Just as well, she reflected. It would have been almost impossible for Helena to get back and forth to the chapel now. Without her visits, he surely would have starved.

  They walked wordlessly toward the pond, a small inlet of water that formed off of the stream. The bare branches of the willow trees, laden with snow, dipped low to the frozen surface. As Michal and Dorie slid on the ice, pretending that they had skates, Ruth glanced out of the corner of her eye at her sister. Was it better or worse for Helena? At least with Piotr, Ruth had known why he broke things off. Sam’s sudden departure would leave Helena always questioning why, wondering whether he was safe. But unlike the finality of Piotr’s farewell, Helena still had hope. Ruth could see it in each furtive glance up the mountainside, as though she thought Sam might appear, limping down the path toward her. She looked up each time there was a scratch outside the cottage door. When he didn’t appear Helena’s face would fall and she’d retreat inside herself, speaking little and doing the bare minimum required for their survival.

  Ruth’s stomach turned and she wondered if the bit of milk she’d mixed in with their porridge that morning had soured, though none of the others seemed affected. But the discomfort was more than digestive—she was tired these days in a way she could not explain, that made her legs leaden and fearful to sit down lest she fall asleep. Was it the grippe? She could not afford to be sick—there was no medicine to be had and no respite from the things that had to be done f
or the children. It was the exhaustion of trying to do too much without enough food, she decided. All she wanted to do was sleep to stave off the cold and the hunger.

  Michal and Dorie had begun a snowball fight, their troubles momentarily forgotten. Ruth bent and formed a small snowball and handed it to Karolina, who licked it and squealed in delight. Then she formed a second snowball and gave it to Helena. “Go on,” she urged. Her sister tossed it halfheartedly in Michal’s direction.

  Michal threw a snowball in retort, and it crashed into a tree above Ruth’s head, raining a cool shower of white down upon her. As she ducked behind a tree to avoid being hit again, something at the base of the trunk caught her eye. It was a dead animal, stiff and motionless on a hard, unforgiving bed of snow. A raccoon or gopher, maybe. Animals that had succumbed to the harsh winter were hardly uncommon. The lifeless body might have startled her once, but after witnessing the man hanging from the swing set, a dead dog seemed unremarkable.

  She started to turn away, then stopped at the sight of a white paw. It was the soldier’s stray dog, the one who had slept by his feet that night. How had it come to be here? Sam did not seem the type to simply abandon the animal. Grimacing, she used her boot to bury it beneath the snow so Helena could not see.

  The children’s laughter subsided and a few minutes later they trudged back to their sisters, rosy-cheeked and tired of the snow and the icy water that seeped into their torn boots. The muted sky had shifted to the dark gray of late afternoon. As if by silent agreement, they all turned and started for home.

  Helena stumbled, her foot catching an unseen tree root. Ruth reached out to steady her. “Careful.” Ruth’s eyes met her sister’s and she pled with her silently to be strong, despite the pain that she understood so well. I can’t do this without you. Guilt surged through her. She had brought this on, and she had no right to ask anything of Helena now.

  When they reached the house, Helena tended to the fire while Ruth undressed the children from their wet snow clothes and put some soup on the stove to warm. Every meal was soup now—beet soup, cabbage soup, potato soup—thin and watery and indistinguishable from one another, designed to stretch the little that was left and to make the belly warm if not full. She glanced at the alarmingly low supply of potatoes in the cupboard. She should talk to Helena again about killing the mule for meat.

  Ruth picked up a stack of plates she’d washed that morning. The location where Mama always kept them, halfway across the kitchen, had never made any sense to Ruth. She paused, then moved them to a spot closer to the sink.

  “We could go, even without him,” Helena said in a low voice after they sat down for dinner. Ruth stared at her in disbelief. Had she gone from depressed to delusional? But her eyes were clear and eager.

  “We don’t have passes. We don’t even know the way.”

  “Yes, of course.” The light in Helena’s eyes extinguished and she withdrew into her melancholy once more.

  Suddenly Ruth pictured Sam above her in the dim light of the chapel. Heat rose in her, mixing with bile, and she pushed back from the table. “Excuse me.” She ran outside in time to be sick, heedless of the stench of her own vomit rising in the steam from the snow.

  She straightened, gasping for air. It was not the food that had made her ill. She had been so tired the past few days, even before the climb. It was as if something was pulling the life from her, feeding on her as the way she sometimes felt the children did, only much more internal and intense. Children, she thought, Maria’s swelling midsection appearing unbidden in her mind.

  Ruth bent over to wretch again, then straightened, counting. Six weeks. Her stomach had ached weeks earlier with what she thought was her impending flow. But it had not materialized and she had been so caught up in everything that had happened she had ceased to notice. Panic rose in her. But it couldn’t be, not from one time, not from her first time. But as soon as she thought it she had no doubt: she was pregnant with Sam’s child.

  Fear seized her then. Sam was gone. Her child would have no father. How could she possibly manage? And they couldn’t hide it from the neighbors—they knew there was no man, they would ask questions and the dates wouldn’t bear out her lying and saying it was Piotr. She would be disgraced. No, it could not possibly be true. She pushed the thought, too awful to contemplate further, from her mind.

