For Those Who Dream Monsters (11 page)

Then
one day, German soldiers with dogs and guns, and auxiliary Ukrainian militia,
came marching into Bronislava’s street. They swept through the houses, pulling
out Jewish families, beating them and leading them away. Bronislava and Esther
were playing with the other children. Mindla was out running an errand. When
Esther’s mother heard all the commotion, she came running out to the two girls,
grabbed their hands and tried to pull them away from the shouting soldiers. The
three of them were caught and shoved along behind the other Jews. Amid the
blows and kicks that rained down on them from all sides, Esther’s mother tried
to shield the two girls as best she could. Then Bronislava’s mother, who had
been sewing at home that day, spotted her daughter out of the window across the
road, and came running out, shouting that her child was Polish. Somehow she
managed to fight her way to Bronislava, and yanked her away from Esther and her
mother. Bronislava screamed and grappled with her mother. She tried to go after
her best friend, but her mother scooped her up and ran back to their building.

The old woman spoke in a dry, dispassionate, almost robotic way, which I would
have found a little disconcerting had I not known that she’d taken some kind of
tranquiliser especially for the occasion. She spoke of street roundups, summary
executions and coldblooded murder. When she told me about a hyped-up Ukrainian
militiaman, in the service of the German military, ripping a baby apart with
his bare hands, her voice wavered, and I realised that even with whatever drugs
she’d taken, she was making a valiant effort to keep it together.

Some
time after Bronislava’s Jewish neighbours had been taken away, the German army
took over the building in which she and her mother lived, and the remaining
residents were evicted. Some of them moved in with extended family elsewhere;
others were forcibly re-housed with other Poles.

“We
were lucky,” Bronislava told me. “My mother had cousins who lived on the
outskirts of Miedzyrzec – in this very house. Out here things were quieter. The
Germans raided the farms to make sure that the peasants weren’t hiding any
livestock or reserves of grain over the allotted ration quota, but it was
easier to grow some vegetables here and occasionally buy a few eggs from a
neighbour who’d managed to hang on to a hen or two. My mother and I helped
around the house, and my mother still took on the odd cleaning or sewing job,
so we got by somehow. We were hungry, but we weren’t starving… Would you like
some more tea?” I shook my head and she carried on.

“I
quickly discovered that there was no love lost between our cousins and the
family next door, and the reasons for this became clear soon enough. I know one
shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” Bronislava frowned, “but there is no other
way to speak of those monsters. The farmer was a mean-spirited and violent
drunk. His wife was a greedy, spiteful and malicious gossip, and their son,
although slimmer in build than his bloated, overfed parents, was a vile
combination of the two of them in both temper and habit. As soon as they laid
eyes on my mother and me, they hated us with as much venom as they did the rest
of our household.

“I
asked my aunt how it was that the next-door neighbours were fat and well
dressed, while the rest of us were constantly patching up the tatters than hung
off our emaciated bodies. And how was it that, when German soldiers carried out
their ‘inspections’, they tore through all the houses – including ours –
shouting, kicking things over and showering down blows on anyone who didn’t get
out of their way fast enough; and yet, when the same soldiers went next door,
they joked and chatted with the owner, got drunk with him, and came out
clutching food or a bottle of vodka, or sometimes a watch, a piece of
jewellery.

“
We
don’t speak about it
, my aunt told me.
Just make sure you stay away from
them
.
Well, being told to stay away from something usually has the
opposite effect on little girls, and – despite the horror of those times – I
was no different. I spent all my spare time playing in the field at the back of
the house and watching the neighbours’ property. Then, one evening, my
curiosity was rewarded.

“That
day, a German patrol had swept through the street, looking for food and
valuables. They were in a filthy mood, as nobody had anything left. They
trashed our house and hit my uncle across the face when he was unable to give
them anything of interest. Finally they went next door and left several hours
later, singing and laughing. I figured they wouldn’t be back again that evening,
so I risked venturing outside.

“The
sun had just gone down, but a strange light lingered. It was magic hour, and
the field and marshland beyond it glimmered golden-blue. The peculiar light
brought out all the blues and purples in the field, so that the cornflowers
glowed like luminous azure eyes in the grass. I looked over the tumble-down bit
of fence that separated my cousins’ land from the neighbours’, and my heart
skipped a beat. Out in the neighbours’ field, a brilliant swathe of bright blue
shimmered in the shadows. At first I thought it was mist rising from the damp
grass. But it was too solid to be mist and, when it moved, I realised that it
was a human figure.

“As
quietly as I could, I headed towards it. The figure was small and slim, and I
finally worked out that it was a girl – a girl in a blue coat. And then it
dawned on me that I’d seen that coat before. The girl turned suddenly, as
though sensing my presence. She froze for a moment, then started to run back
towards the neighbours’ house.

“
Wait!
I clambered over a rotted piece of fence and gave chase. As the girl fled, the
hood of her coat came down, and a flurry of matted black tresses flowed out
behind her. Despite how thin she now was, I was almost sure. But how could it
be? How could someone I’d grieved for every day for three years be alive and
fleeing from me through a field that was rapidly turning murky grey?

“The
girl was evidently weak, but she had a head start, and I realised I wouldn’t
catch up with her before she reached the neighbours’ house. Desperate, I took a
risk and called out.
Mindla? Mindla, wait!
She heard me and stopped
dead. She turned towards me slowly, her whole body shaking from the exertion of
running barely fifty metres or so. She was emaciated – skeletal almost – no
longer the chubby-cheeked twelve-year-old that I’d loved and looked up to, but
a gaunt teenager with haunted, hollow eyes. Abruptly magic hour ended, and we
were in darkness. We stood facing each other, trembling. Then a small gasp
escaped Mindla’s cracked lips and, as I rushed towards her, she slumped into my
arms.

