The Winter Guest (26 page)

21

As she fed Karolina, Ruth watched her sister shovel coal into the stove, her movements leaden. When Helena finished, she did not shut the grate but stared blankly into the fire. Finally, Ruth crossed the room and closed the grate and put her hand on Helena’s shoulder gently. Helena did not respond. Instead, she stood and swept the fine coating of coal dust from the floor.

It had been more than a month since Helena had returned shaken from her trip up the hill and confirmed in a whisper that she’d found the soldier gone. Sam, she’d called him. Ruth had not even known his name when she’d slept with him, though whether this made it better or worse she could not say. They had just sat down to dinner when Helena had come inside, snow covered and shaking. Ruth had watched her sister closely as she stood by the fire. Had Sam told her that she had been to the chapel? But as she drew near, she saw that Helena’s face was ash pale and gutted. Her mouth tugged downward with sadness, not the rage she surely would have felt if she had learned the truth.

“What is it?” Ruth had asked, looking over her shoulder reflexively for any potential harm. She took stock of the children, making sure all were out of earshot.

Helena blinked several times, then swiped at her eyes. It was the closest Ruth had ever come to seeing her sister cry, and she knew as Helena shook her head wordlessly that the soldier was gone.

“Do you think he was taken?” she asked after the children had gone to bed.

“I don’t know.” Helena had lifted her arms, palms turned plaintively upward. “Sam wouldn’t have just left. But there were no signs of a struggle. The chapel looked exactly like when he was there, as if he’d disappeared.”

Ruth saw then the depth of despair in her sister’s eyes as she grappled with Sam’s leaving. Helena had believed, as Ruth had with Piotr, that Sam would never leave her, a notion that Ruth had wanted to dismiss as folly. Yet there had been something in Sam’s expression that told Ruth he really did love Helena, and that, unlike Piotr, he would not have left by choice. A mix of resentment and guilt washed over her—she knew it was her fault Sam had gone.

Over the weeks that followed, Helena had become a shell of herself. It was as if her sorrow had manifested itself physically, causing her to lose weight and giving a gray pallor to her skin. Watching Helena now, Ruth’s guilt rose until it seemed she might drown. She had not meant to hurt Helena like this. Her sister moved with a mechanical emptiness that Ruth recognized from her own days after Piotr had left. Helena had always been the practical one, though, with no time for what she called “sentimental nonsense.” It was hard to imagine her getting close to a man, much less risking everything for him or letting the loss of him destroy her—even a man like Sam, with his gentle touch and soft chocolate eyes.

As she lifted Karolina from the high chair, Ruth saw Michal through the window, nearing the door with an armful of firewood that nearly reached his forehead, struggling to see over the massive stack. He stumbled under the weight and Ruth set down the baby and rushed to the door, flinging it open without stopping for her coat. “Here.” The roughness of the branches scratched her hands as she helped him to lower it to the ground. “So much wood,” she remarked.

“I brought extra in case...” His eyes traveled uneasily over Ruth’s shoulder. The change in Helena’s demeanor, her listlessness and faded strength, had not gone unnoticed by the children, and certainly not by perceptive Michal, who surely feared Helena was deteriorating mentally as Mama had. “In case it snows more,” he finished finally. There was an undercurrent to his words that belied the deeper fears about Helena’s ability not only to keep functioning, but to help contribute to their survival. But his stated reason was also true—winter had clamped down suddenly, a heavy curtain of snow dropped from above without warning. One day the ground had been dark and muddy, and the next morning it was a sea of unbroken white, drifts piled high and heavy against the door. It seemed to snow each night after that.

Once Ruth had loved the snowfalls, the way a heavy silence blanketed the house, muffling the outside world. Under other circumstances, the notion of being snowed in their cozy home would have been an attractive one. But now she hated it, for it seemed a constant reminder of just how trapped they really were. It was late January, the new year having slipped in weeks ago without notice on a night like any other. They should have left a month ago when the weather was better, Ruth reflected, and they were not as weak from lack of food. Now they would never survive the journey.

