The Song of the Stork Page 8

  “This house though,” Eva continued, “Isn’t it the crazy guy’s?”

  “Yes… no… I mean he’s not mad, he’s not crazy, really… He just can’t speak.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s gone to Selo to buy some goods.”

  “He’s sheltering you?”

  “Yes.”

  Eva thought about this. Yael could almost see the thought process moving across her face.

  “For how long?”

  “I’ve been here about a year now.”

  “You’ve been here a year and nobody has given you in?”

  “Nobody comes here, Aleksei doesn’t communicate much with the world.”

  Eva nodded. She drained the broth and handed Yael the empty cup. Sitting up, she swung her feet down to the floor. Her stockings were threadbare, her toes poked through holes in the tattered cloth, black with dirt and stained from the shoes she had been wearing.

  “I need to wash!” she said emphatically.

  While Yael heated up the water, Eva undressed carefully. She showed no embarrassment in front of Yael. Glancing up, Yael found her stood naked beside her. Her ribs showed clearly, her skin was dark with dirt, marked by the track of lice and in places sores marked her skin angrily. Still she was beautiful. She gasped when she stepped in the water.

  “Oh!” she said. And then again, “Oh, you cannot know, you cannot begin to know how that feels.”

  Yael smiled, pleased, and yet still she felt a sharp, little twinge of irritation that Eva seemed adamant she could not know how good the water felt. She recalled almost a year ago how she had felt stepping for the first time into the bathtub. Something that even now, a year later, she could not take for granted.

  Taking a jug from the kitchen shelf, Yael poured warm water down over Eva’s long dark hair. She scrubbed her head hard with soap, rinsed it with hot water, then combed it through with a fine-toothed comb Aleksei had bought for her on a previous trip into Selo. The water in the tub was soon black, and Yael urged Eva out. She wrapped her in towels, heated more water and poured a new bath.

  For three hours Yael bathed her, combing through her hair again and again, pulling out lice by the handful, cutting back her ragged nails and cleaning the dirt from beneath them, tending to the bruises and cuts and sores on her flesh. By lunchtime Eva’s flesh shone pink from where it had been scrubbed. Her hair glistened in the light from the window. She smelled of soap. Yael combed her hair into one thick plait that hung down her neck, showing off the elegant narrow curve of her throat and her defined, small shoulders. She dabbed perfume on her skin.

  “Yael, you will never know how good it is possible to feel!” Eva declared with a grin.

  Yael smiled, glad to see Eva so happy. She was radiantly beautiful. She pushed the naked girl through into the bedroom, and indicated the wardrobe.

  “Find yourself some clean clothes to wear,” she said. “I’ll try to wash some of your clothes and see if they are salvageable.”

  Piling Eva’s old clothes on the table, she threw away the underwear and stockings which were beyond repair. She examined the dress, but that was so infested with lice that in places it seemed as if the material had been stitched together from living things. Disgusted, she took the clothes and fed them all into the fire of the stove. She began to prepare some food when Eva stepped back into the room.

  Yael started. Eva was dressed in the flowered silk blouse and trim black skirt Aleksei had kept wrapped in brown packaging. The clothes fitted her well. With her hair pulled back from her face, her skin pink from the hot bath, she looked elegant. As if she had just stepped off a Parisian street.

  “Eva…” Yael stuttered.

  A sound at the door caused both girls to turn at once. The door opened and silhouetted against the bright snow, Aleksei stood, a box cradled in his hands.

  18

  Aleksei stopped in the doorway. Yael saw the look of fright slither across his face. He took in the clothes and glanced at Yael, a quick, flashing glance that spoke of incomprehension and betrayal.

  “Aleksei…” Yael dropped the wooden spoon with which she had been stirring a thick soup. It landed with a clatter on the wooden floorboards.

  Eva stepped forward to meet Aleksei on the threshold. Yael was startled at her easy confidence.

  “Hello,” she said, with a smile, in slow, well-enunciated Polish, such as one might use to a child.

