Dr. Sterzer's answer caused a ripple of whispers in the courtroom.
"Order," admonished the judge. "If you can't hold your tongue, you will have to step outside.
The whispers ceased.
"I have no further questions," said Mrs. Caine.
Kat was surprised by Doctor Sterzer's testimony. This was a whole side of World War II that she had never had an inkling about. As he spoke, the image of a whole army hidden in the woods formed in her mind. But it also raised a question for her. How did her grandfather transform himself from an auxiliary policeman to an UPA soldier? She hoped some of the other witnesses would shed light on this question.
CHAPTER 35
"THIS FIRST PYSANKAis going to be awesome," said Kat, blotting the black mottled thing she had pulled out of the mason jar of dye with a paper towel.
Michael grimaced. "Somehow, I find that hard to believe."
This Tuesday night was the fourth time that he had come by after supper in the past week. Since Kat had first shown him her pysanky, he became determined to perfect the process for himself.
What had confused him the most was the concept of doing everything backwards. The melted beeswax went on like black ink, but it was used only as a temporary seal for the colour underneath it.
Each day before he left, Kat submerged his egg into a different mason jar of dye, starting with the lightest first: yellow, then red, then black. By the time she fished it out of the last jar and blotted it dry, it was totally black and mottled with bumps and ridges.
Michael's eyebrows frowned in confusion. "Okay," he said. "I know that all the colours are underneath the wax, but how do you get the wax off?"
"Very carefully," said Kat with a smile.
She lit the small stub of the candle on her table, then waited for the flame to burn clean and long. "Now watch."
Holding the blackened egg between her thumb and forefinger, she held it close beside the flame. Within seconds, the beeswax heated up and began to liquefy and drip. With a quick motion, Kat grabbed a facial tissue and blotted away about an inch square of melted wax. A tiny bit of Michael's colourful pattern was peeping through. Kat held the egg at a slightly different angle and again held it close to the flame, then blotted away the melted wax. More pattern was revealed, and the tedious process continued.
"Why don't you just put the whole thing in the microwave?" asked Michael.
"It would explode," said Kat.
"Oh."
Kat didn't want to confuse him by telling him that it was actually possible to microwave the beeswax off pysanky, but first, the raw egg had to be removed from inside. And it had to be removed after the succession of wax and dye had been applied. It was incredibly tricky to do it without breaking the egg and without disturbing the design. One time, when Kat had accompanied her grandmother to the chemotherapy room, she had joked about the big-barrelled syringe the nurse used to inject the anti-cancer concoction they had nick-named the "red devil" because of its vile side-effects. "Wouldn't that be a great syringe for pysanky?" her grandmother had remarked.
After a few minutes, Kat had removed almost all of the wax. There were a few places where it stuck, so she scraped the remaining bits away with her fingernail, and then she held the finished work up with a grin. "See?" she said. "I told you it would be awesome."
Michael's egg pattern was one that Kat had sketched out for him as a good one to start with. It consisted of two stylized eight pointed stars: one on the front and one the back. The points were each so elongated that they connected up with their mirror image on the other side of the egg. The result was stunning, although there were a couple of fingerprint smudges and one or two places where the wax had loosened and dye had bled through in the wrong place.
"Why did that happen?" asked Michael, pointing at the imperfections.
"You were holding the egg too tightly," explained Kat. "Next time, don't try so hard."
Michael nodded in understanding.
CHAPTER 36
THE TESTIMONY ON Wednesday consisted of a succession of villagers. Kat secretly agreed with her father's opinion. It would have been just as effective and much cheaper if one or two of them had testified. They all said the same thing: that Danylo had walked a tightrope in his role as an auxiliary police officer. He had to make the Germans think he was obeying them, while all the time he was working against them. None had witnessed brutality on his part.
One witness from New Jersey had a different story to tell. Kat watched as the white haired man with piercing blue eyes entered the witness stand.
"What is your name?" asked Mr. Vincent.
"Sergei Kovalenko," he said.
"Can you tell me about yourself?" asked Mr. Vincent.
"I am a retired insurance salesman," said the man. "I was born in Russia. I came to the United States from a Displaced Persons camp after the war."
"How do you know Mr. Feschuk?" asked Mr. Vincent.
"I will never forget that man," said Mr. Kovalenko, nodding in Danylo's direction. "I was a prisoner of war, and he helped me escape." Sergei then told the courtroom of that fateful time.
Within the barbed wire enclosure, the odour was overwhelming. Some of the prisoners had died, but the guards didn't remove the bodies right away. The stench of the corpses competed with the smell of dried vomit and feces. The prisoners were not fed, and they were not given water and so it was a wonder they were able to create such a mess, but the mess was there for all to see. And smell.
Sergei had tried to stay away from the other prisoners of war. Although he had no hope of surviving beyond a couple of days, he felt a moral obligation to try to stay as healthy as he could for as long as he could.
Within the barbed wire enclosure, there were perhaps 500 men. Each day, more were brought in, but each day many died, so the number was constant. Sergei was already in his second day, so he knew his time was near. He would sit as still as he could to conserve his energy, and he would watch the guards.
One day, a Ukrainian auxiliary policeman brushed past him, just inches from his face. "Watch the gate. Escape," the man said, then continued walking.
Escape? Could he even hope for that? And what was he to watch the gate for? Something different, he presumed. He gestured to a couple of others who were healthy like him and told them what the policeman said. So there were about five of them, surreptitiously keeping their eyes on the gate, not knowing what they were supposed to see.
It happened the next day. A beautiful, young and healthy girl walked past with a basket of eggs at the exact same time the corpses were being removed. The one guard left at the gate was momentarily startled when the girl tripped and fell.
Sergei and his friends were ready. They slipped out.
Sergei and the others went to the forest, and they found many others like themselves. Some of the villagers came out to find them and brought food. Others brought weapons.
Sergei never saw the policeman again until one memorable day in February of 1943, when thousands of Ukrainian policemen escaped to the woods.
"Mr. Kovalenko," Mr. Vincent asked. "What was the approximate date of your escape from the POW camp?"
"It was in 1941," replied Sergei. "I do not know the exact date, but it was in the fall."
"So as early as 1941, you witnessed Mr. Feschuk performing anti-Nazi activity."