“Do you not speak Belorussian?” he asked after Yona’s silence had gone on too long, and now she felt less pity for him, because there was a curtness to his tone. “Damn it, I can’t make heads or tails out of these towns. Are you Polish? Do any of you peasants even know what you are? No matter, soon you’ll all be speaking German.”
She looked up and met his gaze. His eyes were icy blue, his narrow nose sharp as a bird’s beak. “I am on the way to pray in the church,” she replied in perfect Belorussian.
He arched an eyebrow. “And you are coming from where?”
“Milk. I went to see if any of the farmers on the edge of town had milk they could spare.” It was the first thing she could think of.
“Milk? For whom?”
She thought instantly of Anka. “My daughter.”
His eyes moved to her belly, flat as a board, and then back to her face. “Your daughter?”
She refused to look away. “She is four years old and starving.”
The soldier continued to study her. “But you have no milk.”
“None of the farmers had any to give. I—I could not pay.”
The soldier snorted. “And you hoped that someone would give you some out of goodness? Madam, there is no goodness left here. Don’t you know?”
“That is why I am going to church. I will ask God to help provide.”
He shook his head, his gaze sliding away. “God is not there this morning, madam, I assure you. Go home if you know what’s good for you.”
Her heart skipped in her chest. “Has something happened?” She thought of the nuns’ conversation the night before, the hundred innocent townspeople, Mother Bernardyna’s intention to argue their case with the Germans.
Anguish flashed across his face, replaced quickly by anger. “Please, just take my advice and go home to your child, all right?”
She forced herself to relax. “Yes, sir,” she said, and he nodded, apparently satisfied that he had properly put her in her place. “Thank you.” She hurried past him, relieved that he’d let her go without asking for her papers. She had the ones Sister Maria Andrzeja had hastily insisted she take, but she suspected they would fool only someone less intelligent.
“Wait!” he bellowed behind her, and she froze. Had he realized, after all, that she’d been lying?
She turned slowly, forcing innocence across her face.
He strode toward her, and she stood stock-still, holding her breath. He studied her face once more, as if trying to decide something. Then, hastily, he withdrew a small object from his pocket and handed it to her. “Here. For your daughter.”
She took it, and he was already walking away, back to his post, before she realized what it was. It was a small bar of chocolate, German lettering on the wrapper. For him, it must have been a piece of home, and yet he’d given it to her, concerned for a starving four-year-old. Her heart squeezed. It was a shred of decency in a world gone mad. “Thank you!” she called out, but he didn’t turn. He merely raised his right hand in acknowledgment, and after a second’s pause, she, too, went on her way.
The road to the church was silent, unnaturally so. This time of morning, people should have been bustling about. As she drew closer, she could hear raised voices and the murmurs of a crowd, could feel a ripple of terror in the air the way one might feel a coming storm. She wanted to break into a run, but it would look suspicious, and so instead she walked as quickly as her legs would take her until she rounded the corner, bringing the square in front of the church into view. Immediately, she had to clap her hand over her mouth to stop from screaming.
The square teemed with townspeople, at least two hundred of them, jammed elbow to elbow, some of them whispering, some crying. On either side of the crowd, Germans with rifles kept watch. Ahead of them, on the steps of the church, stood the nuns, all eight of them, with Sister Maria Andrzeja on one end and Mother Bernardyna on the other. They were standing in a row, all of them watching in silence as the body of a young priest swung lifeless from a lopsided, rudimentary gallows that had evidently been constructed from several broken church pews. Yona felt her stomach lurch, tasted bile in her throat. What had happened in the short time she’d been gone?
“This,” a stout German officer was bellowing to the crowd in heavily accented Belorussian, “is what happens when you choose to fight us! You brought this on yourselves! Do you understand? The blood of this priest is on your hands!”
Yona stood frozen, staring at Sister Maria Andrzeja’s face. The nun’s eyes looked straight ahead, and her jaw was set, her chin thrust upward, defiant, angry. How had the sisters wound up in this position? Yona had to do something, but what?