“That was good of you,” she said to Michal, noticing how his lips were blue around the edges and his teeth chattered. The wood was not damp or green. How far into the forest had he gone to get the best pieces, and how had he managed to carry them all home? Michal had been trying in quiet ways to take over Tata’s role, an effort that had become more pronounced now that Helena had become a ghost of herself. Ruth led him into the house and he let her pull off his coat and move him closer to the fire.

She poured him some warm beetroot tea and slid him a few of the nuts that they had been savoring since Christmas, then surveyed the room. Dorie and Karolina sat on the floor close to the stove, playing with the two threadbare dolls that had once been her and Helena’s most prized possession. But their movements, too, were slow. Was it Helena’s malaise rubbing off on them, or was all of the hunger and hardship wearing them down, squelching their youthful energy? Looking at their drawn faces, her heart broke.

Helena had returned from that last trip to the city with a small unexpected satchel of groceries, which she handed to Ruth without speaking.

“Where did you get those?” Ruth asked.

Helena had shaken her head. “The black market.” Her answer explained only the food, and not how Helena had gotten the money. But her sister was in such a state over Sam, Ruth did not press. At the time, it had seemed like a feast. They had eaten bread first, before it grew moldy, and then the cheese. Only a handful of potatoes remained.

“They closed the border,” Helena said grimly now. She was staring out the window at the endless blanket of white, speaking blankly into the air before her. Whether she had heard the news recently in the village or weeks ago was unclear.
So what?
Ruth wanted to reply. It was not as if they had any prospect of escape without passes.

Ruth saw the searching in her sister’s face, knowing Helena was wondering what she had done wrong. It was a haunted feeling Ruth recognized all too well from the days following Piotr’s departure, the nagging question of whether he might have stayed if she had somehow been different. Did Helena wish she had gone with Sam when she’d had the chance? She might have reached safety now, perhaps even sent for the others. Or she might have lost them forever.

It was her fault, Ruth knew. Helena would not say it, but Ruth could see the constant recrimination in her eyes. If she hadn’t so stubbornly fought Helena’s idea of leaving Biekowice, they might have reached safety by now. She looked over at pale, thin Dorie sitting by the fire and the full despair of the children washed over her. They would not see out the winter under such circumstances.

Ruth went to Helena’s side and put her hand on her shoulder. “I can’t feel him anymore,” Helena said quietly, her voice hollow. “He really is gone, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Ruth replied firmly. She searched Helena’s face, desperate for some way to undo all of the pain she had caused. She put her arms around Helena. There was no good to come from keeping Helena’s hopes alive falsely. Better she should accept the hard truth and move on to the next chapter of their lives.

Ruth considered again telling her sister everything, ripping to shreds what she had shared with Sam. Wouldn’t it make things easier? “Helena...” Confession was in Ruth’s nature. Even as a child, she was always tattling to Mama when they did something wrong, even before they’d gotten caught. Then she stopped. The truth would ease her pain but it would only hurt her sister. She was stuck with her secret guilt, alone.

Finally, she could stand it no longer. “Come,” she said briskly, eager to break the heaviness that seemed to suffocate the entire room. “Let’s walk to the pond.”

The children looked up at her with surprise. It had always been Helena, at least in better days, who had urged them to go outside, Ruth preferring to remain home snug by the fire. And she hesitated to suggest it now, especially when Michal had barely gotten warm. She did not want them to overexert themselves and burn extra calories they could ill afford to replace, aggravating their hunger. But she desperately wanted to do something to lift some of the sadness and return the color to their cheeks.

Outside Michal and Dorie ran ahead, dragging the sled Tata had fashioned years ago out of some spare wood. Dorie stumbled. Michal held out his hand and helped her navigate down the steep path, his pace slow and patient. When she climbed onto the sled, he began to pull it.

Ruth walked more slowly alongside Helena, who carried Karolina on her shoulders. She looked out across the hills, beyond the cloud of chimney smoke that hovered above the village to the smooth gray sky beyond. Gazing up at the tree line, she imagined the same stillness up by the chapel. Not that the soldier was there anymore. A flush of heat, equal parts desire and shame, ran through her, as it always did when she could not stop her thoughts of him.

