The Second Winter, page 22
They had eaten bread along the way, but only a little, and Oskar was so hungry that he felt faint. The walk from Aalborg through the snow had fatigued them both. It was already three o’clock, and he and Polina had been awake since five. All he wanted was to go inside and make a pot of tea. He met his father’s gaze. “I’ll change into my other clothes,” he said. “These shoes are pinching my feet.”
“Yeah — make it quick —” Fredrik mopped the sweat from his brow with a sleeve. “Because I’m done here, this is your job, and you’ve made a mess of it. I’ve got other things to do.”
Oskar felt Polina’s hand on his arm. His chest constricted. He had taken a risk bringing the girl here.
“Well, get a move on,” Fredrik said, misreading his son’s hesitation. Polina had remained hidden behind the door, and he still hadn’t seen her. “There’ll be time enough to tell me about your adventure when you’ve finished with this.”
A slender, ivory hand touched Oskar’s shoulder. The diamond ring sent shards of light into the dark barn. Next to Oskar, the shadows shifted. And then Polina appeared. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your father?”
Fredrik had been about to retrieve his gloves from the floor. Instead, he took a step toward the door, wiped his hands on his work shirt, squinted at the pale-eyed whore whom his son had brought home to their house in the middle of the day. Two or three seconds passed before he finally stooped to pick up the gloves. He beat the dust off them against his thigh. “It’s my own fault,” he muttered.
“I am Polina,” the whore said into the silence. The rank smell was making her nauseous, but she didn’t show it. Her voice startled the animals, and one of the male pigs bleated and jockeyed against the smaller ones.
Fredrik ignored her and faced Oskar instead. “You dare to bring a foreigner into our house?”
“She was in trouble,” Oskar said.
“She’s a stranger.”
“I can explain, Father.”
“No, you can’t.” Fredrik tightened his grip on his gloves, shoved them into his pocket. “No, you can’t,” he repeated, more softly. “I already know your explanation. I already know who this is.”
Polina’s eyes flattened. Her fingers found Oskar’s sleeve. As incidental as her touch was, as gentle, he felt the tug sharply. “I won’t stay,” she said to Oskar, loudly enough for Fredrik to hear.
“It’s my house, too,” Oskar said, taking a step between his father and the girl. But Fredrik hardly heard him.
“I know a place in Aalborg,” Fredrik barked, “where they’re looking for girls like this one.” Isabella had complained to him just the day before that they needed more women to keep up with the demand the occupation was placing on their business. The soldiers had an appetite for whores, and unlike farmers they had the means to satisfy it.
“You haven’t even met her yet,” Oskar said.
“Go inside,” Fredrik said. “Change your shoes. The pigs are waiting.”
“You haven’t even talked to her.”
“I’ve seen enough,” Fredrik snapped. He grabbed the shovel again, hoisted it as if he intended to take it outside and find a use for it there. “I’ve met her before.”
Oskar felt his resentment rise in his throat. He wanted to confront his father, but Fredrik had already turned away, and he lacked the resolve to chase him. Polina’s fingers sought his. Rather than take her hand, he grabbed her by the elbow and led her out of the barn. Their feet sank into the slush as they crossed the field toward the cottage.
Upstairs, Amalia was standing in front of the sink in the narrow bathroom. Her blouse was undone, and her uncovered breasts hung slack from her chest when she leaned over the basin to look at her reflection in the mirror. The door was closed. When she heard footsteps downstairs, she assumed that they belonged to her father. It had been another long day, and she was exhausted. With the New Year approaching, there was yet another party for which she had to prepare — the Nielsens’ friends and family would come to the house on the thirty-first to kick 1941 in the teeth. Amalia had spent the day polishing the silver. Her fingers were still black from the chemicals. The footsteps on the stairs barely registered. When the door swung open behind her, she quickly covered her chest. She was startled to catch sight of Polina in the mirror. “Who are you?” A current of colder air had followed the girl in, and Amalia felt her nipples harden in her hands.
