The Flame

Though it hadn't been that long--maybe six months at most--it felt like something far away, like it happened when she was a toddler, in that way things that are determined to not be forgotten come in waves of single images, out of context, forcing themselves into consciousness. Her life was so different then. She had a comfortable bed, soft, even, and plenty of food. Her greatest worry was whether Lukasz would speak to her at school, or ignore her. Now she worried about the most basic things in life: food. Shelter from the cold and storms. Keeping from getting shot, or raped. She tried not to think of how nice life was before. It only made reality far worse for her.

But memories find their way, coming through the back door of your mind at the least convenient times. When she was going to the bathroom, drifting to sleep, loading her gun for guard duty. The worst were the ones that came at night, when she slept. When she was her most vulnerable, defenseless and open.

She couldn't complain, of course. It would make her seem weak to the others, and that opened her to ridicule, or worse. Besides, hers wasn't the worst story in the camp. Every one had their tragedy. Every one had something lost: their family, their homes, their villages. All turned to ash, or an empty shell of what they once were. That was the times they were living in. She was nothing special.

Still, it affected her, when she heard the others cry. Nightmares, feverish, all those visions they can't control at night. Sleep always brought out the truth, and it was awful to see a big, brave man, the same one who had shot a man in the heart while staring into his eyes, weeping, curled like a child, calling for his mother. She wondered if she'd ever done the same, though no one had ever woken her, or mentioned it in passing. But she never did to those soldiers, even if they woke and saw her, staring at her with scared, confused eyes, both of them knowing this was something they wouldn't mention but always know the truth of. The secrets only a survivor can hold.

Magda knew she was luckier than other women in the camp. She could use a gun, and well, for one thing. She was fearless for another. She never flinched when she fired at the enemy, and never shied from bloody combat. It was like that from the beginning; she earned her way into the camp using all the things her father had taught her: loading a heavy rifle. Aiming well. Skinning an animal. The men were impressed, but more important than that, they could always use another well-armed hand, and each officer had one or two women already to do the cooking and cleaning. Besides, she thought. They're scared of me. Women who have the power to fight their own battles always scare men, especially those who like a woman to be theirs. Their cook, their lover, their slave. She was never like that.

Her father thought this might happen. He saw the signs long before September 1939, as anyone who read the news would. He had always been strong, and pessimistic, and so expected the worst. He was sick, though, and a bit crippled now, from the illness, and with her mother gone it was only the two of them. He was convinced he could not survive. But he could help her to.

He started with the guns. He taught her to clean, to load, to aim, and made her practice over and over again to get it right. He showed her old hunting tracks in the forest--valuable information for the partisans--and how to read prints left in the snow. He hunted bears with her, showed her how to wield a knife, how to approach softly and quietly. How to be still when your heart was pounding in fear. He gave her everything he could to ensure her survival. Which left nothing for himself.

When they marched through the town, Magda told herself she was not afraid. There were so many of them, with those straight legs facing forward like a compass, and their arms shooting out like swords on a battlefield. She would fight if they came for her. Fear took her when they started rounding up her neighbors, even the children, and she heard shots long into the night. When they came for them, her father forced her to hide in the space beneath the kitchen floor, and it was only then that Magda realized she could not save him. The truth came upon her, and she knew she would never see him again. She tried to get him to hide with her, but he refused. They would be suspicious, he said, and they would know to look for something. One of us should survive, he said. It should be you.

Magda saw everything that happened. She peeked through a hole in the wall, and she saw what they did. She remembered the sickening sound of the butt of the rifle as it hit his head, the shots that killed him, more than necessary, far more than was needed . The only thing she would allow herself to remember in the light of day was the face of the man who gave the orders. She would know that men when she saw him again. She would know him anywhere. She remembered his cold brown eyes, with one scar over the left one, which she hoped had been gotten painfully, in some way he still remembered and felt. She would taste his blood, and she would make him feel what he'd done, every inch and nerve of him. She would show no mercy.

Now, after months in the cold forest, days without sleep, lying awake with the cold hard steel of the gun beneath her pillow, every man in a German uniform looked the same. There were no differences to her. She had stopped counting the number she'd fought, and because she was in a blind rage in the heat of battle, she had no idea how many she'd killed, if any. It was this, this berserk, mad fight in her, that scared the others the most. No man would touch her now. They thought she was insane, especially that thing she had, where she would say the names of the dead or missing, the ones she knew, at least, as the rifle was pointed at an enemy's heart, or skull. It always started with her father, but the rest were random. People she'd known but not very well, or names of people related to the other soldiers.

The night it happened, Magda had guard duty, and that was after she'd cooked a mean for all 30 occupants of the camp, on her own, and cleaned up afterward. It was a necessary evil; everyone took turns doing it. It was easier with a spouse, though, or a family member, since it was divided by families and not individual names. Alone, it was back breaking work.

She was tired when her guard shift came. She was used to it by now, though. Sleep was never that deep anyway, and she learned her lesson the hard way, when one night, exhausted, she heard a noise, and began to shoot, only to discover an owl. The noise that resulted--both from the owl and her gun--woke everyone in the camp. They were lucky it didn't wake any Nazis that might have been in earshot. She was reprimanded, and required to clean the latrines every evening, the worst shift for that duty, which was never pleasant anyway. She was lucky she wasn't killed.

She was making her third trip round the camp when she heard it. A loud crunch, like the breaking of a branch, or the stomp of a large bug. The sign of something large, and bulky. The sound of a man, for example. Or a bear, she told herself, though the man would be more dangerous, and part of her liked that. Carefully, restraining her urge to burst through the bushes, guns ablaze, she crouched, approaching the area of the noise. She had the benefit of a bright, full moon, helping to guide her though also making her visible as well, to anyone who knew to look. From a rock, on the hill overlooking the old dirt road, she saw him. A lone soldier, in the tell-tale gray German uniform. He turned, seemed as if he saw her, but then slowly turned away. It was him.

