Underground Soldier (4 page)

I stood up and walked over to the wardrobe. When I opened it, I was enveloped in the unpleasant bleach-ammonia smell of mothballs. Inside was a narrow shelf with neat stacks of folded clothing to one side, and what looked like a greyish-green suit on a hanger in the main part. When I pulled the suit out to get a better look, I nearly dropped it. On the collar was the distinctive Death’s Head insignia. This was an SS officer’s uniform. Was this a spare uniform of Martin’s? I would never steal this to wear. Better to go naked. I hung up the uniform and pushed the wardrobe shut.

I turned the light switch off, flopped onto the bed and closed my eyes — just for a moment, just to rest them. I had to think of a way out of this situation. These farm people seemed kind, but their son was a Nazi. How could I trust them?

As I lay on the soft bed, my mind drifted back to another soft bed and another encounter with Germans.

I am stretched out on the bare mattress in a corner of the room that we share with David Kagan, his mother and the Widow Bilaniuk. Bright sun shines through the window. The first thing I notice is absolute silence. No bombs, explosions or bullets. For days the outdoor speakers have announced, “Kyiv was, is, and will be Soviet.” Over and over and over. But now the speakers are silent.

I join David at the window. Down below, crowds line the streets. From a distance I hear a tinny loudspeaker. As the sound gets closer, we hear an announcement in German-accented Russian: “Kyiv is now in German hands. You have been liberated from the Soviets.”

A Nazi army truck slowly rolls by. On its roof is the loudspeaker. In the back of the truck are German soldiers. They are not holding weapons. They are smiling and waving. Behind them march rows and rows of more soldiers.

David and I run outside and stand on the sidewalk to get a better look. We aren’t the only ones — the streets are crowded with confused and silent people. Some balconies have been decorated with flowers.

Now that I am closer, I marvel at these clean-faced, smiling soldiers. Their uniforms are not tattered like the Soviet ones, and their leather boots shine. They do not seem to be the devils that Stalin told us they were.

People in the crowd have no idea how to behave. A girl beside me waves timidly, and one of the younger soldiers stops to shake her hand. An old woman approaches him and thrusts a bouquet of flowers into his hands. Everyone around me stops talking, stops breathing, as if they are waiting for something to happen.

The soldier smiles. He reaches into his pocket. For a gun?

But he pulls out a little phrase book and says in tortured Russian, “Thank you.”

A collective sigh of relief. Maybe it will be better now. Maybe the killing will stop. Tato told me that for hundreds of years, Germans and Ukrainians had developed good relations. But it doesn’t feel right to cheer the defeat of our own government. I turn to David, and he looks as puzzled and sombre as the rest of the crowd …

I wanted to think of that time — maybe it would help me puzzle out what was happening now. But before I knew it, I fell asleep.

* * *

When I opened my eyes the next morning, a few narrow slits of sunlight had managed to shine through the cracks in the tarpaper. It took me a moment to remember that I was at a farm with a strangely friendly German couple. I tried to open the door, but it was still locked. I walked over to the window, poked my finger through some of the tarpaper and peeked through. Beela and Kulia were already grazing outside the barn. It was later than I had imagined.

Moments later the bolt slid back and the door opened. Margarete stood there with a pair of work trousers and a faded green flannel shirt.

“I found these for you,” she said, handing them to me. “You wouldn’t want to wear anything from this room.” Her eyes drifted over to the wardrobe. “These,” she said, resting a finger on the fabric, “may be old, but they are honest working clothes.”

Her comments relieved me. Martin might be her son, but she was not proud of him.

“Come to the kitchen for something to eat once you’re dressed,” she said. “And then we’ll figure out what we’ll do with you.”

When I stepped into the kitchen I could smell potato pancakes sizzling in bacon fat. Helmut was already sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. A book was open in front of him. He looked up at me and said in Ukrainian, “Good morning.”

I wished him the same, then walked over to the cooking range where Margarete stood, frying up the last of the pancakes.

“Is there something I can do to help you?” I asked.

“Go into the pantry and get us some honey,” she said, pointing to a double set of doors in the wall close to the icebox.

