22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [64]
‘Have you ever seen a wounded man?’ Gregor asked. ‘Someone bleeding badly?’
‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘There are men in these forests. Men who are fighting the Germans. They need people like you. You could join them. You’re tough enough to fight with them. I could take you to their camp. You could learn how to use a gun. And if you didn’t want to fight, they still need nurses. Women who don’t flinch at the sight of blood. You could do it.’
Silvana was cleaning the cavities of the deer with grass. She stopped for a moment, wiped her sleeve across her cheek, and looked at Aurek chasing butterflies, his face and clothes daubed with deer blood.
‘I have my son to look after. I’ll do what I have to for him. I’m not capable of more than that.’
Gregor wiped his knife clean on the ground. ‘Who knows what we’re capable of in wartime. Come on. We’d better dig a hole quickly. We need to bury most of this.’
One moonlit night at the end of the summer, when everything was bathed in blue and silver light, Silvana saw Gregor lie down with the old woman. She oozed flesh from beneath his large framed body, and Silvana was sure she could hear the old woman’s tired bones creaking as Gregor moved slowly on top of her, back and forth like a rolling pin pressing pastry. Beside them, pretending to be asleep, her husband curled up like a baby and sucked his thumb in an impotent sulk.
Silvana closed her eyes, unsettled by the desire that stirred within her.
Janusz
Janusz wanted to stay. To try and make sense of what had happened. Ambrose said there was nothing they could do. Franek would be buried in the village. Ambrose would write to the family and tell them the boy had died in a hunting accident.
Bruno grew angry and insisted he write the letter himself. The family would not receive a letter from a stranger. They would be told that Franek had been a war hero. There was no need to say that Franek had been carrying a loaded gun and had shot himself.
Janusz watched him sitting in the kitchen composing the letter, throwing away attempt after attempt until he had it right.
A sledge arrived in the early hours of the morning loaded with goat skins, and they said goodbye to Ambrose in the dark.
‘Send my letter to Franek’s family,’ said Bruno as they left. ‘Promise me you’ll send it today.’
It was a long, sorrowful journey, weaving through small villages, along roads lined with huge snowbanks, tunnels of white which turned the air blue and the trees black. Neither Janusz nor Bruno spoke. The smell of the skins they sat upon permeated everything, a greasy stink of goats that turned Janusz’s stomach.
They arrived at a school, where they were given glasses of vodka mixed with duck fat.
‘For strength,’ somebody said, handing Janusz a glass of the cloudy infusion. ‘It’s a good medicine after what you’ve been through.’
He drank it straight down and asked for another. And then another.
That same day, two girls accompanied Janusz and Bruno to the train station, kissing them goodbye as though they were their girlfriends.
‘Remember,’ said the girl standing with Janusz, ‘you must sit in another carriage to your friend. You must travel alone. Two men together will be stopped by the police.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Janusz. His head spun with the effect of too much vodka. A wind swept along the station platform, snow spiralling and circling within it, and Janusz tried to put himself between the icy blast and the girl, sheltering her from the worst of the cold.
She had brown hair, short and curly under her woollen hat. Her eyes were slanted and small and her eyebrows heavy. The cold nipped her nose red. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. ‘Make a good show,’ she whispered. ‘You must look like a local. Pretend you are saying goodbye to your sweetheart.’
‘I’ll miss you,’ he said obligingly, and thought that in fact he would miss her.
‘I love you,’ he whispered, his words misting into clouds in the frozen air. And it seemed believable. He pulled her