The Winter Guest

The soldier’s eyes narrowed, a mountain wolf hunting its prey. A hand seemed to grip Helena’s throat, squeezing. Would he arrest her or shoot her here? She was suddenly desperate to be in the house that an hour ago she had so eagerly escaped. Her heart pounded as she imagined her death. Ruth would be sad, or maybe cross. “I told you so,” her twin might say if she were here now, a smug smile playing about her full lips. Ruth liked to be right more than just about anything and Helena seemed to always give her reason by spilling or breaking something. Helena pictured Michal, wise beyond his years, comforting his sisters. But the little ones were closer to Ruth, depended on her for their care. And they had been so battered by the loss of their parents that they might weather this additional blow without much grief.

Helena felt against her side the cool metal of the knife she’d taken from Tata’s hunting kit and tucked in the waist of her skirt. She carried it in case she encountered a wolf, but now an image seized her of drawing it and slashing the German’s throat.

A minute passed, then another. Finally, the man sat down and started the ignition. As the jeep started in the other direction, Helena slumped against a tree, trying to catch her breath.

When the sound of the engine had faded, Helena stepped out from the bushes and scanned the now-deserted road. She didn’t dare continue this way now. Perhaps Ruth had been right about the danger of the trip and she should return home. But she imagined Mama alone in the hospital and knew that she had no choice. She doubled back to the path where it emerged from the woods. Steeling herself, Helena stepped into the forest and the welcome shelter of the trees that loomed overhead as she started toward the steep pass over the hills.

2

At the sound of the door clicking shut, Ruth snapped her eyes open and tightened her arms around the children. She strained without success to see in the darkness, instantly struck by the sense of emptiness beside her. The bed was a bit cooler and the mattress did not sink as heavily as usual. Helena was gone. She had left for the city, this time without nudging Ruth as she usually did. And she had gone earlier, though perhaps that was not so strange, given the shortening days and the need to get back more quickly before nightfall.

Ruth shifted with effort, weighing the void she always felt in Helena’s absence. Michal’s head was on her shoulder, Dorie holding to her ankle and Karolina flung across her chest. The children seemed to gravitate toward her instinctively, even while sleeping. They were curled around her like puppies now, sweaty fingers clinging to her arm, cold toes pressing against her side. They had slept like this since their parents had gone, not only for warmth and to comfort the little ones, but also to keep everyone near in case of bombs like the ones Helena thought she had heard the previous night, or God only knew what else. Usually she found comfort in their closeness. But now they seemed cloying and heavy, making each breath an effort.

Disentangling herself carefully, Ruth donned her housecoat and slippers. She made her way to the kitchen, savoring the easy movements of her now-free limbs. She pulled back the shutters to watch as her sister climbed the hill. Her stomach fluttered anxiously. She had never quite gotten used to Helena’s absences. They had always been together, and in some hazy memory she could remember looking up from her mother’s breast to see the roundness of her sister’s head, eyes locking as they fed. Being without her was an appendage missing.

“Don’t go,” she wanted to shout as Helena grew smaller. They had sworn to Mama that they would keep the family together, and each time Helena ventured out to Kraków, risking arrest or worse, they were putting that promise in jeopardy. Her mind cascaded, as it always did, to the worst-case scenario: without Helena, Ruth would not be able to sustain the family and the children would have to be placed in an orphanage, where they would surely remain because no one was taking on extra mouths to feed these days.

As Helena disappeared, seemingly swallowed by the thick pine trees, Ruth was struck by an unexpected touch of envy. What was it like to just walk away, escape the house and the children and their needs for a few hours? Generally Ruth liked the comfort of their home with all of its memories and had no interest in venturing beyond the front gate. But now she imagined striding through the brisk morning air, arms free and footsteps light. Did Helena ever want to keep going and not come back?

