Winter journey, p.1
Winter Journey, page 1
Dedication
To Michael,
For all the journeys we’ve taken together
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Epilogue
Author’s Notes and Acknowledgments
P.S. Ideas, interviews & features included in a new section…
About the author
About the book
Read on
Praise
Other Books by Diane Armstrong
Copyright
Prologue
Poland 1941
The madness began around the time of the summer solstice, as soon as the Bolshevik trucks roared away behind clouds of dust. At first everyone went crazy with joy. Barefoot children chased the departing trucks, poking out their tongues, yelling, and mimicking Cossack dances until they flopped down in the dirt. After the suspicion and fear of the past two years, the arrests and accusations and deportations, everyone was smiling once more. Even grumpy old Antos, who had sworn never to play his harmonica again, struck up a mazurka and hopped around on his wooden leg. It seemed to Piotr Marczewski as though a sorcerer’s spell had been lifted and his dead village had come to life.
And then the other madness started. Piotr first noticed it on market day. He was riding in his high-sided wooden horse cart when he passed his neighbour Janina.
‘Thank the Lord those godless Bolsheviks have gone at last, and my Stach and all the others will come home again. Now we’ll have a reckoning!’ She shook her fist. ‘We’ll make them pay for what we went through. Pan Bog dal nam sie doczekać!’ The Lord has answered our prayers.
Stach’s wife had always been a meek woman and Piotr was taken aback by the venom in her voice.
Perched beside her father on the wooden seat, Kasia brushed away the summer flies that buzzed around his battered felt hat. The mare had an easy trot and all Piotr had to do was emit a low whistle from time to time to encourage her to keep up the pace and avoid the ruts in the road. As the cart swayed alongside fields of corn and rye, they passed old women in thick stockings and gumboots, leading cows to pasture. ‘Szczesc Boze,’ he greeted them with the traditional blessing, and as usual they responded, ‘Daj Boze.’
Piotr gazed at the fields that rolled all the way to the horizon, and then far beyond, all the way to Stary Most. That was all a man needed: a field planted with corn, beets and potatoes, sunshine and rain to help them grow, strength to harvest his crops, and children to pass it on to. Of course there was one other thing that made life complete, but he tried not to dwell on that. The Lord must have had a reason for taking Anielcia, although he couldn’t figure out what that could have been when he and the children needed her so much down here. Still, it wasn’t for him to question God’s will.
When they reached the shrine at the crossroads, he pulled on the reins so that Kasia could jump down as usual and pick daisies and cornflowers. He liked watching the deft way her small strong hands twisted the stems together to weave the garland she placed beneath Christ’s bleeding feet.
‘When we’ve sold our chickens, we’ll buy some bread from Berish,’ Piotr said. Kasia nodded happily. She pulled at her wispy plaits to make them meet on top of her head, but no matter how she stretched them, they barely reached the tips of her ears and she needed a very long ribbon to join them. Every week the baker would survey her with a solemn expression and declare that the ribbon was getting shorter. Then, while she giggled, he would put his hands behind his back and she would have to guess which hand held the raisin bun. Before they returned home her father sometimes bought her a new ribbon.
Carts clattered over the cobblestones of the marketplace as peasant women wrapped in grey and brown shawls arrived with their baskets. They laid out cottage cheese in muslin bags, eggs collected that morning and still smeared with chicken droppings, pickled cucumbers in wooden barrels and pats of glistening butter. Housewives picked over the goods with critical eyes, searching for defects to lower the price. Bantering and bargaining were part of market day. The Catholics came to market to sell their produce, and then bought saucepans, shirts and leather goods from the Jews. Later the men would gather at Szmuel’s tavern for a glass of vodka. It had been like that in the village as long as anyone could remember.
As soon as their chickens were sold, Kasia pulled her father towards the bakery. Most of the shops around the square were owned by Jewish cobblers, tailors, grocers and haberdashers, who stitched, mended and sold their goods in the front and lived out the back. The warm, yeasty smell of freshly-baked challahs wafting from the bakery made them both breathe so deeply that their toes curled. As usual on Fridays, the shelf behind the counter was stacked with the braided loaves glazed with egg and sprinkled with poppy seeds that most of the villagers, not only the Jews, queued to buy. Berish was a big man with a ruddy complexion and a genial disposition, but today he looked as white as the dough he kneaded. Silent and preoccupied, he hardly noticed Kasia and for once he didn’t tease her about her hair.
Piotr counted out a few groszy for the bread and was about to leave when Berish let out a long sigh. ‘They say the Germans will be here soon,’ he said. Piotr waited. He had known the Jewish baker and his family all his life, and had occasionally borrowed money from him to tide him over till the next harvest. ‘Those Endecja thugs can’t wait for the Nazis to get here. Their hands are itching to beat us up,’ Berish went on.
Piotr didn’t know what to say. The nationalist party accused the Jews of having collaborated with the Bolsheviks. They were threatening to take revenge, but threats were one thing, actions another. He started to say this in his slow way when the baker held up his large hand. ‘I can feel the hate in the air,’ he said. ‘I know the signs. It’s not the first time. But it’s not me I’m worried about, it’s my family.’
