excised. This was such an excision.”
He looked over the priest’s shoulder at Nosilewska. His nostrils flared.
“Aber Gott, Gott,” the priest repeated.
Nosilewska sat silent and motionless, and the German spoke more loudly as he looked at her. “Let me explain it to you another way. In the days of Caesar Augustus there was a Roman viceroy in Galilee who reigned over the Jews. His name was Pontius Pilate…”
The German’s eyes were burning,
“Stefan,” Nosilewska said in Polish, “please tell him to let me go. I don’t need anyone’s protection and I can’t stay here any longer, because…” She broke off.
Stefan, deeply moved—it was the first time she had called him by his first name—went over to Thiessdorff. The German bowed politely.
Stefan asked if they could leave.
“Do you want to leave? All of you?”
“Frau Doktor Nosilewska,” said Stefan, rather helplessly.
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Once again, you must be patient.”
The German kept his word. They were released at dusk. The building was silent, dark, and empty. Stefan went to his room to pack a few things. When he turned on the light, he saw Sekulowski’s notebook on the table and threw it into his open suitcase. Then he saw the sculpture next to it. He felt sick when he realized that its creator was somewhere quite near, buried under dozens of bodies in the grave that had been dug that morning.
For a moment he fought the pain tearing at his stomach, then fell on the bed and sobbed briefly, without tears. Then he was calm. He quickly took what he needed, knelt on his suitcase to close it, and locked it. Someone came in. Nosilewska. She carried a briefcase. She handed Stefan a long, white object: a sheaf of papers.
“I found this in the hallway,” she said. When she saw that Stefan did not understand, she added, “Sekulowski lost it. I thought that since you took care of him… It’s—it was his.”
Stefan stood with his arms at his sides.
“Was?” he said. “Yes, it was.”
“It’s better not to think about it now. Don’t,” said Nosilewska, in a physician’s tone. He picked up his suitcase, took the papers, hesitated, and finally slid them into his pocket.
“We’re going, aren’t we?” she asked. “Rygier and Pajaczkowski are staying overnight. Your friend is with them. They’re leaving in the morning. The Germans promised to take their things to the train.”
“What about Kauters?” asked Stefan without looking up.
“Von Kauters, you mean?” Nosilewska replied slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe he’ll stay here.”
When he looked at her, puzzled, she added, “This is going to be an SS hospital. I heard him talking about it with Thiessdorff.”
“Ah, yes,” said Stefan. His head was starting to hurt, from temples to forehead.
“Do you want to stay? Because I’m going.”
“I admire your composure.”
“There’s not much left. It’s just about used up. I have to leave. I have to get out of here,” she repeated.
“I’ll come with you,” he said suddenly, feeling that he too would be unable to touch equipment still warm from the touch of those now dead, or to inhale air in which their breath seemed still to hang.
“Let’s go through the woods,” she said. “It’s shorter. And Hutka told me the Ukrainians are patrolling the roads. I’d rather not run into them.”
When they reached the ground floor, Stefan hesitated. “What about the others?”
She understood what he meant. “It might be easier for us, and for them too. All of us need different people now, different surroundings.”
They walked toward the gate: above them dark trees soughed like the surface of a cold sea. There was no moon. A large dark shape suddenly loomed in front of them.
“Who goes there?” a voice asked in German.
The white beam of a flashlight fell on them. In the reflection from the leaves they recognized Hutka. He was patrolling the yard.
“Go,” he said, waving them on.
They passed him in silence.
“Hey!” he called.
They stopped.
“Your first and only obligation now is to keep silent. Understand?” His voice held a threat. Maybe it was because of the glaring, shadow-sliced light, but he seemed somehow tragic walking in the long coat that fell to his boots, a seam of teeth showing in his face.
Much later, Stefan spoke: “How can they do such things and live?”
They were on the damp road, past the stone arch with the faded inscription black against the sky, when light shined around them again. Hutka was waving farewell with wide swings of the flashlight. Then all was blackness.
They veered off the road at the second bend and slogged laboriously through the mud, heading for the forest. Trees, ever denser and taller, surrounded them. Their feet sank into dry leaves that babbled like water at a ford. They walked for a long time.
Stefan looked at his watch. By then they should have been at the edge of the woods, from which they would be able to see the railroad station. But he said nothing. They walked on and on, bumping into each other; the suitcase felt heavier. The forest sighed steadily. Through the branches they caught rare glimpses of a ghostly night cloud. They stopped and spoke in front of a great spreading sycamore.
“We’ve lost our way.”
“So it seems.”
“We should have taken the road.”
They tried in vain to figure out where they were. It had gotten darker.
Clouds covered the sky, forming a low backdrop to the leafless branches that stirred in the wind. The breeze rattled the twigs. Then rain began to fall, and dripped down their faces.
When they stopped to rest, they noticed a squat shape nearby: some sort of barn or cottage. The trees thinned out and they walked into an open space.
“This is Wietrzniki,” Stefan said slowly. “We’re nine kilometers from the road, eleven from town.”
They had walked in a broad arc in the wrong direction.
“We’ll never get to the train in time. Unless we find horses.”
Stefan did not answer: it seemed impossible. The people were long gone. A few days ago the Germans had burned the neighboring village to the ground, and everyone had fled.
They climbed over a low fence and tapped at the windows and door. Dead silence. A dog barked, then another, and finally waves of steady barking rang through the area. An isolated cottage stood on a little hill above the village. A glow appeared in one of the windows.
Stefan hammered on the door until he shook. He was about to lose hope when it opened to reveal a tall, rumpled peasant, the whites of his eyes shining in his dark face. A white unbuttoned shirt peeked out under the jacket he had thrown on.
“We’re… we’re doctors from the hospital in Bierzyniec, and we’re lost. We need a place to sleep, please,” Stefan began, sensing that he was saying the wrong thing. But anything he said would be wrong. He knew peasants.
The man stood immobile, blocking the entrance.
“All we’re asking for is a place to sleep,” Nosilewska said, quiet as a distant echo.
The peasant did not move.
“We’ll pay,” Stefan tried.
The peasant still did not speak. He stood there. Stefan took his wallet out of an inside pocket.
“I don’t need your money,” the peasant said suddenly. “What people like you need is a bullet.”
“What do you mean? The Germans let us leave. We got lost, we were trying to make the train.”
“They shoot, bum, beat,” the peasant continued in a monotone, stepping out across the threshold. He pulled
