A month later, they are on the move again. They are woken up very early one morning and told to get dressed. One of the younger nuns whispers to Jan, “You are going to Germany, to a children’s home.”
Jan shivers at the thought, Germany. Every move takes him and Lena further away from his home in Czechoslovakia, further from his mother and Maria.
“Where in Germany?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. A letter came yesterday.”
Jan is used to travel by now, he knows to keep close to Lena so they won’t be separated, and knows it’s best to get a seat near the window so that they can get some fresh air. He saves some food from breakfast for the journey, and tells Lena to do the same. If it’s anything like their other journeys it will be some time before anyone thinks to give them food.
A chance to escape; there’s only two women to look after twenty-one children. They’ve allowed him and Janusz to go alone to the toilet, unaware that the train was about to stop. Janusz comes out of the toilet as soon as the train comes to a halt and puts his head out of the window to have a good look round. When he spots the station name he hugs Jan.
“Let’s go, now! I know this place; it’s not far from where my parents live. We can walk there in a few hours.”
Jan pushes him away and shakes his head. “I can’t. You know I can’t. I have to look after Lena.”
“You could… “ Janusz’s voice tails off. He knows Jan will not be persuaded. “Can you cover for me? Give me some time to get a head start?”
“Of course, I’ll say you’ve got the runs.” Jan remembers the sweet Janusz gave him the first day they met, and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the bread he has saved from breakfast. It could be days before Janusz gets anything to eat again. “Here, take this.”
Janusz smiles. “No, keep it. Tonight I’ll be with my family. You’ll need it more.” He peers out of the window. A guard is about to blow his whistle. “Look, the train’s about to move. I’m going to wait till it gets going, so that even if they spot me it’ll be too late to do anything about it.” He turns the handle of the door, his whole body tense. The train lurches forwards. Janusz opens the door. “This is it, Jan. Wish me luck.” He jumps out onto the platform. Jan grabs the door and shuts it before the train can get up speed. He leans out of the window and gazes at Janusz, who is running as if the hounds of hell are after him. “Good luck,” he whispers.
“What are you doing?” It is Magda, one of the women guards, frowning down at him. Jan’s heart thumps.
“Getting some fresh air. I felt a little sick.”
“Yes, you are pale. Where is your friend?”
“Still in the toilet. He’s got the trots.” Jan prays she won’t notice the door is unlocked. He decides to take a chance, it’s best to try to get her away from here. “I think he’ll be some time, shall we go back?”
“No, you go. I’ll wait in case he needs help.”
Damn her! When have these women ever tried to help any of the children? Jan tries one last time, “I think it might embarrass him.”
Magda shrugs. “He’ll get over it. Now, run along.”
Jan trails back to his compartment. His mouth is dry. When Magda finds that Janusz has escaped, he’s for it. His seat by the window has gone. Lena is still where he left her, but she’s sleeping now, her face flushed. There is a trace of a smile on her lips. Perhaps she’s dreaming of home. He squeezes into a seat near the middle of the group and closes his eyes. Perhaps if he’s asleep when Magda finds out that Janusz has gone… He’s kidding himself, but he tries to sleep anyway.
A shriek of rage. Jan’s stomach flips. This is it. He keeps his eyes closed and tries to breathe evenly. He hasn’t a clue what he’ll say.
“You! Where is the other boy?”
Jan pretends to wake with a start and puts on a bewildered face. “What?”
“Your friend, the one with the trots. He’s not in the toilet.” Her face is red. Behind her is the other woman, who looks even more terrifying than Magda. Her fists are clenched. Jan scratches his head. “I don’t understand. He went into the toilet clutching his belly. He was really ill.”
Magda narrows her eyes. “You’re lying.”
“No, I swear.” Jan flinches from the slap she gives him. He puts his hand up to his cheek and she snatches it away.
“You’ll pay for this. Get up!” She pushes him out into the corridor. Sweat breaks out on his forehead. She’s in a fury; he’s terrified of what she might do. Surely she won’t push him off the train? It’s speeding now, the countryside is a blur. He’ll never survive. He staggers as she hits him on the head and on his chest. Over and over, each blow worse than the next. Jan has no breath left; he’d never thought a woman could be so brutal. He can’t help himself, knows it will make things worse, but he has to, it’s her fault. He vomits, horrified as it spills down the front of her dress, then thankfully he blacks out.
