The body lying directly on top of her moved, and Natalia closed her eye, playing dead, praying they wouldn’t touch her.
But she knew what would happen.
A large, calloused hand grabbed her collar and jerked her up. She yelped as her swollen ankle was dragged across the stones.
The Ukrainian bent down and grabbed her hair, forcing her head back. He had a round, almost boyish face, blue eyes and a shock of unruly brown hair. He laughed and said something to his partner, his breath stinking of onions and tobacco. Natalia couldn’t understand him, but it didn’t matter.
The Ukrainian grabbed her by the lapels of her uniform jacket and hoisted her to her feet. The pain in her ankle almost caused her to pass out. His partner now appeared in her field of vision. This one also looked young, though taller, with broad shoulders and a dark, stubbly beard. Both of them were grinning like children with a new toy. The round-faced one reached under her jacket and fondled her breast, then rolled his eyes and spat on the ground. The bearded one jostled him out of the way and reached for her belt.
Natalia twisted her body, trying to back away, but Round Face slapped her, sending a searing bolt of pain through her forehead where the bullet had grazed her. He grabbed her by the hair again and jerked her head back.
Someone shouted from the other end of the walkway. At first Natalia couldn’t make out the words. Then she heard them again. “Halt! Stoppen Sie!”
Round Face’s grip loosened, and his hand fell away.
Two soldiers marched toward them from the street.
Natalia’s stomach tightened as she realized they were Germans.
The one on the right, an officer, glared at the two Ukrainians. “Raus!” he commanded and jerked his thumb toward the street. “Raus! Schnell! Mach schnell!” He reached for the pistol strapped to his waist and shouted again, louder. “Raus! Schweinhunds!”
The Ukrainians made a wide circle around the two Germans, then bolted for the street.
Natalia slumped to the ground.
The officer put a hand on her shoulder. “Can you stand?” he asked in German-accented Polish.
Natalia flinched.
“Yes, I know,” the officer said. “I get that all the time, a German officer who speaks Polish.” He looked to be in his fifties with a narrow face, and a pencil-thin, gray mustache. His uniform was Wehrmacht. Though Natalia could barely breathe, she was thankful that at least he wasn’t SS.
“I was a military attaché to Poland in the thirties,” the officer said casually. “I lived here in Warsaw for six years. So, can you stand, or do you need help?”
Natalia swallowed and shook her head. “I can’t… it’s my ankle.”
The officer barked a few terse commands to his subordinate, who turned and jogged back toward the street. Then he knelt down and touched her ankle gently. When Natalia flinched again, he took his hand away.
The younger soldier reappeared carrying a canvas pack and a crutch. “Unteroffizier Brunkhorst is our company medic,” the officer said. “He’ll take care of that ankle.” Then he brushed back her hair, examining the bullet graze on her forehead.
Natalia’s skin crawled, and she had to fight the urge to slap away his hand.
But he withdrew it, as though sensing her anxiety. “I’d say you were pretty lucky, young lady. Brunkhorst will clean that up as well.”
The medic gently removed Natalia’s boot and began to tape her ankle. He appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties, with a fair complexion and short, stubby fingers. His uniform was soiled with dirt and blood, but his young face was clean and so smooth it appeared he hadn’t yet started to shave. He glanced up at her once, then blushed and looked back down at his work.
The officer lit a cigarette and studied the bodies of the civilians lying in the walkway, shaking his head. “My SS colleagues get a bit carried away at times, but this insurgency is a bad business.” He exhaled a perfect smoke ring, holding the cigarette delicately with his little finger extended. “It’s a shame. I loved my time here; it was a magnificent city. Are you from Warsaw?”
She shook her head. “Lwow.”
The officer raised his eyebrows. “Lwow? That’s too bad. The Russians are such brutes.”
Natalia stared at him, feeling like a prop in some bizarre stage play. Who is this character, and what the hell is going on? Suddenly she was aware of something very strange. There was no shelling, no grinding tank treads, no gunfire.
The officer smiled again. “You’re wondering why it’s so quiet?”
Natalia nodded.
“They’ve called a ceasefire.”
It took a moment for her to process the thought. “A ceasefire… I don’t understand… when?”
“Your General Bor and our high command agreed to a ceasefire beginning at 0700.” He glanced at his watch and nodded. “Ah, right on time.”
Natalia was stunned. Just like that… it’s over? Then she remembered the Ukrainians and shuddered: she might have had her throat slit by those filthy brutes on the very day the nightmare finally ended. “What happens now?”
The officer shrugged. “As soon as Unteroffizier Brunkhorst has you fixed up, you can use that crutch and walk out of here. But, of course, Brunkhorst and I will leave first.” He pointed to the soiled red-and-white armband on her right sleeve. “After all, it wouldn’t do for me to be seen assisting an enemy combatant, would it?”
Natalia sat quietly as Brunkhorst finished wrapping her ankle. Then he carefully cleaned the graze and bandaged her forehead. His touch was so gentle that she had to smile, which made the boy blush again. She thought about Rabbit. Perhaps in some other world, he and this young German boy might have become friends. When the medic was finished, he held out the crutch and, with a firm grip on her elbow, helped her to her feet. Natalia sighed with relief and hobbled around a bit to get her balance. “It feels much better. Thank you.”
The boy smiled briefly, then knelt down to close up his pack.
“Well, we shall be on our way now,” the officer said. He looked at her for a moment, then saluted smartly. He turned on his heel, and the two Germans marched away.
Cautiously negotiating the uneven cobblestones on her crutch, it took Natalia several minutes to make it to the end of the walkway. When she reached the street, she stopped, dumbfounded.
AK commandos milled about openly, laughing and joking, passing around bottles of vodka and hand-rolled cigarettes under the watchful eyes of German soldiers, who stood near their tanks yet kept their distance. Natalia scanned the faces of the Wehrmacht soldiers but didn’t see either the officer or the young medic. She looked down at her wrapped ankle and felt the bandage on her head, reassuring herself that she hadn’t just imagined the whole thing.
She hobbled around for a while, smiling at some of the commandos she recognized, accepting a swig of vodka from an outstretched hand. An exuberant teenager slapped her so hard on the back she almost fell. A young woman hugged her. Finally she stopped near a couple of commandos she recognized from the escape through the sewers.
“The AK’s been disbanded, and we’re all civilians now,” one of them said. He was a stocky, bearded man whose name she couldn’t recall. His tattered army uniform was streaked with dirt and blood, his right arm in a sling.
“Yeah, and I’m Jesus Christ!” his friend retorted. “You just watch. The fuckin’ SS will show up any minute, and we’re all dead meat.”
“Bullshit! I heard from—”
He was interrupted by a weary-looking AK officer banging a steel bar against the side of a dented oil drum. The drum held a blazing bonfire.