“I’m sorry,” Polina said. But she remained where she was.
Oskar’s footsteps creaked on the floorboards. When he leaned his head into the bathroom, Amalia protested. “What are you doing, Oskar? Get out.”
Oskar retreated to the bedroom, sat down on his bed to take off his shoes.
“I met Oskar in Copenhagen,” Polina said.
Flustered, Amalia waited for the girl finally to leave the bathroom before she fastened her blouse.
Polina found Oskar in the bedroom, bent over his shoes. “Your sister is beautiful,” she said, and this surprised him. Not because he disagreed — he had always thought that Amalia was beautiful, whether or not she was his sister — but because he had expected something else from Polina. She didn’t seem to care if Fredrik sent her away to become a whore again in Aalborg, and she wasn’t aware of how Amalia would perceive her. It had been a mistake to bring her back here. Now that he was home, he wondered what had moved him to steal her away from the German in the first place. Wrestling with these thoughts himself, Oskar had expected Polina, too, to show some concern for their predicament.
He looked up from his shoes. “Give me the ring,” he said.
Polina faced him, not quite comprehending.
“The ring,” Oskar repeated, nodding toward her hand. “Give it to me.”
She studied the diamond, then pulled the ring off her finger, weighed it in her hand as if she might keep it, finally tossed it to him as if he was mugging her. “It’s yours anyway. I don’t own anything here that you don’t want me to.”
Oskar pulled a dirty shoelace from one of the shoes, slid it through the band, tied the ends into a knot. Then he stood from the bed and placed the necklace around her neck. When their eyes met, she looked away from him quickly. “It’s better like this,” he said.
Polina gathered the lace, slipped the ring under the collar of her shirt. Oskar noticed the curve of her neck and how smooth her skin was. Wisps of loose hair glistened above her shoulders.
“You can sleep in Amalia’s bed,” he said.
“Hmmm?”
“That’s Amalia’s bed, there.” Oskar gestured toward his sister’s side of the room. “You can sleep with her until we figure something else out.”
Outside, the afternoon was becoming darker, the clouds were growing heavier. The sun was beginning to fall somewhere beyond the horizon. Oskar noticed the way the light collected in the girl’s eyes. The same way the sun’s rays sometimes become trapped inside a brook, he thought. “I had better hurry up,” he said, realizing the time. He slipped out of his trousers, grabbed another pair, searched under the bed for his work boots.
Polina remarked how skinny his legs were. The muscles were sinewy and strong, but his knees protruded over his calves. The dim light gilded his skin, severing his silhouette from the shadows. She watched him dress, then sat down on Amalia’s bed after he was gone. The sheet separating Oskar’s half of the room from Amalia’s rippled in an invisible current. She peered past it, to the corner of Oskar’s unmade bed peeking beyond its edge, then swiveled around to assess the simple arrangements. It was so cold inside that her breath turned to steam. She passed a hand over Amalia’s pillow, then, remembering the ring, pulled it from beneath her shirt to examine it again. After testing the strength of Oskar’s shoelace, to make certain that it was secure, she dropped the ring back between her breasts. Then she reached into her pocket. Her hand remained hidden there for a minute, before she finally drew out the small, smooth piece of amethyst that Julian had given her years before.
The violet stone retained the heat of her body. She balanced it on her fingertips, ran a fingernail over a few glassy ridges where the semiprecious mineral darkened into obsidian. I was going to give you something. Now I don’t want to anymore. Downstairs, the front door slammed, and Oskar’s footsteps beat a path across the porch and into the yard. The house, Polina noticed, felt empty without him.