  Aleksei stepped back a pace, but Eva had already taken the box from his arms, and lifted it easily onto the kitchen table. She turned her back on Aleksei, as if he were of no further interest, as if there could be nothing odd in her sudden appearance in his house.

  “Look Yael,” she said, delighted, “just look what he has brought, your crazy goy.” She addressed Yael in Yiddish.

  Yael hurried to Aleksei and pulled him in, closing the door. She could feel him shaking.

  “Her name is Eva,” Yael said softly, guiding him across to the chair and sitting him down, peeling the cold overcoat off him. “We were at school together. I found her on the doorstep last night. She was freezing. She would have died if I had left her out there. I’m sorry about the clothes, I didn’t know.” She found she was gabbling and this was upsetting him more.

  Eva looked up. “I’m sorry,” she said smiling, “I didn’t introduce myself… it was just the sight of this food! You don’t know what the sight of sausage means to a young girl these days!” she joked. She held out her thin, clean, elegant hand. Instinctively, almost like a child, Aleksei held out his. He glanced up nervously, as Eva held onto it for a moment. She appraised him coolly, openly, an eyebrow rising ironically. Yael wondered that she could have remained so vivacious.

  An old familiar feeling shuddered through Yael, and at once she felt as though she was back at school. She felt with painful clarity her girlish idolisation of Eva, her envy of the older girl’s beauty, her desire for acknowledgement, the bruising knowledge of her insignificance in her presence.

  She turned to Eva now, gathering herself. “Those clothes, Eva, I didn’t mean them. They are special. They…”

  Aleksei waved his hand, stopping her. Yael felt her heart shift a little. Aleksei stood up. He paused a moment, glancing at both girls, then turned away from the table and went through to the bedroom, where he kicked off his boots and lay on the bed, his back turned to the kitchen door.

  “Is he all right?” Eva mouthed. “He looked a bit put out.”

  “He’s not used to company,” Yael whispered.

  She boiled some water and made some sweet tea and took it through to Aleksei, but he did not turn to her when she settled down on the edge of the bed. When she laid a hand on his shoulder, he shrugged her off. His eyes were closed firmly and he would not open them. For some time Yael sat beside him, stroking his arm softly. From the kitchen she could hear sounds of Eva bustling around, stirring the soup and then brushing the floor.

  “You shouldn’t,” Yael said, coming through into the kitchen. “You need to rest, to get your strength back.”

  “I feel fine,” Eva grinned.

  Later that evening Yael made up a bed on the floor in the kitchen and she and Eva settled down there. Glancing through the doorway into the bedroom, she longed to be by Aleksei’s side, to feel him by her, to wrap her arms around his body and fall asleep against him, but she felt she could not do this in front of Eva. Eva’s presence had unsettled everything and she could not help but feel a sharp sense of resentment.

  “It was all so sudden,” Eva murmured in the darkness as they lay side by side on the kitchen floor. “We were all convinced we were going to Plotsk, that the Germans were simply removing us from the battlefront. There was some talk of ghettos, that we were being taken to work camps, like those in Germany. Some of the men had spoken of making a break for it, of trying to overpower the guards, but then other’s argued it would be dangerous. Far better to wait until we were in Plotsk, and then see what the situation was. Think of the older ones, somebody sai
d, they won’t be able to escape into the forests. And the little ones, somebody else said.

  “When we were a few kilometres outside Selo they stopped the column. Even then there was no hint of what was to come. We were directed off the road. Some of the men began to get restless. Michael Leizer and some others started shouting. One boy, one of the Lieberwitzes I think, made a break for the forest. They shot him. That was when we began to get scared.

  “I held my mother’s hand. She kept whispering, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all right, there’s nothing to worry about.’ She couldn’t stop. Even when we were down in the bottom of that god-awful pit and they were digging the holes, throwing the spades at us, she kept on and on.

  “I can’t even remember what I was thinking. We’re going to die, I think. Just that, over and over again, we’re going to die, while my mother kept saying, ‘It’s going to be all right, don’t worry.’ Even when they started shooting. Even after the shooting had started and people were falling down all around us, she stood there, her hand crushing mine, whispering, ‘It’s going to be fine, don’t worry, my love, it’s going to be all right.’