Voices all around him. He doesn’t understand it all for it’s German, but he knows enough to realize they’re talking about him. He should open his eyes, but he’s frightened of what he might see if he does, so he keeps them shut and pretends to sleep. There’s no train sound. Have they stopped the train to try to catch Janusz? Poor Janusz, if they catch him…
They’re shaking him now, it’s no use, he’ll have to open his eyes and face whatever is coming to him. The light is blinding, and he blinks several times to try to adjust to it.
“Get up and get dressed,” he recognizes the voice as Magda’s.
His eyes have got used to the light, and he sees that they’re no longer in the train, but in a room. There are several adults around his bed – one is a doctor – and for a moment he feels safe, then remembers that no one can be trusted. His whole body aches when he moves, and it seems to take an age just to swing his legs out of bed. He tries to hurry for he doesn’t want to antagonize them more, but his head and chest hurt so much that he gasps and lies down.
“You have a cracked rib,” says the doctor. “It won’t take long to heal.”
“Yes,” says Magda. “You got it from that other boy, he kicked you when you tried to stop him running away. Isn’t that right?”
Jan gapes at her. She glares at him, defying him to contradict what has been said. He continues to stare at her, and her face flushes. Jan understands; she’s ashamed. Whether it’s because she lost one of the boys in her charge, or whether it’s because she beat him up so badly he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. He makes his decision.
“Yes,” he says, “Janusz kicked me when I tried to stop him from jumping from the train.”
“Do you know where he was going?” The doctor is writing in a notebook.
Jan puts his head down, tries one more lie. “I think he must be dead. The train was going fast when he jumped.”
Magda smirks. She knows he’s lying, but Jan stares at her, and eventually she nods. “The boy’s probably right.”
Jan gets up from the bed. It’ll be days before he can move freely again without pain.
Jan isn’t sure, but he thinks they’re being prepared for something. This place is different from the convent in Lodz. It’s more like a school. Apart from the handful of children from his village there are twenty or so Polish children; some came with them from Lodz, others were here already. It’s absolutely forbidden to speak any language other than German. An older Polish boy, Pawel, takes him aside after he’s been beaten for singing a Czech song. He looks round to check no one’s listening.
“You have to speak German all the time. If you don’t they’ll beat you. Soon you’ll be thinking in German.” He lowers his voice. “Some of the little ones forget very quickly. But I will never forget.” His voice is proud when he says this.
“Have you been here long?” asks Jan.
“Four or five months. Long enough. I want to go home. Don’t you?”
Jan bites his lip and says nothing. His stomach twists, he doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t have a home any more. The Polish children’s stories are very different from their own. They tell tales of being snatched from the streets of their towns and cities; some were stolen from their homes.
Pawel’s story is typical; he was at home alone one Sunday, his parents had gone to church, but he wasn’t feeling well, so he’d stayed behind. A few minutes before his parents were due back from mass, a truck drew up in front of their flat. Pawel thought nothing of it; they lived in a busy street. It wasn’t until they hammered at the door that he realized what was happening; the dreaded Gestapo had come for him. Everyone knew they were stealing children to send to Germany where they would be brought up as Germans. There was nothing he could do: there were six soldiers, and they had guns. He was allowed to gather a few belongings together, and then he was bundled into the truck. When Pawel told Jan the story for the first time, he wept as he recalled how his parents had seen this happen, and how they ran after the truck calling his name. “I am their only child,” he told Jan. “They will not survive without me. I must return home. I must remain Polish.”
Jan envies Pawel’s certainty that his parents are waiting for him. He would like to know why he is so sure, but there are other things on his mind too. “The day after we arrived, they took many of us away. Is that where they went then, to Germany, to another children’s home?”
Pawel drops a potato into a large pan of water. “I do not think so. The others, the ones who have gone to families, were taken away in small groups, maybe one or two at a time. I think…” he lowers his voice to a whisper, “I think your friends are dead.”