“From
then on, Mindla and I met every night at the border of the two properties in
which we were reluctant lodgers. I learned how Mindla had returned from the
bakery on that day to find her mother and sister gone. The Polish family next
door told her that it wasn’t safe for her to stay in the street as the Germans
could return at any moment to look for stragglers. She managed to get to the
factory where her father worked, but all the Jewish workers had been taken
away. So she hid in a series of attics and basements in Miedzyrzec, moving on
when each hiding-place became unsafe. Finally there was nowhere else to hide,
so she left the town one night with a young Jewish woman and her fiancé. They’d
tried to survive in the forest, hiding in a hollowed-out tree trunk by day and
scavenging for food when it got dark, but when winter started to draw in, the
cold and hunger became unbearable. They came across another group of Jews
trying to survive in the open, who told them that a Polish peasant was taking
in Jewish girls for payment. Mindla knew she wouldn’t survive winter in the
forest, so she decided to take a chance. She still had a couple of gold coins
that her mother had sewn into the lining of her coat when enemy soldiers had
first entered the town, so she followed the instructions given and made it to
the peasant’s house.

“
The
man told me to give him everything I had
, Mindla explained.
In return he
would hide me and feed me… But now he says there isn’t enough food, so I only
get a bowl of soup and a piece of bread a day. During the day I lie hidden
behind straw on a kind of shelf above the animals, at the back of the house.
That way the Germans don’t see me when they come. Sometimes the soldiers stay
for hours, drinking homemade vodka with the man and his son. I have to lie very
still. I get cramps in my legs, and sometimes bugs crawl on me.

“Mindla
told me about two other Jewish girls who’d been hiding in the peasant’s house
when she arrived. They’d fled their home village of Rudniki when the ‘roundups’
started, but the rest of their family had been taken away. One day the peasant
and his son came for the sisters in the middle of the night, and Mindla never
saw them again. When she asked what had happened to them, the peasant’s wife
told her to mind her own business, and the peasant said that a relative of
theirs had come and taken them away. But Mindla must have had doubts as to the
girls’ plight because she kept returning to them in our conversations.

“I
told Mindla that I would ask my mother if she could stay with us.
No
,
said Mindla.
I
won’t put your lives in danger
.
I related
our conversation to my mother, and she said that Mindla was right; we didn’t
have the privileges that the next-door neighbour had – unlike his house, ours
got searched from top to bottom – and, in any case, there were no hiding-places
in our house. So Mindla and I met outdoors, sometimes in the pouring rain. I
lived for those meetings. I put aside what little food I could, as did my
mother. We didn’t tell my cousins what I was up to. The fewer who knew, the
better. Sometimes my mother caught me sneaking out at night. She was very
afraid for me, but she didn’t stop me.

“One
night Mindla was late to meet me. Finally she appeared, looking paler and more
frightened than normal. She usually managed a wan smile and a few words when
she saw me, but this time she was withdrawn and silent. It took me a while to
get her to admit what had happened. The farmer had become tired of hiding her
and feeding her. He said that he wanted payment.
I said that I’d already
given him everything, and he said ‘Not everything.’
Mindla cried as she
told me that the man had tried to force himself on her. She was only saved
because her screams brought out the man’s wife, who called her ‘an ungrateful
little whore’, and dragged her husband back to bed. I don’t think I fully
comprehended what Mindla was telling me – at twelve I was very naive about the
ways of the world – but I knew that my beloved friend was in trouble and that I
had to do something.
Let’s run away together
, I told her.
Let’s go
right now – tonight.
Mindla looked at me with love and sadness. I’ve never
seen such sadness in anybody’s eyes.
We can’t run away
, she told me.
There’s
nowhere to run
.

“That
night I had a terrible nightmare. Mindla was standing by the marsh at the
bottom of the field. She was only in her underwear. She reached out to me and
at first I thought that she had that same sadness in her eyes, but as I drew
closer, I saw that her eyes were gone.” Bronislava paused. I had been engrossed
in her recollection, and the sudden silence startled me. I looked at her, but
she avoided my gaze. She turned away and pretended to blow her nose, but I
could see that she was wiping her eyes.

“The
next night Mindla didn’t come,” she finally said, then fell silent once more. I
waited in vain for her to speak. After what seemed like a long time, but was
probably only half a minute, I finally asked her what had happened.

“I
waited for hours,” she said. It was raining and very cold. Eventually my mother
came out and found me by the fence, soaking wet. I contracted pneumonia and
nearly died.” Another pause.

“What
happened to Mindla?”

“She
was never seen again.”

“Well,
what do you think happened to her?”

“I
don’t
think
. I
know
what happened. They killed her. The farmer
and that son of his. As soon as I saw my Mindla’s blue coat stretched over the
grotesque body of that woman, I knew that they’d killed her.”

“You
saw the farmer’s wife wearing Mindla’s coat?”

“Yes.
When I was well enough to get out of bed, I looked out of the window and saw
her parading around shamelessly in it. It had always been too big for Mindla. I
remember, she’d seen that coat in a shop and fallen in love with it. That was
just before war broke out. She persuaded her mother that she’d ‘grow into it’
and eventually her mother gave in and bought it for her. But Mindla never grew
into it. Instead of filling out like other girls her age, she’d been starved
and the coat always hung off her. But it was too small for that awful woman –
she couldn’t even do the buttons up, and yet she strutted around in it as
though Mindla had never existed. God knows why she wanted it – it was tattered
and badly worn, but it was a pretty colour, and the woman was greedy.

“I
flew out of the house before my aunt could stop me, and I confronted her. I
asked what she’d done to Mindla. The woman shouted at me to mind my own
business. Her husband came storming out of the house and told me that if I
didn’t shut up, he’d make sure that something very bad happened to me.