  “Then I was down on the floor. There were bodies on top of me. I didn’t know if I had been shot. I lay there as the bodies crushed me. I was soaking wet and I didn’t realise it was blood – that I was soaked from head to toe in blood. I lay there with my eyes squeezed tight.

  “Then the shooting stopped. For some time it was quiet. Totally silent. And then the breeze picked up in the tops of the trees and I heard the sound of birds again and some men muttering. I didn’t move. Not a muscle. I lay there, trying not to breathe. The men were poking around and then I heard a gun shot. Isolated shots. Like they were picking off the last of the dying.

  “Later they started to throw earth over the bodies. It got dark. For hours they worked and then I started panicking that I was going to be buried alive and I didn’t know what to do, to start trying to get out or to stay there. The weight on top of me was crushing. It was hard to breathe. The blood had started to dry and it was sticky and my skin itched. I twitched my fingers and found that they were still clasped in Mama’s. I moved them, trying to pass a message to her, trying to see if she was still alive too, but there was nothing. Her hands were cold, but so were mine, and my nerves were crushed and I had pins and needles, so it was hard to tell much.

  “It was late, very late, when I started to move. They had stopped shovelling. I hadn’t heard their shouts for quite a while. I lost track of time. The sky was dark though. I inched myself up, struggling to move without making a sound. It seemed like an hour or two before I managed to move more than a foot. The layer of soil was thin over the top of the bodies. As far as I could tell there was nobody around, but I couldn’t be sure the Germans hadn’t left some guards. I slid across the bodies into the undergrowth. There were others there. The forest floor seemed to be alive with Jews slithering along on their bellies like snakes.”

  She stopped. Yael glanced at her face. It was expressionless. Eva gazed up at the ceiling, her hands folded across her breasts. She looked calm and collected, but under the sheet Yael could feel her body shaking, a tight, rapid vibration. Yael moved closer and stroked her forehead, smoothing her hair away from her face. Eva turned and smiled at her softly.

  “My parents?” Yael whispered. “Did you see anything of them?”

  “No, Yael,” Eva whispered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t.”

  On that day Yael had arranged to hike with a group of friends to a lake and when they backed out she decided to go on her own. It had been a willful action, but the weather had been fine and bright and she had enjoyed the time alone. It was late afternoon, as she was returning, when she bumped into a farmer the family knew. He had looked at her as though she was a ghost. He took her arm and pulled her to the side of the track and she had been scared.

  ‘Go!’ he had whispered hoarsely at her. ‘They are taking everybody.’

  It had meant nothing to her. She had shrugged him off, pulling her arm away. She hurried back along the path through the trees, towards the town.

  When she joined the main road it was quiet. The sun was beginning to fall. By the side of the road was a suitcase. It had been dropped and the clasps had come undone and the clothes spilled out on the verge; a cream blouse, women’s underwear. A darkness stirred inside her. Further down there was another bundle. A dog was nosing at it and each time it moved a dark cloud would rise into the air above.

  She recognised the woman. It was Abigail, the baker’s wife. She had a large hole where one of her eyes had been. Flies buzzed. Her whole face was crawling. Yael bent over and retched. The sound of an engine startled her. Turning around she saw an army truck driving out from the woods and down the road in her direction. Instinctively she ducked into the darkness of the trees and watched as it passed. In the back the men were drinking; their faces were hard and dark and their eyes stared blankly. One of the men cracked a joke and the others laughed mirthlessly.

  It was the next day that she had run into Rivka in the forest.

  After that, everything had changed.

  19

  Eva took extraordinary care over her appearance, Yael thought. She watched as the elder girl conducted her ablutions the next morning. Yael had slept badly on the thin covers on the kitchen floor and woke with a headache and a sore throat. Eva, however, declared she had not slept so well in months. Yael brewed some tea, a cup of which she carried through to Aleksei. He nodded his thanks to her and for this she was grateful and rested her forehead against his briefly.

  Before dressing, Eva washed carefully. If she was aware of Aleksei’s presence she showed no signs of being bothered by him.