Jan stares at Pawel, who looks away with an indifference that infuriates him. With a roar of rage, he throws himself on the boy. “No,” he screams, “no, they’re not dead. I won’t let them be.” He pummels him with his fists. One of the women who look after them runs to see what is happening. She peels Jan off Pawel, hits him on the head. Pawel laughs until she hits him too. She shouts at them both, but neither of them answers. They stand in front of her, sullen and silent, until she gives up and leaves them alone.
Jan clenches his fists. “Why did you say that?”
“Because it’s true.” The boy’s shoe scuffs at the ground. He still doesn’t look at Jan.
Jan breathes in deeply. “How do you know?”
Pawel’s hands are stuffed deep in his pockets. His eyes are full of tears. “I heard them talking,” he says. “Some days after the trucks left. They said they would get what they deserved.”
“But that could mean anything,” cries Jan. “They could have been sent home, or to…” His voice tails off. Pawel is staring at him with an expression of pity.
“They called them little bastards. I don’t think they would have done that if they were going to be nice to them, do you?”
Jan turns away from him. He looks over to the high fence surrounding the home. They’re in a prison, really, he thinks. A prison for children. He wonders if what Pawel says is true about taking the children away and putting them into German families. It seems such a silly thing to do. They’ve broken up families – his, Pawel’s, Janusz’s, Josef’s. All of them smashed to pieces so they can be given to some other family. It doesn’t make sense.
Lena is playing over on the other side of the yard. She is throwing a ball to one of the women. The woman laughs as Lena catches the ball and calls her Liebchen. Jan knows this means “darling”. It chills him. He wants to run across the grass and sweep her away, but he knows if he does it will lead to another beating. He tells himself he doesn’t mind these endless beatings, but he can’t take another today. So, instead of rescuing her, he stands watching as she twirls round the woman, laughter spilling from her mouth. She’s smiling in a way he hasn’t seen since they arrived, and all of a sudden he is glad that she is having a moment of happiness; that she’s forgotten her mother won’t be there to sing her a lullaby, or her father to lift her on his shoulders and play at giants.
It isn’t often he gets a chance to speak to Lena, for the girls and boys are kept apart most of the time. Weeks pass before he manages to find a moment when she is alone; when he speaks to her, he thinks she’s changed. For one thing, she speaks German. When Jan talks to her in Czech, she screws up her face and tells him to speak properly.
“Only peasants speak the way you do.”
Jan gazes at her, wordless. It’s not her fault; she doesn’t know what she’s saying. Every day the women tell them lies like this, and she’s only little. It’s no surprise that she takes in and believes what they say to her.
“Our parents spoke this way,” he reminds her.
Lena kicks a stone away. “Ich habe keine Eltern. Sie sind tod.”
The roof of his mouth is dry, his heartbeat quickens. Flashes of his father falling to the ground zip past him, making him giddy. His head is empty of everything save that image, falling, falling. He cannot speak. Lena is staring at him, her eyes puzzled, her mouth downturned. One of the women calls her, she runs off without a word, leaving Jan alone. He cannot see properly as his eyes fill with hot stinging tears. It’s a relief when they start to fall. One of the boys from his village joins him. He has overheard Jan’s conversation with Lena.
“The little ones are quick to forget.”
Jan wipes away the tears and nods. The other boy continues. “When my mum and dad find out where we are, they’ll come and get us.”
Jan doesn’t reply.
“Won’t they?”
If he tells him the truth, what will happen? Jan doesn’t know what to say. He wants to share his knowledge with someone, thinking that this will maybe chase away the images that disturb him so often. He can go for days undisturbed, then with no warning they intrude into his dreams and waking moments alike. So, when he opens his mouth it is with the intention of saying that there will be no rescue, but the boy’s eyes are so hopeful and trusting that all Jan can do is nod; his head has a life of its own. He turns away, walks across the lawn to the house, wishing he were anywhere but here. The bell rings; a summons to the class where he will be bombarded in a foreign language, that to his horror is becoming so familiar that sometimes he finds himself thinking in German.