22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [32]
He takes his wooden rattle from his schoolbag and sets it down beside him. He knows it’s a stupid baby toy and not for a boy his age, but his mother says the rattle is full of Polish magic. It was carved from magic wood. He is sure she is wrong, but still, he is careful with it. Just in case.
He stares at his hand-me-down shoes and reties one. They are a size too big and his narrow feet slip around in someone else’s footsteps. Aurek kicks at the wall, scuffing his shoe over and over. Birds fly in and out of the house and he listens to the applause of their wings, their rumbling coo. It’s a lovely sound. Peaceful. There are no other children to call him names. No adults to force him to sit up straight and write his letters.
His voice starts as a vibration in his throat, like a kitten purring. He cocks his head on one side, trying out different notes, a musician tuning up. When he has the right tune, the same lilt and fall in the song as the birds roosting above him, he opens his mouth and raises his voice. The house echoes with the sound of pigeons.
When the day begins to fade, Aurek sees a man standing in the doorway of the old house, like a black shadow. The enemy has found him.
‘Aurek?’ says the enemy quietly. ‘Come with me, son. It’s time to go home.’
Aurek climbs out of the cupboard and follows him through the leaves and broken tiles out into the street with his hands in the air, surrendering. He’s not going to admit it but he’s glad they are going home because he can feel the failing heat in the hedges and pavements and smell the night descending. Aurek is afraid of the dark. He likes to close his eyes to it and keep them closed until dawn.
He picks up a stick and holds it like a gun, shooting at windows and doors. He presses it close to his side, then swings around and shoots people in the back as they pass. Sticking his head round the door of a pub, he sprays machine-gun fire into the half-empty saloon bar. A boy about the same age, sitting at a table, stares straight at him. He has a face full of brown freckles, cheeks the colour of bacon.
The boy gives him a grin, nods his head, folds his fleshy chin into his solid neck. Aurek shoots him dead. A bullet to the heart. The boy gives a thumbs-up and falls off his chair in a swoon, clutching his hand to his chest. Aurek is transfixed. Then the barman is shouting at him to clear off and Aurek runs ahead, waving his stick in the air the way soldiers do when they want to move people quickly. By the time he gets home, Aurek has killed everybody.
He sits at the kitchen table eating bread and dripping, and Janusz breaks his stick gun into pieces.
‘No more war games,’ he says. ‘I don’t like you playing like that.’
Aurek thinks it’s a useless thing to break his twig gun. He knows there are enough sticks and twigs in the world for him to make guns out of until he’s an old, old man. Surely the enemy knows that too?
Poland
Silvana
‘Do you have to go?’ asked Silvana. She was sitting on the only chair they owned, nursing Aurek, stroking his soft baby curls, idly marvelling at his plump cheeks and long lashes. The boy was fourteen months old and never stopped smiling.
Janusz shrugged.
‘My father says it’s inevitable.’
Silvana shifted Aurek on her knee. This conversation had been going back and forth between them for a week now.
‘But what will we do?’ she asked.
‘You’ll stay with my parents.’
‘And if I don’t want to?’
‘Then go to your parents,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, you can’t stay in Warsaw. It won’t be safe.’
The day he left, heading for the railway station to sign up as a soldier, Silvana stood on the kitchen table and looked out through the skylight, hoping to catch a glimpse of him walking across the park. She wanted to see him joining the other soldiers going to fight for their country, but she saw only crowds of people walking in the sunshine