Pushing away her uneasiness, Ruth walked to the kitchen and began preparing the ersatz coffee, knowing even as she did that the bitter mixture of ground acorns and grain would do little to stave off her exhaustion. She slept so poorly these days, waking at every creak. Helena had always been the one with the vivid dreams, while her own sleep was deep and uninterrupted. Now her nights were shattered with dark images of holding on to a tree, trying not to get blown away by a storm with winds so fierce they lifted her from her feet, seeming to pull her by the ankles and threatening to tear her in two.

She dreamed of the odd things, too—not food dreams like the ones Helena and the children often discussed, describing in mouthwatering detail the cakes and breads as if doing so might cause them to actually appear. Instead, Ruth dreamed of stockings, the smooth silk kind, well-woven without any holes or pulls. Nylons, she’d heard them called on the radio. They talked of German soldiers giving them to the girls. She sniffed. Piotr had not given her any gifts, even when she’d knitted him the scarf. He had talked about making her something for her birthday or Christmas, but their courtship hadn’t lasted that long.

Setting the coffeepot with the rusted handle on the stove, she looked around the house, their one saving grace. Built by their grandfather over the course of a decade, it was made of stone, and sturdy enough to keep out the harshest of weather. There was a large living room with a wide-beam oak floor and fireplace, and the lone bedroom off the back. Beside a faded picture of the Virgin Mary, a ladder climbed to the loft where the children had slept when their family had still been whole. Ruth saw an image like a long-forgotten dream of Tata playing with Helena on the floor, roaring with laughter as she and Mama looked on. They had been too happy to know how poor they were. Ruth had joined in, too, sometimes when the play was not as rough. Other times, she had watched from the side, wishing she could be a part of the game but too timid to play.

Seeing the house clearly now, Ruth began mentally inventorying the cleaning and decorating that needed to be done for Christmas. Once she had looked forward to the holiday so eagerly. Now it felt an effort, the idea of celebrating without their parents inconceivable. But they had to keep to their traditions as much as possible for the little ones’ sake.

There were other things that had to be done before deep winter set in, too: Helena would have to reseal the windows and repair the chimney crack their father had neglected to fix. Tata had promised grander things, too, like plumbing pipes for an indoor toilet. He had always tried so very hard to please Mama, but the basic chores to keep the house running and the odd jobs he took when he could get them seemed to fill every waking hour. Mama did not complain when such extra things did not materialize.

Once Ruth had imagined a home of her own—nothing terribly grand, just a bit bigger than this, with a flower garden. But that vision had walked off over the hill with Piotr, and remembering it now, she felt frivolous. Daydreams were not a luxury she could afford anymore, and wanting too much, well, maybe that was what had caused all the trouble in the first place.

Ruth uncovered the plate of peas that she’d left by the sink the previous evening and began shelling them for the soup she would make for lunch. A year earlier, the broth would have been thick with sour cream and pieces of lard. Now it would be mostly water. There was a bit of beetroot, too; she could shred and mix it with some vinegar and call it salad.

She pulled out the radio that sat hidden beneath the sink, adjusting the volume so as not to wake the children. Radios had been forbidden by the Germans, and keeping it was her one act of defiance, a link with the outside world. Only heavy static came through. Whether the radio was dying or the Germans had jammed the signal, she did not know. She made a note to ask if Helena could fix it. An unintelligible voice crackled then, growing clearer in time for her to hear the announcer warn in a low gravelly voice that Jews were no longer to ride the trolley cars.

Reaching for the coffeepot, Ruth stifled a laugh. There was no trolley in Biekowice, and no Jews, either. She had seen Jews only once in her life on a trip with her parents to the market in My´slenice. “Dorfjuden,” she’d heard them called on the radio recently. Village Jews. Their cluster of dismal, tar-roofed shacks made her family’s own cottage seem luxurious by comparison.

“I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of them, really, with all of the trouble,” Helena had remarked a few weeks earlier over breakfast, in that vague manner of speech they tended to use around the children.

“Better that they stay where they are,” Ruth had replied, her own voice sounding harsh. She did not mean it unkindly, nor did she harbor any special animosity toward the Jews. But while the Germans seldom seemed to trifle with Poles, they had enacted an endless series of laws aimed at the Jews, forbidding them from doing ordinary things and making their already-miserable lives harder. Ruth just didn’t want, as Mama would have said, to borrow trouble by having them around.

