He'll be more careful next time.
.oOo.
Karol Karski, 15, Polish Male
He dips the brush into the large paint bucket, the lime-green paint splashing onto the cobblestones of the alley way as he lifts the brush towards the wall and brushes against the faded-red bricks. The paint drips as he makes the large P of the rebels, adding the whale tail-shaped bottom so that it truly resembles a kotwica.
He giggles and shoves the top of the paint can back on top of the bucket, shoving the brush into the bucket and rubbing off any drops of paint that had landed on the covering of the bucket. After all, he has to make it seem like a milk can. It's the only way he can get it past the Germans.
An old lady grumbles as he shoves past her and enters the street, joining the growing thong of Poles who enter the town to find food and work. After all, the Germans have promised food to those who will help rebuild the city after the bombs fell, and the hungriest are willing to work for anything, even if it is under the hands of their captors.
His dark blonde hair falls over his eyes as he walks through the streets and he struggles to push it back under his cap, catching a stray lock as it droops downwards and firmly setting it in his place. His pale skin, so white and ghoulish, shines in the light and catches his dull green eyes, which gleam in the sun - or maybe it's the feeling of pride in his heart. He always feels this way whenever he does something to help Poland. It's the feeling of doing something bigger than himself.
As he exits the street and heads towards the residential area of Warsaw, an angry German soldier moves through the crowd and towards the alley way. Quickly and surely, Karol watches him enter the alley and curse in German, a nasty, ugly word that Karol wishes he didn't know. The soldier barks something to another soldier in the crowd and grabs a young man, holding a pistol to his forehead and yelling so rapidly in German that Karol can't translate it in his panic. Karol pushes away and walks through the crowd, humming loudly and trying to ignore the sound that is sure to come.
But he still hears the gunshot. And the screams.
Running now, he moves through the crowd and towards home, away from the Germans. He mutters curses under his breath and blinks away a few tears, but his heart reminds him of what's just happened. He knows the risks of demonstrating against the Germans, he knows the risks of sabotage, he knows that the Germans have a penchant to direct their anger towards random civilians, it's just that the thrill of the moment makes him forget it all.
That is, until the Germans take revenge.
He'll be more careful next time.
His breathing calms as he hurries through the streets and into a less crowded part of the city. It's a part with children running through the streets with their friends, laughing without fear. Here, old women stoop in the doorways with their own cronies, gossiping about the nerve of the housewives on the other side of the street to let their laundry so blatantly hang in the windows or whatever trivial issue they've found to talk about. He feels safer here. After all, it's his home.
His father waves from the stairwell as Karol heads towards their apartment building, leaning against the loose frame of the doorway as he waits for his son to get closer. "Mother's left… on business." Karol nods and waits for his father to start walking back up the stairs, both unwilling to say with so many others around them that Mother has left on rebel business.
They reach the fourth floor and head into the apartment, Father waving to Gertrude Nowak in the kitchen. Ever since other cities in Poland had been bombed, an influx of refugees and a rapid sectioning off of the city by Germans had caused families to seek hospitality in other households. Gertrude was one of them, and the Karski's had gladly welcomed the dignified woman into their house, who disappeared often in the daytime and spoke little to the Karski's. She didn't listen to them, and they didn't listen to her, so they were both happy with their arrangements in this welcoming deal. After all, it could have been much worse. The Wojcik's on the other end of the hallway had to take in two families.
Gertrude, almost as if she senses that Father wants to talk to Karol, disappears into her bedroom and shuts the door, and Father breathes a sigh of relief before leaning against the wooden counter. "I have to go later tonight to another part of Poland. There's an old train bridge over the Vistula that the Germans plan to take a supplies train over, and a few of our forces have found explosives to leave under the tracks. If all goes well, we'll have a lovely little article in the newspaper by the next morning." Karl nods, his face lighting up in the thought that they'll waste supplies for the Germans. They've been transporting a lot of slate and stone as of late: materials that the Germans have asked for help to the eager people of Warsaw. After all, work means food to put on the table, and there wasn't much of that in Warsaw to begin with. If he's right, he would see many young men travel to Germany to start working later in the month.
But he doesn't plan to be one of them. He'll stay here, where Father has a steady-paying job and Mother keeps up the pretense that she's an ordinary housewife. He's happy here.
"But, you'll be here with Gertrude because of that. Mother phoned earlier saying that she won't be here as well tonight." Karol's face looks away with a slight sigh, a sulky expression taking over his face. It's not that he doesn't like Gertrude, it's just that she's often picky and quick-spoken, leaving Karol to feel like he's been insulted more often than not. No, he'd rather have Mother and Father here instead.
"I'm okay with that." Karol nods to Father despite his doubts, putting away the doubts in a small crevice in his mind where he won't think of them. After all, Mother and Father do so much. He shouldn't do anything to disappoint them. "Could I go to the cinema later this afternoon?"
