Page 35

‘Whose memory we will avenge when the city finally wakes up and rises.’

That promise had become the forest’s refrain, although nobody knew how long they would have to hide and train and hope before the Poles decided they were sick of existing under a Nazi yoke and fought back.

Now that she was outside the ghetto and back in some level of touch with the world, Noemi knew that if they ever was unfair.

The Nazi war machine had continued to hurtle at full speed across great swathes of Europe, and – despite the terrible losses inflicted on the German army in Russia – nobody had managed to put a conclusive stop to it yet.

She could hardly expect a country which had been so brutally and swiftly occupied as Poland had been to do what the combined weight of the Allies couldn’t.

But Noemi had fought inside the ghetto’s smashed walls, and she’d heard the silence outside them.

It was hard to shake off the sense of betrayal.

It was harder still to accept that the years she’d already spent fighting might only be a drop in the ocean, that there was no end to the conflict in sight.

That their time in the forest was merely a pause between battles, not a chance to plan or rebuild, whatever she and Matthias told themselves to keep going through the long winter nights.

Noemi had gradually adjusted to life in the Kampinos, although she hadn’t been certain at the start that she would.

The first headlong dash from the cemetery into the densely packed trees – which had soon slowed to a clumsy half-run, half-walk as the miles tore at their starving and exhausted bodies – had been far more frightening than she’d initially admitted.

The fighters had come at the forest blind, forced to put their trust in men none of them knew, praying they were being led to a place of safety and not into a blackmailer’s den.

Everything had been a threat in the first few days on the run.

The mosquitos which never stopped biting.

The German patrols constantly sweeping the forest, determined to flush out the rebels who’d not only dared fight back against Hitler’s soldiers in the ghetto but had escaped with their lives as it burned.

The Jew-hunters who came carrying clubs and pitchforks and collecting fugitives to trade with the Nazis – dead or alive – for money or sugar or salt. Nothing had been familiar.

The Kampinos was so riddled with marshlands and swamps, it was as if the entire landscape had been fashioned from black and bitterly cold water even in summer.

Wet mist clung round the trees, ready to wrap itself in curtains around the survivors; thick mud sucked at their ankles at every step.

As for the sky… there was barely a trace of it to be seen, beyond the odd pinch of deep blue caught like a scrap of torn silk on a treetop.

This deep into the forest’s heart, there was no hope of the sun either: its rays had been conquered centuries ago.

This was a subterranean world, heavy with shadows; creeping with damp and the fungal scent of decay.

The forest had felt like a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. But now… I’m learning to tame it.

That had felt like an impossibility at first. Noemi’s first hours in the camp had been spent learning survival skills that were a foreign language to a girl brought up in Bavaria’s mountains and meadows.

Look for the bright patch of green which marks a swamp before the water swallows you.

Listen for the twig’s snap before the enemy’s boot fully lands.

Understand which swooping bird call is actually a comrade calling a warning.

But then one – learn how to make yourself one with the trees and use them for cover – had made sense, and she’d realised staying safe was simply about learning to read a landscape, something she’d been born to do.

Now she moved when the leaves moved, and she could hear the sound of a patrol coming as clearly as a swooping owl picks out a mouse.

And she knew not only which plants could kill her but also which ones could keep them alive.

Noemi sealed the pot of paste she’d made out of steeped yarrow buds with a circle of wax and added it to the growing medicine shelf. The remedy wasn’t as powerful as an antibiotic, but it would help stop a wound bleeding and could fight an infection that hadn’t bitten too deep.

She stood back and admired her work, imagining Frieda picking up each jar and praising her talents while offering advice on how to do a better job next time.

It was a warming thought for a cold day, even if the few tears she allowed herself to shed fell like frost on her cheeks.

She dashed them away and rubbed her hands as clean as she could with snowmelt and dried them on a scrap of cloth which might have frozen slightly but at least wasn’t blooming with the mildew that had eaten everything in the summer months.

She had one preparation left to make – an infusion of pennyroyal and mugwort – but that could wait.

None of the malnourished forest wives were likely to need it: their bodies were struggling to support their own needs, never mind sustaining a pregnancy which would likely mean death for both mother and baby in such an unforgiving forest if it went to term.

Besides, someone was singing outside by the campfire, somebody was laughing and that was the medicine she needed right now.

She pushed a few loose strands of hair back into her braid – there wasn’t a mirror to check it in, even if she’d had the desire to do so – and went outside.

The heavy snowfall had turned the zemlyanka she shared with Matthias into an ice palace inside and out, but at least the cold snap meant that the Germans wouldn’t risk sending a search party into the woods and the partisans could stay in one place for a while.