Like everything else in this farmhouse, the storage area was massive. All sorts of food lined the shelves — tins of tea, coffee substitute and powdered chocolate, but no tin of honey. Burlap sacks sat neatly lined up on the bottom shelves, labelled in various languages — it had to be booty from the war. Rice, barley, flour — these I could decipher, but it was hard to know what every item was.

I stepped out of the pantry. “I cannot find the honey,” I said to Margarete.

“Look in the white cloth sack on the top shelf.”

When I looked back into the pantry, I could only see one white cloth bag and it had
Muka
 — flour — stamped on the outside. I pulled it down from the shelf and untied it. Inside were coils of what looked like linked sausages, but the contents were nearly translucent. I rooted around until I found a single sausage that wasn’t attached to the rest and brought it out.

“Thank you,” said Margarete, taking it from me.

I watched as she slit the top of the sausage casing and squeezed the contents into a small jar. “Claus sent this,” she said. “From the Eastern Front. We used to keep bees ourselves when we lived in Bukovyna.”

That comment made me so angry. When the Soviets retreated from the Nazis in 1941, they left us civilians with nothing. These coils of honey hidden in sausage casings might have kept an entire family alive on the Eastern Front, but for this man, Claus, it was just war booty.

Margarete looked at me oddly, perhaps understanding the anger I felt. “Sit,” she said. “I know you’re hungry.” She set a small plate of crispy pancakes in front of me. “I would give you more,” she said, “but your stomach is not used to rich and plentiful food.”

I cut a small piece of pancake and put it into my mouth. The anger slowly evaporated as I chewed. Helmut and Margarete ate their breakfasts silently, pretending to ignore me, but once I saw Helmut glance up at me and frown. I ate every crumb on my plate. I felt like lifting the plate up to my face and licking it, to get every last bit, but I resisted. My stomach felt like it would burst.

After the meal, Margarete took down two more cups and filled them with coffee. Without asking, she stirred a big spoonful of honey into the one for me. “We need to talk.”

I took a sip from the cup and looked at her.

“We will give you what you wanted to steal,” she said. “The weather will be getting cold soon, and it’s always raining around here, so I’ll need to find you something to use as a groundsheet.”

“You’ll want food that’s easy to carry,” said Helmut. “And sturdy footwear.”

“Thank you,” I said, taken aback by their words. Why were they being so helpful? Was this some sort of trick, or were they simply good people?

“But what I want to know,” said Margarete, “is where do you think you can go?”

If I told them my dream was to get back to Kyiv and find my father, would they think I was crazy? My short-term plan wasn’t much more than staying alive until the war ended. I could head to the mountains and get away from the Germans. If Tato survived, he’d certainly go back to Kyiv. Then together we’d find Mama — and Lida. My eyes met Margarete’s and I could see her concern.

“I’ve survived by hiding,” I said. “Maybe I’ll keep on doing that.”

Helmut tapped the kitchen table with a coffee spoon. “You were lucky you ended up on our farm and not somewhere else.”

“I don’t want to overstay my welcome,” I said. What I really meant was that I wanted to leave as soon as I could.

“Helmut,” said Margarete, “the boy cannot leave right now. How far do you think he’d get on that foot? And that wound on his thigh — it’s not fully healed.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I can walk.”

They ignored my words.

“So you think it’s worth the risk to let him stay here for a while to regain his strength?” asked Helmut.

“If he leaves now, he’s almost certain to die. If he stays and is caught, he will die.” Margarete took a slow sip from her cup.

“So our only choice is to hide him and hope he doesn’t get caught.”

“We’ll put some fat on his bones and give him time to heal up,” said Margarete. “Then he’ll have a fighting chance to survive on the run.”

It felt odd to have them talking about me as if I weren’t there. My stomach gurgled from too much food.

Helmut turned to me and said, “Someone could see you from a distance.”

“He’ll have to stay inside,” said Margarete.

