The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

74 18 June 1944

It’s 18 June 1944. Paul McCartney is two years old today. Little thing. If I were to dismount and press my ear against that Polish tree trunk, I would be able to hear the bells his mother, Mary, is shaking over his cradle in a brick house in Liverpool. Their echo reverberates across Europe, under the ground, under the war, with beetles announcing the beat that will be resounding here in twenty years’ time when all the leaves start to sing in English ‘Love Me Do’ in front of Polish and German forest rangers who won’t understand a word.

But today it is 18 June 1944, and Paul McCartney is only two. I, on the other hand, am fourteen, doing my third year in Inferno High with another two whole war terms to go. Czerwony the horse had been carrying me across Poland for a whole day. And finally took me out of the wild forest back into human territory, with cultivated land, roads, and houses in the distance. The horse recovered his joyful trot again and moved at a canter along the dusty road. The pain in my groin returned.

The country road was so glaringly white in the summer heat that I had to squint my eyes and didn’t see the cloud of smoke coming against us until the tank hidden inside it had stopped. Czerwony slowed his pace and eventually stood dead still against the war machine. The road was so narrow that the tank occupied its full width, and its edges were two manes of grass, fenced off by barbed wire, making it virtually impossible to pass.

The tank was clearly German, marked with a black cross. It started to show signs of agitation, to shift on its tracks. I tried to direct the horse onto the grassy bank, but stubborn as a tripod, Red refused to budge. The tank edged forward another bit and halted. Its nozzle was approaching the horse’s head now. There was no window on the front of the tank, which gave the impression that it was following a will of its own – two beasts confronting each other, a metallic dragon and a draught horse. Once more, the former pushed forward, but instead of stepping aside, the latter drooped his head. The tank’s cannon was moving across the workhorse’s mane. I leaned over to one side just to be safe, but there was no point, the nozzle halted right in front of my face. I looked into the black hole of war. And smelt its bad breath. I almost felt like pinching my nose but didn’t dare offend this beast of war. Was this perhaps the moment to use the egg? Chuck it down that infernal trunk, like horseradish down a nostril? Czerwony wasn’t intimidated in the slightest and didn’t even stir when the tank treads rolled into motion again. Once more I bowed to avoid getting the tank gun in my head, but then I decided to wrap my hands around it, instead of getting annihilated with horse and hooves. The tank halted again and I clung to its sun-heated metallic shaft while Czerwony reluctantly stepped onto the side of the road. I managed to feel my way down the gun and clamber onto the tank. The hatch was open and I could see into the beast’s intestines. There were two soldiers inside, a sweaty blond kid without a helmet and a cursing chubby one with a rifle and a red face. Lying between them was a beautiful white living goat.

‘Heil Hitler!’ I exclaimed, a child accustomed to war.

They parroted the same greeting, but I was already startled by the goat and asked, ‘Is she in the army?’

‘What? No!’

‘Oh, a prisoner of war, then?’

‘Get out of here with that bloody horse!’

‘Yes, but he’s Polish. Doesn’t understand German.’

‘In war, everyone understands German! Try to pull him to the side! We are in a hurry.’

I pulled my head out of the beast’s intestines and yelled at Czerwony in Polish, the few words I knew. He raised his mane, the tank brusquely twitched again, and the draught horse finally sidestepped towards the barbed wire, digging around it with his hooves until it had loosened two pickets; the fence yielded just as the caterpillar beast bulldozed by. I leaped off the tank’s rear into the cloud of dust and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I saw my valiant friend wrestling with a tangle of barbed wire on the edge of the field, but he swiftly freed himself and scuttled with a loud snort out onto the arid field of dirt. I called him back, but he trotted away, his hooves kicking up dust as he cut diagonally across the field towards an old farm two hundred yards from the road. I carried on walking down the road, the pain between my legs flaring up again, and then turned up a path leading to the farm. Was this my four-legged friend’s home?