Father breaks into a grin, pointing towards the cupboard under the kitchen sink. "I've got just what you need."
.oOo.
She's heading home. Or at least where home should be.
.oOo.
Dahlia Kachlika, 13, Polish Female
She watches the movie-goers flood out of the cinema doors with shrieks of disgust, a wave of smoke and stench trailing behind them. A few German soldiers run in to inspect the damage, but they're forced to retreat by the sheer power of the smell inside. Not even the mighty Germans can stand a stink bomb.
She notes the likely perpetrator of the bomb in the crowd, his face alight with mischief with a smile that lets his pale face glow. His dark, dirty-blonde hair is loose from under his cap, and he fails to notice it as he pushes through the crowd and away from the cinema with exaggerated cries of disgust. Clever boy. He knows how to deflect the blame away from himself.
Not that she doesn't know a thing or two about that.
She walks up to the German soldiers with a worried look on her face, pointing down the street to where the crowd is headed. "I saw the person who set off this bomb! Please, could you catch him? He must be very dangerous. It would do me great pleasure to help you catch him."
"Ja, was können wir für Sie tun?" the German soldier asks, and Dahlia nods in affirmation. She has little idea of what he's said, but she'll try her best to answer anyway. Bluffing usually works in her favour, and soldiers like to hear appearances and the direction that their foe is headed. It's what she's learned from the other times she's tried this trick.
"He had long, dirty blonde hair, and he had a cap on. I think he was wearing orange clothes." It was more of a reddish-yellow look, but that doesn't matter to her. A little confusion goes a long way. "He went down that way!" She points to the right side of the crossroads, the opposite way of where the boy has went. She doesn't want him to be caught, after all, only to get her prize. That's all that matters. She's given enough information to the officers that if they catch him, they'll know she was telling the truth, and if they don't, then it isn't her fault. She's done her job well.
The German soldiers nod and toss her a few coins, hurrying towards where Dahlia's directed them to. She grins and snatches the coins up, running through the streets with her prize. It's a few złoty, enough to buy her a loaf of bread - and some butter to go with it. Oh, she can feast tonight!
She offers a quick thanks to the God up above - perhaps he isn't listening to her right now, but it never hurts to get on the good side of her creator - and heads through the streets, squeezing through a pair of old women and towards the ruins of Warsaw.
She's heading home.
Or at least where home should be.
She squeals and dodges a cart of apples as a vendor heads through the crowd, Dahlia snatching one of the falling apples before it hits the ground and running off into the crowd. The vendor yells at her and tries to turn his cart around, but urchins attacking the cart for food cause him to curse in anger and head towards the market. The best thing he can do now is just try to get as much of it as he can to the markets of Warsaw, over in the city square, before he loses it all to the hungry children.
After all, there's been more and more of those since the war ended.
She shakes her head and sits down on a bench near one of the bakeries in this area that she's claimed for herself, eating the apple quickly and without hesitation. She takes large, rounded bites out of the apple before throwing away the core, the seeds of the apple falling out and into cracks in the street. They'll never grow to be the apple tree from which they came. Warsaw is too cruel for that.
She sits back and watches life mill around her, the inhabitants of Warsaw quickly moving towards their destinations. There's the old woman with the funny limp and a grim smile on her face moving through the crowd, a light-red shawl draped over her shoulders as she lugs a basket of bread back to her flat. And then Dahlia sees the fat man with golden hair, whose belly jiggles in the tight, frayed grey suit that he's worn for the past five days in a row. Her eyes follow the man as he disappears around the corner, bumping into a young girl with a patchwork blue-and-white dress and green eyes. She smiles in apology to him before passing Dahlia, her eyes looking straight ahead.
She doesn't want to acknowledge a homeless person.
Dahlia shrugs and leans back on the bench. She's used to it all. No one acknowledges the orphans, the homeless, those who are in a worse place than they are. After all, it could give them bad luck. No one wants to be on the streets.
Does she mind living like this? Not really. She's free out here, with everything she could want and desire right now. When her expectations have been so drastically lowered, it's easy to please herself. But when it's cold at night and the wind bites into the scarf that she found near one of the bakeries and her thin jacket almost falls into pieces, she wishes that her home hadn't been bombed to the ground last year. She remembers the warmth of her mother's touch - was her hair red? A shade of auburn? - and her father gruffly reminding her to take the dog out for a walk - or was it to take the dog to the bathroom? She doesn't remember anymore - but she remembers the way the sirens began to wail and bombs lit up the night. She thought she would never make it then. But she's still here now. She'll continue to survive. It's what she'll always do.
No matter what.
.oOo.
Sometimes, the soldiers talk of cities like Berlin, large, gleaming cities where the streets are always clean and there are jobs for all. She wants to be in a city. But first, she has to figure out how to get there.