Chapter Seven
Mountains

The thought of staying in a warm house with plenty of food and hot running water didn’t seem like it would be a hardship, but after a few days of inactivity, I was desperate for something to do. I had peeled back a bit more of the tarpaper from Martin’s bedroom window, and from one angle I could see the mountains in the distance. I wanted to get to those mountains. Their treacherous landscape would stop an army, but not one person. They would keep me safe.

In the meantime, I stuffed myself. Each morning Margarete would cook up eggs, or potato pancakes, or if there were leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, we’d have that instead. Beef and dumplings for breakfast? An incredible treat. When I looked in the bathroom mirror, I could see that I was filling out.

But was their generosity too good to be true? The friendliness of the Germans who took over Kyiv had only been skin deep — I knew that too well. Would Helmut and Margarete change, the way those other Germans had? The quicker I was away from here, the better. Otherwise I would become as soft as Martin’s bed.

On the sixth morning, while Helmut applied the daily coating of iodine to the wound on my foot, he said, “It’s almost healed.” A week later, he removed the stitches in my thigh. Soon I would be strong enough to leave.

“Whatever gave you the idea to put
milk
on this?” He shook his head as he pulled out the last stitch with tweezers. “You Slavs sure are backward.”

“My father was a pharmacist.”

“And your father taught you to put milk on an infected wound?”

“It is a traditional remedy.”

He shook his head. “Slavs …”

“The Soviets destroyed all of his medications before they evacuated Kyiv.”

“An old tactic: leave nothing behind that can be used by the enemy.”

Or by the civilians who are abandoned by their own government
, I thought, but didn’t say.

Helmut wrinkled his brow. “What other things did your father teach you to use?”

“Things from around here, you mean?” I asked. “A piece of mouldy bread, honey.”

Helmut looked sceptical.

I smiled. “Often what we need to survive is right at our fingertips.”

Helmut looked up. “Anything at our fingertips to make Blitz healthy again?”

“Blitz?”

“The horse.”

I had gotten so used to thinking of her as Kulia that I’d forgotten it was only my name for her. “Can’t you get a veterinarian?”

“They’re all in the army. Their medicines too,” Helmut said.

“My father showed me a way to treat wheezing in humans,” I said. “It may work for your horse.”

“No milk washes for my Blitz,” said Helmut.

“A bit of honey in her drinking water — and it should be warmed up — that will loosen the mucous.”

“Well, I suppose it won’t hurt,” said Helmut. “And we have lots of honey.”

After dark, I took a pail of warmed honey water into the barn for Blitz. Then I helped Helmut carry in a laundry tub full of steaming water. I placed a blanket over Blitz’s head to form a sort of steam tent.

Almost right away, Blitz began to breathe more easily.

* * *

Helmut and Margarete didn’t lock me in at night anymore, so I would go out and visit the animals. It felt good just to be there in the barn with them, leaning into their warmth and feeling the rhythm of their breathing. Even with bombs still exploding outside, I felt safe.

After a few days the weather turned mild, and I took a wheelbarrow out to the fields in the cover of night to dig up turnips for Helmut. My back ached from filling just a single load. How did an old man like him manage this alone?

As safe as I felt with Helmut and Margarete, though, I was anxious to get going. My foot was fully healed as far as I could tell, and my leg no longer gave me trouble.

One evening after dinner, Margarete set a small plate of ginger cookies on the table and served each of us a glass of hot tea. I took a sip as I considered how kindly they had treated me. In many ways I would miss them.

“Helmut, Margarete,” I said, setting down my glass. “Thank you for all that you have done for me, but it is time for me to leave.”

“You are welcome to stay here,” she said.

Her words were not a surprise. I had sensed that she enjoyed having a bit more company. “I’m putting you both in danger.”

“But this is the worst time of year to travel,” said Margarete. “It rains nearly every day. Soon it will be December. To be travelling in the snow is almost as difficult. How can you hide? How can you stay warm?”

“And where would you go?” asked Helmut.

“To the mountains.”

Helmut blinked in surprise. “Do you even know where you are?” he asked.

“Somewhere in Germany …” I thought of the atlas on the bookshelf in Martin’s bedroom. “Just a minute …”

I retrieved the atlas from the bedroom and flipped it open to a page I had studied so many times.