  “In the forest, there was little room for modesty,” she explained.

  Yael sat at the table. Eva pulled up the hem of the shirt she had slept in and bathed her shapely thighs, as she threw back her head so her dark hair cascaded down her back, and wiped her long throat with the damp cloth. Aleksei glanced up, then looked away startled and embarrassed. But Yael noticed his eyes flick back occasionally, as if caught on strings and yanked, without his willing it, in Eva’s direction.

  “Eva,” Yael whispered, and nodded in Aleksei’s direction.

  “Oh I’m sure he’s seen worse!” Eva laughed.

  She dressed carefully in the clothes from the brown paper package; the silk blouse that fitted her neatly, accentuating her breasts, the skirt which displayed her small waist.

  “Yael, sweety!” she said. “Help me with my hair.”

  Over the next few days, despite her reluctance, Yael enjoyed having a girl’s company. Eva was happy to talk, and as they worked together, cleaning the house, they shared memories of Selo, of school and the friends they had. Eva told her about life in the woods; of how there were whole families surviving in the wild, three generations of a family, living in a narrow dugout, like frightened rabbits. She talked of the partisans she had come across.

  But as the days passed Yael felt the house shrink. Life was circumscribed by Eva’s presence. Aleksei was agitated. Often he would storm out of the farmhouse and she would worry that he would disappear, but he would come back an hour or so later and linger in the doorway, watching them.

  Yael longed for the silence of her life with Aleksei. The quiet hours when they would look out across the snow-bound fields, listening to the sound of one another breathing. When the feel of his hand, not more than an inch or two from hers, would make her shiver. She longed for the books, the hours spent reading, his quiet concentration, the soft, sibilant sound of her tongue on the smooth verses.

  And Eva would take little care. She would wander down to the well in the daytime and linger there, staring out into the woods. Aleksei would stand by the window, clearing his throat, scratching at the skin on his arms. He seemed to fear confronting her, and did not go out to remonstrate silently with her, as he had with Yael. It was Yael who scuttled out, nervous, glancing up towards the road, to see that nobody passing by
would see them.

  “Eva come in,” Yael begged, in a low voice, tugging at the sleeve of the coat she wore.

  “Leave me.”

  “It’s not safe, Eva.”

  “Don’t order me around,” Eva turned on her viciously. Her eyes were alive and fierce. Yael was stung by the sharpness of her tongue.

  That evening Eva pulled out the tin bath and heated up some water. Yael was out in the woods gathering firewood, to supplement the logs Aleksei had cut in the summer. The quietness of the woods soothed her. Aleksei worked by her side silently. Occasionally their bodies would draw close to each other, graze as they picked up the sticks, and Yael would feel a fizz of delight sparkle across her skin. In a little clearing, they stopped in the shadow of the trees and stood gazing out at the brilliant whiteness of the moonlight on the snow. Their breath hung in frosty clouds. A fox darted across the clearing, not noticing them.

  When they returned, Eva was sitting naked in the tub. Aleksei stumbled in the door and would have turned and left, but Yael coming up so close behind him not understanding why he faltered, and keen to be out of the freezing night, pushed him forward. It was not until the door was closed behind her, that she glimpsed Eva’s ripe flesh and her smile like a split peach.

  “Eva!”

  “I didn’t expect you so quickly.” Eva laughed and stepped from the tub reluctantly, reaching up to take a towel from a hook on the wall, so that her full, lovely body was on show.

  Aleksei hurried through to the bedroom and pulled closed the curtain. “Eva, how could you?” Yael said sharply.

  “What?” Eva wrapped the towel around her. “How was I to know you would walk in? Besides,” she added tartly, “you think he hasn’t seen a woman before?”

  Yael turned from her angrily.

  Later, Yael heard him fumbling about. Occasionally his bed would creak as he sat on it, but he seemed unable to rest and late into the night Yael heard him pacing the small room, as Eva slept quietly beside her.

  “What are your plans?” Yael asked the next morning. She attempted to keep her voice light, but the anger from the previous evening had not dissipated.