It was after seven by the time Oskar finished shoveling the pigsty. Once again, the work had chafed his hands. The shovel’s wooden handle had opened up old blisters and created a few new ones as well. Oskar hardly noticed. He returned the shovel and rake to the utility closet, then carted the last wheelbarrow of waste out of the barn. The ground was too icy to roll it to the usual heap around back, so he brought it as far as he could, then emptied it on top of the previous loads he had already carried outside. When the snow thawed, he would have to scoop it back onto the flat barrow and bring it the rest of the way to the dump. Until then, the cold would keep it frozen. He tilted the barrow up against the wall, then emptied a bucket of slop into the pigs’ trough. One of the smaller pigs — a runt that hadn’t made it beyond its first year — had died the week before, and Fredrik had ground it up in the feed grinder. Everything except the intestines. Blended with barley, the soup would last the pigs a few more days. As Oskar headed back to the cottage, except for a few contented grunts, the pigs were quiet behind him.
Halfway across the icy yard, he was joined by his father. Fredrik had been working outside, scraping snow off the roof of a shed. He had been working in the light of a kerosene lantern before the fuel had run dry. He would finish tomorrow in daylight. When he fell into step beside his son, he was winded from the effort, and his breath billowed in front of him. “It sounds like you fed them, too,” he said.
Oskar nodded. “I did.”
“Animals are always happier when they’ve eaten.”
Oskar remembered his own hunger, but he kept his mouth shut.
“A famished pig becomes a lion. Starve him and he bites your fingers off.” When Fredrik placed a hand on Oskar’s shoulder, his son was surprised by the touch, and he was surprised even more when his father left the hand resting there as they walked. “Feed him, and he becomes a meal himself.”
Oskar stamped his boots on the porch, and dirty chunks of frozen turf skittered across the painted wood planks.
“I suppose you brought back something else from Copenhagen,” Fredrik said. He stamped his boots, too. “Other than the whore.”
His father was only expecting five hundred crowns for the whole of the treasure. He would be happy, Oskar thought, with two hundred and fifty. There was no reason to tell Fredrik the truth. The day before, Oskar had wanted nothing more than to impress his father with his success. Now the thought occurred to him that he might have his own use for the money. He opened his mouth, ready to deceive, but found he couldn’t. “More than you thought.”
Fredrik took one last whack with his boot against the side of the house. A chunk of ice disintegrated like a diamond beneath a hammer. “Oh?”
“A lot more,” Oskar said.
“How much?” Fredrik wanted to know. It had been a long year, and this was going to be a difficult winter. Even with the food from the farm, his family was suffering. Fredrik wondered how much longer Amalia would be able to continue working like this. He saw how tired she was.
“A thousand.”
Fredrik allowed himself a smile. It was no wonder that the old Jew had clung to the suitcase so tightly. “Why don’t we bring some wood inside,” he said. “You can light a fire.”
It was clear from his father’s words that at least a few crowns were already spent. You can light a fire. Fredrik would head into town to find Isabella. It might be a day or two before they saw him again. “Will you have dinner with us?”
Fredrik jostled his son’s shoulder. “You did well, Oskar,” he said, choosing not to reply — perhaps because he didn’t know the answer yet himself. “In that at least, you did well.” He chuckled, but there was no mirth in the sound. “Still, I noticed you put a ring on the girl’s finger.”
Oskar thought about explaining, but he didn’t know how. He remembered pulling the ring from his pocket, turning it over in his hand, suggesting to the German that he might want to give it to Polina. The smell of baking bread came back to him with the memory, strong enough that the thought crossed his mind that Amalia might have the oven on inside.
“You could have gotten more,” Fredrik said. “Eh? If you hadn’t kept the ring for yourself —”
Oskar shook his head. This wasn’t true — he had sold the ring to the German, then had stolen it back from him again — but the story was too complicated to relate. He glanced up at his father, realized that he would never understand.
Fredrik surprised him with another smile. “Anyway,” he said, “at least you’re finally acting like a man.” Then he led his son inside.
