The Second Winter, page 2
At the far side of the river, she continued on the road, then dropped down onto a path that led through a thicket of birch trees into a field that was lying fallow. She walked listlessly, and the sun baked her through her dress. She stared at the rocky path at her feet, but her thoughts were elsewhere. She didn’t look up until she was in the shadow of an old plaster barn. Catching sight of a boy dressed in clothing handed down from his older brother, she smiled, but the expression fled just as quickly. She hesitated, then took a few more steps, keeping herself hidden beside the barn.
Julian was lanky, as thin as a rail. He was about half a year younger than Polina, but already he was a few inches taller. This was a new development. Last summer, when they had played — which they often did, since they were neighbors and it was convenient for one of their mothers to look after both of them — Polina had hardly noticed him. His nose had always been runny, his hands were always dirty, his shirts had holes, he kept his pants up with a rope belt. She had begged her mother not to let him into the house. Now Polina found herself thinking about him even when he wasn’t there. When she was close to him, she liked to stand on her toes to see if she could still match his height. Since he had become taller, his shaggy black hair had thickened, and she had noticed his eyes, his white skin, his too-red lips. At night sometimes she fell asleep wondering if he was thinking about her, too. She approached him slowly. His back was turned toward her, and he didn’t hear her footsteps. In front of him, the chickens squawked.
Polina leaned into the wall of the barn. Bits of white plaster crumbled onto her bare shoulder like flour. She grasped a piece of embedded wood and squeezed until tiny splinters pierced her fingertips. Ten feet from her, crouched behind a fence post, Julian scooped up a handful of rocks, chose a black shard of flint, then took aim at the captive birds. Polina understood his intention, but when he raised his arm then jerked his wrist and sent the sharp stone hurtling into the coop, she gasped anyway. The missile struck the rooster, and when the rooster lifted its wings, a couple of feathers floated through the dusty air. It let out a shriek, leaped across the hard ground, pecked one of the hens — as if the hen had been the cause of its injury. When the rooster settled back down, Polina could see that the rock had left a gap in its feathers. A sliver of skin was showing, red with a trickle of blood. Julian was already weighing the next rock in his hand, getting set to whip it at the helpless bird.
Polina didn’t think to shout. She bounded from the shadows, closed the distance to the boy, grabbed his arm before he could fling the stone.
“Hey!” Julian twisted around as if old Farmer Madeja, to whom these chickens belonged, had caught him in the act. His expression went from startled to terrified to flustered in the space of a second. “Hey,” he said, more softly. “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” Polina asked him, without any pause.
Julian returned her gaze. He noticed how pale her eyes were. His own were bright. Their surface was as wet, Polina thought, as if he had been crying.
“Look at his wing,” she said finally.
Julian didn’t budge.
“Look at his wing,” Polina said again. This time, she let go of her doll and grabbed hold of Julian’s face and tried to twist him toward the coop.
“Stop it,” he protested. Her fingers dug into his skin.
“Look,” she insisted, “and I’ll let go.”
Julian capitulated, and Polina took her fingers away.
“You cut him,” she said. “You made him bleed.”
“He was hurting her.”
“What?”
“The rooster,” Julian repeated. “He was hurting her.”
But Polina didn’t hear him. The memory of her uncle Czeslaw’s hands on her rib cage, lifting her, overcame her. She had left her house — earlier today, only one or two hours before — and she had started down the road to find Julian at the barn, as they had agreed. Her uncle had ridden up behind her on his bicycle and asked her to climb onto the bike behind him. She hadn’t wanted to, but she hadn’t resisted when he hoisted her up. As lithe as she was, she was too heavy to be carried like a child. The steel rack behind his seat gouged her skin. She hated the feeling of his waist beneath her fingers, but she didn’t have any choice. If she didn’t hold on to him while he was pedaling, she would have fallen. The cobblestones became a blur below the tires. They crossed the bridge, then wound through the streets on the other side of the river to the apartment where Czeslaw lived with his wife and two ugly sons. Her uncle squeezed her neck as he led her up the stairs. The rancid smell of dirty laundry assaulted her. The light had been dim. Czeslaw brought her through the kitchen into the bedroom where he and her aunt slept together on a mattress on the floor. She had never been in this room before, and it felt foreign to her, as if she had entered a different apartment altogether, one that didn’t belong to this same city she knew as her home. There was a doll lying on the mattress that caught Polina’s eye.
After that, the next thing Polina could remember was Czeslaw sitting in a wobbly chair beside the mattress, pulling on his shoes. He pointed at the doll, which was now on the floor. It had a face made of china, hair cut from a horse’s tail, a body stitched together in silk, stuffed with cotton. When she didn’t move, he picked it up, shoved it into her arms. It’s for you, he told her. Don’t you want it? It’s a little girl. See? Just like you are. Then he had lifted the doll’s red dress to show her the fabric body underneath, and his laughter had made her shiver. Beneath the dress, the doll’s torso and legs had the clumsy shape of a cow udder.
“He was trapping one of the chickens against the fence,” Julian said.
“What?” she managed.
