Bitter Tears

Chapter 1-2

Walking half a mile with two heavy buckets full of water was strenuous, and Katrina sighed with relief when the farmhouse came into sight. But the next moment she stopped in her tracks and Richard bumped into her from behind, spilling some of the precious water.

“What’s up?” he asked, as a tremble rocketed through her body. The stone building lay in wreckage, columns of smoke rising into the otherwise blue sky. She set down her pails, ready to sprint to the house, but Richard put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Don’t.”

“We have to go look for her.”

“First, we must wait until the soldiers are gone,” he said, tightening his grip.

She defied the urge to fight him because she knew he was right. A rash action would only bring harm . If she barged into the farm right now, it might be a suicide mission. “You can stop holding me, I won’t run off.” She turned her head and smiled.

“Let me go ahead first.”

From experience she knew it wouldn’t help to argue with him, so she nodded. Richard ducked into the high grass and snuck up on the farmhouse. After several minutes he stood and waved her forward.

Leaving the pails of water behind, she hurried over to where he waited.

“All gone. We can have a look.”

But as soon as they entered the yard, Katrina put a hand across her mouth at the ghastly sight of Mrs. Jaworski torn to shreds. Searching for Richard’s gaze, she noticed the tightening of his jaw, a sure sign of his hapless anger. “We’ll bury her and then we leave.”

Katrina nodded and put her feet into motion toward the ruins of the house, to see if there was anything she could salvage. She didn’t find much. Some pieces of cutlery. Metal crockery. A big shawl. A book that had miraculously survived. She rubbed the dirt from the copy of Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich Schiller and wondered if the book served as an omen for their own lives. Shuddering, she knotted the shawl into a backpack and filled it with everything useful she found, including some stray potatoes lying in the yard.

Meanwhile, Richard dug a grave for Mrs. Jaworski in her yard and was about to lower her inside when Katrina returned. With wet eyes she watched the kind woman slip into the dark earth, and she folded the dead woman’s hands in prayer, before she helped him fill up the grave.

“I liked her, too,” Richard said as he took Katrina’s hand.

To prevent herself from tearing up, she showed him the backpack and said, “I gathered everything useful I could find. Including a copy of Wilhelm Tell.”

“How fitting. Let’s go.” Richard’s lip quivered slightly, revealing the depth of his own emotion. A little shiver of grief and regret tugged at Katrina’s heart. But now was not the time to mourn.

“But where will we go?” The Polish Home Army partisans they had been providing with food came to her mind, but the partisan unit had left the area weeks ago to join fighting units elsewhere.

“I don’t know.”

Sounds of artillery in the distance heightened her sense of urgency and she looked into Richard’s eyes. “The woods.”