فصل 11

joana

The wandering boy found a deserted barn a ways off the road. We decided to settle there for the night. We had been walking for days and both strength and morale waned. The bombs had set nerves on edge. I moved from body to body, treating blisters, wounds, frostbite. But I had no treatment for what plagued people the most.

Fear.

Germany had invaded Russia in 1941. For the past four years, the two countries had committed unspeakable atrocities, not only against each other, but against innocent civilians in their path. Stories had been whispered by those we passed on the road. Hitler was exterminating millions of Jews and had an expanding list of undesirables who were being killed or imprisoned. Stalin was destroying the people of Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltics.

The brutality was shocking. Disgraceful acts of inhumanity. No one wanted to fall into the hands of the enemy. But it was growing harder to distinguish who the enemy was. An old German man had pulled me aside a few days earlier.

“Do you have any poison? People are asking for it,” he said.

“I will not administer poison,” I replied.

“I understand. But you’re a pretty girl. If Russia’s army overtakes us, you’ll want some for yourself.”

I wasn’t sure how much was exaggeration and how much was true. But I had seen things. A girl, dead in a ditch, her skirt knotted high. An old woman sobbing that they had burned her cottage. Terror was out there. And it chased us. So we ran west toward parts of Germany not yet occupied.

And now we all sat in an abandoned barn, trying to create a fire for warmth. I removed my gloves and kneaded my chapped hands. For four years I had worked with the surgeon at the hospital in Insterburg. As the war raged and the staff dwindled, I moved from stocking supplies to assisting him in surgery.

“You have steady hands, Joana, and a strong stomach. You’ll do well in medicine,” he had told me.

Medicine. That had been my dream. I was studious, dedicated, perhaps overly so. My last boyfriend said I preferred my studies to him. Before I could prove it wasn’t true, he had found another girl.

I tried to massage warmth into my stiff fingers. My hands didn’t concern me, but the supplies did. There wasn’t much left. I had hoped the dead woman on the side of the road might have something—thread, tea, even a clean handkerchief. But nothing was clean. Everything was filthy.

Especially my conscience.

We all looked up when they entered the barn, a young man carrying a pistol, followed by a short blond girl in braids and a pink hat. They were both haggard. The blond girl’s face was red with exertion. The young man’s face was also flushed.

He had a fever.