"What God wills is what happens. Pray for the Poles in Germany and Russia, boy."
Dobry nodded out of respect for the older man. After all, Starzec had had the idea that stopped the tanks. But he didn't pray. He had prayed for three years, and there was no good that had come of the prayers. As if hearing his thoughts, Starzec spoke again.
"We prayed that the Russians be driven out, and the Germans did it. Now we've prayed that the Nazis be destroyed. Look at the Nazi bastards on the road. They're beaten. While we're killing the last of them and driving them out, we can pray for those Poles kidnapped and stolen from us."
Dobry thought about it. It was true. The Russians had been beaten back into Russia, and the Nazis were now fleeing Poland. He shook his head stubbornly.
"It didn't happen fast enough. Half of Poland died before God helped us."
"God's time isn't our time." Starzec sighed.
"God shouldn't have let this killing happen. God should have stopped it."
Starzec gestured at the trees and the forest around them. "Do you see God? Where is he, you fool?"
Dobry flushed and shook his head. "I don't know."
"God didn't come down and kill us. I don't see God shooting children and priests. None of us met God beating up Jews or shoving them into railroad cars. This is men doing the murdering. Talk to men about their evil, kill evil men, but pray to God. You can't expect God to come down and do our living for us. We have to do that ourselves."
Starzec turned his back on the boy and walked on, feeling the pains in his knees and back and ignoring them. He had a long walk before this war would be over and he safely back in his bed in Warsaw - in what would be left of Warsaw when the Nazis and the Russians had burned and looted it - but he didn't like to think about that.
The young peasant stood staring after the older man, and he was so flushed that his eyes watered. He brushed away the tears and trotted behind Starzec, and his mind, almost against his will, began to form prayers for his father and mother, for all the Poles taken away from their country, kidnapped and beaten and starved and perhaps worked to death or dead already in the camps. He prayed, and the prayers developed a sort of rhythm as he walked, and his mind grew quiet as they moved steadily eastward towards the thunder of death.
-The True Story of Hansel and Gretel; by Louise Murphy
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