Summer – and the spring she hadn’t yet experienced – demanded constant movement and constant vigilance.

Nothing could be left visible. Tracks had to be swept clean with branches.

Ashes from the campfires had to be thrown into the swamps.

Anything that had been buried had to be covered with stones and leaves so the ground looked untouched but not suspiciously tidy.

Sunny days and wet ones were as much of a threat to the partisans as the Germans, but snow was a godsend.

Snow meant the campfires could burn at night as well as in the day.

It meant they could stop and sit together, sing and tell stories.

It gave them the chance to be more than survivors eking out a dangerous existence.

It allowed them – however briefly – to be a family.

And – although we don’t tempt fate and talk too often about the future – it’s given the two of us the time to learn more about each other, for good and for ill.

Matthias was already at the campfire, surrounded by the bustle he always attracted.

Noemi loved how popular he was and how easily he gave his time to others, whether they wanted a listening ear or advice.

Nothing was too much for him. He was one of the few fighters who regularly visited the civilian forest camps, to see what help was needed there.

Most of the other partisans, including her, avoided those – even the toughest of them stumbled when faced with starving, frightened children they could do little to help.

She loved a great deal about Matthias; she cared very deeply for him.

But she hadn’t been able to fall in love with him in the wholehearted way he’d fallen in love with her. And he knew it.

‘It wasn’t meant to be me, was it? You’d been imagining someone else.’

Noemi tried to wipe the memory of those words away as she walked towards his welcoming smile. It always took an effort. They’d lurked in her head since they’d spent their first night together, when she’d woken up to find herself alone in the fur-covered bed.

‘What do you mean?’

She’d found Matthias outside the dugout as the sky was slipping gently towards dawn. He was leaning against a tree, his arms wrapped round his body. It had felt kinder to wait until she knew what he’d sensed than to go straight to him.

‘There was a moment, afterwards, when you weren’t there. When your eyes were looking away from me as if you were searching for a different face. You seemed so…’ He shook his head. ‘Sad, Noemi. You seemed so very sad. And I was so stupidly happy. Does that make me a fool?’

She’d gone to him then and wrapped her arms round his. All the things she’d done with a gun or a grenade in her hand and yet she’d never felt so cruel.

‘Not a fool, never that. I wanted it to happen; I wanted to be yours. You’re the best, the kindest of men – you know that.’

His quiet smile had cut through her. ‘But I’m not him, am I? Tell me who he was or who he still is to you, Noemi. Don’t leave me wondering where I stand.’

She’d led him back inside the dugout before she explained, away from early-morning risers and prying eyes.

She told him about the locket she’d once worn and the kind woman who’d been a second mother to her.

She’d told him about the boy she’d grown up with who’d given it to her, and the hopes the town, and eventually they, had shared for a future together, despite the impossibility of their situation.

She’d tried to explain the connection they’d shared, although that had always run too deep for words.

She’d stumbled horribly when Matthias had asked, ‘Why was it impossible?’ And then reacted in horror when she completed the story.

‘You’re in love with a Nazi?’

He’d sprung away from her touch as if her skin carried hot coals in it.

‘No! I was then, but that was a long time ago. I’m not now. How could I be, given what he is?’

The denial had been instant and heartfelt. In the end, they’d both decided to believe it.

But Matthias was right. I was thinking about Pascal while I was lying in his arms that first time, and about the bed we could have shared. And I hate myself for it.

Noemi had tried as hard as Matthias to wipe that memory away.

She’d forced herself to remember the leaflets she’d found in Pascal’s rucksack, not the kisses which came before that crushing moment.

Or the slow walk upstairs with him she’d been ready to take.

She forced herself to stop hearing Pascal’s voice saying, I love you .

She told herself those were words he’d never had a right to say.

She told herself, in the same way she’d done time and time again, that he was the enemy, that the flag he’d chosen to follow had written him out of her life, whatever the ties that had once bound them.

Because those things were true and what she was determined to believe.

And they were what Matthias’s goodness deserved.

She crossed to the firepit and sat down on the log beside him. His arm found her waist; her head found his shoulder.

We are together. We come from the same people; we share the same purpose. This is how the world is meant to be.

That was also true, and it was right, by every standard she lived by. So it was time she made her treacherous heart listen.

‘I love you.’

It was true in so many ways, and it wasn’t so hard to say it in the end, not to him.

The look on his face as she finally handed him what he’d been waiting to hear was so pure, it stopped mattering that the words were, at their heart, a lie.

There was, after all, still time to grow into the I’m in love with you that he’d heard.