But Helena had a point, Ruth reflected now. Why didn’t the Jews scatter and flee the Germans? Though they probably thought there was strength in numbers, staying in their small compact centers just made them an easier target.

There was no mention of the bombing on the radio that Helena had thought she had heard the previous evening. Ruth smiled with satisfaction, glad that her sister, who always accused her of having an overactive imagination, had this time been wrong.

She finished shelling the peas and transferred them to a smaller bowl. From the bedroom came the sound of Michal’s snoring, the girls breathing gently beside him. She sighed. No one saw the work she did, the little things that kept them going. Helena deemed the chores she did outside and in the barn so much harder, scoffing at what she called “woman’s work.” Perhaps that was because Mama had made it look so easy, doing things twice as well and without complaint. To Ruth, though, it sometimes felt like too much.

Ruth washed the plate and dried it carefully, setting it back in its place in the cupboard. She tried to keep everything exactly as Mama had, as though she might walk through the door at any moment and inspect everything with a sweeping eye and issue Ruth a grade. Not like Helena, who blew through a room like a storm, sending things scattering. Borrowed was how the house seemed to Ruth, though she had grown up here herself. Like a sweater she kept carefully because she would one day be expected to return it. To acknowledge anything more would mean that Mama might not come back, and the thought was more than she could bear.

Ruth was suddenly restless. It was not like her. Usually Helena was the one hopping around like a chimpanzee. “Bored?” Ruth had replied incredulously once when her sister remarked upon it. The notion seemed absurd, especially when there was so much work to be done. But now the house felt small and confining. She wanted to go—not into the woods, rough and deep, like Helena, but somewhere else.

Ruth tiptoed back into the bedroom to the washbasin, studying her reflection in the pale early light that just illuminated the cracked mirror. She took in her thick auburn hair and round blue eyes with a twinge of self-admiration, avoiding the scar that marred her neck. She combed her hair and patted a bit of Mama’s old lotion onto her cheeks, fighting the tears that welled up at the familiar, flowery smell. The jar of lotion Mama had given her was one of Ruth’s most prized possessions and she loved the way it soothed her cheeks and eased the redness brought on by the wind and cold. She did not know where the cream had come from or how she would replace it when the last precious drops were gone.

It was important, Mama had said, to always look one’s best, even for the most mundane of occasions. Ruth did not wear the lotion every day, though; she used to save it for Sundays when Piotr came. Her mind reeled back to one of his visits a few months earlier. The weather had been unseasonably warm and he had cajoled her into the shadows of the trees, persuaded her to let his hands wander lower and longer than they had before. But she had pushed him away a minute later and he had not tried again. Her cheeks stung now, remembering.

Turning from the mirror, she looked down at the sleeping children and a wave of affection passed over her. She had been sixteen when Karolina was born, old enough to have a family of her own if things had worked out differently. At the sight of the squiggling bundle in their mother’s arms, she’d felt a longing she could not remember with Dorie or Michal—and more than a twinge of envy as Tata hovered above, glazed eyes proud and happy. Not that Ruth was jealous of his attention—she had long since resigned herself to being the daughter he did not see, his main interest in Helena because she would walk the woods and do rugged things with him. But Ruth wanted to be the center of her own family, an adoring husband standing anxiously above her. Now she had the family, the responsibility of caring for the children, only with none of the love or affection of a husband.

“Watch the others,” she whispered into Michal’s ear, judging by the way the covers shifted that he had heard her. The girls did not move. Let me go with you, Dorie would have pled through the long, uneven fringe of hair that fell into her eyes. Having lost both parents, she was afraid to let Ruth out of her sight, for fear she, too, might not return.

Nearing the front door, Ruth frowned at a brown footprint she had somehow missed when sweeping in the dim light the previous evening. Keeping the house was an endless battle against dirt tracked in under feet, crumbs and milk spilled on the table. But she persisted doggedly in her attempts to keep the house as neat as Mama had. What would happen, she wondered now, if she simply stopped trying?

