War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 138

Chapter 22

R

ichard had nowhere to go. He couldn’t very well return to his unit after being AWOL for so many weeks. The memory of the interrogation in Warsaw was still vivid, and they wouldn’t give him the benefit of doubt the second time around. Having to face a firing squad wasn’t on his list of things to do, so returning to Wehrmacht barracks was out of the question.

Tadzio’s house came to mind, but Richard had left Katrina to protect her and her family, so how could he impose the threat of his existence on his only friend Tadzio now? No. Richard shook his head. He had to steer clear of anyone he knew and loved.

He walked along the road leading to Lodz, pondering his options. There weren’t many left. Hiding in the woods might be one. But the dense forest around Lodz was infested with partisans and Jews in hiding, hardly a place where a German would be welcomed with open arms.

If his own compatriots didn’t kill him first, the Polish resistance would. A grim smile appeared on his face as he thought about the satisfaction Stan would feel at the notice of Richard’s demise. At least one person would be happy then.

Richard trudged forward, the church tower of Lodz appearing in the distance. If only he knew what to do. Where to go. He sat down on a rock alongside the road, taking a long gulp from his water bottle. Leaving Katrina had destroyed his spirits and shattered his heart. Unable to find a silver lining, he flopped onto his back, looking up into the sky, where white fair-weather clouds chased each other. They formed peculiar shapes, two clouds coalescing into a tank, cupola, barrel, and muzzle. It obscured the sun for a while, before the wind tore it apart again, two rabbits nibbling a carrot between them.

Then one of the rabbits changed form again, transmuting into his sister Lotte’s face.

“You’re giving up? Really? I never had you down for a quitter,” she taunted him. His ears rang with her sermon, as if she stood at his side bristling with righteous anger the way she had so many times during their childhood. “People are about to die and you’re wrapped up in self-pity? Miserable coward!”

“What do you know about life, Lotte? I’m not a coward.”

“Prove it. Get your ass up and save that boy and his aunt.” The cloud metamorphosed again into an overdimensioned fist. Richard broke out into laughter. His youngest sister would haunt him even in the afterlife, should he fail his mission. For all he knew she might be there already. The negative thought sobered him.

“I’ll rescue Jan and Agnieska, alright? If only to prove that I’m not a lousy coward. And you’d better be alive when I get home, sister.”

A million ideas flooded his mind as he tried to come up with a plan. He was too absorbed in his thoughts to notice a group of men who suddenly surrounded him.

“Who are you, stranger, and what are you doing here?” a filthy-looking man asked with a rifle at the ready. Being held at gunpoint seemed to have become an annoying habit.

“My name is Ryszard Blach,” he said in the drawl he’d practiced with Katrina to disguise his German accent. “I’m from up North, displaced by the Soviets first, and by the Germans second. I came all the way here to stay with my relatives, but I lost my way.”

“What might be the name of your relatives?” one man asked shrewdly.

“Lenska,” Richard responded, cold sweat running down his back, “Magda Lenska is my second cousin once removed.”

“Ah, Magda Lenska, the midwife. She’s a good woman.” The haggard and filthy man eyed Richard and the pack slung over his shoulder. “One of my men can take you there right now, but it’s a considerable deviation from our ways and quite dangerous.”

Richard understood and opened his pack. “Take this as a reward for your generous offer,” he said, holding out the bread and cheese to the leader of the group. He could all but see the saliva as the hungry men’s mouths watered, while their eyes remained glued on the food.

Minutes later, not a morsel of bread remaining, the leader of the group said, “Zych will bring you to your cousin.”

Zych obviously was a code name, because the mentioned man – or rather boy – needed a moment to process the request and nod. Richard hid a grin. Soldier Zych was a character in a historical novel of the Polish Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz. Richard had devoured all of his books that had been translated into German, most notably the novel

Quo Vadis

, about the persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero. The boy did show a sense of irony in choosing his nom de guerre.

“Thank you,” Richard said and followed the boy through the woods. After about four hours of vigorous walking over rough and smooth terrain, circling around Lodz instead of taking the short – German-guarded – main road, Zych stopped and pointed at a building slightly higher than the others. “See this house? Turn to the left until you pass a haberdashery, then it’s the second house on the right side. Good luck.”

Richard turned to thank the boy, who couldn’t be much older than fourteen, but he’d already drifted away into the protective shield of the trees. His palms sweaty despite the chilly early summer night, Richard set out to follow the boy’s directions to Magda Lenska’s house, as a troubling thought came to his mind.

Curfew

.

This time of year the nights were short. He couldn’t risk violating curfew without the protection of darkness. And he sure as hell didn’t want to run into the Blue Police, the auxiliary police manned by Poles or Polish-speaking Ukrainians, or worse, into one of his former comrades. So he settled against a tree, waiting for dawn to arrive. At daybreak he ventured into Lodz to find Magda Lenska’s house.

If she was surprised to find him knocking at her door, she kept her expression neutral and invited him inside.