.oOo.
Yvonne Müller, 16, Swiss Female
The Germans chat in the lounge and Yvonne watches them from the stairs up to the Müller's own apartment, shyly waving back to one of the friendlier ones. She smiles and starts to walk towards them, her white-blonde hair shining in the light and from the hundreds of times she's dragged a comb through her unruly locks, attempting to keep them straight and neat.
But then Noah of all people bumps into her before she has a chance to introduce herself, nearly knocking her over with the tray of jam and toast he has in his hand. She bites back a retort and clenches her teeth, smiling thinly towards the soldiers before turning back up to the stairs, Noah in hand. "What are you doing, brother dearest?"
"Ma and Papa asked me to help clean up breakfast!" little Noah says innocently, his large blue eyes almost enough to calm Yvonne down. "Why were you going towards the soldiers? You know that Ma doesn't want you to associate with them. You should just stay upstairs or help in the barn, like they said you should."
Almost.
"Why aren't you doing what you're supposed to?" Yvonne sneers, steering the conversation away from the fact that she's not supposed to be talking with the soldiers, or even looking at them. Mother and Father are too paranoid for their own good. "You're supposed to be helping them, right? Then you better go back to the kitchen and start working on the dishes. You shouldn't be out here if you're going to help. How are Mom and Dad ever going to trust you with anything if you don't help?"
Her brother's face crumbles, then lightens up again as he remembers what he was doing. "But -"
"No, no, go back to the kitchen before I tell Mom. Do you want to lose your privileges or not, little brother?"
Noah slowly shakes his head and heads back to the kitchen, where Yvonne contentedly listens to her mother berating Noah for going to the wrong place. It might be mean of her to have gotten him confused, but it keeps her safe. She doesn't need to get in trouble. Not when so much is going on already. She'd rather keep her freedom to move around the large home and listen to everything that's going on, and plot her way out of this piece of land that will take her nowhere. Sometimes, the soldiers talk of cities like Berlin, large, gleaming cities where the streets are always clean and there are jobs for all.
She wants to be in a city.
But first, she has to figure out how to get there.
She walks back up the stairs and into the Müller's living room, picking up a book and flipping through the pages with a bored gaze. It's a travel guide that she snuck upstairs from the magazine collection near the check-in counter, and she likes to look at the different places whenever she feels down. It inspires her to go further, to aim for bigger and better things than work here for the rest of her life. But she doesn't feel down right now, she feels bored, a much more dangerous emotion than melancholy.
Perhaps sneaking outside and taking a walk will help her boredom. After all, the longer she vanishes for, the more likely that Noah gets to do her chores in the barn.
She likes that idea.
She grabs her boots and walks out the back way, stepping down the stairs at the back of the house and walking around the side to step onto the road. It's solid and thick, a sure sign that spring is almost over and summer is on it's way. Her parents don't like the idea of summer this year: that Schnee fellow's promise to take children to fight to the death worry them, but she wants it to come all the sooner. It means that she won't be stuck indoors for much longer, and Switzerland is only truly beautiful to her in the summer.
Well, there is the winter skiing. But that's the only thing that makes winter enjoyable.
She smiles and hurries towards the town nearby, hoping to get close to the soldiers and listen to them. Ever since the Germans have occupied the town, she's been closely listening to the language, picking up the terms and learning it slowly. Slowly, but surely. She's sure if she had been given the chance this morning, she would have been able to talk to the soldiers about their home, or at least attempt to. Maybe if she meets one of the higher-ups, she can find a way to leave, to get out of this town. She wants to visit the cities! The cities!
A gunshot nearby causes her to jump in fright, and she lands nimbly on her feet as she glances to the side of the road, blissfully unaware of the puddle that she's almost stepped into. A German soldier is yelling at one of the villagers, the frightened man holding onto a cap and a bag as the German points a gun at his face. The German curses - she doesn't know if it's cursing, but the tone of voice that the German uses sounds like it - and strikes the man across the face, a bruise swelling instantly and leaving a splash of crimson and indigo on the cheek. The man cringes and breathes heavily as the German shoots into the air in fury, grabbing the bag from the man and walking away stiffly as the man closes his eyes and cries in relief.
She gasps, turning away and trying to stop her knees from shaking as the German walks back onto the road, a bag of goods in his gloved hand and a stern look on his face. She doesn't dare breathe until he walks past, taking well over a minute for her breathing to return to normal.
She takes a step forward, her mental state shaken. Maybe she doesn't need to go to Germany.
Splash!
She glances down in disgust at her soggy shoes, the loafers now muddy and uncomfortable.
Oh, she definitely does.
.oOo.
No one had the foresight to see what it would become. Their heads were stuck in the past, lingering over memories long ago.
.oOo.