Ruth donned her coat. It was more of a cape, really, great swaths of billowing fabric where the sleeves should have been. She had found it in the back of her mother’s armoire two years earlier, and had been instantly captivated by the soft, flowing garment, which was more fitting of what she imagined a night at the opera to be than anything in their roughshod farm life. “Where did you get it, Mama?”

Her mother had stared at the cape, as though it was part of another lifetime. “I don’t remember.” It was not just her vague tone that told Ruth she was lying—surely one could not forget acquiring such an extraordinary thing.

“Can I keep it?” Mama shrugged, seemingly divorced from whatever part of her life she had worn it. After that, Ruth wore the cape from October to April.

“So impractical,” Helena chided each winter. “Not very warm. And you’re going to trip.” Ruth’s first impulse was always to take it off to escape Helena’s disdain. But she persisted in wearing it, navigating the extra folds of cloth like a second skin. She pulled the hood high and close around her face now, her own personal coat of armor. Mama’s lavender scent enveloped her like the arms she had not felt in more than a year. It was growing fainter, though, muted by her own smell and the passage of time. She had to burrow deeper, stick her nose in the collar, to really find it anymore.

Ruth stepped outside and breathed in the crisp, coal-tinged air like a drink of water she had not known she needed. She had not realized how much she craved this bit of solitude, a few minutes just for herself. Their wounded goat, Bolek, one of the last two animals still living in the barn, limped hopefully to the fence and she patted his nose in silent apology for the lack of the treat he was seeking. She paused at the gate to arrange some twigs on the ground, pointing in the direction of the barn. It was a game she and Dorie played, Ruth leaving clues that led around the house and yard. Once they might have ended with the discovery of a piece of fruit or hard candy, but with none to be had she would have to come up with another sort of treasure.

Closing the gate, Ruth gazed up at the hill where her sister had traveled a few hours earlier, trying to picture the hospital. They would make Mama well, though how they would go about it, she could not fathom. Helena was always so vague in her descriptions of the nurses and Mama’s treatment, and Ruth did not like to ask too much and admit that she did not know. But there was a plan, she had always believed, and that plan could surely not be to leave the children with neither parent. No, Mama would not be going to the Other Place with Tata. Not now.

“The other place,” Helena repeated, with that one eyebrow arched, after overhearing Ruth using the expression to explain to Michal where their father had gone.

“Heaven, or whatever you would call it, where they go after they die...” Ruth kept speaking, using too many words, spilling them on top of one another like a drink carried too quickly across the room.

“I thought that was something you’d made up just for the children,” Helena replied. Ruth looked over her shoulder to make sure the little ones were out of earshot. “Surely you don’t believe it.”

Ruth faltered. “Don’t you?” Helena had gone to church and sat beside her as the priest talked about heaven each week.

“I believe we put Tata in the ground. And that is where he is.” Stifling a gasp, Ruth crossed herself. She had pushed away the image of the coffin being lowered into the earth, holding Dorie back so she didn’t throw herself in the hole after it. To Helena, dead was dead. They had not spoken of it again.

Ruth continued walking along the narrow band of water that wound along the edge of town like a ribbon. Farther down, it passed between high banks of peat moss under a crude wooden bridge where children played in summer as their mothers washed clothes. It quickly disappeared around the bend where it widened into the gorge. When they were younger, she and Helena would climb the bluff holding hands and watch the logs travel downstream to the mill.

An image flashed through Ruth’s mind of her and Helena standing in this very spot when they were seven. A snowstorm had come suddenly on their way home from school and Helena had been transfixed by the way the forest was suddenly coated in white. “Come,” Ruth had urged, tugging her toward home, but Helena stood still. Ruth’s gaze followed her sister’s upward to where the treetops and sky became one. They remained motionless, for how long Ruth did not know, hand in hand, the two of them alone in that snow globe of a world.