Julian liked the way her lip stretched taut over her chipped tooth and uneven bite. The incisors on either side of her front teeth jutted into the skin, turning her upper lip white. It reminded him of Polina as he remembered her years before, with one front tooth missing, the other not yet fully developed. “He was pecking at her. Look.”
She followed his finger to one of the hens at the far side of the coop. Its head and neck were bald of feathers where it had been attacked.
“He was going to kill her. If I didn’t throw the rock, he would have eaten her, I think.” Julian was still gripping the second rock. He had made his point to Polina. He lifted his arm again, took aim.
“Don’t,” she said.
Julian squinted at his friend. Hadn’t she heard him? “He needs to learn his lesson,” he said.
Polina shook her head. “Just don’t,” she said. “I don’t care what he’s done. Just don’t hurt him anymore.”
Julian let the rock slip from his hand. It landed on the hard, dry earth at their feet with a quiet thud. He fingered a small object in his pocket. “I was going to give you something,” he said. “Now I don’t want to.”
“What is it?”
Julian tightened his fingers around the smooth chunk of raw amethyst at the bottom of his pocket. “I found it in the river this morning,” he said. When he drew out his hand, the worn stone caught the sunlight like a jewel.
Polina took it carefully from his palm. She didn’t thank him for the gift, but just slid it into her own pocket.
“I thought maybe you would want to keep it,” Julian said.
Realizing that she had dropped the doll, Polina snatched it up by its arm.
“What’s that?” Julian asked her.
Polina didn’t answer.
“You’re too old to play with dolls,” Julian said.
“I’m going to call her Polina,” Polina said.
“She doesn’t look anything like you.”
Polina shrugged. “She doesn’t cry,” she explained. “Neither do I.”
That same night, Polina couldn’t sleep. The smell of cigars climbed the stairs. Her father’s voice shook the walls of the small house. Polina liked the sound, because it comforted her and she could picture his face and his eyes with the cadence of his words. An hour before, as the family was finishing dinner, Czeslaw had knocked on the door with a bottle of vodka, store-bought and unopened, and after he and his younger brother swallowed a few shots, he had pulled a box of cigars from his pocket, too. At the kitchen table, Polina had gone so quiet that her mother asked what had come over her. Her father grabbed her cheek between his index and middle fingers and gave her skin a soft twist. After so much sun earlier in the day, the gesture had lost its tenderness. Her skin felt chafed. Ahhh, leave her alone, Ania. She just doesn’t like to see her father drink. That’s it, isn’t it, sweetheart? His eyes fastened upon her. You don’t like to see me drink and laugh and enjoy the company of my brother? Polina didn’t answer. Here, he said to her. Why don’t you help me with this splinter? He held up a hand and showed her a long, thin sliver of wood that ran half the length of his finger beneath a thick layer of skin. I can’t reach this one myself — I need your little fingers. She stared beyond the hand into her father’s eyes. Then she ran from the kitchen, up the steep staircase to the small room she shared with her sister. Through the walls, she heard her uncle’s voice. She’s a strange girl, I think. When she’s quiet, you can’t really imagine what she’s thinking. Then her mother’s. She keeps her own company most of the time. Except for Julian. She doesn’t even play with Adelajda. Now, the rumbles through the walls had become less distinct. Polina listened with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling through the gray air, aware of her baby sister’s shallow breathing in pockets of silence.
After some time passed, she slipped from beneath her covers and climbed into bed with Adelajda. Her sister was only five — there was nearly a decade between them, and Polina had little natural affection for her — but, suddenly, she wanted to be next to her. In her sleep, Adelajda shifted on the mattress, dropped an arm onto Polina’s shoulder. Her hand squeezed her biceps, twitched. Her skin was damp with sweat. Polina lay still, concentrated on the feeling of her sister’s fingers on her arm, listened for her father’s voice, tried but wasn’t able to figure out what he was saying.
When she finally closed her eyes, she was already asleep. She didn’t wake when the front door slammed and her uncle stumbled out of the house into the unlit street. A few minutes later, her arm slid off the side of the narrow bed. Her fingers grazed the floor, but still she didn’t wake.
December 1939.
The snow fell in flurries. At noon the sky was so dark that Polina thought that it was night. She sat beside the window in the kitchen and stared outside at the white blanket settling over the courtyard behind the house. A fire smoldered in the stove, remnants of the coal her father had lit at dawn. Polina’s mother was on her knees in the bathroom, scrubbing the floor. Her hair, covered in a kerchief, was coming loose from the bun, and she tucked a long strand behind her ear, then continued with her work. She was the firstborn child of a rabbi in Warsaw, but Ania Rabinowitz Dabrowa wasn’t a practicing Jew. Outside the family, no one knew of her ancestry. Polina’s father was Catholic, and that is how Polina had been raised. Her mother had never wanted to make things difficult for Aleksy, even before the occupation. She had fair skin and blue eyes, blond hair. There was no reason for anyone to know that her family was Jewish. When Aleksy was working and the Dabrowas had money enough for meat, Ania made a point of going to the butcher herself to buy pork. This morning, although there was nothing for Polina at midday, they had eaten well, and the air was still smoky, sweet with the smell of bacon grease from breakfast.