Piotr remembered Berish’s daughter, Malka, a tall girl with unruly reddish hair and a mischievous smile who used to serve in the bakery before she married and moved to Stary Most. Berish was looking at him with such unnerving intensity that he shuffled his heavy boots on the wooden floorboards.
‘Our rabbi says that life is like market day and when we meet our maker we all have to answer whether we traded honestly,’ the baker said.
Piotr scratched his head. He wasn’t sure what Berish was getting at. ‘You people worry too much,’ he mumbled. Putting the loaf under his arm, he stepped outside. He quickened his pace past the crowd that was gathering around the Endecja banner and headed straight for his cart. Casting a regretful look in the direction of the haberdasher’s store, Kasia followed him. There was no point pleading when he had that look on his face.
As the cart rumbled over the loose planks of the bridge, Piotr noticed three lads hiding in the reeds, spying on the village girls. Just as he had done the first time he’d seen Anielcia wading into the creek, her skirt rucked up above her knees. How his throat had contracted at the forbidden flash of her round white buttocks. She had gone into peals of laughter when she turned and saw him staring open-mouthed, and splashed him from head to toe so he had a hard time explaining to his mother why his clothes were wet.
He was still smiling at the memory when he looked up and pulled so hard on the reins that the horse and cart jolted to a sudden stop. A row of shiny cars and motorcycles, modern ones that had never been seen in these parts, were choking the road to the village. Edging closer, Piotr saw German soldiers in helmets and leather gloves. Everything about them was crisp, polished and perfect, from their high glossy boots to the jackets that seemed moulded onto their bodies. The scent of eau de cologne wafted from them, like brides.
They had stopped in front of the triumphal arch that was decorated with flowers, ribbons and banners. Hanging from it was a photograph of Hitler, surrounded by signs thanking the Germans for liberating Poland from the communists and the Jews. Piotr watched as several village girls ran in front of the vehicles and handed the Germans bunches of asters and cornflowers and chunks of bread, and wondered who had organised this welcome. When one of the officers bowed to acknowledge the gifts, the death’s head insignia on his cap gleamed in the sunlight. A crowd of villagers had g athered, some of them waving flags and smiling. Even Father Olszewski was there, leaning against the white wall of his church, his shrewd eyes taking everything in.
‘You’d think they were greeting heroes,’ Piotr muttered to himself. Less than two years ago, this army had made mincemeat of Polish soldiers, poor boys who had tried to defend their country with weapons dating from Kosciuszko’s time. Horses and lances didn’t stand a chance against machine guns and tanks. It didn’t seem right to be welcoming them now, even if they had declared war on the Russians. Piotr had left school at twelve and expressing ideas didn’t come easily to him, but some things were as clear as the priest’s black cassock billowing in the light breeze.
In the days that followed, the group that congregated under the Endecja poster grew larger and their voices became louder and more menacing. ‘Jews are traitors. They suck Polish blood.’ The tendons in Wladek Bulka’s thick neck swelled with every word. The most vehement men were those who, like Piotr’s neighbour Stach, had recently been released from Soviet jails. They accused the Jews of conniving with the Bolsheviks to persecute their Catholic neighbours. One man yelled that the Jews exploited decent Poles and turned them into drunkards. Another shouted that they had killed Christ. Voices grew angrier. It was time to get even.
Piotr heard that in neighbouring villages Jews had been beaten up, synagogues had been vandalised and Jewish shops and homes smashed and looted. Although he didn’t know whether to believe the rumours, he didn’t trust Wladek Bulka, the leader of the local nationalist party. In the 1930s, Bulka had organised a militia armed with clubs to stand guard outside Jewish shops to make sure that no Catholics entered. Most of the villagers kept away but Agata, who was about to get married, ignored them and went into the Jewish haberdasher’s to buy a length of satin for her wedding dress. Two of Bulka’s supporters burst inside, dragged her into a lane behind the square, knocked her to the ground and kicked her until she lost consciousness. Piotr remembered how bitterly she had wept because the doctor told her that she would never have children.
Piotr was riding to the mill with his grain one sultry afternoon, mulling over the past, when the sky darkened and zigzags of lightning speared the horizon. The clatter of his big wooden wheels along the stony road sent a flock of ravens flying across the cornfield, but the branches of the poplars and birches were still and the birds were silent. The mill wheel turned over the foaming stream as usual, but inside the millhouse Yankel Rabinowicz was pacing up and down, stroking his black beard.
‘These are hard times,’ he said, hoisting the bulging sacks into the cart. ‘You’re my first customer today. The fascists have become much bolder since the Germans got here. Why have they all turned against us? We suffered just as much as they did under the accursed Bolsheviks. They sent my uncle and nephew to Siberia and I don’t know whether they’re alive or dead.’