  Ruth returned to the house, wiping her mouth and trying to smile. “Are you all right?” Michal asked with concern.

  She forced herself to stop trembling. “I’m fine. Just an upset stomach.” Helena was staring at her strangely and she wondered if her sister did not believe the excuse.

  They all went to bed early that night, tired from the walk to the pond. “The wood,” Helena remarked in the darkness, and Ruth wondered how long it had taken her to notice that the pile had been replenished. Was Helena simply grief-struck or was her mind slipping as Mama’s had done?

  “Mischa brought it.” Ruth considered pointing out to her sister the extra work her weakness meant for the rest. Then she stopped—Helena had enough to worry about. Helena did not speak further but soon began to snore. It seemed in recent months that they had switched places, Helena sleeping more soundly as if preferring her dreams to the life they had here, Ruth tossing restlessly with her guilt. She felt her own eyes grow heavy.

  Sometime later, a noise in the darkness jolted her from sleep. Ruth looked up to see if Helena had gone to the water closet, but her sister lay beside her sleeping. She slipped from bed, checking all of the children beneath her fingertips.

  Ruth walked to the kitchen. A loose shutter, perhaps. Closer to the doorway, she stopped again. This time, footsteps crunching against the snow were unmistakable. She opened her mouth to call for Helena but no sound came out. Fury rose in her as she remembered the policeman who had come, his near-violation. She considered going for Tata’s gun, but even as she did, she knew she would never have the nerve to use it. Instead, her hand closed around the poker by the fireplace, cool and hard. She would not let him hurt her again and she certainly wasn’t going to let him near the children.

  There was a tentative knock at the door. For a moment she considered not answering it, but it would not stop whoever was on the other side. Taking a deep breath, she swung the door open, then stepped back and raised the poker. But before she could lower it and swing it at the intruder, something hit the ground by her feet with a heavy thud.

  Ruth reached for the light and it flickered on. She gasped.

  There, on the floor of the cottage, lay the American soldier, Sam.

  22

  Hearing a crash, Helena leaped from bed and raced to the front room. Ruth hovered over something on the ground, poker raised. As the lump unfolded, Helena gasped in disbelief. “Sam?”

  She rushed forward to help him, concern and joy mixing with her shock. She touched his cheek to make sure that this was not a dream. He was here, really here. But his face was nearly as pale as the day she had found him in the forest and his eyes were half-closed. “Are you all right?”

  Sam opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Helena assisted him into a chair. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist, and buried his snow-covered head against her, clinging to her tightly.

  Feeling his chill against her midsection, Helena panicked. “Ruth, he’s freezing.” Her sister stood motionless, still clutching the poker and staring. “Warm some water, please. And bring blankets.”

  Karolina cried out then. “I’ll get her,” Ruth said, hurrying from the room.

  Helena raised Sam’s face to her, running her hands over his cheeks and chin, clearing the thick ice from them. She had expected never to see him again. She attempted to bat back her tears without success, then let them flow, heedless as they cascaded downward, pelting onto his cheeks and melting the snow that clung there. He looked different. Heavy stubble covered his jaw, reminding her of when they fi
rst met. His complexion was eerie pale. He was sweating profusely despite the cold and his breathing was labored, as though he had run a race. The trip, from wherever he had been, had taken everything he had, and perhaps more than his newly healed leg could handle. But he was here.

  Ruth had not reappeared, so Helena rushed to pull a blanket from the cupboard and wrapped him in it. She pulled his wet boots and socks from his feet. His toes were a worrying shade of gray and she hoped he would not lose them to frostbite. She knelt and began to rub his feet to warm them.

  As she worked, she studied him. It seemed so strange to see him here, in a house with real walls, a roof and furniture, instead of the bare chapel. Where had he been all this time? Tata’s coat was gone and in its place he wore a thick brown leather jacket, worn at the elbows and seams. He looked more like the other Sam, the one she did not know. But even now, huddled and freezing in the chair, he seemed to fill the room with a kind of light.

  “Thank you,” he said in a hoarse voice, finally able to speak. “I’m sorry to come here unannounced—”

  “Sorry?” She cut him off, her voice harsh with disbelief. “I’ve been frantic for some news of you. I had no idea what happened to you. I’ve been sick with worry.” Tears welled up in her eyes again. “I thought you were dead.” There was a moment of awkwardness between them, for even though he had returned, his sudden disappearance still felt somehow a betrayal.

  “Excuse me,” he apologized, looking over her shoulder. Helena was suddenly ashamed of the small room with its simple, worn furniture. But it wasn’t the cottage he was noticing. Behind her, Dorie had appeared. She stared at the strange man who seemed to fill the room, eyes wide. Her lower lip quivered. “Hello,” he said gently.

  Helena stood up. “Sam, this is my sister Dorie.” Ruth came back into the room, holding the baby. “And these are my other sisters Karolina...and Ruth.” Helena could not disguise the note of reluctance in her voice.