“What will you call her?”
Maksim held the baby carefully in his arms, looking as though he feared he might break her.
“Chasidah,” Yael said quietly. “Kindness.”
“A stork!” Maksim laughed, referring to the Hebrew word.
“A reminder,” Yael said.
“Well, little stork,” Maksim whispered to the baby, “one day you will take wings and fly south, down to the Holy Land.”
Yael looked up. They were sitting in the trees behind the barn. It was mid-March and the snow had begun to melt. Buds were swelling on the trees and shoots had begun to thrust up from the dark earth. She said nothing. In the days following the birth, Maksim had disappeared into the forest. When he returned, he explained he had made contact with a Zionist group who were willing to help him make the journey to Israel.
“We can’t stay at the barn long,” he said to Yael. “I don’t know how far we can trust the doctor’s wife.”
The wife had been candid with Yael as she cared for her.
“He thinks he can’t trust me, his own wife,” she grumbled. “And, truth be told, if he had said you were here in our barn before, then perhaps I would have gone and told the Germans. You think that’s terrible?” She glanced at Yael frankly. “You want that I die for you? That the Germans should kill an old woman like me for looking after you? The law is the law and I do as I am told,” she carried on, pouring warm water in a large bowl to wash the baby. The steam rose, condensing on her wrinkled skin. “If the law says I am to report Jews, then who am I to start arguing with the powers that be? What have the Jews done that I should stick out my neck for them? Did they ever stick out their necks for me? Or did the Jewish doctors take away our business? Ei?”
She shook her head and took the baby tenderly from Yael. She grinned as she gently lapped water over the child’s legs.
“Nu, but you needn’t worry child,” she said. “I won’t tell the Germans.”
Yael did not know whether to be moved or angered by the old woman. She watched as the doctor’s wife deftly bathed the baby and swaddled her tightly in towels. Yael’s body was still sore after the birth and it hurt when she moved around; she was grateful for the help. The old woman had given her herbs and teas to take away some of the pain.
After a week, the doctor told them it was no longer safe for them to stay on the farm. He told them he knew of another place where they could hide and early one morning harnessed up his pony to his trap and, spreading straw and blankets out on the back, drove them south, deeper into the woods along a rutted track to the hut of a woodcutter. The woodcutter was a middle-aged man, with thick arms and a face blunted by alcohol. He agreed to look after them for a while, and with that, the doctor quickly got back up into his trap and drove away, back through the forest.
They had been at the woodcutter’s for only a couple of days when Maksim returned from one of his excursions excited. He pulled Yael aside.
“There was a raid on a village close to here,” he explained breathlessly. “The partisans are camped not more than five miles away. Yael, I heard it was Volk, the Wolf.”
“You mean it could be Josef? My brother?” Yael’s heart thudded. She felt suddenly faint as her knees went weak. She sat down on a crooked stool. “We must go,” she breathed. “Quickly, we must move.”
“You can’t go with the baby,” Maksim protested. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Maksim, I need to see if it is Josef!”
He held out his hand to calm her. Kneeling down close he stroked her hair. “I know how much this means to you,” he whispered. “I will go. I will speak to him. If it’s your brother, I will bring him back here.”
“But Maksim…”
“Hush now, think of the child,” he said. “Think of Chasidah.”
The woodcutter said very little. When he was not working, he was drinking vodka which he distilled in a shed behind the house. Often late at night he would stumble about the small shack, knocking over the chairs and table, and Yael was forced to pick up the oil lamp, for fear he would overset that too and set fire to the building. She was afraid to sleep until finally he had drunk himself into a stupor and collapsed on his narrow bunk.
Chasidah was a quiet baby. She fed healthily from Yael’s breast and was growing rapidly. Yael knew it would have been dangerous taking her on foot through the forest, but regretted letting Maksim leave her behind. She woke early the next morning and rose immediately, going out to see if there was any sign of him returning. The morning was warm. The air smelled of spring. The sky was clear blue and the sun, which had just risen, was so brilliant it stung the eyes.
All day Yael hung around the door, her eyes searching the woods, latching onto any movement, her heart rising, but by evening Maksim still had not returned. Yael began to worry. A five-mile walk would not take more than a few hours, even considering the difficult terrain. She tried to imagine scenarios that might explain why he had been delayed, but when she settled down for the night, a gloom had settled over her.
They were woken early the next morning by the heavy thrum of engines. The woodcutter struggled off his bunk and opened the door. He muttered an obscenity and turned to Yael.
“You awake?”
“What is it?”
The woodcutter did not answer. He stepped out into the dawn light. Yael followed him to the door, Chasidah in her arms. It felt as though her heart stopped when she looked out and a low cry rose to her lips. There were a number of German tanks squatted like ugly toads in the clearing at the foot of the hill. A group of four soldiers had hiked up the path and stood talking with the woodcutter. Yael withdrew quickly, but it was too late, as one of the soldiers indicated over the woodcutter’s shoulder, pointing straight at her. The woodcutter turned and levelled his gaze at her. He motioned for her to come down to him. Trembling she stepped out of the doorway and approached the soldiers.
“Who is she?” one of the Germans barked, his Polish poor.
“Daughter,” the woodcutter said, enunciating the word carefully, slowly, as if speaking to an idiot. He wrapped his arm around Yael’s shoulder and squeezed playfully, then pointing to Chasidah said, “Granddaughter.”
The German nodded. He did not seem interested. His eyes scanned the shack and the forest beyond.
“Partisans?” he said then, in his broken Polish. “You see partisans?”
The woodcutter shook his head and raised his shoulders in a loose, careless shrug. For some minutes the German soldiers conferred amongst themselves. Yael stood close, examining them. Their uniforms looked worn and smelled faintly of oil. The skin on their young faces was drawn, as though they were tired and hadn’t eaten well. One of them chewed at his nails incessantly, so that they were bitten far down. Deciding the woodcutter knew nothing more, the four soldiers turned abruptly and hurried back down to the tanks.
As she watched them pull away she released the breath she realised now she was holding. She turned to the woodcutter, but the words escaped her.
Later that day a number of planes flew low over the woods. Russian planes, the woodcutter told her, when he came in from his work and sat at the table with a large tumbler of moonshine before him.
Maksim did not return that day. Yael stayed on at the woodcutter’s not knowing what else she could do. Each morning she woke with renewed hope and would get up immediately and go to stand at the door and watch the sun rise. And late into the evening, long after the woodcutter had fallen into a drunken slumber and Chasidah breathed deeply, gently, in her sleep, Yael stood by the small window gazing out, hoping to see the sudden shiver of movement in the darkness, Maksim, Josef, come back for her.
Chasidah was five months old when Yael was once more woken by the sound of tanks in the field at the foot of the lane.