Nino Altherr, 16, Swiss Male
He grabs the camera from his brown-leather bag and puts the strap over his head, the silver, German issued Leica I camera gleaming in the light of the city. A small smile plays on his lips before he walks into the throng of salesmen and women trying to make as much as they can today. Two years ago, this market wouldn't have even been thought of by anyone who walked through the crisp, clean square of Bern. Some of the older citizens may remember murmurs about the old Christoffelturm being torn down, remember their parents telling stories about how the inner city of Bern used to look like, but no one had the foresight to see what it would become. Their heads were stuck in the past, lingering over memories long ago.
No one could blame them, really. After all, the German army wasn't something that anyone would like to think about in the city of Bern.
He snaps a small picture of a woman offering an array of fruits to newcomers in this market, a few soldiers stopping to chat with her. She's fairly attractive, Nino notes, but he also sees the silver wedding ring on her hand as she blushes and tries to tell the soldiers to go away without offending them. God help anyone who'd offend one of the German soldiers, the self-proclaimed 'saviours' of Switzerland.
Eh, as long as Nino keeps his head down and doesn't talk to anyone, he'll be fine. Not interacting with them means that he won't have a chance to provoke them. Besides, he's never minded keeping to himself. It's nice to not talk to others. He feels safer this way. After all, who would mind a boy with just a small camera in his hands, especially if he isn't aiming it at them?
He keeps taking photographs, making sure to not take pictures of anyone who looks directly his way. He's learnt from experience that people don't like to be caught off guard by him, so he usually sticks to the birds congregating around church steeples and the wares of the markets. He's not a religious man, but he does like the way the birds fly around the churches. It feels different. It feels grand, not like some of the gawdy buildings on the outskirts of Bern. No, the inner city is from a different era, an era that's withstood the test of time and is all the better for it. It's the most beautiful place on the planet - at least to Nino. He's never seen even Italy, after all, which has been highly praised by his parents for lush, rolling hills and valleys. Who knows what other cities in Europe may be like?
His brown hair is blown back by a sudden breeze, and he tucks the small camera back into his bag before turning to run back to his house. The Germans always seem to come in and search for dissenters and potential rebels just before dinner, and he makes sure to leave an hour before in case he gets caught up in their questioning. His parents, the public marvels that they are, would never forgive him for returning home after a short questioning - especially if it's as bad as they've told him about. Nino doubts it, but he's heard rumours that they torture those who don't cooperate. It's just believable enough to cause doubt, but he's never paid attention to that rumour spread by old housewives in the city. After all, wouldn't he had heard about it from those who were questioned?
As he enters the apartment, he's greeted by his mother applying a fresh coat of lipstick and adjusting her royal-purple dress, the hem a modest few inches below the knee. She gives a small grin as Nino walks in and ruffles his hair, her painted smile all the brighter. "How was your walk, honey? I hope you have a few more photos to show us. It's always wonderful to see your little scrapbook."
Nino gives her a small smile back, patting the small bag hanging against the side of his hip. "I have a few. Bern is beautiful, as always. Will we stay here for a while?"
"Your father would like to leave for the mountains before summer fully comes, but the truth of the matter is that the government is forcing us to stay here. Apparently this region of Switzerland is being chosen for the male position in the competition Schnee speaks about, and no one who's lived here for more than six weeks is allowed to leave it except if they have explicit permission. They denied us."
"Oh."
"I know it might sound scary, but nothing's going to happen. Schnee is just blustering, his bark worse than his bite." His mother rubs his hair once more, giving him a hug. "You're growing so big, Nino! I'm surprised how tall you are. You'll soon be every bit the man your father is."
Nino laughs, thinking of his six foot, three inch father with the stature of an athlete and a black mustache that he meticulously grooms. "I don't think I could be quite as assertive as Father, Momma."
"But you're just fine that way, Nino." His mother gives him a quick kiss on the cheek before grabbing a coat and shrugging it over her shoulders, her lithe frame enveloped by the black coat. "Now, I must hurry to the office. I may be starring in a smaller movie if I play my cards right! Isn't that exciting, especially after Liebling Edelweiss?"
He smiles and waves goodbye to his mother as she exits the door, closing the door carefully and picking up his bag, focusing on the lights gleaming on the city below his home.
His camera, his mind, only captures the beauty of Bern.
And it's just fine that way.
Our regularly scheduled two month update is here again! XP I have reasons this time for this, mainly because the Swiss Male and Female needed to be replaced and it took a bit to get them both, but the lovely BulletproofReed and willemsbakedgoods submitted those two! So a round of applause to them :D I'm excited to get more into this story, especially now that we're over halfway through! 4/7 intros, y'all!
Anyways, tell me what you think of this! I already have started on the next intro, so I'm determined to get to Berlin soon. We are going to do it, guys! We're going to finish this story, no matter how long it takes! Cheer me on in the reviews, because I want so badly to finish this up :D Until next time, TheAmazingJAJ