“Dziewczyny!” Girls, a voice called like a sharp wind, blowing her into place. Only then had Ruth noticed the coating of ice on Helena’s face, and the way her own feet had gone numb. A neighboring farmer had found them and carried them home. They might have died, Mama scolded. But together they had not been afraid. How she wished for just another moment like that, the two of them alone in a white, silent world.

At the adjacent Slomir farm, an old man pulled a wagon with both hands, taking the place where his horse had once been. Though his land was ten times the size of theirs, Pan Slomir had always looked enviously across the fence at their plush, fertile patch, which seemed to draw energy from the stream like a child from its mother’s breast. Now he glared at her, not bothering to mask his disdain. Ruth hunched her shoulders slightly to avoid making eye contact. Once she had loved the walk into town, soaking up the approving looks like sunshine warm on her face. She could almost hear him thinking: What would become of the Nowaks? It was a question that Ruth herself did not like to ask.

Closer to town, she focused on the familiar things—the way the houses, set close to the road, slatted at exactly the same angle, the birds seeming to dart from rafter to rafter in identical patterns, as though performing a dance. Twigs and roots poked out persistently between the paving stones. Biekowice was not a place that one ever left. Children grew up and married and raised their families in the same house, or maybe their husband’s house if it had more room. Sons worked at the same jobs their fathers had before them. Marriage just above one’s original station was the best to be hoped for a daughter. Every ten years or so, some headstrong young person would head off to the city never to be heard of again. Rumors of doom and destruction always followed. There had been a story once of a girl who had left and found her fortune, but Ruth didn’t know her personally.

She passed the school, now closed by German decree. A group of girls, twelve or thirteen years old, played around the wide base of a tree. Ruth envied the easy way they laughed and joked. She and Helena had gone to school for a few years when they were younger, before Mama decided to teach them at home. But the village schoolgirls regarded the identical twin sisters, who sat in the back of the classroom together holding hands, as an oddity. Helena had never seemed to mind much, deeming the other girls “silly.” Ruth would have liked to have been included in their secrets and games, though. She had never quite fit in here, felt an outlier from the others. But that couldn’t be right, for she had never been anywhere else. Was it possible simply to belong nowhere?

She approached the main square. Market was a modest affair, a dozen or so canvas-covered tables smelling of carp in stale water and odd bits of too-old meat. Beside the stalls, Gorale women who had come from the sharp mountain peaks to the south sat on the ground, selling crude wool sweaters and salty sheep cheese from burlap sacks, their weather-hardened faces turned upward.

At the dairyman’s stall, Ruth gave her most appreciative smile, hoping that he might move the wire over a bit to make the cut of cheese more generous. But he simply looked down at his work. She turned away, feeling foolish. Once her smiles seemed to buy everything. Now it was as if her prettiness had faded, making her a tarnished coin. It wasn’t just that, of course—the war had taken the men to the front. There were so many more women that even a tired old merchant failed to notice.

She passed the dairyman the ration cards and moved on. Behind the vegetable stall, Pani Kowalska sorted potatoes and did not look up. She had been a contemporary of Mama’s and could not be more than forty-five, but the hair tucked beneath her kerchief was white and she had many chins, making her look much older. What was it about the women in the village who seemed to age overnight? One day they were young and beautiful, with the promise of a future before them, and the next they were crones. Mama had never made the transition—she had not had the chance before taking ill. But Ruth knew that one day she would wake up looking exactly as Pani Kowalska, and then any remaining hope for a future would be gone for good.

She appraised the selection of fruits and vegetables. Even before the war it had not been good, the cool climate and short growing season inhospitable for vegetables like tomatoes and peppers. Now all that remained were a few mottled onions and potatoes already sprouting roots.

“Three apples,” Ruth requested. An unfamiliar police car sat at the edge of the market, engine idling despite the lack of a driver. Ruth shivered uneasily. The fact that the provincial police had come to town had nothing to do with her, but it was different, and change seldom meant anything good.

“Did you hear about the Garzels?” Pani Kowalska asked as she weighed the fruit on the scale. The mole on her nose, which seemed to have doubled in size since Ruth had last visited the stall, bobbed as she spoke.