Every bit of her wanted to run full-front into him, to scare his face, to pound him with the butt of her rifle, cut him with the knife strapped to her leg. The soldier in her knew that would be loud, and draw attention. He could scream, or pull out a gun, which would bring more of his kind directly to the camp's position, which they had safely maintained for months now. Instead, she sat down, her eyes never leaving the German, and made a plan.

It was not even a half hour later when the man, who had sat down to rest and drink his water, and whom she knew by now had been separated from his unit, was surprised by someone from behind, a sharp thick rope pulled tight around his neck, so tight he passed out. When he woke, it was because ice water on an already chilly fall evening was splashed on his face, along with chunks of the ice, and he was staring into the face of a small pixie of a girl, with huge eyes and short, uneven hair. He knew her. He remembered her younger, softer, sitting next to him in math and language classes. Her father had been a baker, he thought, though he couldn't be sure now, since his head hurt and he was in much pain.

"I know you," he said, his voice raw, breathing heavily.

"I'm sure you do," she said. "Although I'm surprised you remember any of us. Aren't we all the same to you? Like apples in a barrel?"

He didn't know what to say. Of course at some point he knew, if they lost, he'd have to explain what he was doing here, why he ended up in this army in the first place. "I...I...was forced..."

She hit him, hard, with the rifle butt, and he felt the blood drip down his cheek. It hurt, but he hadn't lost teeth, somehow, probably because she wanted him to speak.

"You weren't forced. You smiled before you pulled the trigger. That wasn't "forced".

He didn't know what to say. She thought he was someone else, but she looked so crazed, he knew she wouldn't believe him if he tried to explain. "Please...I'm not sure who you think I am..."

Her knife dug into his other cheek. "You know exactly who I think you are. Who I know you are. And I was there. I got away. I saw it and I got away."

Quickly, she sliced, and he cried out. For a second, Magda wondered if anyone had heard, and looked around, but after a few minutes there were no sounds, and she turned her concentration back to him. She realized they could be heard, and so forced her gun into the back of his head, leading him to the cave.

The cave may not have been deep enough to quiet his screams, but it was all she had, and so she tied him to a boulder and went for supplies. When she came back, he had passed out. She slapped him a few times, and that solved the problem.

"Please. Please don't. I...I'm not...we were in school..."

"Couldn't you think of a better thing than that?" She admitted, he did seem a bit younger than he had that day, but that was just a trick of her mind. This was him. She remembered the sickly smell of his uniform, stained with blood, when he stood over her hiding spot, and the way he licked his lips before pulling the trigger. She hit him again.

"No...no, you and I...we were...."

She broke his finger. Then, because that wasn't enough, she sliced off his ear. He screamed loudly then, so loud he woke the bats, but somehow did not wake the troops. Or perhaps they did, but they knew who he was, and what she was doing. This was their revenge, too, in a way. Most of them would never have the chance to look the man who took away everything from them in the eye, to make him suffer, but here she was, and it was going to count.

"Mag...Magda...your name..."

She stopped. How did he know her name? Could he have known she was hiding when they'd come? Why did he let her go?

"How do you know my name? Did you see me?"

"No...no...I..."

She hit him again, stronger. Her rifle was soaked in blood by now, and there was even some on her face.

"Liar! How did you see me?"

"Magda....I...." One eye was shut. He was speaking slowly. He was in pain. Good, she thought. But not in enough pain to stop lying.

"Liar...liar...liar...liar..." She began to repeat it, over and over, with each cut of the knife, slicing him to bits, sometimes punching him with the back of her hand. Then it changed again, her chant, to the more familiar, her mantra. "Chayim, Chava, Mordechai, Benjamin..." on and on, until at last she grew tired.

Blood covered her hands, soaked it, like dough on a baker. The man, she saw, was dead. She did not feel relief, or less pain, or diminished lost. She felt nothing. His face was bruised, but he had one good eye, the one she'd managed not to stab out of his face. It was blue, and open. She had distinctly remembered him having brown eyes. Perhaps he had been in disguise? She rifled through his uniform, found some identity papers. She opened them, and read "Lukasz Strarzki", the name misspelled since it didn't matter to the Germans anyway, and remembered a laughing young man with starry eyes, who always had a kind word for her. She remembered he had been taken away by the Russian army, while visiting his grandparents, she thought, and no one had known what became of him. She had thought of him, before the day her father left her, for he had been a pleasant boy and she had wondered if he thought of her.

Magda slumped to the ground. She had killed him, and he wasn't even the right man, perhaps hadn't been guilty of anything, though she doubted that. They were all guilty of something. They had all stolen or killed or violated someone in these times, though it had been done for survival. She remembered who she was before, though, and with a crushing sadness, realized she could never be that again. None of them could. She tried scrubbing the blood off her hands, like Lady MacBeth, like a million murderesses before her, but it wouldn't come off. She started to cry, sobbing in a heap on the floor.

It was Zbig who found her. She was pounding her fists on the rocks, filled with such anger it had no other place to go, no one to aim itself toward. He approached her softly, said her name, asked what happened, before he turned and saw the bloody mess against the wall and vomited. Even with all he'd seen, it was brutal. He was trying to get out a handkerchief--something to cover the smell, when out of the corner of his eye, he saw her move. "Magda....", he said, half not believing she would do it, she seemed so strong. He moved to stop her, but it was too late. The trigger was against her temple, and at his first step, she pulled the trigger. He wondered what to do now, whether it was worth cleaning up or letting nature and its animals and dirt and rot take care of the remnants of man.