He waited and watched and did not see a light, and constant with the voice was the river’s unbroken surge.
‘I am shaped by it, Johnny. When I was a child she told me of it, and I sat at her knee. When I was a man, she came into my room before I slept. She would bring me a drink. She would not sit on the bed but would stand in the darkness of the room, not moving, and she would tell me of what happened here to her. You cannot free yourself from it. Man and child, after the door had closed behind her and whether or not I switched a light back on, I could not be free of it. No part of the story is better than another. It is a slide towards despair. The man does not exist to whom I am in debt. She was out of the camp, was with Samuel, was in the forest where dragnets closed on them. One enemy? A German enemy only, with a Ukrainian ally? No, Johnny, many enemies. Vultures circling to find food. My blood carries no debt to any man.’
We had made love that morning. For him it was the first time, and for me, the first time that it had been meaningful. It was after the dawn. We had slept on the forest floor and the rain had fallen on us, but we had slept and had held each other for warmth through the night. I think we were too tired to have done it in the dark and it was better, then, to sleep. The morning had come.
In the night the forest had been quiet except for owls, the bark of a fox and the fall of the rain. The wind had thrashed the trees. We had some shelter against a big pine. I wanted him to do it … Germans came near to us, and had dogs, but the rain had killed the scent we had left and the wind would have covered what tracks we had made. I think we were now five or six kilometres from the camp. They were in a line, and their officers could not ride their horses because of the denseness of the trees so they led them. The end of the cordon line they made would have been less than fifty metres from where we hid, and we held each other close. Samuel had whispered to me that if we were seen we would run together. It would be better for us to be shot than taken and herded back to the camp. And they were gone …
So we lived. To celebrate, two rats that the dogs had not found, we made love. He knew what to do, he said, because it had been talked of endlessly in the unit he had been with. Always they had talked of it. He was gentle with me. I wanted to do it, but was frightened … I was in a forest, I was hunted, I had lived more than a year in the shadow of death, and it was ridiculous to be frightened of love. He opened the clothing on my chest and touched me, and as he touched me I felt the wetness coming. It did not matter to me that the rain dripped hard on us. He had lowered his trousers to his knees, and I had lifted my skirt, and he had taken my hand and had guided me to hold him. It did not hurt when he came into me. I had thought it would, but it did not. The only sensation I felt was love, no writhing pleasure. It was love. I buried him in me, squeezed my muscles, held him, and did not want him to leave me. It did not last long, but I told myself I would remember each moment of it. He was spent. He was more tired than I after it. I held him close to me, and I could see his white buttocks and they had the marks on them where my fingers had been. His head was against my chest. It could have lasted for ever … Those minutes, gripping him and holding him, were the only ones in more than a year that I had lived. In those minutes the shadow of death was gone. They did not last.
Minutes of love were snatched. Death took them.
Men came. They were not Germans, not Ukrainians. They were of the Armia Krajowa. The first to see us shouted that he had found ‘Christ killers’ from the camp. Others came running. We could not run. Samuel could not because his trousers were at his knees and my old knickers were at my ankles. We were trying to cover ourselves. I was a Pole, Samuel was a Russian from the army attempting to liberate Poland, and they were Poles. To them — partisans in the forest who were from defeated units of the Polish Home Army — we were Jews and as much of an enemy as the Germans. They would have shot us, then and there, but did not — I believe — for fear of the noise of a gunshot. There were perhaps a half-dozen of them, and the leader was a bear of a man with a great beard. He stood over us, his legs apart, took the bayonet from his belt and fastened it — I heard the click, metal on metal, of the action. Then Samuel tried to save me. He fell across me. We were fighting each other for the right to protect the other, but Samuel had more strength than I. He was across me, covering me, and I felt the blows to his body as he was stabbed. Then there was a whistle, a signal. Again there was the shout of ‘Christ killers’, and they were gone. Perhaps they thought the Germans were close. They were around us. Then there was the emptiness of the forest.
I examined him.
He was conscious.
He was bleeding in many places, his back and sides. If the whistle had not blown the man would have had time to kill him, but the whistle had blown. He was in huge pain. Any movement hurt him. He said then that it would have been better if we had died on the fence or in the minefield. He thought himself too severely hurt to move, and tried to urge me to leave him and go on, further into the forest, alone. And the rain fell on his back and the water was reddened. I didn’t know what to do. I was against the tree and he was across me. I had my shirt, my blouse, against the wounds. My chest was bare but I didn’t feel the rain or the cold, only his pain. I wasn’t strong enough to move him — if I had been able to move him I didn’t know of anywhere I could take him.
I saw the child.
A child, a boy of five or six, stood among the trees and watched us. He had clothes on that were little better than rags. I thought him to be the child of a peasant family. He stood with his hands behind his back, and the look on his face was curiosity. I called to him to come closer so that I could speak to him, but he wouldn’t move. He was among the trees. I didn’t know whether the child was an idiot from birth, was simple, but there was no fear on his face, or excitement, and no charity. I was pleading with him to find me help, and he stared back at me. I lied to him. I offered him money: I had no money. I pointed to the wounds on Samuel — as if it were necessary to point. I showed him my hands, which were washed in Samuel’s blood. I screamed for him to help me. And he ran. I shouted after him that he must bring help.
I was alone again with Samuel.
I don’t know for how long. His strength was going. Too much blood had been lost. I couldn’t save him. All I hoped for was that he would be comfortable and — in his own time — slip away. I talked to him and didn’t know if he heard me. I said to him that I was privileged to have known his love and that I would survive to carry the memory of him … and I heard the voice of a child.
We, who were in the camp for a week or a month or a year, had forgotten how to weep or show joy. I could have cried, in my desperation, for joy when I saw that child and the man who followed him. The child led him, skipped ahead. He was a man of young middle age, rough-dressed and rough-faced, and he carried a woodsman’s axe, a long-handled one, and a dog was with them. I heard the child’s voice, then the dog barking, and I thought help had come.
The child’s father had not come to help.
I saw greed in his face, and hatred.