Polina listened to the scrape of the brush on the floor in the bathroom. She knew that she should be helping with the chores, but she had other things on her mind. Her mother had forbidden her to leave the house — it was cold, and she didn’t have gloves — but, beyond the icy glass, the snow looked as soft and inviting as a thick layer of sugar. It was difficult for Polina to resist. When she caught sight of Julian, traipsing across the courtyard in his thin jacket, she made up her mind. She slipped into her coat, grabbed her mother’s scarf, and, careful to latch the door behind her, ran to catch up to her friend.
“Which way are you walking?” she asked him, when she joined him at the side of the small house. The snow was deeper than Polina had imagined, and Julian was hugging the building under the eaves to avoid the deepest drifts.
He glanced at her without acknowledging her. Since his father had disappeared in September, he had become somber — this was only three months before — but he was still glad for her company. He shrugged. He was half a foot taller now than the adolescent girl next to him, and his coat was too small for him and his shoulders poked through the material like sharp branches. He had aged years, it seemed, since his father had gone. “Into town,” he said.
“Why?”
“The market’s today.” His lips were even more red than they usually were. Polina had the impression that they possessed the only piece of color in the otherwise gray day. Even the tile roofs had turned to charcoal. “Anyway, my brother was picked up this morning to work on the road. I thought maybe I could find him.”
“Are you going to help him?”
“Don’t ask so many questions.”
When Polina slipped, Julian grabbed hold of her arm, then held on to her until she found her balance again. The cobblestones were icy. Polina thanked him with a smile, but he didn’t return it. She felt suddenly young next to him, even though she was older. She focused on the path in front of them. She didn’t want to lose her footing a second time. In the distance, the rigid edges of the bridge emerged from the fuzzy whiteness like a shadow.
The snow had stopped falling and the sky had cleared a little by the time they reached the center of town. It was market day, but with supplies diverted to the German army, the square wasn’t as busy as it usually was. Farmers with vegetables and staples had sold out their stock early, and most had already taken their carts and headed home. The merchants who remained were hawking wares no one wanted — the dregs of the harvest or cuts of meat that few could afford. A group of German soldiers stood huddled on one side of the square, smoking cigarettes, stamping their heavy boots, glancing at the Polish villagers. The tips of their rifles, strapped over their shoulders, poked above their heads like the strings of a marionette. As oppressive as the occupation was, Polina was barely aware of it. After the fighting had stopped, life had settled back into a routine. It wasn’t the same as it had been, of course. From time to time, the family was woken by gunfire, and they didn’t eat like they used to. Her father spent most days at home, her mother’s face had become gaunt. But Polina was too young to appreciate the deeper effects of the changes, and she had seldom seen German soldiers up close. She stopped at the far edge of the square, grabbed Julian’s arm. Even from this distance, she could see how foreign they were. They didn’t belong here. Julian gawked at them, too. The two children stood still so long that their toes began to freeze.
“Come on,” Julian said.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m hungry.”
Julian slowed when they reached the first stalls. The farmers eyed the young boy and girl suspiciously. Flour and spice, one of the merchants said. Meat, I’ve got meat, I’ve got pork, I’ve got sausage, I’ve got meat, another repeated. The children paused to watch a woman in a heavy skirt and wool shawl haggle with a man for a large roll of orange fabric, then zigzagged through the stalls toward the center where there were more people. A fire was burning in a large steel drum, and smoke rose above the crowd in a dark, greasy plume. Its heat warmed their faces. Bread and pastries, bread and cookies, bread and pastries.
“Do you have any coins?” Polina asked.
Julian didn’t answer. His eyes were focused on a cart that was nearly empty, except for a few soggy loaves of bread. The red cloth the baker had spread underneath had gotten wet in the snow, and it was covered with a sludge of crumbs and flour.
“I wish I had a grosz that I could give you,” she said.
Julian was jostled backward. He had walked right into someone — his attention had been fastened on the scraps of bread. Polina hadn’t seen the man either. He was wiry, barely taller than Julian, an elderly man with gray hair, dressed in a black jacket. Polina noticed the armband on his biceps first — the yellow Star of David — then his long, unkempt beard. His hands were like talons. He grabbed hold of Julian, gave him a shake. “Watch where you’re going, eh?”
Julian pulled himself from the man’s grip, then gave him a shove. The man slipped and nearly fell, but when he recovered himself, he didn’t say anything more. He simply stared at Julian, and Julian looked back at him. Polina didn’t breathe again until the old man finally let Julian alone and started back on his way through the crowd.
“Meet me in front of the school,” Julian said.
“What?”
Julian didn’t wait for Polina to understand. He squinted at the baker, made certain that his attention was focused elsewhere. Then he darted to the cart, grabbed whatever he could fit into his hands, and bounded off in the other direction. By the time the baker realized what had happened, Julian was already gone. Polina watched him disappear behind a line of stalls as the baker’s voice rose into a shout. Hey, you there, hey! Worried that the commotion would attract their attention, she turned toward the soldiers, but they were laughing obliviously, engulfed in a cloud of steam and smoke. The baker, who had taken a few steps in pursuit, returned to his cart, and Polina started across town in the direction of the school.