It was too confusing for an ordinary man to figure out, Piotr thought, tugging the reins to head for home. Soon the horse was trotting faster as they approached the bridge. He had stood near this spot as a boy when a villager’s horses had bolted. The harder the man pulled on the reins and lashed them with his whip, the more maddened the horses became, snorting and rushing down the hill, tossing their heads, foam flying, hooves raising clods of earth as the cart swerved from side to side. Piotr had been glued to the spot, his eyes wide with alarm but also with excitement, because he knew that this could only end one way and no one had the power to stop it. Faster and faster the horses galloped until they reached the narrow bridge. The cart overturned and crashed into the water, dragging the horses with it. Piotr remembered the wild eyes of the struggling animals and then the ever-widening ripples. Everyone rushed down to the stream, but the driver was pinned beneath one of the horses and drowned before they could lift the animal off him. The horses were injured and had to be shot.
Piotr had just swung the cart into Kosciuszko Street when four youths swaggered along the dirt road towards him, swearing and brandishing sticks. ‘We’ll show the motherfuckers!’ one of them yelled. It was Stach’s son Bogdan, a sullen lad who reminded Piotr of a dog that’s been chained too long. As his cart drew level with the youths, the reek of moonshine hung in the air.
‘With all that bimber inside you, you’d better not go near any lighted matches!’ Piotr called out.
Stepping in front of the cart, Bogdan hissed, ‘You son of a bitch, watch yourself or we’ll come and fix you after we’ve finished with them!’ Peering inside the cart, he shouted, ‘So you’ve been getting flour from Yankel the Yid?’
As he raised his stick to stab the sacks, something glinted in the light and Piotr saw that the tip was studded with pieces of razor blade. Piotr swung his whip towards Bogdan’s shoulder but one of the youth’s drunken cronies pushed him out of the way in time.
‘Ej, Bogdan, who gives a shit about the old fart. Get a move on. We’ve got better things to do!’ And they lurched along the road, yelling and cursing.
Bogdan was a lout, Piotr thought, and his father wasn’t much better. In fact the only decent person in that family was the girl, but he hadn’t seen her around for a long time.
Thunder growled in the distance and large drops of rain pattered onto the splayed plane leaves as he drove into the farm. He and Anielcia had cleared the land to plant apple trees, beets and potatoes, sometimes disturbing the badgers that had burrowed deep in the earth. In May, when the purple lilac filled the air with its wistful perfume, Anielcia used to walk ahead of him, scattering potato seedlings from her apron while the blade of his plough sliced through the soil.
Piotr grunted with the effort of pulling off his rubber boots, dropped them on the doorstep and went inside the dimly lit farmhouse. As always, he glanced at the wedding photograph beside the plates on the sideboard and Anielcia’s kind strong face looked back at him. Usually her presence comforted him, but today’s events left him feeling uneasy. ‘Something is brewing,’ he told the photograph.
Kasia threw more wood into the stove and soon steam rose from the blackened pot and the floury sweet aroma of boiled potatoes filled the cottage. Although she was only twelve, since her mother’s death she had taken over the running of the household. She had Anielcia’s brains and Piotr was sorry he’d had to take her out of school, but someone had to look after the little ones while he was ploughing fields or felling trees. He comforted himself that women’s wisdom didn’t come from books.
After placing an earthenware bowl of potatoes on the table, Kasia filled the jug with buttermilk and called the children for dinner. They all bowed their heads, crossed themselves and murmured a hasty prayer to thank Lord Jesus for their food. They were looking hungrily at the potatoes, waiting for their father to start, when they heard a crash in the distance, like walls of glass shattering. A moment later, they heard screams that made the skin prickle on their backs. Their forks, poised to spear the potatoes, froze in mid-air. Marysia, the youngest, began to whimper. Eight-year-old Tereska was the first to speak.
‘Tata, what was that?’ she whispered.
Piotr didn’t answer. Accustomed to her father’s taciturn nature, Tereska didn’t ask again.
After the meal, although it was still twilight, he closed the wooden shutters and sent the children to the bed they all shared in the corner of the room, below the picture of the Blessed Virgin with the infant Jesus. ‘Don’t forget to say your paciorek,’ he said.
But Satan had been let loose and he sensed it would take more than prayers to rein him in.
At dawn, when Piotr left the house, Kasia handed him two chunks of bread with a slab of lard tied up in a gingham cloth. This time he went straight to his neighbour’s house. Stach was in the yard, his sandy hair falling across his bony face as he sharpened his axe.
Dispensing with niceties, Piotr said, ‘It’s Bogdan I’ve come about.’
Stach gave a knowing wink. ‘There was some excitement in town last night — he’s sleeping it off.’ He put down the axe and rubbed his hands. ‘The miller won’t be grinding flour for a long time.’
Piotr could feel the colour draining from his face while Stach spat a gob of phlegm into the dirt. ‘Cholera psia krew,’ he swore. ‘They thought they could lord it over us with their friends the Bolsheviks. Well, now we’ll show them who’s boss. We’ll soon flush the blood-suckers out.’