In the kitchen, the kettle was on the stove, and the water was boiling, forgotten. The metal was nearly dry, and the room smelled of scorched iron. The pot was so hot that it would crack under running water. Polina was seated at the table, holding a cup of tea to her lips. She had found the sugar in the cupboard, and a spoon was sticking out from the small paper bag. Oskar had been expecting to find his sister there. Normally, Amalia would have had the kitchen clean from the dishes left over from their lunch. The table would be set, the counters would be clear, food would be roasting in the oven or simmering on the stove. There was little doubt how Fredrik would react to this disarray. And the sugar was for special occasions. Only Amalia was allowed to touch it, for she alone knew how to apportion it to get the most from the bag.
But Fredrik crossed to the stove and turned off the flame himself. He set the glowing kettle onto a hob at the back where it would cool down slowly. Then he stepped behind Polina and took the cup from her hand. The liquid inside was still scalding — she had only poured it a couple of moments earlier — but he swallowed half in a single mouthful, as if this indeed was the way he liked his tea, boiling hot and as thick as syrup with precious sugar. His Adam’s apple bobbed beneath the gray stubble crawling down his neck from his chin. He wiped his lips with his sleeve, offered the cup back to Polina. He was already drunk, Oskar realized, on the thousand crowns. “Where’s my daughter?” he asked.
“She was tired,” Polina said. Within the walls of his own house, Oskar was more aware of her accent. “So I told her to lie down for a while. She fell asleep, I think. Upstairs, in her bed.”
Fredrik looked around the small kitchen. Polina had made herself at home. She had cut herself a slice from the bread, leaving crumbs that would feed the mice. She had found a tin of cookies left over from Amalia’s birthday, and even though they had been rationed until they were stale, she had treated herself to a few. She had tried to saw a chunk off the salami, but it was too hard, and she had left it where she had laid it, on the counter. Fredrik smiled — he had been right about this girl, that much she had already proved — but it was a tolerant smile. There was something compelling about her, wasn’t there — There was a reason why Oskar had fallen under her spell. She wasn’t an ordinary person. Well, they never were, he thought. They always had their stories to tell if you let them. “Now,” he announced, nodding his head at the mess on the counter. “I was planning to eat in town anyway. I’ll be leaving before it gets too late, and you can clean this up after I’m gone.”
Oskar saw the kitchen through his father’s eyes. Taking a step past him, he wrapped the bread in its foil, set it back inside the box, put the salami away, brushed the crumbs into the sink. “I’ll light a fire,” he said. “The house is cold.”
Fredrik grabbed the tin of stale cookies and set it squarely down in the center of the table. As if he were serving them cake and champagne. “Let’s have a little celebration before I go,” he said. “After all, it’s almost the New Year, isn’t it?”
Oskar crossed the small cottage into the sitting room, where he stacked a few logs onto the grate in the fireplace. “I can make us some coffee,” he said, “once the kettle cools back down.”
“Forget the coffee,” Fredrik said. “I’ll open a bottle, eh? And you know what I’d like to do then?” He reached into the cupboard, found what he was looking for. “Play a game of cards.”
It had been years since his father had wanted to play with him. Those had always formed some of Oskar’s fondest memories — the few times when his father had sat with Amalia and him and taught them hearts. In front of the hearth, he stopped still, bewildered by the recollection. When he looked back into the kitchen, the deck of tired blue cards was splayed in his father’s gigantic hands like an Oriental fan.
When Amalia stumbled into the kitchen an hour later, the bright light stung her eyes. She took in the cards on the table, the open bottle half empty next to her father, the three glasses in front of them. The smile on Oskar’s face perplexed her, as did the amount of flesh on display below the unbuttoned collar of Polina’s blouse. The diamond ring dangled from the shoelace around the Polish girl’s neck, cradled in her exposed cleavage. Candles burned on the table. Wax had melted onto the cloth. The house was as hot as an oven. It was this that had woken her — the heat, and the rumble of her father’s voice and the tittering strain of Polina’s laughter. Polina was still laughing as Amalia stepped through the doorway. When their eyes met, she quieted, but forced a smile. Amalia stopped where she was, blinking, trying to make sense of the scene.