But was it truly her fault that Sam was gone? Ruth considered the question now for the hundredth time. He could have been planning to leave all along. But even as she thought this, she suspected that his departure was somehow related to her. Either he had felt so guilty at what had happened he had chosen not to face Helena again or... She could not finish the thought. His kind face appeared before her, his devastation at betraying Helena so apparent. Ruth had been angry and had spoken impetuously that day at market, regretting the words as soon as they had come out. Had he been arrested as a result of her foolishness? She had heard no such rumors. Under normal circumstances, news of the discovery of an American soldier by the Germans would have spread like wildfire through the town. But she seldom ventured out anymore and had scarcely been back to market since that day for fear of further questions. So it was possible she simply hadn’t heard.

No, he had left on his own, Ruth insisted silently, as if convincing herself would somehow make it true. Maybe he had recovered well enough and knew he had to flee before the weather worsened. But deep down she knew the timing was too close to be a coincidence.

The snows had come just days after Helena discovered him gone. Just as well, she reflected. It would have been almost impossible for Helena to get back and forth to the chapel now. Without her visits, he surely would have starved.

They walked wordlessly toward the pond, a small inlet of water that formed off of the stream. The bare branches of the willow trees, laden with snow, dipped low to the frozen surface. As Michal and Dorie slid on the ice, pretending that they had skates, Ruth glanced out of the corner of her eye at her sister. Was it better or worse for Helena? At least with Piotr, Ruth had known why he broke things off. Sam’s sudden departure would leave Helena always questioning why, wondering whether he was safe. But unlike the finality of Piotr’s farewell, Helena still had hope. Ruth could see it in each furtive glance up the mountainside, as though she thought Sam might appear, limping down the path toward her. She looked up each time there was a scratch outside the cottage door. When he didn’t appear Helena’s face would fall and she’d retreat inside herself, speaking little and doing the bare minimum required for their survival.

Ruth’s stomach turned and she wondered if the bit of milk she’d mixed in with their porridge that morning had soured, though none of the others seemed affected. But the discomfort was more than digestive—she was tired these days in a way she could not explain, that made her legs leaden and fearful to sit down lest she fall asleep. Was it the grippe? She could not afford to be sick—there was no medicine to be had and no respite from the things that had to be done for the children. It was the exhaustion of trying to do too much without enough food, she decided. All she wanted to do was sleep to stave off the cold and the hunger.

Michal and Dorie had begun a snowball fight, their troubles momentarily forgotten. Ruth bent and formed a small snowball and handed it to Karolina, who licked it and squealed in delight. Then she formed a second snowball and gave it to Helena. “Go on,” she urged. Her sister tossed it halfheartedly in Michal’s direction.

Michal threw a snowball in retort, and it crashed into a tree above Ruth’s head, raining a cool shower of white down upon her. As she ducked behind a tree to avoid being hit again, something at the base of the trunk caught her eye. It was a dead animal, stiff and motionless on a hard, unforgiving bed of snow. A raccoon or gopher, maybe. Animals that had succumbed to the harsh winter were hardly uncommon. The lifeless body might have startled her once, but after witnessing the man hanging from the swing set, a dead dog seemed unremarkable.

She started to turn away, then stopped at the sight of a white paw. It was the soldier’s stray dog, the one who had slept by his feet that night. How had it come to be here? Sam did not seem the type to simply abandon the animal. Grimacing, she used her boot to bury it beneath the snow so Helena could not see.

The children’s laughter subsided and a few minutes later they trudged back to their sisters, rosy-cheeked and tired of the snow and the icy water that seeped into their torn boots. The muted sky had shifted to the dark gray of late afternoon. As if by silent agreement, they all turned and started for home.

Helena stumbled, her foot catching an unseen tree root. Ruth reached out to steady her. “Careful.” Ruth’s eyes met her sister’s and she pled with her silently to be strong, despite the pain that she understood so well.
I can’t do this without you.
Guilt surged through her. She had brought this on, and she had no right to ask anything of Helena now.